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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 #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 that into vashwood but #i mean #vash IS that pretty tho #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

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Por qué es tan lindo este rubiooOOOO??? 🧎‍♀️🛐✨️

#trigun stampede #fanart #precious darling boy #this colour scheme/outfit was so rad #i love the rough textures of this #he's so cool

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I’m obsessed with the ways they broke through the window like Vash had a failed high jump attempt and Knives really just belly flopped his way out

Edit: everyone PLEASE check out the reblogs. It’s a fucking goldmine in there. This post is one of my top tumblr experiences, easy. I read all of them. Y’all are so real for this. I love you.

#trigun stampede #gif #precious darling boy #i'm pretty sure that's conrad's desk lmao #knives is so stupid

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Official art of Vash from Trigun Stampede released by Studio Orange

#trigun stampede #official #precious darling boy #is going :D

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#trigun maximum #precious darling boy #ticket to the future etc. #don't care what anyone says i love the ending

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Final Phase: Lost Girls

So what makes me so certain of this madness?

I had my doubts. But…

Rosa is confirmed to have had a husband, since that was how she would have wound up with a son and a second child on the way, but he is neither named nor seen. He's simply not relevant to the proceedings. Rosa says she threw him out for being lazy and that's the last time he so much as gets mentioned. She does, however, have a close relationship with the other women of the town, also mothers to children whose fathers don't seem to be present. They trust and support each other.

That doesn't necessarily imply romantic relationships, of course; it's all up to interpretation. But...

Luida makes the decision to let Vash see to the Plant aboard Ship 3 because her trust in Rem is enough for her to overrule Brad's objections. She also shows the geodome and explains her plan to Meryl, not Roberto; he's just sorta trailing after Meryl (and then Luida gets to dunk on him by pointing out he can't smoke in the geodome).

Again, hardly definitive. But...

Rem, in past versions, mentions a lover who greatly inspired her, whose death in an accident (and the depression she suffered in her grief, which she doesn't mention to Vash as she explains) led her dream of the blank ticket to the future.

Alex. A unisex name. If I recall Alex's gender is never specified in the manga.

Once more, not conclusive. But...

Tesla's memorial. A white lily.

I'll admit that I believed Vash's draining powers were coloured violet. Red is for humans, blue is for the Plants. Logically Vash, unifier of the two species, would combine them.

Shoulda known better. Nice dichotomy, idiot. Now what lies outside of it?

I've come to think Vash's powers don't have a colour at all when they're used; they're clear like water, frothing and bubbling, cleansing, visible only in the changes in the world around him. Or possibly black. It's a little hard to say. Either way, the purple glow isn't Vash.

It's the Independent whose opinion we never got to know, the girl who didn't get to grow up. She's a ghost, a bodiless spirit. She can't do much to affect the physical world, but she definitely has a favourite brother, and she'll help him out in what ways she can when circumstances align.

I don't know. Maybe I'm reading too much into it.

#trigun stampede #trigun tesla #trigun meta #shape of a lost girl #lesbian visibility week #ig? #mother is the name of god #meta: final phase #and if this feels insane to you #imagine how i felt uncovering it

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#it is very alarming

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Final Phase: Cycles

First up, I'll draw attention to the way the episodes are numbered and ordered. They only had twelve to work with, so they would have had to be very careful, especially in a story so heavy with symbolism.

Most Anglosphere stories adhere to the three-act-structure, in some form. It's so common and ingrained to the public consciousness that when it isn't there, the audience can feel uncomfortable. As though there's been a contract broken, an expectation unfulfilled. As if something isn't right. It's been waaaaaay too long since my days studying theatre to give specific examples, but this discomfort can be used purposefully so the audience will view the play with emotional detachment. (IIRC it's a thing in Epic theatre. Again, this was many years ago and I hated Epic theatre.)

Anyway, in the very simplest form, you have the first act (introduction), the second (complication) and the third (resolution). Establish the characters and setting, introduce the problem, then resolve it. There are about a bazillion variations, more elaborate expressions, but that's what it comes down to.

Beginning, middle, end.

In Stampede, the first act (introduction) ends with episode three, ushering in the second (complication, also known as Millions Knives, also known as The Problem). Episode four introduces Wolfwood the undertaker because four is commonly associated with bad luck and death in Japanese culture. Then six/seven for his backstory and major development. Episode eight then begins the third act (resolution) as details of the twins' backstories are unveiled, giving context to events up to that point and setting everything up for the climax.

All very standard so far, up until...

The finale is episode twelve, but it's numbered zero. And yes, that could very well be because this is a kind of prologue or prequel.

But it might not only be that.

A clock face has twelve hours. At noon or midnight, the time ticks over from eleven to zero. And as I discovered, there's a certain... suggestion of being reset back to zero, of repetition, in the composition.

Once I noticed, it became more and more obvious it had to be deliberate. This doesn't all feel so familiar only because it's a re-telling of the story, but because it's a loop. A cycle. Birth, death, rebirth.

Nothing changes. Everything repeats.

And I think all the characters are aware of it on some level, but especially Vash. He and his siblings are beings outside of time.

When Roberto says Meryl and Vash are "not long for this world", and the worm dudes refer to Wolfwood as a dead man walking? That's what they mean.

They're trapped souls.

#trigun meta #trigun stampede #meta: final phase

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not long 4 this world

#trigun stampede #fanart #precious darling boy #meryl stryfe #flowahs

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Please forget me not

#trigun stampede #fanart #precious darling boy #such pretty flowers