#I started trying to make a vector out of it but couldn't quite figure out a pleasing way and I'm tired now so I'll try again tomorrow maybe

[effemimaniac]

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[soltiana]

tristamp ep 11 ramble

I almost forgot that if I had longform (IF INCOHERENT) thoughts about something I could just...blog about them?? i'm still getting used to having this power again. cut for spoilers of course, this ep was so fucked (positive). I have thoughts/hopes for the finale too but I'll keep those to myself so I don't get hooked on them lol whatever will be will be.

meryl and wolfwood exchange pretty standard pleasantries. it's obvious ww is going to come back to try to help vash despite his contract. i still think his chances of making it out alive are pretty good, but i guess we'll find out.

then we're directly thrown into the pussy juice tank. like. last week the episode ended on knives throwing vash into what looked like an oversized version of a plant bulb container, so I was like haha he threw him into the pussy juice funny :) but tristamp pointed directly at me and was like this person knows exactly what we're doing here. what a smart person. yes. the entire tank is pussy juice and it's FILLED TO THE BRIM WITH KNIVES' EGGS. there are plant "buds" everywhere, following up on conrad's discussion last week about how knives has been "helping" him create the perfect living creatures, like himself, but the conclusion they had both come to is that knives' offspring were missing an ingredient, what humans call a soul. the new plant lore dropping is that while humans originally created plants they don't quite understand where their powers come from, other than a "higher source" (god).

tesla vash and knives are what conrad and other plant scientists call "independents" because they have:

souls (from the higher power, presumably)

wills of their own

biological non-independent plant mothers (who died giving birth to them)

and, according to conrad's analytics, while knives "gate" is receptive to the higher power from god, vash's "gate" can not only receive but transmit this higher power (souls) as well. in other words vash is. just. chock full of sperm. he's a humanoid vector for getting other creatures god pregnant, so since they couldn't air vash literally fucking knives pregnant, they settled for him inseminating knives' dozens of pre-laid eggs like a horrifyingly beautiful deep sea nature documentary.

so to get back to the meat of the episode, knives connects his body to vash by stabbing into him with his chains of knife tentacles, and immediately after losing his senses from this black roots begin to grow out of the points the two brothers are connected. the roots seek out each of the eggs, and glowing energy begins to transfer, through knives' manipulation, from vash into each of the eggs.

then we take a trip inside of the twins shared headspace and watch knives brainwash vash one memory at a time, erasing his past for him so that he can be wiped completely blank. when this process reaches a critical point, vash's external body starts reacting defensively - this part is speculation but i think he senses that knives is seeking his memories of rem, and starts instinctively re-creating her before it even happens. so new roots start to grow, this time straight down, following vash's will instead of his brother's, and through the rest of the episode this set of roots expands and becomes a monstrously enormous tree literally in the shape of rem, covered in bio-luminescent blue geraniums.

this is also the moment where instead of knives seeking vash's memories, vash begins visiting knives' instead. vash begins appearing both in memory form as well as his current dream self, which implies a subtle growing grip that vash has on the situation, despite being at 90% synchronization physically. so it's vash who starts entering doors in the ship that leads to knives' memories, beautifully complimented by the fact that the next one he accesses is him solving a problem knives can't figure out on his own. we get our tesla reveal moment and it's fucking incredible.

birthday confirmed canon july 21 happy birthday boys. it also says they were born in the year 2455 so let's just hang in there a couple hundred more years and say hi to them.

vash looks into another door that rings with mechanical sounds, but when he tries to enter it knives takes him instead to the rec room, where they both seem to be recovering from their discovery of tesla. the mechanical door memory is skipped, either for vash, the viewer, or both. in a reversal of their manga conversations where knives is more manipulative and vash is more depressive, knives despairs of human wrongdoing while vash urges knives to have faith in humanity's ability to change. knives interprets this to mean that vash, who has no powers of his own, feels the need to bow to human might and expectation out of self preservation, and makes up his mind to eradicate them so he doesn't have to. adult knives appears in the memory he's curated to explain this, and to tell vash once again that the fall was his fault, since knives did it all for him, to protect his vulnerable twin from human cruelty.

this is the point of mind break for vash, and knives, taking advantage of that vulnerability, becomes empowered and moves in to finally remove rem from vash's memories. symbolically, as soon as he does, vash's red coat carbonates, and knives synchronization (the tristamp version of melding from the manga) reaches 100%. with no memories left to access, we return to knives in the physical world, quietly elated, wishing his brother a happy birthday since believes he has literally re-made him in his own (rem-free) image. while knives and his plant eggs all give off light in the pussy juice tank, no part of vash is glowing anymore, he only reflects light.

then (through vash's power) knives opens the final pussy, the opening to the higher plane where plant power is drawn from. this is the moment that vash's mega-rem geraniums begin to bloom as well. and the plant eggs, still attached to vash's insemination roots, open, revealing non-independent female plants that are connected to vash via their enormously swollen pregnant bellies.

conrad is revealed to be dying, a hostage knives took as an adolescent to fulfill his wishes. this is not news but it is sexy. the knives conrad relationship in tristamp is weird and really good. knives finally disconnects from vash, leaving his motionless shell behind in the pussy juice tank as he crosses through the gate vash opened for him. all the while, vash's giant rem tree is growing, literally suffocating the entire city of july and killing or driving its people to flee. at the moment that knives seems about to make contact with the core he believes to be the source of their power, vash's tree rem fully takes form, and blooms.