#ALSO at this point wolfwood does not believe he's good enough to be a brother or a friend or protector

[annaofaza]

Wolfwood's arc in TriMax is all about him questioning the world, the ideals he's held all these years, all while wondering if he's good enough—for the world, for his god, for Vash, for the children he protects.

Even in his dream sequence, he can't have it all. Wolfwood so wants to be Big Brother Nico again but believes his hands are stained in blood and cannot be washed clean. He cannot put away his "work," even in his own fantasy.

We've seen Vash running away from his past and him realizing he cannot escape—and then we see Wolfwood with the same realization. Both of them believe there's no true redemption, that they're both lost, that they can't be anything more than what they've been turned into.

They're still going to fight for a better world—but one that doesn't include them in the end. They both recognize the necessity of donning their monikers and doing their duty, but that means leaving any peaceful life behind. As Vash had to cast off Eriks, Wolfwood says goodbye to Nico.

[nanomooselet]

Final Phase: The Fairy Tale

I'm going to tell a story.

And because it's a gruesome, disturbing one, it can't be anything other than a fairy tale. Caution is advised.

Once upon a time there was a boy whose name was Nai.

He was a good, innocent boy who loved his mother and his brother, who liked jokes and cowboy movies. He wasn't born what he grew to become. He was, at worst, too protective of his dignity. Precocious. Convinced that he was special.

Then Nai made a choice. Nai went on to make many more choices, every single one of them a cascading result of the first.

Knives would like you to think he's Vash's equal opposite. He's aligned with the Plants; he's their avenging angel. He talks about them as though they're people, calling them "she" and "her". To him, they're suffering martyrs. They're crying out for vengeance, can't you hear them? He's the older twin. He's the adult. He's the authority. He's the lord. He's the avenger. He's a liberator. He's fighting for freedom.

He might even believe all those things. He might have so much conviction that the story, through his eyes, bends to support him.

Nevertheless it is a distortion of the truth.

Knives says that everything he's done was to protect Vash from the humans who'll eat him alive. He wants to keep his brother safe. On this point alone, he's being honest. It might be the only honest thing he says. But it's an honesty concealing a truth no one so much as suspected was there. No one except…

You want to know a secret?

Nai poses as cold and inscrutable, but he wears everything he thinks on his face. You can track his thought processes quite easily, when you know.

I've yet to figure out what the proper order is, but I wager this conversation was one of the last before the fleet crashed, even though in the episode it comes before the one where they discover Tesla. The way these scenes are presented in Episode Eleven is extremely manipulative. 

Right here Nai is thinking: Joke's on you. I know the truth already.

He's reminiscing.

Rem realises in this instant she cannot save her son. That there's nothing she can do or say, or that he'll hear from anyone, that'll spare him the consequences. She looks into the eyes of her child, the boy she raised with so much love, whom she trusted and adored, and she sees the path he's chosen by disobeying her.

Because he ate the forbidden fruit.

Knives loves Vash - really and truly, he does. He always has. He's telling the truth when he says his paradise/world of Plants is incomplete without his brother. But the same way he sees Rem in Luida and Meryl and immediately tries to destroy them, Knives can't understand how Vash exists as an independent entity or as a Plant who has no desire to hone or use his power.

Knives craves that power - wants to have enough that he'll feel safe. You can't forget he is driven above all by fear. Rem ran into the fire, leaving him behind. Knives had Dr. Conrad modify himself so he wouldn't die until Knives allowed him to. One of the arguments he makes to Vash is that humans only live a century at the outside.

He looks at Vash and he sees Tesla, who was so heartbreakingly young when her body failed her, yet to reach her full potential. She couldn't defend herself. He sees her reborn in Vash, because her powers are also Vash's powers: to connect, to receive.

To consume.

This is a second chance. He wants to keep his family safe.

You think that's an operating table? These are specimen jars?

Or maybe an alter? A reliquary?

Holy robes? Suffering angels?

Because Knives calls Conrad a doctor? Because he wants him as a father? Because anything about this could possibly be sacred? That's a table. That's a freezer.

That's an apron and those are husks.

Because the only thing any of this has ever been about?

Preserving the meat.

What do you want to hear? Wolfwood says to Meryl about Vash. That his parts are hanging in Knives's chop shop?

In the English dub specifically, whenever they meet again after the crash, Knives always pauses to inhale deeply before speaking to Vash. Breathing in his scent. Savouring it.

Cain is a farmer. He knows how to raise a crop. How to set a snare. He knows patience, maintaining cycles, destroying infestations. He'll keep his brother safe. No one will touch him. The humans aren't going to eat Vash alive.

Not if Knives catches him first.

The real reason Vash "turned against" his brother? The real reason Vash supposedly chose humanity over the Plants?

Abel is a shepherd. He protects his flock.

No matter what it says, what skin it wears, what it pretends to be…

He knows a predator when he sees one.

Knives has always been like this.

I wonder if it's because he's less independent than Plant. He yearns to be part of a collective, but fears his own identity being subsumed. He's left with an emptiness within himself he has no understanding how to fill, a loneliness he's too frightened to bring to an end.

There's no better way for Knives to keep what he loves safe than making it part of himself. Sustaining his perfection. Sharing his immortality.

So they'll all live happily ever after.

[not-souleaterpost]

Trigun - Inspired by the movie "Wise blood"?

(maybe the book too but havent read it)

Anyways, first I thought it would just be funny to point out some surface visual references of charachters which prolly are too generic to be proof of anything.

I mean ehh thats generic enough-

Well that too-

Well the hat and crazy eyes are there

Well the last more recalls Vash's own injurys

(think there is a scene in his Eriks disguise that match more)

But ok, one could say that this is as arbitrary as any other of my posts that dont deserve to be posted - Until I saw the full movie and got that there may be a deeper and more interessting connection

So trigun is know to have atleast Christian-adjasent themes and the author, even if never or not anymore Christian, seems to have a familiarity and interest with it that goes beyond the usuall japanese "wow cool crossess" and pop kabalah stuff (like NGE and shit or persona having all those occcult demon shit)

So what does it have to do with the movie? Well it is one exploring a theme that seems to be simmilar, even if Wise Blood presents it in a more macabre, black-humor, less sentimental and uplifting way

A world without God - or better said Christ/Love/Forgivness

Triguns whole point about Vash not killing anybody IS in the end an expression of the want of the world to be able to heal, to get better, to people to connect in a true way, of going beyond tricks and self serving rational scientfic interests

Thats why Knifes is kinda a representation of cold, uncarring survival of the fittest, of evolution, of the rule of superior beings by force and cold calculation and deception.

To make a parralel to the movie, it shows a man who cant see Christ, the power of redemption of something beyond himself and his own interests and striving - even if he feels justified by partly believing the things he rejects.

But in the end without them, it becomes a self fullfiling prophecy - his "Church without Christ" - without healing of the blind and resurection, without redemption - it condems him to that, making him blind and dead, and his atempts at repenting for killing some guy for a petty reason futile - not even being able to recupareta the love he gets from a landlady.

The theme of a fake preacher is then what is reflected in Wolfwood in Trigun, who is also just a killer, trained by another one, who can in the end find redemption in death and doing the right thing, even if it has a tragedy to it.

And in a way that illuminates Vash's whole journey more, why he couldnt give up and why it was important for him to find love and not become a more suffisticated monkey in a zoo who's hand only his brother would want to shake...

And thats why Vash not killing is actually cool and good and not stupid - cause of a random movie that butchered a book that prolly was tottally different.

But why the self.depreciation? Isnt apreciating the world and creation, "art", not a dialog, a call and response of unlikely meetings?

If not: Yeah...Sorry

[approxtwelveangrybees]

@merryandrewsworld this is for you 😘

SOME TRIGUN AUS

“Paradise” AU

The fundamental premise is that when the ships crash, rather than cackling like a maniac, Nai keeps his shit together just long enough to see the horror in Vash’s eyes

I don’t know what exactly nai was thinking in canon, but here he realizes that he might genuinely be at risk of losing vash, even if the crash was all for him in the first place

He did it for vash and vash, he realized, can never, ever know

He spins a story about other humans trying to steal the plants on Ship 5, or trying to take the twins away from Rem to do what they did to Tesla

Vash is devastated and scared and all he really has to cling to is Nai, so even if some things don’t quite add up, he believes him

They “grieve” together and then Nai starts building a “paradise,” same as in canon

(The rest is more tentative)

At the start of season one, Vash is wanted for stealing plants still—he and Nai have been looking for some way to bring the plants back to life (or at least, vash thinks so)

Vash is still a pacifist to the extreme but he does not have the sense of needing to atone for his brother’s crimes. He tries to convince people to give over their red plants for healing but is not above heists when need be—again, in this world he doesn’t blame himself or Nai for the harsh conditions humanity faces, and so he’s a bit more inclined to take a dead or dying plant’s side, especially since they’re no longer providing a town with resources or won’t be for long

Nai probably also frames this as benefitting humanity, like once the plants are healed they can be brought back

The eye of Michael still does it’s thing but vash is MUCH less aware of the extent of it. Nai has been trying to keep this deception going for over a century, he’s good at it by now

He’s not sure how to unlock vash’s gate though.

Vash is looking for more dead or dying plants in Jeanora Rock when he meets Meryl and Roberto

Domesticated Nai AU

The crash was genuinely an accident

Nai loves his brother more than anything else, even his sisters, so reluctantly, he lets vash take the lead

You know what’s worse than one accident prone idiot? TWO.

The main antagonist would probably be the scientist, trying to create more plants or graft together humans and independents somehow

This is just a Nai is a Lil Dude AU

(I think this could go knives x Meryl pretty easily)

Wolf’s Rain AU (tentative details)

Nai and Vash are made of moon flowers, allegedly destined to lead the way to paradise

They were created when a lot of desperate scientists decided to seek out a legendary utopia as the planet became increasingly ravaged by war and pollution

The issue is that the legend also said wolves would be the ones led to paradise, not humans—So there’s also been some gene splicing going on there to resolve that

That’s how you get wolfwood and livio. Wolfwood on paper is a perfect success, able to assume a wolf guise and having their strength, speed, and senses. Livio is…less so in some way and more so in others. He has all the same enhancements, but can’t quite go all the way human or wolf.

Nai breaks out, killing everyone he can find to reach Vash, and the two are on the run from there. Wolfwood and Livio get sent after them

They meet Meryl and Roberto, two “true” wolves, and vash wants to keep traveling with them, while Nai thinks every being is unworthy of paradise but he and vash. They fight and part ways

So vash, Meryl, and Roberto—later joined by an excitable wolf named milly—are trying to find paradise and hopefully from there, either get as many wolves in or try to model the rest of the planet on what they find there

Wolfwood and Livio are hunting them for the lab at first, but Nai does??? Something??? Idk Nai might return to the lab and take over all the research at knives-point—but in any case, that shifts to ww and Livio hunting the pack on behalf of Nai

[alena-reblobs]

Trigun Bookclub Trimax Vol4 Part 1

Vol01: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3  | Vol02: Part 1 | Part 2

Trimax: Vol01 Part 1 Vol01 Part 2 | Vol02 Part 1 Vol02 Part 2 |

Vol 03 Part 1 | Vol03 Part2 | Vol04 Part1 | Vol04 Part2

Thoughts on the first part of Volume 4 of Trimax!

I feel there are so little instances were we see Vash and Wolfwood being friends/buddy-buddy and here in casual clothes, they just look so much like good friends it makes me happy to look at! Just two dudes! Vash putting a hand around Wolfwood’s shoulder to show him around the ship...rare physical contact!

(with each progressing volume I’m less and less just showing little panles but simply complete pages. Watch me in volume 14 pointing out every single page because EVERYTHING is worth looking at.) anyway! Knives looks so cool here! Reminds me of western superhero comic style how he is drawn actually! And I love the follow up page, and the little detail that sb else already pointed out of the glass fracturing from...plant stuff? Or the shock wave of Knives destroying the satellite? And that first panel of Vash opening the eye as he senses Knives and probably him using his powers...

The little dots of what is being unsaid of Vash are so telling. I mean, the cards are pretty much on the table already. It’s less that Vash really needs Wolfwood...but more that it’s Wolfwood’s mission to accompany Vash. Vash knows that and Wolfwood knows that Vash knows but it’s all left unsaid. (Why say it when there’s nothing you can do about it and it wouldn’t change a thing anyway?)

This volume is out here to confuse me in lots of scenes, this one of them. Though now that I look at it again I think....this is not a knife as I initially thought, but the ground or whatever they are standing on (machinery structure?) is sliced/cut open by Knives. And Midvalley was able to see or sense it because of his hearing?

These brothers really look so much alike. I wonder if they are identical twins or if these categories even apply to plant nature? Since they originate from one source only..it’s more like they are clones maybe of their mother plant. Like little tree sprouts!

Very interesting to note here on this spread, after Knives tells us that he is a collector of Knives (the Gung Ho Guns): We see Wolfwood’s cross and also the arm that is holding it (white sleeve? Or is this just thanks to the drawing?) but the rest of the body is out of frame! Clear distinction from the rest of the gang! 

Oooh Legato was not informed of this! Even though as a Gung Ho Gun, Wolfwood would be his subordinate. Legato might think that Knives doesn’t trust him enough or value him enough since he withhold that information- though the me it just seems like he does not care. Look, he can’t even be bothered to look at Legato while talking to him, even yawning. His whole posture tells us how uninterested he is in Legato.

Pic of Legato walking away (with that weird creature on his shoulder! I’ve come to the conclusion that he has kinda attached himself to that half-person because of his pretty messed up state) which looks kinda cool! Yeah alright, you can have ONE or TWO cool panels, you messed up boy.

This whole chapter here to ultimately confirm that Wolfwood has an ulterior motive (secret mission assigned by Knives) to follow Vash and guide him. His real reasons though, we don’t really know yet, but I guess a first time reader could make a pretty good guess.

Love the girls for this! And look at Milly’s expression! :DD These silly moments in between really safe the reader from dropping into too much of a depressing hole.

I strongly believe that Milly thinks Meryl is being honest here, because she hovers over her so considerate, while Meryl is straight up being sarcastic. Probably grinning into her hand! She’s such a fun character :D

I’m not quite so sure what they are saying by this (and the conversation the page before)? Do they regret that they teased Vash and Wolfwood. What Meryl says here, “feel like this”, does she mean she wouldn’t have expected to feel angry and revengeful after Wolfwood and Vash just left them behind earlier? And she probably doesn’t like how the whole situations drags her in emotionally...I guess. Hm. Sometimes these conversations are hard for me to fully get behind, but that’s ok.

Somebody tell me this is not what I think it is but also I don’t want to know.

Yeeeah cool Milly pose!!

They are doing it! They are arresting criminals, helping people by themselves, and they are being so much more confident about these situations than in the first volumes! Others have pointed that out before and I’ll say it again, I LOVE that Nightow’s female characters have their own agenda and are being strong, even supportive of the main male cast.

Uuuh Zazie you should let that get checked

Another conversation where I’m not quite sure I’m understanding it correctly. By what I’ve read of others too by now this is Wolfwood arguing that it’s maybe better to leave the girls behind and have them stay out of trouble, while Vash is saying that, hey, the know what they are getting into and if they want to follow him, they can do that! I mean..Vash is probably enjoying the company for a change, where people will stick to him despite being super dangerous, and the girls have grown on him. Vash says it sounds more like Wolfwood asks himself if he’d be able to watch them die if they get in a fatal situation...well, maybe! I’m sure that’s smth Wolfwood doesn’t want at all! But he does have a point though, cause the road that Vash and Wolfwood are headed is much more dangerous than Meryl and Milly can imagine and are prepared for.

These are from different pages, and I liked how just 2 pages before, we see Meryl shortly stepping into this ring of light...just for her to be gone from it later. And that panel with the light and nobody in it...such a strong impression!

The reaction faces of Wolfwood and Vash..:DD

[ethecookednoodle]

Imma be honest, I wasn't sure if I was gonna do a post about my classpect choices for my TrigunxHomestuck AU but I kept rereading Homestuck and started thinking about things and thought "why the hell not?"

Also @stuck-in-the-ghost-zone and @anachronistic-falsehood tags kept going around my head since I saw them, so this is partially because your tags were very nice thank u guys <3

All that being said, this is just gonna cover Vash and Knives because turns out tired as shit me has a lot to say and no self control so I wrote a lot and if I got into why I made Meryl and Wolfwood's classpects what they are in my AU this was gonna be way too damn long, so I'm cutting it.

Anyway, whole ass essay under the keep reading. Keep in mind I wrote this last night when I was very tired and with a raging headache (still haven't recovered from that) so this might be a bit ✨dramatic✨(and also a bit of a character analysis because, like I said, I had a lot to say but not a lot of self control.)

To begin with, I guess the reason I put Knives and Vash as the Lord of Time and Muse of Space respectively has to do with the fact that they remind me of Calliope and Caliborn for obvious reasons. They're twins of an alien species which, while not extinct per se, they're very much alone since either the other members of their species are not quite like them or, in Calliope and Caliborn's case, they are the only one's of their species in a good, universe-sized radius, among other things I’ll get to later.

But aside from that there's the fact that…I don't really see, or can't see, Vash as a Hope player. Like, sure, he's all about hope and believing in a bright future but Hope players have a very black and white way of thinking (see: Eridan and Jake). And Vash doesn’t really see things that way, he's very much aware that there are layers to the issues between humans and plants, but his insistence doesn't just come from a blind hope that maybe things will work themselves out if he believes hard enough. His insistence comes from the fact that he has spent a good amount of his 150 years of life going around No Man's Land and realizing that yes, humans are stupid and can hurt others just for the sake of hurting people, but the vast majority of them that hurt people do it because they've been cornered and are really out of options in the department of survival (see: Wolfwood, Rosa, and pretty much any petty bandit, since they’re not really out for murder but out for fucking money because they gotta eat), and that even if there are people who go out of their way to hurt others for funsies, there's just as much people out there willing to help others out (Meryl, Luida, Brad (even if he’s a prick at the beginning), Rem). It's all about circumstances and Vash knows this, he just acts dumb as a coping mechanism. Him believing things can work out comes from a place of tribute towards Rem and the knowledge that there is a way things can get better as long as it is given the time and space to be worked on (pun not intended). His vision is nuanced and his feelings towards what his brother does are complicated because he knows he has a reason to act the way he does.

Knives either knows there are layers and doesn't care or he hasn't let himself think about them, because otherwise it would shatter his idea that there's only one true ultimate villain (humanity) that must be defeated in order to attain peace, which the latter is what probably goes through his mind. And this is oversimplifying his point of view, because his disregard of human issues come from the fear of seeing Tesla's body all fucked up by humans on a relatively peaceful environment and thinking that if he doesn’t do something quick they might be next, or more specifically, that Vash will be next. If anything, Knives actually fits better as a Hope player than Vash does. He believes plants to be superior and humans the trash of creation, and thus, he must do what’s right in order to protect what he loves. It might also be because all of the Hope players we see also have this…weird way of seeing themselves as the greatest heroes in their fucked-up/stupid stories, and also because two of them are big, self absorbed assholes. Even Jake is his own kind of self absorbed asshole. One would argue that could be said of Vriska and Meenah as well, but the difference is that they actually have ground to stand on. They say they’re the shit not just for the sake of saying it, they can actually back up that claim. What I’m trying to say is that Knives sees himself as a savior to his species while failing to see that in the process he’s hurting the one person he swore to protect while also subjecting the plants and his brother to become a means to producing his “paradise”, essentially enslaving them, just as humans would have done. And if he does see it, then he justifies it by saying “there’s no other way.” Which, to be honest, reminds me a lot of Eridan in the sense that he, as the Prince of Hope, decided all hopes of beating Jack and bringing back their people were lost, so he decided to destroy the matriorb and go on a murderous rampage. It’s a very “all or nothing” mentality, which is exactly what happens with Knives. He fails to see (or decides no to see) the layers and the nuance of the situation and refuses to listen to any kind of argument against his belief. Because, let’s be real for a hot second here, when was the last time Knives really tried to hear Vash out instead of brushing him off and telling him he’s being delusional/he’s sick and needs to wake up? And by the time he actually listens to Vash when they’re flying up into space, it’s in this high-stress, very emotional moment because he’s trying not to blow a city up. But I digress. 

All that being said, I don’t really think the Hope aspect fits Knives either. 

The reason I think Time and Space fit the twins so much is because of the fact that the aspects seem to encompass the rest to some extent. They’re, to quote the wiki, “the two basic fabrics of reality” which means that without them, nothing else can exist. It’s why every successful Sburb session needs to have a Time and Space player. And if you think about it, it makes sense. For example, Space seems to be similar to the Hope aspect in the sense that their players have a very strong hold on their beliefs, they also resemble the Light aspect because their players also seem to be very knowledgeable (to some extent, i.e: the messages in the clouds in Skia and how Space players seemed to be the ones that paid the most attention to them) about stuff other aspects are not, and of course, it also has a strong relationship with the Life aspect, since it’s the Space player’s duty to breed and care for the frog that will eventually become the new universe in which life will proliferate (and not to mention, all space players have been somewhat related to life, with Jade being a botanist, Kanaya and Porrim being in charge of bringing back trollkind and Calliope being fascinated by the lives of other beings (i.e: trolls and humans) in general, despite her kind being extremely asocial). And the same can be said of the Time aspect: it’s related to death, this of course being a direct relation to the Doom aspect, the Time and Heart aspect seem to share this ability to become splintered (one with time loops and the other via soul splinters), and even though it’s more of a reach, you could say Time and Rage have relation because of the fact that both seem to be related to destruction (although the instances we’ve seen the aspect being used are by destructive classes, that’s why I say it’s more of a reach). I put very specific things as examples, but with the exception of the life and death thing (and maybe the Heart aspect thing), I think the things the Time and Space aspects encompass of other aspects are on a spectrum, and may even vary from player to player.

Obviously, all of the above is more my personal speculation than anything else, but that aside, now that I finally got to the point in my re-read of Homestuck where I’m reacquainted enough with Calliope that I understand why I think her and Vash are similar. And wouldn’t you guess it, it has to do with the fact that they were hoping for their brothers to change. Like, to be fair, in Calliope’s case, she was straight-up lying to herself, but again, to be fair, this stemmed from the fact that she had hope the game would help them understand each other and…well, you can see where I’m going with this. Vash hoped his brother would change, even if deep down he knew he wouldn’t, or at the very least, he wouldn’t change without things going south first. And it wasn’t until things started to go very south where they, both Calliope (the version that overpowered Caliborn) and Vash decided it was enough and sprung into action. I am well aware that the brother thing can also be applied to Knives and to his situation, but you get what I’m saying. 

If I wanted to go through the Caliborn and Knives comparison, then I would point out that Knives, as far as I can tell, was never squeamish about killing (at least not after the Tesla incident), and sees it as something necessary in order to make sure his plans come to fruition. That being said, I think the other thing I would point out is how driven he is. To quote the wiki yet again, Time players “value action over passive acceptance” and “tend to value the destination over the journey”, and what is Knives if not someone with a huge drive to make his dreams of a peaceful paradise for him, his brother and the rest of his kind come true, even it comes at the expense of the human race and the happiness, free will and general freedom of his brother and his kind. Since day one he’s been scheming and finding ways to make things happen, and I don’t know about you guys, but I think at the very least the amount of research he put on to Vash’s powers and how to unlock his gate despite how unbelievably limited the data on Independents were, without actually having Vash captive for 150 to study him is very impressive (and kind of (very) scary). But that’s where the similarities with them end, at the end of the day Knives is 1000 times smarter than Caliborn (and more likable, even if he’s a genocidal maniac). I just think that Knives possesses a lot of the qualities that make up a Time player, and him being a Master Class is because both Vash and Knives are stupidly powerful.

In the end, I guess it’s because the duality of both Vash and Knives’ ideals and personalities can be perfectly encompassed by the duality of the Time and Space aspects. 

(And also because I thought of a great scene between Vashwood and the image has been ingrained in my brain to such a degree that I refuse to change the classpects to something else. It’s like 50% all those things I said 50% gay stuff, ngl.)

Anyway stay tuned for the “why did you make Wolfwood the Knight of Doom and Meryl the Rouge of Light” post. It’ll hopefully be a lot shorter and less convoluted lol.