I've been thinking about how Vash always seems to be hungry. Or at least, that he's shown eating quite often in the manga. Happily having his salmon sandwiches. Eating an entire box of donuts in the side car. Knowing the conversion rate of bullets to pizza. Seeing a flower and immediately wondering if it's edible. Pondering his life over breakfast. It's a really cute little character detail about him - he likes food.
But then I kind of started to think about the angel arm and its specific brand of destruction. How there were no bodies to be recovered. Nothing but a crater left of July, left on the Fifth Moon. It's all been incinerated. Devoured, even. Tristamp takes it even a step further and makes the power something akin to a black hole - a yawning drain; a constant destructive hunger.
Vash is clearly terrified of this potential for destruction, and for very good reason. But it's not separate from him as some kind of "power he can't control" - it's his arm. It's literally his arm. It is him. Vash is scared of himself, scared of losing control. He does what he can to repress it, even subconsciously (the gaps in his memory whenever it activates). He can't control it in the moment, so he takes steps to preemptively push it down, to avoid the use of his abilities entirely, to hide himself away.
I talked a bit in a previous post about how there are probably several interrelated reasons for Vash's chronically avoidant behaviour, but I'd like to throw one more into the ring and suggest that it's not just a matter of not deserving to want things, but maybe also that he's afraid of wanting. That if he allows himself to even think about what he wants personally that he'll want too much, take too much, and that the only cure in his mind for this is to give and give repeatedly.
I wonder how starved he is for love. Vash loves hard, after all. Once he loves (and I’m not talking about the broad, distant love/compassion he has in general), for better or worse, he carries them around with him forever, long after they've passed. Does he feel like it'd be selfish to admit this kind of want? His love isn't really a passive thing after all - it's the drive at his very core; a mournful inferno he is just barely suppressing. Does he remember how to love in a way that doesn't consume him entirely?
Is that part of the reason he checks out at signs of intimacy? Diverts gifts towards others? Tends to accept kind gestures only when under an assumed name? Intentionally starves himself in Tristamp? Runs and runs and runs? Is he afraid he won't be able to stop hungering? That allowing himself to want means his want will become insatiable?
I just have to wonder how much of his avoidance of connection is being scared that he will cause more destruction (to them? or to him?) by trying to take far too much into his hands than he ever caused by turning his back and running.
...of course I may just be entirely deranged here sorry.
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I often wonder about the quote-unquote logistics of Corvo the Black/Emily the Butcher endings. Emily makes more sense to me, in a way, carving her way through the empire only to come back with blood caked under her fingernails and realising that she did everything her father refused to do 15 years ago. but why did Corvo have a similar choice?
what happens to the statues later? does Emily keep her father trapped in stone? does Corvo look at his daughter, frozen in the moment and considers freeing her? is he at his deathbed when he finally reaches out and cups Emily's cheek, freeing her into a carcass of an empire that he gutted for her, in her name, in the name of her mother?
when I first heard of the endings I thought that if you reach very high chaos, you are locked into this choice - Corvo or Emily tries to free the other and the stone just doesn't budge. they are trapped. the quest is over but the world knows that the bloodshed was extreme and this is the punishment they have to face
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Ride 741: Danchiku's “shout”
Pag 1
1: In their eyes,an unshakable will....!!
Pag 2
3: Ahhhh
4: Danchiku is exhaling!! For so long!!
3.... 4....
5: 5 seconds!!
Ahh
6: No, he's exhaling even more!!
8... 9.... 10 seconds!!
Ahhhhh
Pag 3
1: 11 seconds.... 12 seconds!!
3: He's emptying his lungs using all his muscles around them!!
5: This is bad!!
Pag 4
1: It's coming!!
2: “Panda shout”
“It's a breathing technique”
“I become twice as fast”
The onw who reaches the sensor line first wins this race!!
If I don't get ahead now
3: He'll catch up!!
4: Ahhh
Pag 5
5: Filled up of “fresh”!!
6: Panda....
Pag 6
1: Shout!!
Hiigaruaaagh!!
Pag 7
1: Hiigaruaaagh!!
Pag 8
1: He caught up to me!!
2: Twice as fast!!
3: Kuaaaaagh
Pag 9
1: We entered the last curve!!
And Danchiku is still accelerating!!
2: This is Danchiku at “100%”!!
Pag 10
1: Cough cough
This is so hard!!
2: 300km left until the sensor line!!
3: Catch up, catch up, catch up
Catch up!!
Pag 11
1: Sugimoto Terufumi!!
2: Kuaaaaaa
200m left!!
Pag 12
1: Cough
Cough
2: We're all both human beings
We all have limbs, and a head
Danchiku, and Onoda, and Naruko too
3: We're all human beings!!
4: Our bikes aren't all that different
My Colnago is ligh and fast!!
5: So, I'll catch up
I'll catch up!!
6: I should catch up!!
Pag 13
1: I watched it, their running
3: I watched them from the sidelines
For three years!!
4: Onoda!!
Onoda-kun!!
Sakamichi!
Pedaaal!!
5: Doesn't matter how hard it was for them
Pag 14
1: They never gave up!!
3: Calm down, heart
Calm down, breath
4: Panda shout? Bamboo Hop Shot?
5: You're working hard,didn't you, Danchiku?
That's nice
6: Then I'll indulge you and let you practice with me!!
Kuaaaaaa
Pag 15
2: They left Onoda and the others behind.. so the race is on this lap!!
Nii-chan!! On!!
They're coming!!
3: Danchiku and Sugimoto
4: 100m left!! This will settle it!!
They both started the final sprint!!
Danchiku is ahead!! And he's smiling!!
Pag 16
1: Sorry, Sugimoto-san
As expected, you ran and practiced in Sohoku with no breaks for three years
2: But
It's over now!!
3: I'm sorry, but give up please!!
4: Sugimoto!!
5: Nii-chan!!
Pag 19
2: Kuaaaaaagh
4: Ju... just now....
Pag 20
1: They arrived at the same time.... on
2: At the end.... Sugimoto stretched ahead with a long sprint...
Who knew he could do something like that!!
3: Nii-chan really is amazing, on!!
4: But
A tie at this moment means that-
On
5: This race
Pag 21
1: Hasn't ended yet!!
It's a suddent death match until they settle this!!
2: A long.... sprint...
You still had.... something like that....
4: Good job.... my Colnago-chan, good job
5: No... now....!!
Should we go another lap, Danchiku?!
6: This guy.... he doesn't give up!!
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I don't like DDLC'S MC very much on a very petty level but I still wish there was more fic or meta speculation about him. I'm not interested in him as a character, though, because he's barely a character. Literally by the game's standards, he has no inherent "character file." He is the SCRIPT, if anything. All of his thoughts and actions occur within the little text bubble at the bottom of the screen, and so do the characters'. He barely appears in CGs, has no body sprite, and it is through his observations and his thoughts and his call to make choices that the game progresses.
I think that specific trait of MC is fascinating, especially given how deep reaching Monika's manipulation is. During Act 1 he is active, he is talkative, he has a definitive (and yet inconsistent, based on which girl(s) you're speaking to) personality. He has thoughts about just about everything going on. And yet in Act 2 he is reduced to dust. He stops having any kind of commentary and he almost never remarks upon the horrible occurrences around him unless prompted or unless it is something that could plausibly happen in the realm of reality, like Yuri abandoning him for 10 minutes and Natsuki collapsing on him. But even then he's still significantly muted. Yuri and Natsuki have a horrible fight and the only kind of response he tries to throw out is co-opted by Monika. He witness Yuri declare her love for him and talk about how she would love to pull his skin open and crawl inside of him and the only thing he has to say is "yes" or "no" when she asks if he likes her back. And then he physically cannot move or speak or react because the world is so far gone that Yuri's death has damaged him, the script, so much that all he hears is gibberish coming from her lifeless mouth.
And like... that's neat to me. I like that by the end of Act 2 the script is so off the rails and so far gone from reality that MC can no longer really function as a person, because the script is barely functioning. He stops reacting to anything happening around him and most of the conversations he has are just the girls talking at him. Monika has to literally rewrite the script and force Yuri and Natsuki to say things to further her agenda or keep the scene rolling. MC had a clear and very human response to Sayori's death because it was a plausible but horrible (and not forced) event that could happen naturally. Yuri's death was so jarring and away from the scope of the natural order of his world that MC (and Yuri, by extension) can only sit frozen and broken until Natsuki and Monika show up to force new progress.
Like Monika's effect on the girls has been talked to death and it is an interesting topic but I also think what she unintentionally did to the POV character of the game is also something neat. It really adds to the feeling of the world in DDLC being hollow. The MC is a half-character who can only react in incredibly predictable ways, and when the world stops being predictable, he stops being anything more than a walking camera for Monika to speak into.
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