#graceful vash

[moodysnowflake]

Throughout the journey, he has been slowing down his pace

But I think it's here, at the very end, that he's the most stunning.

You might say resignation is guiding him at this point, but I don't think so.

Fear turned into acceptance. And bloomed into grace.

[itachanta]

Just here, oogling Vash's beautiful hand animations

[nebularyo]

on the road

[nanomooselet]

My Brother's Keeper (VII)

Knives, despite it all, I do indeed pity you. You horrible creature. More than you might imagine anyone would dare.

I said some time ago that Knives has agency and Vash doesn't, and that the Eye of Michael's dogma demands sacrifice.

One lives. One dies.

When Knives tells Vash to leave humanity, it's at that very instant Vash realises the truth: that this isn't about the Plants versus humans. It was never about that, ever, and trying to dissuade Knives from continuing his descent by arguing from that premise isn't ever actually going to work.

It's about how discovering Tesla broke them in two. It broke reality, cracked the singular unit they once believed themselves to be in half, and sent each half down forever-separate paths in both space and time.

Vash, through Rem, decided he could face the future. Even despite this discovery, how apathetically cruel the world is to the innocent, the future is always ours to shape as long as we live to choose. Rem showed him that through acknowledging and accepting responsibility for the pain of the past, even if once ignorant or complicit, one could learn and heal, and therefore work to be free of it. Not perfect. Never perfect. But still better.

Nai only saw potential pain. The fear of facing the world where it could be inflicted, and of those who'd done so, consumed him. He would erase both by returning to the past, the innocence and ignorance of having never learned the frightening truth. He'd thus build a paradise, an Eden, where no sin was committed and no sinner would set foot. He alone, in his own singular perfection, was fit both to assume this task and the power - and thus the right - to fulfil it.

Since when have we been so different?/Who are you? We've become so different I don't think I even know you anymore.

Vash begins to cry because he sees now that Nai… Nai is gone. Maybe he ran for too long, or maybe the Nai he thought he knew never existed. It doesn't matter anymore. There's nothing of his brother left to love in this monster before him, who's done everything that he's done and isn't sorry and wants to keep doing it by seizing control over Vash's own body. (Even though they look more like each other now than they have since they were kids, which still absolutely ruins me.) Vash grieves his brother, his brother's love and their togetherness in the past, but he finally knows for sure that they're gone, and he must define his own identity, and move beyond them.

His declaration that he'll always run isn't about running from humanity, anymore than Knives is truly fighting for the freedom of the Plants.

Seriously, Knives isn't fighting for the freedom of the Plants. He thinks he is, because he thinks that justifies controlling their bodies and consuming their power and benefiting from their suffering, but he's reversed cause and effect. He acts and so they suffer, but he believes their suffering is what motivates his actions and not his fear and his greed for the power to destroy whatever he fears. It's circular, and it's entirely self-centred.

It's the logic not of a liberator but of the entire system of oppression.

Knives's paradise, the home to which he's so desperate to return, no longer exists. It never will again. Not for him or for Vash or for the Plants. Knives himself broke it. Knives himself ripped it out of the heavens and plunged it into the earth, shattering it, so he could reshape the pieces into something that he alone controlled. Knives will always assume control, and he won't stop if you give what he says he wants, because he won't admit or even try to understand that it's not the truth.

He wants to stop being scared and alone. He wants his brother to need him and never leave him. He wants his mother, but she's gone. (He killed her. Over and over and over again he kills her and she's still always gone and he hates her for always being gone. Why is she gone? Why didn't she stay? He asked. He gave her a choice.)

(Yet in Vash's memories and in the people he loves, Rem's spirit lives on, and always will. She still loves him, her perfect boy, even still protects him, just as she promised she would. Did you guys know Vash's coat is bulletproof? Did you guys realise Vash literally still walks around kicking ass in the protective embrace of his mother? I actually had to take a minute, when I figured it out. It made me tear up.)

I was rejected?

Let me back in! Take me back.

Knives wants to go home. To be a child again with Vash by his side. Innocent, together, in paradise. But once you've grown up, you can never really go home again. It's a fundamentally selfish desire to want everything to go back to being the same forever - what it means is that because it was good or kind for you specifically, everyone else has to conform whether it was good and kind to them or not. There's always danger in nostalgia even when it's not misplaced. It encourages destructive nihilism, malicious and ignorant apathy. If the best can only ever be behind us, there is no reason to try to go on.

Vash is not nostalgic. Vash will run, and run, and keep running. For a lifetime if he has to - and a Plant's lifetime is a long one. It's not that he hasn't made a choice, but that he'd already made it long ago: to be free of Knives, to live and to fight for independence from his brother's abusive care, and to find a way to unite humans and Plants, the purpose he's been eager and happy to serve since the day he found it. Rem's dream is one he longs to fulfil, and he finally knows he has the power, intelligence, resilience, strength and above all, the right to take up that task.

He's just acknowledged and accepted that it's not also his purpose to help his stupid brother, not if this is all he gets in response. Dismissed, ignored, insulted, his grief and compassion mocked; abused, put down, smothered, injured, rendered permanently disabled, scarred, violated, traumatised. Forced into the shape that Knives imagines he should be in, pieces cut away until he fits the image in his brother's head.

It's very sad that after all that Knives has done to him, Vash doesn't value his own life and wellbeing enough to care for himself as much as he cares for everyone else in the world. But it still beats Knives trying to do it for him. He's so bad at it.

In the past, on occasions such as this, when Vash demonstrated like... the capacity to sort of almost disagree, Knives would yell at him suddenly and loudly enough that Vash would freeze up in terror, and then Knives would do whatever he wanted regardless. My man isn't good at hearing the word "no". If yelling or insults failed, he'd do something physically violent. I've seen a lot of takes on how funny and/or gay it is that Vash's reaction to Wolfwood grabbing his lapels and threatening to torture him to death is... this.

But understand that when Vash suggests an alternative that doesn't involve mass murder, his brother tends not to agree to it. Or stop at threats. Vash's arguments with Knives always make Vash sound a bit pathetic and dumb because Knives doesn't actually engage Vash - he shuts him down or insults him, telling him he's too weak and stupid to even speak. He has no respect at all for Vash's opinions, abilities, or as a person - honestly, I wouldn't treat an animal this way.

When someone finally respects your beliefs and abilities after they've been coldly or violently dismissed so many times, that's… how it feels.

Knives assumed that Vash had no powers so he was weak, and then when Vash did demonstrate powers, that Vash was weak because he was frightened of them. As usual, the trauma he's inflicted maybe being the problem never entered his mind; it's always Vash's fault. When Vash finally has both power and the will to assert control of it, he finally has the capacity and strength to enforce his refusal. And that leaves Knives finally exhausted of any means to break his will.

Except one. One final choice.

Vash is right: the plan has failed and this is over. Knives can never again have the power he desires, and what's more, Vash would rather be shot at for another hundred years than be together with his brother in paradise.

In spite of everything Knives has done to destroy it, the independent identity of Vash the Stampede yet survives. And so.

One lives.

One dies.

Nai is dead.

There's no turning back.

(The stars are falling down.)

And no one ever really goes home.

If you want to tell me Stampede is a poor quality adaptation, it's not funny and it's shallow and Vash is a loser now and there's no Milly and they're just exploiting the property and if it just hadn't been called Trigun maybe... maybe...

Maybe! You're entitled to an opinion. I'm open to the discussion. I do always try to assume good faith.

However, I'm still probably not going to agree.

And I'm done. Now I need to lie down on the floor and cry over my beautiful disaster twins. Thank you very much for reading! I encourage you to be as insane in the tags as you feel moved to be, because I crave validation.

(Extreme Lesbianism for Meryl Stryfe: Coming Soon.)

(Part I)

(Part II)

(Part III)

(Part IV)

(Part V)

(Part VI)

[lesbian-space-fish]

or the one.

[chuthulhu-reads]

[ID: A double-page spread from Trigun Maximum. On the far right, Vash is collapsing in front of a shocked-looking Knives, Vash's arm still raised in the air and holding his gun. Behind Knives is a gigantic blast of light that is utterly shattering and obliterating a spaceship coming down behind them. End ID.]

TFW you were finally ready to die at your brother's hand and be free of all your crimes and suffering but it turns out he is still never, not ever, going to kill you no matter what you've done, that he still loves you and wants to protect you no matter how much you've hurt him, and that he may have just expended the last of his strength on saving your life

[punkeropercyjackson]

How to instantly ruin a male character's design:

Give him an undercut

How to instantly improve a female character's design:

Give her an undercut

@insomniac-jay @honeypotsworld @floof-ghostie @julieemarine @nogender-onlystars @genderfluid-bat @cottoncandyteeth @cottoncandyspikes @jellyjays @agrebel18 @what-shitfuckery-is-this-ew @yukii0nna @pyrocortex @ammomancer @asmashed-papaya @leo-thecactus @malikselfindulgence @nightwings-robin @catlliecal

[typhoonstrikes]

[dinowatermelons]

Modern au where vash becomes a no kill speed runner from the simple fact that he hates killing in games and figures out how to perform glitches and clips because of it.

Nai is the opposite though, 100% glitchless speed runner. He’s smug about it.

WW there too, but he doesn’t play video games. He’s just a mortician and Vash’s fiancé. They met through something entirely unrelated to gaming. He does travel alongside vash to gaming events like GDQ, though.

In the middle of typing all of this, I realized milly and meryl could be game journalists. ROBERTO COULD BE THEIR HEAD EDITOR. Very funny to imagine, he doesn’t play video games either. He owned the original pong though.

[moodysnowflake]

You'd better take that back.

I'm what sandworms run from...

[blooisasleep]

drawing vash and realised if you squint hard enough, his mole looks like a lil heart <3

(click for better quality)

[drksanctuary]

Crossover: Jasico

How late is too late?

Oh well. Have some Trigun crossover Jasico. Please excuse my coloring I was in a hurry. XP

[everylivio]

[stayatsam]

i need him

[multiverse-imagines]

Reverse Isekai AU!!

It's time for Knives and Vash to finally talk after Knives has been gone for 8 months traveling the continent.

Clarification: Knives is TriMax Knives, and Vash is 98 Vash.

Warning! Manga spoilers!

Under the Stars

June, year 6

Vash was making his way up to the loft one night. Wolfwood and you, his Mayfly, were out of town at a Three Days Grace concert, so he would be sleeping alone tonight. Setting the book he had been reading on the end table, his eye caught a figure out on the roof of the garage.

Knives was sitting on the roof, knees pulled to his chest as he watched the stars. Vash paused before making his way downstairs, and slipping a sweater on. He left the house, approaching the spot where Knives sat.

"Hey, mind if I join you?" Vash called from the ground. Knives' face peeked over the edge of the garage, looking down to his brother.

"Sure. C'mon up. Use the suite balcony to hop up." Knives almost seemed to be smiling. Vash walked up the stairs to the little guest suite above the garage that Knives called home, then exited to the balcony, and hopped up onto the roof. He sat down next to Knives, his posture a lot more relaxed than his brother's.

"You, uh, looked a little lonely. Figured you might want some company." Vash shrugged.

"It's a good night to stargaze." Knives nodded, avoiding the accusation, "They're all jumbled around compared to No Man's Land."

"I know. It's almost crazy to see such a different map of the sky. I think it's really pretty though. Such a good view of the Milky Way." Vash indulged Knives' topic change. The two were silent, not really knowing how to continue their conversation.

"What was it like?" Vash finally breathed out.

"Hm?" Knives raised an eyebrow.

"Merging with so many of our sisters. What was it like?" Vash elaborated. Knives let out a solemn chuckle.

"It was amazing. To be one with so many plants, to feel such amazing power, to feel… like I wasn't alone anymore…" Knives frowned, "Which is why it sucked when My Vash convinced them all to leave and return to their bulbs across No Man's Land. I had to use every ounce of power I had to recreate my body from scratch. I died making sure he was safe… just like I had always tried to do…" another long pause sat between them.

"Even if he didn't truly know… about your death… I could tell he was very happy to see that you did something kind in the end. Did you take the time to read the manga yet? To get his story?"

"I'm about halfway through the 3rd Volume of TriMax. It's just kind of rough. Seeing my brother make stupid mistakes, see the pain he's gone through, knowing that I caused it all in some way or another. It's like a testament to all of my mistakes, and the effect it had on others. I haven't watched your show yet either, but My Dear Pet was telling me about it." Knives shook his head, remembering your encouragement to read and watch the Trigun media.

"My show isn't too bad, honestly. It's different enough from your brother's story to where I think you might actually laugh a little. I meant it when I told My Knives that I had fun. Those days before I started fighting the other Gung-Ho Guns was pretty amazing, even if I was a wanted criminal the whole time." Vash chuckled.

"Sounds like something He would say." Knives nodded, a gentle smile returning to his face as he looked at the stars once more.

"What was it like to kill Legato?" Knives hit back with a heavier question, "You hadn't killed anything yourself before. What was it like?"

"I still have nightmares about it." Vash frowned, "I didn't want to kill him. I knew there was some way to defeat him, and save The insurance girls and everyone would live but… maybe I just didn't think fast enough…"

"I forgive you, ya know, for killing my right hand man. He wanted to break your resolve just as much as I did. It… it wasn't right. There was a better way for everyone. I was just too stupid to see it."

"We all make mistakes, Knives. Yours was just a super big one that had catastrophic consequences for over a century." Vash gently nudged Knives with his elbow, indicating the lack of malice in his statement, "I understand your frustrations, though. I always did. But I could never justify what you did in your attempt to fix things."

"I-I know. Looking back, and seeing it as something I don't live in anymore, it was easy to see the better option I could have taken. I… I just didn't want us or anyone else of our kind to end up like Tesla…"

"I know… that was scary to read. You two were very messed up by that. So scared, and weary of humans from then onward. He had Rem to pull him out of that mindset, but no one was truly there for you. I'm sorry." Vash frowned, scooting closer, wrapping Knives in a hug. Knives flinched at the contact, but soon returned Vash's hug.

"Thank you, Vash." Knives sighed.

The two of them continued to talk through the night. Heavy things, funny things, Knives' travels, gushing about you, Vash's relationship with Wolfwood, how Knives was coping with being on Earth, their opinions of the ADE, Rem, especially Rem, their similar and different experiences on the SEEDS ship, and anywhere else that their shared train of thought drifted to.

The sky began to turn pale, signaling the two had been up all night. They returned into the suite, and Vash gave a wave as he left to go back to the loft in the main house to sleep. Although the two hadn't really said it aloud, they knew they had truly become what they hadn't been before.

Brothers.

[kiraleighart]

the trigun reboot is wicked fun for me because vash's new design is so close to my OC alex (who was partially inspired by both 90s vash and knives) that it makes me feel like i'm personally getting fanart

which is extremely stupid but.

look at them:

then read my books so that this makes even more sense.

or don't.

just keep making vash fanart and make it trans and gay so i can bask by-proxy in the glory that is babygirl twiounk guncritter disaster wifeguy friend-to-moms-everywhere badass-idiot energy 😳