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siniva

redraw from that blr moon scene

#trigun #fanart #precious darling boy #i wanna eat these colours

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nowhere to run

#trigun maximum #fanart #my fav vash outfit #and some awesome tarot symbolism #good art

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Monsters

You can blame a lifetime of obsession with Gothic literature for this.

First up, we have the Nebraskas. Because I came into the story through Stampede, I didn't notice they'd been "shrunk"; I was too busy thinking about Frankenstein.

This is a Victor Frankenstein who didn't run from the sight of his completed creation. Nebraska's reckless and self-absorbed (as Victor is), but he does care about Gofsef; he pursues Vash, and then the Plant, because the money will keep them out of prison.

And Gofsef isn't mindlessly obedient to his father, for all that he can't say anything besides his own name. He suggests they give up on pursuing Vash after he evades them, he went back for the Plant as the bridge was collapsing, and he fled the diner before E.G.'s drones went off to keep the townspeople from being hurt.

Then we have Rollo.

There's the obvious Venom homage in his mask and his name, but an unstoppable enemy, product of a lab, that fixates on a target whose name he constantly repeats?

That's Nemesis, of Resident Evil. He's a bio-organic weapon.

Next, Livio.

The way he moves... he's clearly not all there. Sure, it could be something to do with Razlo, or with his mask (I wouldn't be surprised if both factor into things). But I also have to wonder if isn't because he really isn't all there.

Because he's a ghost. The fire of Wolfwood's lighter even turns blue.

Scented smoke, calling his name, a memory he could never forget... even spilled blood. These are all ways to placate or banish a spectral presence. And Wolfwood is, technically, a priest.

For that matter, Wolfwood. A dead man walking.

Signed a contract in blood to escort the man who saved his soul to his death.

They're all obliquely or directly referred to as monsters, but Vash refers to them by their names, when he knows them, and tries to restore them to who they were. Sure, it's because he's defined by his unwavering faith in the human spirit. He believes everyone deserves another chance.

But I also wonder if it's because he has insight that others don't. All of them are doing as they do not because they want to, but as ways to protect their loved ones, or because they were forced to adopt monstrous methods or die.

Is Vash blinded by his ideals, or does he see beyond the present moment?

Are these really monsters? Or are they dressed up to frighten the real monsters away?

#trigun stampede #trigun meta #meta: final phase #there's also e.g. the mine but lbr nobody cares

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It's so funny to me how Roberto puts on this grand show of being uncaring and almost nihilistic, valuing surviving about all else (as he says and tries to teach Meryl many times), and yet. He sees Vash senselessly and brutally beaten by these military policemen, who are obviously unafraid to cause violence and harm for no reason, and he gives this speech. He instigates this whole situation after seeing Vash suffer like this.

No wonder he doesn't leave in the liferaft later on the sandsteamer when Meryl says she won't leave but he should go alone. He's just as bad as the rest of them.

Vash truly is surrounded by everything he believes humanity is capable of.

#trigun stampede #of course roberto also gets a chance to see if vash really “isn't a fighter” #obvious bs with that piece he's packing but never hurts to confirm #anyway i love him he's such a shitstirrer

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Watching tristamp: oh vash has mommy issues

Watching trigun 98: oh vash has MOMMY ISSUES

Reading Trimax: Actually Vash went through an extremely traumatising event at a young age and had to face the realities of humans. Rem was there, as the twins' mother figure, to represent the good. Reconciling humanity's differences is what made him how he is, and he projects that onto Rem. In this essay I will-

#trigun #tbh i get a little annoyed with vash being framed as needing to “learn better” #from whom? better than what? #and what could rem have done better anyway? #i'm at least confident stampede will go into this

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meryl is the partner who screams when she finds a bug inside. vash is the partner who catches the bug and takes it outside. wolfwood is the partner who catches the bug and chases meryl around with it.

#trigun #wolfwood sneaks up and drops the bug down the back of meryl's clothes #citation: i have older brothers

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Trigun Stampede | s01e07

“Vash… That pattern… A plant?”

#trigun stampede #gif #pretty pretty scene #pretty pretty boy #he looks like a fish

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Hellooooo people of the media

Still gonna post Trigun fanart because it was really good and also I had a cool idea

Warm colors are so fun yay

#trigun stampede #fanart #precious darling boy #warm and sunshiney #like mah boy

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crybaby

#trigun stampede #fanart #precious darling boy #what a beautiful shade of gold

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Weeping angel

#trigun maximum #fanart #precious darling boy #he's allowed to be a little dramatic under the circumstances

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Family business

#trigun maximum #fanart #precious darling boy #the thing about family disasters #is that you never have to wait long before the next one puts the previous one into perspective #“it's a secret” get his ass #vash is the older sibling i will fight people on this

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Final Phase: Liminal Time

Now this is where things get weird.

Liminality is a concept that you'll never stop hearing about if you get deep enough into folklore, literature etc. "Liminal" means (more or less) "between”; the point after which something ceases to be itself, but before it becomes something else. For this moment, or in this space, it's neither definitively what it was, nor is it anything else. It's nothing more or less than potential. It's in transition.

Noon, midnight, sunrise and sunset are liminal times; doorways and thresholds are liminal spaces; the point between leaving childhood behind and assuming the responsibility of an adult is a liminal period. They can be dangerous and frightening. It's natural to fear the unknown, be unsure of the future, or have trouble making a choice. Undergoing a transition means something is destroyed - certainties, structures, self-concept - and that can be traumatic. It can feel like you've lost something. Innocence? All the choices you didn't make?

It's hard to say. Everyone approaches it differently. Nevertheless it is a choice you must make. The alternative is to remain trapped between - to stagnate, to suffer, to succumb.

Trigun Stampede incorporates a lot of liminal imagery, most of it centred around Vash, who embodies all sorts of dichotomies and contradictions. He's a force of absolute destruction, but he's a kind and gentle person who refuses to take a life. He's male but incorporates a lot of typically feminine traits and story developments. He looks and behaves youthful - especially so in Stampede - but he's older than human civilisation on the planet he lives on. He seems clumsy and silly but he has superhuman grace and self-control. Everyone says he's an idiot, weak, foolish, selfish, but he's none of those things; it's always safe to assume that he understands what's happening better than you do, and that he's acting with intent that you may not grasp without access to his perspective.

The Plants are all aggressively weird and Vash might be the weirdest of all. Because he can seem otherwise.

It makes him… unsettling. A little hair-raising. He's an incomprehensible fourth dimensional entity who likes doing things as a human would, but every so often the mask falls. It's one of the things that has people calling him a monster.

That takes me to a liminal time which I think is familiar: Hallowe'en. Stripped of its commercial aspects, it's the time of the year when one honours the dead, and the time when children dress themselves as monsters. Because it's when the worlds of the living and the dead come close enough to influence each other - and death, too, is a liminal state. A spirit departed from its body, yet to reach its final rest, can be a dangerous thing.

By the way, another word for liminal?

Gate.

#trigun stampede #trigun meta #meta: final phase #precious darling boy #basically there's a whole other story going on that only vash knows about #because he's an interplanar nexus wearing humanness as a silly hat

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#trigun stampede #fanart #okay i'm not into vashwood but #i mean #vash IS that pretty #and this is funny

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#trigun stampede #precious darling boy #fanart #toughest thing on the planet #also most cuddley #i love that zazie thinks he's as cool as we do

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Bless this person on Twitter for sharing the Tristamp SakuraCon deets for all us peons stuck at home (Source in the comments since it won’t show up in the tag otherwise ):<)

#trigun stampede #i remember picking up on the hoods and then this confirmed it and i felt so smug #kinda got a feeling about the open jacket too #official #anyway orange clearly love this story a lot

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Some of Vash's anger with his brother honestly reads to me as embarrassment.

Knives is flailing around, knocking things over, making a mess - and he refuses to acknowledge that he's behaving this way because he's scared, or that he enjoys killing. He talks about it in terms of cleansing and revealing the truth about humankind and freedom for the Plants but he's lying, maybe as much to himself as he is to everyone else.

Vash - at least in late Maximum - has no patience for it, because he knows how Knives feels. He's consciously chosen a different path.

If Vash made the same choice his brother did? That'd be it. He wouldn't be cruel. He'd just extinguish it all in an instant. No one would see it coming. He has that power.

But there's pancakes and kind people to meet and children to play with and that's way more fun. Vash has to keep putting all that on hold to stop his idiot brother from blowing up the planet and like, he does this every time. It's just embarrassing.

Anyway Vash is a very good boy.

can you explain why knives needed vash for his plan? is vash's power giving plants life?

So from what I gather, Vash is unique in his ability to both give and take from the higher dimension, which is the place where all plants get their energy from, and that's what humans use them for. (This is also where Conrad says their souls are instead of their bodies (possible bullshit, given the unreliable narrators we have), and also given Vash's conversation with Rem in episode 12 it's possibly connected to the afterlife???) Or, at the very least, Vash is different from most other plants, as they can only take. His power has been compared to something black hole-like, but I won't bore you with quantum physics since we don't know exactly what they mean by that yet, exactly.

In order to access and enter the higher dimension to rip souls free and shove them into the plants' bodies to birth independent plants, Knives needed to use Vash as a gate, as a tool, to open Vash up and let himself in so he could funnel that power out through Vash.

At least, that's just what I've gathered from watching Tristamp... way too many times and reading meta as I go. I'm probably a bit off in this explanation, so anyone feel free to add on anything I missed! I think we're going to get way more in-depth in the following season/s with the plot threads left hanging after episode twelve. Hopefully this makes sense! :'D

#trigun stampede #trigun maximum #precious darling boy #trigun

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Vestments

It just occurred to me that probably most other members of the fandom don't have any insight into Catholic liturgical seasons and colours. I used to be an alter server for my parish so a lot of it got sunk into my brain, and I somehow didn't realise it's affecting my reading of Stampede, so...

A Catholic liturgy is an elaborate ritual. Everything about it is layered with significance. It's about representations and stand-ins. And part of that is the clothing!

Vestments. They differ from place to place, depending on what's available, but the calendar and the colours don't change.

Green is for Ordinary Time, between Easter and Christmas or vice versa. It represents hope, growth and life.

White/Gold is purity, joy, light and glory. Angels, saints, feast days relating to Mary, Christmas and Easter.

Red is passion, fire, the blood of martyrs. Good Friday, Palm Sunday, and the Pentecost. A sign that you're willing to die or kill in the name of devotion.

Purple is for Lent or the Advent (before Easter and before Christmas). A mourning colour. Penance, preparation, and sacrifice. A reminder to pray for the absolution of the departed. (Black is also mourning, obviously, but it doesn't get used that much. Wearing black is also a reminder to pray for the departed.)

Rose is very rarely worn - third Sunday of Advent, fourth Sunday of Lent. It represents joy and love, even in times of mourning and penance.

Blue is worn on exactly one day, during the feast of Mary.

#trigun stampede #meta: communion #trigun meta #tw religion #tw catholicism #an excuse to have more pictures of meryl? more likely than you think #say what you want about catholicism but it's an Aesthetic