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Vash ver (+ Meryl)! They are coping.

i’ve thrown around trigun reincarnation concepts around before but fuck. i can’t believe ive overlooked the simplest one: trigun maximum reincarnated as trugun stampede. like can you imagine all the times vash has pushed up his hair in shitty motel bathroom mirrors and for a second seen a man he has never met but always known staring back? how meryl’s desire to help others and be a journalist always seemed to run deeper than she could explain? how when she hears the name Milly, there’s a strange sense if familiarity ghat flashes in her mind? how when he was a kid, wolfwood met livio and already felt like he had known this man his entire life? how wolfwood felt a similar way after seeing the fuckers that ran him over? how the reason vash trusted his eyes and saw him as a good man was cause of distant memories clinging onto his heart? how vash can’t help but feel like nai has been stuck on a loop for lifetimes but still feel the need to try and help him because he can just feel in his bones that it’ll work? how vash’s anger against the world has simmered down even when he began his life on the new planet because his bones were already dry from centuries of sand and dust? how when meryl meets vash, she can’t help but quickly believe in and fight alongside him because she can still hear his laughter in old bars after saving town after town after town while being chased out? how roberto saw the three of his travel companions alongside each other and could probably also sense a bond that went beyond time itself? it’s insane really how well this works.

I think chapter 2 of TriMax Volume 6 might just be my favorite thus far. Everything in it hinges on this one iconic scene.

This isn't the first time Wolfwood has pointed a gun at Vash's head. Maybe it won't even be the last. But it holds a bit more weight here because just a few pages ago, we saw a flashback where Wolfwood pointed his gun at someone else's head.

His hand shakes as he aims at Knives. His breath is heavy, and the memory of the Fifth Moon incident is fresh in his mind. He knows if he can just pull the trigger, he can end it here. This being of destruction will be gone, and maybe this time his fancy scientists won't be able to bring him back.

But then Knives does Plant things, and under the weight of it Wolfwood finds he just can't follow through. He fears his own death too much, and Knives will surely kill him.

When he points his gun at Vash, it's different. His hand is steady, his breath calm. The memory of everything that happened at the Dragon's Nest is fresh in his mind; just this morning he warned Meryl that she and Milly should remember that, despite his ideals, Vash is still a loose cannon that they'd do well to avoid. He thinks to himself that if he can just pull the trigger, if he can just take out the less intimidating of the brothers, then one of these monstrous twins and half of the problem will be gone.

This time, there's no crushing sensation of oppression. There's no air of fear and malice. There are no threats or memories of twisted promises. There's only a look, wary and concerned...

...but even by the time this happens, Wolfwood has already lowered his gun. He's decided not to pull the trigger, not because of an immediate threat on his life, but because... well, it's Vash.

Wolfwood surely knows that if he pulls that trigger, he catastrophically fails his mission, and whatever consequences might await him on the far side of such a failure aren't going to be anywhere near pleasant. But it doesn't seem like it's fear of Knives that makes him lower his gun. At the very, very least, Wolfwood knows no one stands a better chance at taking down Knives, but he also knows Vash. He's seen Vash's fake smiles and knows his real ones. He understands Vash's ideals despite very much not wanting to and not knowing how he could possibly accept them for himself. He's fought side by side with Vash, and been standing at his back since day 1.

And before this night is out, only a few minutes after pulling a gun on Vash, Wolfwood's right back there again, moving in tandem with Vash, being a human shield so they can accomplish Vash's goals together.

It's only when the fight comes to a close that Wolfwood realizes that's what he's been doing. He didn't put any thought into falling in step behind Vash, didn't dwell on the fact that Vash trusted and moved with him during the fight. It's only afterwards, when they stop to catch their breath, that he realizes Vash hasn't looked his way through the whole battle. That Vash didn't need to look his way through the whole battle.

Not only did Vash trust Wolfwood at his back, but he knows Wolfwood well enough to move intuitively around him, not hesitating and always understanding what Wolfwood's about to do. And at that moment, Wolfwood realizes two things:

First, that there's no way Vash didn't notice when Wolfwood pointed a gun at him. If Knives could figure it out while half dead and barely knowing Wolfwood, then Vash, who's awake, alert, and has spent plenty of time with Wolfwood, can surely figure it out.

And second, that when he's fighting back to back with Vash, nothing else really matters. All his (quite legitimate) fears about what Vash is and how dangerous he can be, about Knives, about finishing his job, about what he himself has become... they all melt away. He's where he needs to be, where he should be, and that's all there is to it.

Every single time I see a take that amounts to "if you write about X happening, or like fiction where X happens, you like X" I'm reminded of this one time I was at a casual friends house as a young kid. We were in her room, pretending to "be orphans" escaping from an evil orphanage and having to take care of each other and fend for ourselves. It was all very Little Orphan Annie/All Dogs Go to Heaven and based on the 80s pop media.

And this girl's mom comes in, hears what we're playing and gets all MAD and UPSET. She says that if we play act something, it's because we want it to happen. So her daughter must WANT HER TO DIE.

First off lady, we were 6 year year olds, so take it down several notches. We barely had a concept of mortality for fucks sake. She made us feel so guilty and ashamed, because she was taking our game personally.

Now I have a 5 year old. And sometimes she looks at me and says "pretend you're dead, and I have to -" Whatever it is. Some adult task she's assigned herself.

And it's just so transparently obvious that she's practicing the idea of having to do things on her own. Which is exactly what 5 year olds are supposed to do. I actually find it very flattering that the only way she can envision me not being available to help her is to be literally deceased. Otherwise, obviously, she wouldn't have to do scary hard things alone.

It's a natural coping mechanism. She's self-soothing about what would happen if I wasn't there by play-acting independence in a perfectly safe environment. She's also practicing skills she needs, and making up excuses for practicing them on her own, without taking on the responsibility of being able to do them by herself all the time yet.

Humans mentally rehearse bad this in their brains all the time. We can do that by ruminating- going over worries over and over again, which tends to lead to anxiety and helplessness and depression. Or we can do it with a sense of play- by recognizing that the fiction is fiction and we can dip our toe into these experiences and expose ourselves to bad things without actually being injured.

My daughter does not want me dead. And I don't want bad things to happen in real life. But fiction and pretend help me face the horrors of the world and think about them without collapsing or messing myself up mentally.

Black Coffee & Donuts ☕ 🍩

~A Trigun fan comic~

(Image description under cut)

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Language Barrier

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Has this been mentioned somewhere in the manga or bonus material?

Is Asta the only Black Bull who got recruited through the magic knights entrance exam instead of getting randomly scouted by Captain Yami? Is he the only one (other than perhaps the captain himself) who actually passed the exam?

Oof I felt this

The way most autism literature describes "literal interpretation" is often not at all similar to how I experience it. Teenage me even thought I couldn't be autistic because I've always been able to learn metaphors easily.

In fact, I love wordplay of all kinds. Teenage me was fascinated to learn all the types of figurative language there are in poetry and literature.

But paperwork and questionnaires are hard, because there's so much they don't state clearly. Or they don't leave room for enough nuance.

"List all the jobs you've had, with start and end dates." What if I don't remember the exact day or month? Is the year enough?

"Have you been suffering from blurred vision?" Well, if I take off my glasses the whole world is blurred, but I'm fairly sure that's not what the intake form at the optometrist is asking.

Or the infamous (and infuriatingly stereotypical) "Would you rather go to a library or a party?" What sort of party? Where? Who's there? I work at a library. Am I currently at the library for work or pleasure? Does it have a good collection?

It's not common figures of speech that confound me. It's ambiguity, in situations that aren't supposed to be ambiguous.