hi i'm kitty your local neurodivergent ace weirdo (she/they); i have lots of fandoms and i write and draw and liveblog | my writing is on ao3 @blackjacketsandpens | i do commissions!!
Hello! This will be my pinned post because it's about time I made one.
I am Kitty/strangefellows/apparently The Ayin Guy(tm), and though I am a multifandom blog (my tags page is long defunct but i will update it eventually with working links for fandoms and characters at some point/eventually) it seems as though my claim to fame is quickly becoming that I am the #1 Dante-is-Ayin limbus company truther and I will sit upon this hill until Kim Jihoon himself tells me I am wrong in big neon letters.
So this pinned is a quick go-to link grouping for my major important things you might want to check out from me!
EDIT HERE: I AM DOING ART/WRITING COMMISSIONS! Please click this link for details.
THE BIG ONE. Here is my 200+ page and counting Dante-is-Ayin theory gDoc, updated every time we get any kind of story content so keep checking back regularly! UPDATE: Now collaborating on this document with @leonawriter who is my co-leader of this theory, check out their Tumblr for much more discussion and essays on the theory as well!
Here (click me!) and here (also click me!) are short essays I have written about Ayin himself and why I believe in this theory meta-wise, discussing a few different points I know fans have made against said theory.
Here, because I figure you all might need a little extra context (click me!) is a link to a fic I wrote posted on AO3 which while with the barest minimum of headcanon, is very much how I understood Ayin -- well, X , but also Ayin -- as a character in the course of my run through of LobCorp. Spot some unintentional Limbus foreshadowing with me! There's a sequel to it with some more Ayin characterization via LoR Realization stuff, but that's not as relevant given that's purely AU.
And if you would go into the tag #projmoonblogging you will see my animated discussion posts with anons on the topic -- you know who you are and I love you dearly -- and tangentially you are absolutely free to message me with questions and thoughts yourself! Just keep it polite, because though I'll gladly discuss with you if you disagree with me, I don't mind, if you're rude you will be ignored.
I have and will continue to occasionally answer asks in-character as Ayin, and I'm having great fun doing so -- if you'd like to read them all (or block the tag), you may refer to #committing to the ayin bit and it's all there!
EDIT: I ACTUALLY NOW HAVE AN AYIN RP SIDEBLOG! @iamthemanager for those who wish to go bother him and interact with my take on Ayin.
(And while I'm here, if you like ProjMoon stuff, go read Simon R. Green's books, especially the Nightside series but genuinely anything he's written-- the vibes are Extremely similar, it's where my blog title and username comes from.)
so idk which of my followers are here for xiv posting but i'm in one of those moods where i really wanna talk about my wols (esp bran my main boy but everyone else too lol) and emetwol (especially because i don't see a lot of male emet wolships going around twitter!) but my following on twt is so tiny and it's so quiet over here that it's like kinda…idk.
but anyway if anyone's around and cares feel free to poke about it or something idk, if anyone's new enough they don't know about bran and my girls or if anyone's been around long enough they DO know about bran and the girls but aren't up to date bc idk if i've xiv posted a lot since mid shb, hit me up lol
Hi, same recent anon! I wanted to also say thank you for your representation of s/a in the livalley fics, it's genuinely so wonderful to see someone not only share that headcanon but to also portray it so well. I feel strange thanking someone for that but it is important to me that you know how much I enjoy these fics!! They are art!!!! Okay I'm gonna send this before I chicken out lmao
dfdfadh--
Oh my goodness you're SO welcome-- it's a headcanon I'd seen a lot while I was going on my 'need to read every Trigun fic I can get my hands on' post-finishing catching up on everything, and I looked back at Trimax and went "....yeah, yeah I can see it" so when I was writing livalley -- I haven't written as much vashwood but I know I did imply something on Wolfwood's end there in one of the fics -- I knew it was something I wanted to both portray and address, because it was definitely something that would be there, and I wanted to make sure I didn't just gloss over it. And I'm so, so glad you think I handled it so well!!! That means a lot!! Like your asks are so delightful, it always means so much to me to hear from people that liked my fics and why, so thank you so much!!
(Also no no it's okay the lock on some of my fics is because I heard that helps prevent AI scraping, that's all! You're fine to mention it, don't worry~)
here to say THANK YOU FOR THE LIVIO/MIDVALLEY FICS ON AO3... they are everything to me and you are the only person who has posted fics for them
Oh my GOD this made my entire day
YOU ARE SO WELCOME!!!! The ship showed up on my twitter feed and I kinda fell in love with it, and then when I went to post my fics i was like WHAT DO YOU MEAN I'M THE FIRST PERSON TO USE THE SHIP TAG???? i'm so glad i was able to feed all yall fellow livalley shippers honestly this ask made me so happy <333
i am very glad we seem to be done with the heavier handed political stuff, that was my only complaint and it's over with mostly
aside from that adi shankar still absolutely aces and nails dante and vergil's character writing 100% and i am DEEPLY enjoying his take on the story and the universe he gets the heart of it right even if it's far from 1:1 and i do not mind that at all
looking forward to season 3!!
NOW IF ONLY THEY COULD STOP FUCKING BLUEBALLING US AND LET US SEE SPARDA FIRSTHAND FOR ONCE INSTEAD OF JUST HAVING OTHER PEOPLE TELL US ABOUT HIM AND THEIR OPINIONS ON HIM/THEIR IDEAS OF WHAT HIS FEELINGS ARE OHHHHHHHH MY GOD DMC6 PLEASE I NEED THIS
one day i'll be able to enjoy unpopular things without being intentionally or not made to feel like a shitty garbage bad fan for enjoying said thing. one day.
so because again twt has a character limit and i desperately want to just type out all of my feelings and i have The Anxiety(tm) sharing things when i'm critical of something here we go. i said a shorter tldr version of all this in my initial "i watched/read all the triguns and here's a short review" post but i wanted to go into more depth with why i don't like 98, esp after rewatching it all the way through a second time and also rewatching stampgaze + rereading trimax a couple times as one does when in the midst of an audhd hyperfocus binge.
i'mma be keeping this out of the tags and under a cut, but i'd also welcome (civil!! keep it civil please!!!) discussion, because i know 98 is very well liked, generally - which is why i was surprised at how much i didn't like it compared to the manga/stampgaze - and i'm curious about takes on the things i didn't like. and i'm also curious if people agree with me!
so, here goes; why i didn't like trigun 98
now, the first thing i didn't like is i will FULLY admit to a matter of personal taste, and i understand the rationale for it, so i won't dwell on it. but dear god the added slapstick in 98 made the first half dozen or so episodes painful for me to get through. i get secondhand cringe/ embarrassment really easily for comedic/slapstick moments, which is why 99% of all comedy genre stuff doesn't land for me, so it was. a struggle.
granted, i know trimax has slapstick! vash is a goofy goober sometimes and there are some genuinely silly moments! i love that. it strikes a perfect balance with the seriousness of it all and helps inform vash's character. but it felt like 98 just kind of turned it up to 11 and not in a way that helped. i joked a few times to myself in notes i was making that it felt like everyone was suffering from heatstroke, and it did at that. everyone at first felt that much...denser. they did not need to add the lack of wanted posters just for that mistaken identity slapstick with meryl, and that dragged on way too long honestly. and while i do stand with Certified Freak(tm) Vash, the added over the top horniness was a little grating. like vash darling i know a lot of this is an act but i think you might be overdoing it here.
but, as said, this was the late 90s, and late 90s anime humor had a very specific something to it that was...uh...this. so i don't hold it against the anime for leaning into the trends of the time, and it also helps that once they got into the meat of the plot past ep 6-7 or so it got toned down a fair bit, so it stopped being a problem for me really quickly.
okay now onto the ACTUAL issues not the "kitty is a baby about too much crack and slapstick" issues.
my main issues are twofold: the lack of stakes and consequences for vash's actions or lack thereof, and the wild and rampant character derailment.
the first issue: like, why in the hell did 98 just shrug and go yeah no one died in july or after the fifth moon, absolutely not a soul. and i can't remember if they came out and said yeah no one died at the attack on home either (besides brad but i'm salty about THAT too, why did you kill off our boy) but i wouldn't be surprised. like, that cuts out so much of the weight of those incidents, that oh no one died. it feels like it takes away so much of the reasons vash had to carry so much of a burden. it lets him off much too lightly for his flaws. nothing feels earned when none of the major incidents in his path actually kill anyone.
now, stargaze has this issue too esp in the last 4 episodes (you will not see me arguing against ww's survival but after that is a bit. hm.), but i did appreciate that stampede did have july/jeonora rock cause so much death-- and the weight of us knowing rosa and toniv made that hurt him so much more, too-- and the addition of monev/rollo and the blatant consequences of vash's savior complex was peak shit. all of that is why i can let off midvalley and leonof's survival in stargaze, at least, because in that sense, those two surviving feels earned, it gave me a breath of "after all that death, just this once, he's done it"-- which 98 never ever gives me, because no one died at all anyway, so who cares if more people Don't Die.
(granted i'm biased towards midvalley, leonof can stay dead idgaf but mids....i'm so glad mids....i'll take it....)
another problem relating to this is knives....uh...not doing anything. the lack of stakes in that knives is just, what, twiddling his thumbs sipping some wine like a bond villain waiting for vash to roll up was A Choice. what's the hurry vash, there's no fleet there's no fusing with the other plants there's no attacks on plant facilities there's no hard time limit before things explode knives LITERALLY ISN'T DOING ANYTHING besides harassing you for shits and giggles. where is the stakes. where is my reason to care that your brother is bullying you specifically. it's not very nice but like. no one's dead so why am i invested?
so yeah. that was....not great.
and that leads me into my second major issue. who the fuck is that and why are you telling me that is knives.
my confusion leading into the flashback was there, going, okay um this isn't like trimax, but i'll roll with it, and then the flashback happened and i was left staring openmouthed at the screen going WHAT????? WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT??????
now. i liked knives in stampede and stargaze. but then i read trimax and ohhhh mygod. oh my god. he's one of my favorites. i wrote two oneshots and an entire au fic with him as a pov character. he's fascinating and he hurts me.
so seeing this version of him, with his heartbreaking motivations of wishing and dreaming and thinking they could be friends with humanity shattered by tesla's horrible fate, this soft hopeful kid broken into rage and fear against humanity-- replaced by this spiteful, nasty little manipulative nightmare child who talked Mary into accusing his bully of rape and then Rowan into embracing his inner incel at Mary and then basically killing them all because...Joey was mean to him? I mean granted, Joey was kind of a piece of shit. But it just has nowhere near the same gravitas and tragedy of trimax, and it just makes knives look like a spiteful horrible little bitch. like, sure, take joey out. that's the bully gone and you're all safe now. but to escalate it to that degree feels disproportionate and unbelievable in comparison, especially when mary rowan sam and rem were all so kind as counterexamples.
and then for him to spend the entire present day runtime a) killing vash's last tie to rem just out of vindictive spite and then b) doing nothing at all except letting legato bully vash until the last episode when he just rolls up sips wine and has a frankly silly gunfight - i remember trimax knives saying he hates guns do you 98 - before...that's it? that...he was just a petty spiteful little brat the entire time and compared to trimax and even stampgaze knives it felt so wrong.
and that isn't even the only character who got done did dirty.
see me, fresh off of the first half of stargaze, having read the manga before the last few episodes drop, watching 98-- and then getting to midvalley showing up. on god, who is that man and what has he done to my boy. my love. my free real estate. my wet cat music man whose conflicted feelings about his actions for knives and desire to get out even if he's also a coward and a hypocrite are why i loved him so much in stargaze and who i also adored in trimax for the same reasons even if he was less of a wet cat. who is this guy who isn't even wearing white who doesn't even have the same hairstyle and whose entire screentime is just silently following legato - who he hated in trimax and stargaze! - around being his yes man and bgm before he has the shortest and most anticlimactic duel with vash? what happened there????
not to mention my disappointment in hoppered's entire beef with vash over lost july being removed because without that who even is he? that conflict was GOOD SHIT. why remove it???? oh yeah bc no one died in july :/
and now we get to the most controversial 98 beef of all time. the one that's gonna get me taken out back and put down like a dog next to the couch.
i didn't like how 98 handled wolfwood. there i said it. yall can string me up now.
lemme explain tho. see, my first experience with wolfwood was stampede, so my first experience with him-- and the moment i went "oh, this man is my favorite character, i am devastated, he now owns my heart and soul"-- was episode 6, where we see his backstory, where we see him at hopeland with livio, him being taken by the eom, and that absolute fucking gutpunch of a smash cut when we see how the experiments aged him up so much so fast. like that cut to him on the table all grown up hit me like a semit ruck and that was the exact moment he owned my soul.
of course, i knew he died and the couch panel, but other than that i knew nothing about him beyond stampede and the first 7-8 episodes of stargaze when i picked the manga up. and ohhhghghghhhgod. everything i loved about him in stampgaze turned up to 11. his trauma, his attitude, his juxtaposition with vash, his ideals and his ferocity and bitterness and his development and growth and everything was just. yeah that's my man that's even MORE my man now.
so...when i got far enough through 98 to realize that 98 wolfwood had almost none of that-- that his backstory was totally different, and it explained why though he butted heads with vash something about it felt hollow. because it was. granted there was still a tragic backstory, but no eye of michael, no experiments, no melanie and hopeland, no livio...it felt like the core of him had been cut out, and what was left was a guy who was superficially wolfwood, but without the parts of him that i loved most. it didn't feel like wolfwood to me. he wasn't even hired by knives there, not until the episode where he died and even then, it was chapel (who was #notmychapel either lmao, give me my horrible old man back), so there was none of that internal conflict, either!
like yeah, his death speech did make me cry and hurt my heart, but like with vash and his lack of death/consequences, the lack of conflict up until that very last moment - the thing with zazie which felt kinda contrived and rushed given it happened literally the ep before he died - made it not really feel earned in the same way as in trimax and stargaze's did. like sure stargaze faked us out, but it hit enough of the same beats as trimax that if he HAD died there it would've hit the same. i sure know i was screamsobbing my throat raw lol.
it's just...98 wolfwood feels like a hollow wolfwood. none of the things i love most about him are there. and it sucks because he's still surface wolfwood, his personality hasn't been replaced with a pod person like knives or completely removed like midvalley. so it feels that much harder to say "i don't like him" because he's not not him, he's just...more shallow.
also livio's removal was the worst thing ever you put that cowboy back this instant. also where's elendira. girl we need you. their absence was ROUGHHHHH.
another issue i have is. everything about the angel arms and plant powers was STUPID. why is it tied to the gun?? why is vash's arm transplanted on legato???? that feels like it undermine's legato's character!!! (we stan a king who stuck his wires in 1300 whole ass people when he was a kid on top of Everything abt the finale) why does knives do the exact same thing vash did he's KNIVES for a reason??? it was so stupid. like. what. why. what.
and. this is petty. this is SUPER EXTREMELY PETTY i know.
but for all that there are complaints about stampgaze's pacing uhhhhhh 98 did it first.
yeah, stargaze had to cram most of the manga into 12 episodes bc of corporate meddling, but 98 did the first 20 chapters in like 17 episodes and then had to cram 97 chapters into the last 9. and didn't do it very well either.
not to mention-- and admittedly this WAS petty i will outright admit it-- that vash took just as long to shoot legato in 98 if not longer than it took him to shoot legato in stargaze. i timed it. checkmate.
is stargaze perfect? hell no. i fully agree that the last 4 episodes fell off pretty hard in quality due to the pacing, and legato my poor boy got done did extremely dirty (though i suspect the pacing issues contributed to his screentime getting fucked and them needing to deal with him in a less than ideal way), and i honestly have a very large amount of questions over the idea of nai letting conrad anywhere near him or elendira or plants in general when he knew exactly what conrad did to tesla the entire time (like yeah sure make up for your sins old man but that nai let conrad Do Things to him??? and other plants??? what) and there are some plotholes if you think about the timeline of livio/razlo and razlo's existence too hard. but like.
i still love it more than i like 98, because for the most part the soul of the characters i love so much is still there. stampgaze is what made me love midvalley, love wolfwood, and give me the tools to end up loving livio and knives as much as i do. stampgaze is what made me love vash to pieces and be so so fond of meryl and milly. i got around to reading and rereading trimax, and i got to see them in the manga and go oh, that's them, there they are, now i love them more to see those same characters in their original context with how they were originally written to be, which stampgaze just added to. i got to meet livio in trimax (and oh my god, livio. stampgaze doesn't do him nearly the justice he deserves, he's up there in top 3 with vash and wolfwood and top five with those two knives and midvalley), and that made me so happy to see him in stargaze, to see him get to fight alongside his brother.
98 just felt.....hollow. those characters just weren't there. vash was there for the most part, sometimes, and the girls were, when they didn't have heatstroke, and as a polygun shipper outside my diehard love of vashwood i absolutely have no issue with the added emphasis on vashmeryl and millywood, but...no one else was. and with the added slapstick, the removal of consequences, and how diminished and empty both the role of home and the entire finale felt compared to knives' genesis flood/attack on the fleet...
yeah. my least favorite adaptation.
please my kingdom for a faithful trimax adaptation pleaseeeeee.
hi i'm desperate enough to try this so yeah. hello i'm kitty i'm disabled and i've been unemployed for over a year with zero progress on finding a job (not even mcdonalds wanted me lmao), i live with my retired heavily disabled mom whose disability checks and pension barely get us through with the help we get from my bf and we're currently $200 short on rent, if anyone could help us out that would be really great thank you. i can draw stuff as thanks even. please.
so excuse me while i ffxiv post for a minute because twt is kinda driving me up a wall and i need more than 140 characters
once again we've hit the point before a new expac where a chunk of the fandom is going "kill the scions, get rid of them, retire them, we're tired of them, their arcs are over so we don't need them around anymore, they're pointless" and every time i start banging my head against a wall. (under a cut so yall don't have to read my opinions if you don't want to lol)
putting aside the meta fact that they are never going to do that because the scions make them way too much money at this point...
before this is an mmo, it's a final fantasy. a jrpg. and what does every single jrpg, especially final fantasies, have? a jrpg party.
from as early as FF1, we had a party. and starting in FF4, they were characters. cecil had kain, rosa, edward, edge, palom and porom, yang, rydia, and cid. bartz had lenne, faris, galuf, and krile. terra had edgar, locke, celes, sabin, cyan, gau, shadow, setzer, relm, strago, mog...the list goes on and on and on.
that's the scions. that's what they are to us, especially now that duty support/trust has been added.
yes, characters die in ffs. famously aerith, tellah, galuf, so on. but sometimes there are fake-outs. i see people being frustrated with them in xiv, but might i point you to the rest of the dang cast in 4? they faked us out with yang, rydia, palom and porom, and cid! half the dang cast got fakeouts! it's not new!
do we see people going "oh, i'm bored with these characters, their arcs are over, get us new party members" over any of the other ff casts? no! do you guys remove like, tifa or vanille or freya, locke or irvine or balthier, etc etc etc, from the party and forget them when their arcs are over? no! the entire point of the world of ruin in FF6 is to resolve everyone's character arcs and plots so they rejoin the party to fight kefka! if we ditched everyone once their arcs ended, we'd be rolling up to the jrpg final boss fight solo!
i mean, sure, in xiv we have the azem crystal to dial up 3 to 7 friends or randos from across time and space, but like. now that trust is a regular thing the scions are almost always there as well! they helped us all the way into the endsinger fight in EW, and both mid-story trials (valigarmanda and zoraal ja) in DT as well as fuckin' hydaelyn back in EW were doable on trust. this is going to probably continue.
i know, it does feel different in an mmo when the story is stretched out going on 13 years now as opposed to a self-contained single player jrpg like the other FFs, but this is the FF formula, and we know they stick to it in many other aspects in xiv as well. we're not going to ditch our party. sure, they may go in and out -- as single player ff parties do that, too, we get limited members for certain parts of the story, characters leave and come back all the time -- but they'll never be fully removed from the plot.
in addition, i see in conversation a lot the topic of "stakes", that there are no stakes and it's boring because the scions can't die-- okay, we don't need to constantly worry about our core party to have stakes. it's not a question of "will they die" it's "how will they survive". even if we know they'll make it, the how is always in question. and there are plenty of stakes to be had in the expac characters themselves; even if the scions won't die, literally everyone else we meet is fair game. they don't have to be core party members for us to mourn them if and when they die, to fear for their lives.
and anyway, it isn't like they haven't killed people off before. it's just gone past the need for a core party death-- there's nothing killing someone we've known for 10+ years now could do for the plot, at this point, for any of them. it'd be needless angst fuel.
( and for those who say thancred dying in shb would've been for the best? even removing the fact that my reaction to the fakeout was so visceral i made myself physically ill, so god forbid they'd followed through with it, that was never the point of the arc at all; his arc was letting go of minfilia and his regrets and learning to live in the present with ryne and what he has now-- as a thancred fan since 2012 who's been in the trenches, frankly, him dying there would've been an example of the "suicidal character self-sacrifices and it's somehow noble" trope we all hate. so let's not do that. some of yall just still hate thancred don't you)
so like. yeah. no. we're not losing our core party, they're a staple and permanent part of our story, even if they come in and out of the plot.
That feeling when one of your most beloved OCs turns out to be based heavily on a character you didn't meet til 13 years after you created her. I have never met a more A'khemi-coded character than Vash the Stampede; it helps that she's the OC that's most based on me and I also see a lot of myself in Vash, so it's all connected, but like. Yeah.
My sweet, caring sunshine girl empath who sees the best in everyone and tries to give everyone a second chance no matter who they are, refuses to hate anyone, and sympathizes with almost every single villain she meets and wants to help ease their pain too, who believes in holding onto hope through even the darkest times, and that a reason for living can be found in the small joys of life, every day, one day at a time. Also, she's got flower theming. ...she's much better adjusted than Vash, though, so points for that?
...also, she's got a sarcastic, somewhat more jaded and cynical, kinda fucked up former orphan boyfriend with a heavily checkered past and a gun who doesn't seem to think he's a very good person and who has a drinking problem, a near-death experience in a desert, and is good with kids? So, uh, yeah, there's that too. I need everyone to draw more Thancred Wolfwood please and thank you.
BONUS! Under the cut is some more of my WoLs/XIV NPCs dressed up in Trigun cosplay based on either personality or story role/connection to A'khemi~
So G'raha is Meryl because he's A'khemi's other love interest and because her being inspired and changed by watching Vash and her journalism/recording Vash's story aspects fit really well with G'raha-Exarch's being inspired by WoL via reading about their story. He does not like this skirt it is very short.
My WoL Cassie is Milly because they're both the cheerful and friendly and somewhat out there one who is a lot more perceptive and emotionally intelligent than she seems. Do not give Cassie that concussion gun she WILL make herself a nuisance about it.
My main WoL Bran is Livio because he's Thancred's best friend, first of all, and he's visually similar, but also because he spent HW-end of SHB as a Dark Knight and that's close enough to having an alter. His Esteem situation was a bit unique, but it still fits the bill. Boy does Bran wish he had Livio's regeneration abilities because he's got way too many scars haha.
My WoL Brona is Elendira because they are both very sexy and very scary ladies that give BDSM/domme vibes, mostly. Do not let them meet they will verbally eviscerate the pride and dignity of any men in the vicinity while sipping tea and gossiping. And yes, I need people to know you should be as scared of Brona as you are of Elendira.
Emet-Selch/Hades is Knives because A'khemi's ancient self, Persephone, is Emet's little sister, so that fits, and also because Emet is a bitter and cynical and angry man who once had faith in humanity to be better but had that faith and hope slowly crushed and now he's going to burn them all down because fuck you you're not worthy, die. That, uh, that sounds familiar.
Tiny Hermes Legato because-- and this one is really stretching it, I know, frankly-- honestly it was either him or Zenos, and Zenos doesn't have quite the underlying bubbling well of manic violent lunacy that Fandaniel does. Our boy Fandaniel out here Judging Humanity because they kinda suck in his eyes, putting the WoL through some Suffering for the petty spite of it all, and going KILL ME DAMN IT while A'khemi is like BUT I DON'T WANNA KILL YOU at least twice during EW. (Guernica does kinda look like Zenos' Avatar, doesn't it, though?)
And a tiny little Venat as Rem because Mom(tm), mostly.
There wasn't more room on the page but I would've probably tried to squeeze in a tiny Themis/Elidibus as Tesla because Sacrificial Lamb(tm) that kicks things off.
...Midvalley Hyth would've been really cute, too. Give our purple haired bard a saxophone. He'll play Careless Whisper on it.
Do not seek forgiveness, for it will not ease the burden. It weighs as it should.
My brain: you know, technically speaking, Razlo has a lot in common with FFXIV Dark Knight's Esteem, they're both a very sarcastic and cynical Other Self/alter whose entire purpose is to protect their host from the pain and the grief, even if that means violence and bloodshed, but deep down they love them, so very much...
Me, immediately: Oh cool I'm gonna go extra special crazy now huh.
(I mean it's not like Livio isn't continually popping Living Dead every five minutes, boy you stop that you're gonna give a healer a heart attack. Nobody let him learn Living Shadow though lmao.)
"Report from Meteia Eptakosia Ikosi Ena: ....love and peace!"
When my current hyperfocus (Trigun) and my returning hyperfocus (FFXIV, on god Fanfest) collide and instead of canceling each other out, they go "por que no los dos" and now I'm making it everyone else's problem. More of this to come.
seeing people talk about knives on twt is reassuring to me considering it sorta validates my read on him as being debatably good at pretending like he's anything but lowkey a constantly vibrating small dog who is either about to bite your kneecaps off or have an anxiety attack or both.
like. this man came off as someone who is terrified of humans and making it everyone else's problem because outside of his hatred for them it's him taking back that control he feels like he lost when they found tesla, especially in trimax where he was demonstrably the more innocent one and had that faith in humans. (unlike stampgaze where he's more stoic even back then and 98 where. yeaaaaah.)
something that also grabbed my attention in trimax ('im So sad they dont address this in the other adaptations bc it adds a lot in my eyes) is the moment in the flashbacks where he self-harms (biting his finger open) beccause it REALLY tied in both his anxious tendencies and his need to feel In Control/ground himself. (not to mention parallels vash's own self-destructive coping mechanisms, esp in stampgaze where his ED is most explicit.)
(both of them bottle and mask CONSTANTLY but while vash's masking and unhealthy/harmful coping mechanisms are all turned inward on himself/harder to see, knives' are projected outward/more visible. something to be said about that paralleling how knives generates and vash absorbs, i think.)
like??? gestures at him. he's knives bc the best way to protect himself/feel in control is to Be Sharp and Pointy, and hurt before he is hurt whether that ends up himself or what's around him, but he is internally a vibrating chihuahua masking just as hard as his brother just in a different way. that day we both went mad, vash says, and knives can PRETEND he's more stable but he's like two seconds from noclipping into the floor with how hard he's just constantly buzzing with tension and anxiety and if i kill them all they won't have the chance to hurt me or my brother.
(not to mention, something i really enjoy thinking about is that many of the ghgs - particularly legato and elendira, the two closest to him, but a lot of them apply here - feel so similarly to him so it's like...this sense that he finds other ppl who have different ways of expressing violence/sharpness as control of their lives and their surroundings, expressing it as a way to protect themselves, and it's part of why he collects them/has them close to him. hell, even ww and livio kind of apply here.)
person in fandom: eeeyikes!!! i hope im writing this character in this short little fanfic right >_< eeekkk what if my takes on my meta are all wrong and everyone will Kill me!!
guy in professional comic industry: okay lets mischaracterize every single character that appears in this comic for 50 or so issues
