Social unrest, political upheaval, and world-building in the AC timeline. A (mostly) instrumental playlist.

Listen Here (10 songs // 47 minutes)

Growing up is hard to do, even more so if you're a Gundam Pilot. But ten years is a long time and people change...

Listen Here (46 songs // 3 hours, 37 minutes)

The women of the AC timeline are not strong women; they are complicated women, with their own agendas and desires. They have their character flaws, moments of weakness, but also unyielding courage.

Listen Here (18 songs // 1 hour, 14 minutes) 

Heero and Duo have been brothers in arms, compatriots, confidants, and best friends since the conflict ended. But as the two grow older and take steps down their own paths, they find that understanding and compassion is hard to come by – and love is an even scarcer commodity yet. It is not until a series of unhealthy relationships (of different kinds) leaves them both downtrodden that they find their way back to one another. It is then that they decide to give being “more than friends” a try. 

Listen Here (33 songs // 2 hours, 17 minutes)

Quatre and Trowa’s relationship starts as something purely physical, a comfort during the worst of the conflict. As peace blossoms, the bond between them quickly evolves into something much more consequential. Unfortunately, peace wears on them both differently, and it isn’t long before problems arise. They part ways with the taste of iron on their tongues…and reunite in much the same. A close call resets priorities and the clock, and the two men work to rebuild the relationship that was lost. 

Listen Here (44 songs // 3 hours, 24 minutes)

Wufei and Relena meet in NYC in AC 205 during a private get together of the pilots and close family.  They meet again soon after at the sidelines of some high-brow Preventers function over New Years Eve that Wufei was somehow roped into attending (he blames certain individuals in the leadership chain for that one).  Both instances, they spend much of their time together debating the policies and shortfalls of the ESUN’s decision-making and implementation capabilities.  They frustrate one another to the point of delirium both nights...and then they can’t think of anything else.

The relationship that grows out of their verbal sparring sessions is built on mutual respect, brutal honesty (sugar coating is for pansies), and a shared desire to be the strength and balm the other needs to keep fighting.

Doesn’t mean it’s easy, of course.  But then…who wants easy anyway?

Listen Here (45 songs // 3 hours, 8 minutes)

Zechs and Noin began as comrades in arms and ended has something much more: her stalwart devotion saves him from his self-destructive tendencies. 

Listen Here (16 songs // 1 hour, 2 minutes)

At the launch of Operation Meteor, Heero’s conditioning had suppressed most physical and emotional response to external stimuli – he has been scrubbed down and programmed to receive and transmit only, leaving static of feelings. But even Dr. J’s most careful ministrations couldn’t suppress them forever, and Heero eventually overcomes the barriers so painstakingly constructed. Defying his training and his rearing, Heero lets the words of a long-dead mentor and exposure to the new post-conflict world guide his internal rebellion and eventual recovery of buried emotions.

…But emotions are exhausting after extended absences, and the creeping slide of depression offers a familiar but poisonous numbness. In the bright lights and pounding bass of New York City’s nightlife, Heero seeks out temporary fixes and thrills to feel something – anything – in increasingly self-destructive patterns. The inevitable crash is epic but mercifully private.

True to his call sign, however, Heero destroys himself through fire and creates himself anew. With gentle coaxing and not-so-gentle prodding of family, he sets his gaze on the horizon and takes the next step.

Listen Here (23 songs // 1 hour, 48 minutes)

Gregarious and defiantly morbid (as illustrated by his wartime call sign of “La Muerte”), Duo would appear a unique entity to himself. However, he is in fact par for the course on his home colony: stridently patriotic in the cause for colonial independence, “in” on the Cosmic Joke, and lacking of nearly all respect for designated authority figures. And like so many others, Duo uses his outward optimism to mask a deep sadness over paths not chosen and lost causes.

Under the relentless devil-may-care attitude and toothy grins lies something foreboding, and tremendously sad: a dark abyss whose siren call sings much like the void between the stars.

But on clear nights, surrounded by good company and those who have become family…the darkness is burned away by the cold fire of the starfield and bright lights of foreign cities.  It’s at times like this that the smiles are real, his guard is down, and he can truly allow himself to hope.

Listen Here (36 songs // 2 hours, 30 minutes)

Peace brought a calm that Trowa has never known and was ill-prepared for. There had once been campaign to campaign, shifting allegiances to follow the money, a dutiful cog in a wheel of violence; now there is only red-stained hands and doubt. The insomnia doesn’t help.

Staying with the circus offers some sense of normalcy – he remains part of a unit, and so long as he does his job, he can remain invisible…as has always been the case. Before too long an itch begins to grow, a hunger that crawls beneath his skin and is only satisfied with increasingly death-defying feats and near misses…and the occasional bar fight alongside the troupe’s roustabouts.

But the only true respite from the maelstrom of uncertainties is the company of old comrades in arms. They fuel his vices, embrace his budding adrenaline junky tendencies and biting humor, and assure him that there are more reasons than routine to keep moving.

When a falling out crashes through his world, old ghosts are resurrected and it becomes all too easy to withdraw back into himself. A close encounter with a stray bullet induces a long overdue catharsis and reconciliation.

With renewed energy and focus, Trowa embraces his becoming with reckless abandon, knowing that he’s no longer flying without the net.

Listen Here (21 songs // 1 hour, 28 minutes)

Quatre begins his post-conflict life optimistic and throws himself headlong into the rebuilding efforts. He is disenchanted all too soon. Low intensity conflict rages across the Earth and pockets of resistance continue their fight against conformity in the colonies. Nonetheless, he stubbornly clings to his principles and keeps his gaze focused on the horizon. Surely just one more step in the right direction will make things better.

Quatre’s tactician tendencies serve him well in the years that follow the Mariemaia Insurrection. After much struggle, he manages to fully restore the Winner corporate empire’s image and industrial reach, making a name for himself through a series of high-risk, high-yield business deals. Admittedly, the name his competitors give him is “an angel-faced pit viper,” but he opts to own the brand rather than let it hinder him. His ethical moorings allow him to avoid overt criticism until, however, he establishes a weapons R&D program so as to better arm the Preventers’ field units which had thus far been going up against leftover wartime arsenals with rubber bullets and handcuffs. Throughout the L4 elite, it is rumored that the young Mr. Winner designs and tests the weapons himself in the colony’s belly, rarely sleeps, and keeps questionable company.

So begins the unraveling.  Not of the Winner name, nor of the company’s holdings, but the life that he’s kept for so long in the shadows, the one that has never graced the pages of a tabloid, has never been nodded to in even the most secure of board rooms. This is because Quatre’s years of fighting to maintain a life of strict dichotomy has had its edges blurred one too many times, the scars made by the Zero System years ago have left bottled rage in their wake, and lies are toxic things when taken in large doses. 

It’s only after a chance encounter on a rainy New York sidewalk and a very, very close call that Quatre is hurdled into the truth and begins to accept his priorities as they truly stand. Only then does he begin to embrace who he is beneath the public face.

Listen Here (22 songs // 1 hour, 31 minutes)

Left orphaned and adrift in a world at peace, Wufei is especially susceptible to Dekim Barton’s promise of order and vindication; the collapse of the Mariemaia Insurrection leaves him once more lost and alone until Sally makes a generous offer that breaks all of the Preventers closely monitored rules and regulations. The (in)famous, now-retired Colonel Une turns a blind eye to the dubious infraction so as to keep the former Gundam pilot on the payroll lest he take up some other equally doomed campaign.

Wufei remains as suspicious of the system as ever; however, he has traded outright rebellion for days spent under the Preventer colors, first out in the field and then later in the organization’s research and analysis wing, aggregating intelligence and raw data into “bite size” reports for the agents still fighting for peace. On both sides, he proves to be a formidable force and his path to the Preventer badge becomes one of the organization’s most widely known but best kept secrets.

Even as his post-conflict career mounts a positive trajectory, he grapples daily with ghosts from his past that threaten his own sense of self-worth. He rages against the legacy his family left him, now no more than space debris and ash, and kicks against every thought that had been drilled into him as a child by a colonial population that decided death was a better option. Ever stubborn, Wufei refuses to let the needling of the Dead define him…but that’s not say they don’t get the upper hand at times.

In the end it is his own voracious appetite for knowledge and companionship that keeps him sane and helps him grow. Hatchets buried, trespasses forgiven, fears aired, and kinships forged – Wufei begins a new life with brothers standing beside him.

But above all, Wufei is still and will always be a man of action.

Listen Here (23 songs // 1 hour, 32 minutes)

For all your frustrated and/or exhausted Relena needs.

Listen Here (15 songs // 1 hour, 2 minutes)

At times viciously caustic, and other times tender, Cathy binds her long-held and deep-seated grief with the allure and mystery of a circus performer. 

Listen Here (13 songs // 47 minutes)

One for everyone’s favorite BAMF Preventer Agent. 

Listen Here (14 songs // 49 minutes)

Because sometimes, it really doesn’t mater where the enemies are.

Listen Here (34 songs // 2 hours, 16 minutes)

Everybody goes a little crazy sometimes...

Listen Here (17 songs // 1 hour, 20 minutes)

“When things to go to hell in a hurry, they send us in to get everyone else out.”  One for Duo and his EXFIL compatriots.

Listen Here (18 songs // 1 hour, 12 minutes)

When it was established, the L2 cluster was a vibrant manufacturing hub feeding the colonial industrial base. The promise of jobs and education drew a grab-bag of races, religions, and creeds from their war-weary and Earth-bound origins.  A new start among the stars.

Since Heero Yuy’s assassination, the colonial population has suffered the harshest of the Alliance’s sanctions and in a constant cycle of self-fulfilling prophesies, the citizens of the L2 cluster struggle ever harder against the system.  A century of isolation and violent oppression in response to the frequent (but often poorly organized) civilian movements has led to the organic development of one of the most eclectic, insular societies in the colonial sphere.

Cut off from colonial compatriots, the populace has delved deeper into their multitude religious texts for messages of perseverance which transcend generational and spiritual divides.  In poorly veiled attempts to circumvent the colonial censorship committee’s attention, religious symbols and allegory weave themselves into the words of singers and songwriters as nods to the on-going resistance and undying patriotism.

At the same time, in the search for spiritual guidance the citizens of the L2 cluster have found the universe’s longest running joke: everyone, and everything, dies.  Death thus affords the greatest respect – whether as a Deity or simply a Universal Truth – and is greeted with boisterous applause.  The greatest strength (it is widely believed) is to celebrate what your enemy most fears: the unknown of the void and what happens next. 

Listen Here (32 songs // 2 hours, 3 minutes)