#his willingness to pull the trigger when vash won’t is what makes him more than just another person vash loves

[mumblesplash]

ok mostly just getting this out of my head i think the reason i like stampede vashwood as much as i do despite not being much of a shipper in general is it resembles a dynamic i theoretically love but have never actually seen—where one character (A) is pining over a character (B) they know feels the same way about them.

because see for A these feelings are uncharted territory, a type of connection they’ve never formed before and maybe fear they never will again. even getting to the point where they admit their feelings to themself is like pulling teeth, but it’s something special to them.

meanwhile, character B has no reservations about their own feelings at all. they could give the most heartfelt declaration of love and mean every word of it as easy as breathing. they’ve loved A from the start and always will.

but in a sense, A’s feelings are unrequited anyway—the affection the two have for each other is equal, but it’s because B cares that much about everyone. it doesn’t matter if their feelings for A are romantic, deep down they probably don’t even know how to tell the difference between that and being whatever anyone wants them to be. and A knows this, so A can’t tell them what they want

ideally, this seemingly infinite capacity for compassion and love is part of what drew A to B in the first place (it at least can’t be something A resents or sees as unfair to them personally, that would miss the whole point). also ideally character B represents some sort of hope for a future A thought was impossible, escape from a dark past or a chance to become something better than they feel they are, but it’s a chance they can’t take without losing them

also also, this dynamic is angst-only. if they’re healthy enough to talk through their feelings and actually end up together they’re disqualified. it takes two specific types of disaster character for this to work properly, and any way it plays out will end up with everything falling apart horribly.

and like if i’m being honest here it’s barely even romantic. they probably never even get around to kissing and if they do they’re both convinced the other one doesn’t really mean it

#this is probably one of those ‘oh he’s been overtaken by the madness again’ types of posts isn’t it #oh well #re: the hope of escaping a dark past wolfwood is a good example of what i mean here because his whole ‘forcing himself to play the devil’ #thing is both the thing he feels he can’t escape and the thing that makes him ‘useful’ to vash #his willingness to pull the trigger when vash won’t is what makes him more than just another person vash loves #do u see what i mean. it’s about the tension of not being able to let love change you because the moment you do you’ll lose it #and like. this isn’t exactly what vashwood have going on per se #at least i don’t think? i never read the manga or even finished the original anime #but like you can see how the resemblance to this would get me Thinkin yk #mumbling