lonely
[ID: A limited palette of green and pink, Vashwood comic. The first page serves as a prologue. The first panel shows Vash speaking to someone off screen while Wolfwood is lingering behind him. A black arrow is drawn pointing at him. In the second panel, Vash is buying donuts in the distance while Wolfwood is once again in view, lingering. and the black arrow is drawn pointing at him. In the third panel, Vash is leaving a cubicle and turning towards his right with a slightly peeved expression. He sees Wolfwood, leaning against the cubicle, waiting for him, and with the black arrow drawn, pointing at him, implicating the consistent hovering of Wolfwood’s presence during Vash’s everyday. At the bottom of the page, they’re drawn out of panel with Vash turning to Wolfwood and saying with an irritated expression, “You’re really following me everywhere, huh?” Wolfwood responds, “What, you got a problem?” Vash responds without hesitation, “Yeah, kinda...”
The second page starts with a new day. In the first panel, Vash is seen alone, weighing apples in his hands at a mart, with crowds passing behind him. In the second panel, he turns to his right and starts to say, “Hey, Wolfwood...” In the third panel, he’s startled from seeing a stranger, whom he’d accidentally called out to when he was expecting to see Wolfwood. He says, “Oh, you’re not him. Sorry!” In the fourth panel, the stranger walks off and Vash muses, “Right, he said he had something to do today...”
The third page begins with a close up of Vash's miffed expression, the continuation of Vash's thoughts, "Now that he's not here, this is just like how I used to be, but... It feels lonely somehow. Oh well, I'll see him again tonight, like always." In the second panel, it shows Vash walking through the marketplace crowd, alone. In the third panel, the door panel is a close up of the door opening with a peek of Vash's head. He says, "Wolfwood!" In the fourth panel, Vash is holding a bag of food with a bright smile and says, "Are you hungry? I got you something to eat today!"
The fourth page begins with a shot of the room, two beds being highlighted, one of them being made properly with the blanket draped over the bed and the other with the blanket folded and pillow sitting on top of it. There's no sign of Wolfwood. The second panel shows Vash with a disappointed look as he thinks, "He's still not here?" The third panel shows Vash putting the bag of food on the table. Stapled to the paper bag is the receipt with a written note "For Wolfwood." Vash's thoughts continue "He does like to stay out so, I guess there's no reason to worry..." The fourth panel shows Vash sitting his bed somberly with his thoughts continued, "It's not any of my business anyway..."
The fifth page starts with a close up his blank expression as he looks downwards, thinking, "Even if he left completely... That'd be understandable and better for him. I'll just travel alone again... like before... Huh?" The next panel shows Vash's composure break, tears welling up in his eyes suddenly, as he didn't expect to cry. He starts to sob, putting his hands to his face to quiet himself and wipe at his tears, as he says, "Ugh... Dammit... I miss h..." The last panel shows Vash leaning over into his hands, still crying, and in the back, the door swings wide open with a bam as Wolfwood walks through with the punisher swung behind him. He shouts, "SPIKEY! You in here?!"
The sixth page starts with Wolfwood confused, looking at Vash and Vash looks back, just as confused, with tears in his eyes and snot out of his nose. Wolfwood starts saying, "Ah? You..." No longer in panels, at the bottom of the page, Wolfwood takes the Punisher off of himself and starts to walk towards Vash, continuing with slight concern, "What's wrong with you? Did something happen?" Vash, hurriedly begins to wipe at his tears, denying immediately, "No! No, I'm fine! Nothing happened!"
The seventh page, Vash points towards the table, with a hand still wiping at his tears and he smiles as he says, "I uh got you food. On the table." Wolfwood looks towards to the table and responds, "Oh. I was getting hungry, thanks." He turns his head back to Vash immediately after with an uncertain expression, knowing the other wasn't responding to his concern, and says, "But, I know you're an idiot with this stuff, so I'm reminding you again. Don't brush it off if it's an issue, alright?"
The eight page, Vash's tears have dried and he looks to Wolfwood with a soft smile and responds, "Yeah. It's okay though..." A panel at the center shows a side view of Vash approaching Wolfwood. At the bottom of the page, with no panel, is a close up shot of Vash's hand, holding onto the edge of Wolfwood's jacket sleeve, as he says, "Because you're here now. Wolfwood."
The final page is a back shot of both of them standing next to each other, Wolfwood's head tilted slightly to the left, not fully believing Vash as he says, "That doesn't answer anything, Spikey." Vash responds, "There's no need to talk about it! You should enjoy your food. Let's have a drink too?" Wolfwood responds, "Tsk, tsk. Fine, yeah. I could use one." END ID]
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i've been promising it for ages, so here are finally some notes on the two iterations of black arms/doom i write for. in this house we ignore the "black doom is an evil space tyrant for the sake of being an evil space tyrant" thing and have fun exploring his motives from different angles
(it's because i had no idea that was even a thing until like a week ago. i've always thought the motivator was Just Food, and i like that significantly more.)
i like to think of eclipse's paternal qualities as something telling to black doom/the species as a whole, at least outside of canon instances. so that's an intentional trend across both.
it's also intentionally implied the alt arms are more or less what aruna's hive could/would have turned out like if he were less traditionally stubborn and foolhardy.
as for their plans and how things ended up:
alt doom started out as generally interested in how humanity might progress. once in contact with gerald, his plan was to trade his DNA for the chaos emeralds as a source of energy for the black comet, as its at-the-time power would have been mostly depleted by the time it circled back around in 50 years. this agreement was doomed to fail; both he and gerald almost immediately realized how badly it could backfire, got paranoid, and mutually planned to destroy each other. the fact humans are good sustenance for the black arms was just a convenient bonus at that point.
given shadow didn't make it past SA2 on this timeline, it left sonic to defeat the black arms. and in sonic fashion, this meant putting them in their place and sending them packing without properly destroying them.
alt doom is not so much one to accept he's been beaten, and more one to re-approach something from a different angle once he realizes his methods were flawed. this leads to him picking up and just going Somewhere Else. he's a scientist too, on some level. he can figure it out. and he does. rather than being all traditional and stubborn, he learns to work with other species, which in turn leads to securing better/more diverse materials, more ethical/convenient food sources, etc. the arms' population booms and advances at breakneck pace from then on. they diversify and spread out. without having to fight for survival, things are chill. it's considered the good end.
aruna's is the bad end. shadow is present on this timeline, and summarily wrecks his entire shit (for good reason).
the trouble with aruna's hive is it was in a constant state of nutritional deficit. they were the multiverse's scavengers, tending to pick planets clean whose populations were already critically low. not for any moral or ethical reason, just that the hive itself was so comparatively small in numbers, they didn't much have a choice.
this led to desperation. he got Tired of it. his last ditch effort to secure some means of easier travel/means to acquire food was to obtain the chaos emeralds. so he struck a deal with gerald, as these things always go.
he comes back 50 years later, finds his son has sided with the humans, and just snaps. just goes absolutely nuclear. if the deal isn't going to be upheld, and shadow sees the black arms as The Enemy, then he's just going to take the emeralds (and by extension the whole planet itself) by force. he's done playing nice. he and his people are starving. have been starving for enough years he's lost count.
this ends with the entire comet being blown up, and that's the last thing he sees as he's falling back to earth.
what all goes on after that point is between nobody but him, the multiverse's worst and, somehow, eventually, a familiar fallen god. (it's going in another aruna-centric post, some day, maybe, i hope.)
there's even still more i could say about how their respective hives operated and how they interacted with them personally, but that also needs to go in another post because this one's already long enough. but oh man is there more to say.
(and a shoutout/direct link to @motobug as always for the mobian design)
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I've been thinking about why in so deeply bothered by people saying that afab enbies who don't look trans are less oppressed than other trans people. Part of it is just that it is either based in enbyphobia/misogyny (seeing afab enbies as women and seeing women as attention seekers with a victim complex) or it's erasing amab enbies (because if 'looking trans' is such an important part of the trans experience then why wouldn't the same apply to amab enbies who aren't visibility trans)
But I've realized that it's also because it reminds me of one of the most common acephobic arguments I saw back when asexuals were the targets of the "discourse" (aka the main target for bullies in online queer spaces) The argument was that no one can tell you're asexual unless you tell them. That mlm and wlw can be clocked in public by homophobes and thus are the targets of violence but asexuals aren't going to be holding hands with the wrong person so clearly we don't experience any type of oppression. At it's heart it's the same argument I see against afab enbies. It's this idea that going through life hiding your actual identity is a privilege, that somehow staying in the closet all the time is fun and easy, it's the idea that the only meaningful form of oppression is random violence from complete strangers, that non-violent bigotry doesn't really matter, and that violence from people you know is somehow less common or less important. It's people acting as though the only reason that someone might seek out queer spaces is to avoid that violence from strangers, and that seeking out queer spaces for emotional support or to form connections is somehow "taking up resources" or an "invasion" of a space where they don't belong. It's the same oppression olympics that I hate with every fiber of my being, that does nothing but turn us against each other and distract from our actual oppressors.
Afab enbies wanting to exist and be acknowledged no matter their gender presentation is not an act of violence against other trans people.
It took me years to come to terms with my asexuality because of the way asexuals were targeted when I was a teenager, and I hate to think that there are going to be people growing up now that struggle to come to terms with their gender identity because of the way enbies are being talked about.
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