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nanomooselet · 3 months

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Episode Eleven: To a New World

Deep breaths. Uh, pre-emptive apologies; I keep the tightest grip I can over my tone, but this ep sliced me off at the knees. There's a lot of anger in it.

I like Wolfwood. Lots of people do. And I like Knives. Besides Vash himself they pop up on my dash more frequently than any other character. Maybe I like Knives more than Wolfwood because I enjoy poking his horrible trash brain with a stick, but Nick's certainly got his charms.

But I can't get around it. This is the episode where Knives... violates Vash. And this is the episode where Wolfwood turns his back as Vash is screaming in pain and despair, reliving all the worst moments of his life. For reasons (I'M WORKING ON IT and they're not that Meryl is The Girl), Wolfwood was never going to be the one to save Vash from his agony. Back in the initial watch, before I knew anything else, I knew it just wasn't going to happen.

So, sorry, Nick - you’ve had a rough time, but I still giggled when Meryl kicked you in the shin as you tried to pretend you didn't give a shit. I needed the levity. Off you go, brood over your sins and the whatnot. I'm sure Vash is gonna be just fine.

And you, Millions Knives. Today it's the tire iron.

This is the first time we finally see him fully revealed - full face, cloak discarded, even his thoughts themselves laid bare. (By the way, he's not actually naked; that's just a very, very tight bodysuit. I think he wears it so he looks like his idea of what a Masculine Plant is, like an Italian Renaissance sculpture. Also pretty sure he made it himself. Without it, he'd look just as human as Vash does.) Knives spends a lot of time talking, often very passionately... but you still cannot trust anything he says to be the truth; not about himself, not about Vash. At best, there might be a tiny sprinkle of truth prettying up a great big lie. Or he genuinely believes what he's saying; it's just that he's confidently wrong. I don't doubt, for instance, that Vash really is motivated by a lot of guilt over the Fall, not least because Knives was the one who put that guilt on Vash and left it to slowly consume him. Nonetheless I always think back to the line, "Does their praise cure it? The loneliness?" because, well, no? It doesn't? Because that’s not the point. Vash doesn't do what he does for praise or to avoid loneliness. If you try and tell him he's good at something he brushes you off - "just lucky!" and then he's vanished through the backdoor before you can thank him.

Similarly, we see a moment where Knives just straight up changes reality to suit his narrative - when poor Rollo called for Vash, he said that he wanted to live. In Knives's world, he begs Vash for death.

When Knives says these things, it's not accurate criticism of Vash, or of his philosophy, or even anything to do with the Plants. It's not the truth. It's not an argument. It's a probe.

Especially in this episode. Knives is trying to rip Vash open. He’s searching for the points where he can apply pressure - the most efficient means to break him down. How true his words are is not relevant. Only whether or not they hurt Vash, weaken his resolve, undermine his ego and confidence - which he already barely has anyway because of Knives.

Why the hell would he do this? I mean, as much as I can be sure of anything with this guy, I’m sure that Knives loves Vash very much. His brother might well be all that he loves - all that he has left. We can argue about what kind of love (though it's really not a debate I want to get into, so I’ll capitalise the words Very Normal and leave it at that). But it is love. Forget about the higher plane and the dependent Plants (which is to say I'll try and find a way to get down my thoughts on them, but not at this time). Knives is doing what he’s doing because he loves Vash.

Specifically, he’s doing it so that Vash won't leave him.

Imagine how the moments before the crash must have felt for Rem. Every second counts in an emergency, and yet she took the time, perhaps selfishly, to ensure her children escaped before anyone else. I think she'd already decided to go back for the sleepers, but the longer she went without doing so the less possible it became and the harder it got to keep her resolve. Still she took those precious moments, the last they ever had together, for the love of her boys. A chance was all she had to give them, but her work was done too soon.

And Nai. With the knowledge of the rest of the series he was acting so calm because he planned this, and it went just the way he expected it would – until the moment he reached out his hand, and Rem said no. We don't see his face, but we do see Vash, pleading desperately, thrown hard back into his seat, and it was Nai who did that when Rem refused him.

Remember? Nai offered Rem a choice.

So to Knives, that left Vash to be only thing in the world that matters as much completing his crusade. I suspect he views the two as the same goal – having Vash back means killing the humans, and killing the humans means Vash is his. His and Vash's safety, togetherness, and freedom means there must be absolutely nothing left of humanity.

Even if it's the intrinsic humanity of his brother. (And of him. But he's not going to acknowledge that. Nope.)

So Knives didn't simply want Vash without his memories. Knives is a perfectionist - he hates to even admit to the possibility that he might have made a mistake, to the point where he assigns all blame for his actions to Vash. Vash's emotional development under his total control would be too unpredictable, too likely to fail. If given a choice, Vash could make the same choice that Rem did (again), and that risk is simply unacceptable.

So what Knives wants is for Vash to be without autonomy, devoid of independence - a shadow that he casts, empty of agency save that which Knives enacts through him. A graven image. Depending only upon him. Needing only him. If it means he'll finally be first before humanity, rather than alongside or behind them, he won't be all alone. It's only together that they can be perfect, because it's obviously what Vash is for.

After all, they're twins. Vash was born to be with Knives.

I'm sure he's just happy to be useful.

#trigun stampede #tristampparty #meta: tristampparty episodes #trigun meta #yet no matter how comfortable chains are still chains #so many layers to his hypocrisy!!#he says rem built a silly fantasy #as he is creating a fantasy to stick vash in to keep him pacified #i never yell at the screen but i did when That happened to the other plants #already in tears over vash begging for rem #but by the end i saw the shape of rem and knew #knives DID make vash a better plant and it was the second biggest mistake of his entire life #tesla also looks like vash! i don't have time to unpack that but hooooo boy #tw incest #just to be safe #this man is incredibly normal about his brother #also feel like the english dub leaned into the evangelion vibes?#“i need you” says vash #these are too many tags #let me off kenji muto's wild ride #mother is the name of god

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vampirepunks · 1 month

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Higgs Monaghan's MBTI + Enneagram Typology (pt. 2)

(disclaimer: this is my opinion based on deep character study, eight or so years of special interest in typology, and subjective interpretation. if you wanna argue, good luck finding my PDB. friendly debate is fine.)

MBTI: ENTP (Ne-Ti-Fe-Si)

Enneagram: 7w8

Instinctual Variant: sx/sp

Tritype: 782

(part one: mbti deep dive)

(Sam analysis)

As an ENTP, Higgs is right at home in enneagram 7. However, he's an interesting flavor of ENTP 7, due to his sexual instinctual variant, 8 wing + secondary fix, and emotional center in 2. Let's start with the basics.

Enneagram 7 Overview Basic Fear: Of being deprived and trapped in pain Basic Desire: To be happy, satisfied, to find fulfillment Fixation: Planning Trap: Idealism Passion: Gluttony

Deprived and trapped in pain, huh? Considering Higgs' backstory as an abused child locked away from the outside world, forcefully told there was no life outside the four walls of his home, denied the ability to explore and discover, punished for basic curiosity, this makes perfect sense. Higgs experienced extreme repression of his natural instincts, denial of his basic emotional and psychological needs, and had no means to escape the constant abuse he suffered. Remember, the common belief is that one's MBTI type is innate, while enneagram theory hinges on the acquisition of negative traits stemming from warped self-beliefs manifested by the impact of inevitable social oppression and possibly even trauma. The enneagram dips closer to psychology and sociology than MBTI (still pseudoscience tho, Naranjo was a hack and is very worthy of criticism) and thus is a lot more logical in its foundations. Hence, I strongly believe that any MBTI type can be any enneagram, due to the breadth of human experience, it's just a matter of conflicting cognition and instincts. Don't fight me on this one, y'all, I'm working on my sociology B.A., I can go back and forth all day about this stuff. I'm gonna get banned from PDB any day now for the arguments I get into.

It's not hard to understand why "be happy and fulfilled" became the crux of Higgs' pursuits. Enneagram 7 takes this most basic human desire, "be happy," and crafts it into an obsession. Until they overcome their fix and passion, 7 will never be satisfied. (cough cough, intelligent eyes in a hunger-pang frame... ahem. sorry, sorry, something stuck in my throat there. moving on.)

Enneagram 7 treats life as one grand stage, where anything can happen if you just want it badly enough. Thus, 7 is hedonistic, rebellious, undisciplined in one way or another, driven towards wish fulfillment, egotistical, persuasive, and extremely seductive, with some variants of 7 exhibiting charlatanism and fraudulence.

Sexual 7

Instinctual variants are the result of the enneagram type's passion invading an area of the social life and self, dominating its expression. There are three realms here: sexual (not always explicitly in the adult sense, this refers to one-on-one relationships, intimacy, etc), social, and self-preservation.

So, obviously sexual 7 is the result of gluttony + the sexual instinct. sx7 traits include: talkativeness, grandiosity and exaggeration, exhibitionism of personality and style, invasive tendencies, brazen audacity, obliviousness, magical thinking, relationship difficulties, self-indulgence, hypersensitivity, anti-hierarchical escapism, and intolerance for frustration.

Put simply, sx7 has their head in the clouds. Ichazo nicknamed this subtype "suggestibility." Although I really dislike Naranjo, he made an excellent point when he said, "The sexual seven is not earthly, but heavenly. He is not interested in the things of this world. It is the gluttony of the things of a higher and more advanced world. The sexual E7 is what we could call a dreamer[...] His passion is to dream, to go towards the sweetness of the imagined instead of contacting the ordinary and not so interesting reality."

Higgs is a showman. He paints everything in metaphor, in literature, in poetry, in history, in performances and masks and shadow theater. When captured in the literal view, Higgs' life is one tragedy after another, with no rhyme or reason, no grand answer to "why me," no satisfying conclusion to make an adoring audience cry for him. In the meta, fourth-wall breaking sense, the player becomes that for him. He looks us in the eye and asks, "Isn't this what you've been waiting for this whole time?" and prances around putting on a good show as we give him the attention and recognition he craves; we observe, we react, and a few of us see him. For a few moments, we live in his tragedy, we smile at his one-liners, we laugh at his bad behavior, and in those precious moments, he isn't alone. He's still at it, winking at the camera in the DS2 trailer when he quips about porters having to pull the trigger sometimes, a sly little, "I know what you did. You're not better than me. You get it."

But let's peel back that layer. Higgs is a mask. Let's talk about Peter.

Yeah, Peter, who was destroyed time and time again by his stubborn drive to believe, no matter how many times it got him hurt, nearly killed, even. Peter, who believed his way into stepping into a new world with a new sky. Peter, who believed his way into becoming a terrorist. Peter, who believed his way into Amelie's puppet master hands. Peter, who believed until the moment the carrot was snatched away and he met the stick face-first. Peter, the child whose only crime was being curious, became a grown man with his dreams shattered entire, with no innocence left to call his own, no one to save him, and no way out. So what was there to do but construct new dreams, nightmares made ideal, to build anew an image of himself as "the bridge that brings the extinction" in service of a greater power? Dreamer turned apostle, Saint Peter having the faith that he could walk on water. Except Amelie didn't pull him out when he sank. (Sam did, but that's a completely different conversation.)

Higgs built up a world of magic, because his real life was tragic, and in the end, Amelie forced him to bury the castle.

sx7 traps themselves in false hope, breezing through the world with witty speeches, talking, talking, talking, coasting by on charm and an energetic demeanor to mask their anxiety. This is right at home in the possibility-obsessed, silver-tongued ENTP, but the sensitivities of sx7 soften the ENTP personality quite a bit, amplifying their vulnerabilities and making them all too easy to manipulate. This is a personality that needs someone to protect them, and to teach them to protect themselves, which Higgs never had. Coffin tried, but fate had other ideas, and she became another loss upon his shoulders.

Self-Preservation 7 (secondary)

Now, on PDB, almost everyone has voted Higgs as sx/so, and I get why, but I believe Higgs is very social-blind and not countertype. The last instinct in a stack is a personality's blind spot, their weak point, the thing they struggle with, try to ignore, and overcompensate for. For Higgs, that's the social instinct. The self-pres and social instincts are conflated a lot in 7, due to this type’s inherent need for outward validation; their cool exterior conceals fear of inferiority and deprivation. 7 is arguably the most extroverted of the enneagram thus their self-preservation needs are heavily dependent on the presence of other people and having a clear role within a group. They often create family units and can appear similar to the so8 via their proclivity for creating a “tribe” for themselves, a group they nurture and in turn are protected by. Thus, sp7s are characterized as defenders in spite of their obvious self-interest. sx/sp 7s are often warm, charismatic people. Combined with an 8 fix, they're quite intense. In a well-read ENTP, this is a personality that could sell ice in the Arctic, and people gravitate towards their ability to sell their dream. "Together, we'll carry packages from sea to shining sea."

Many of Higgs’ deeper issues can be explained through the aforementioned developed Fe + social-blindness + a 2 fix in his emotional center. Having grown up completely isolated from the world, there’s no way he could be anything but soc-blind. His self-sacrifice is cognitive compensation for social deficiency and expression of a moral righteousness generated by his sx7-driven idealism, not an instinctual social egotism and rejection of gluttony. More on this when we get to his 2 fix. sp7 is the closest of the 7 variants to the literal definition of gluttony. They yearn for indulgence in every way.

Now, let's talk about that 8 wing and tritype secondary fix

Enneagram 8 is known for its aggression before all else, and it has a strong pull on any personality that has it in their wing or tritype. The 7w6 is flighty, much more risk-averse, and they work to satisfy their gluttony by seducing others into feeding their cravings for them, holding back to explore all possibilities, and they seek assurance that they're making the right choices, whereas 7w8 knows what they want and they'll take it if they have to. The 8 wing adds a heavy-handed, decisive edge to the 7 personality; 7w6 pushes back when the world closes in on them, 7w8 pushes forward against the world to make sure they're never restricted to begin with. Thus, the sx7 with an 8 wing displays much more sexual aggression (licking people!) and is inclined to show dominance. They're self-protective, they don't like to share their toys, and they won't let anyone take what's theirs. See: "gonna make [Sam] regret ever fucking with me and mine." This makes the 7w8 a powerful protector, a fierce enemy... and a nervous wreck prone to covering up fear with violence, anger, and provocation. This sort of aggression is a tendency in the standard 7w8, but with an 8 fix added to the tritype, it becomes a leading trait. This is particularly interesting in an ENTP, as they aren't typically aggressive by nature; they seek conflict for entertainment's sake, without malice, looking to test people and expand their own worldview through discourse. The ENTP 7w8 with an 8 tritype fix, on the other hand, takes up stronger convictions, greater stubbornness, and an impatience for people who won't bend to their whims. They often go looking to convince people they're right, getting frustrated when they aren't heard. ("You just don't get it, do you?") Further, when 8 invades the sexual instinct, secondary to a 7 fix, you get a personality that wants to possess the hearts and minds of their closest loved ones, fears abandonment, would die to protect one of their own, and knows better than to bite the hand that feeds.

Finally, the tertiary 2 fix

Enneagram 2 is a nurturer. 2 generously gives of themselves, constantly fixating on everyone else's needs. This is a personality that would give another person the shirt off their own back if they asked. Important thing to understand: their help isn't free. They might say it is, but 2 unconsciously expects to be rewarded and praised for helping others. Overall, this fits well with Higgs' secondary instinctual alignment in sp7. 7 fears being deprived, while 2 fears that no one appreciates them, and they mask this insecurity with a show of humility and an insistence that they were merely doing the right thing. They reason that if they meet everyone else's needs, their own needs will be taken care of in reciprocity. Meanwhile, they minimize those needs, making themselves as small and convenient as possible, denying they have needs at all. With an sx/sp alignment and a secondary 8 fix, this becomes a push-pull internal conflict between "I don't need anything, really" and "Give me what I need or else." I firmly believe that part of why Higgs' betrayal of Fragile was so malicious was a subconscious urge to punish her for not being... you guessed it... what he needed.

Let's go back to the point from post no. 1 about Higgs having highly developed Fe. In his youth, every time Higgs found himself in a new social situation, he responded with skepticism and instinctual aversion to social connection. It took time and persuasion for him to warm up to the idea of group politics; he’s only convinced when he realizes he’s needed and stands to have his own needs fulfilled in turn. Most people try to place Higgs' emotional center in enneagram 4 (which, when modulated by the sx-instinct and an 8 wing, can get downright nasty due to the fixation with envy and the aggression of 8) but frankly... I think that's lazy analysis.

Higgs’ initial reluctance to accept his DOOMS for what it was and subsequent secretiveness about killing to maintain it for his own survival screams 2. Higgs doesn’t self-victimize or wish to be special. Rather, he conceals his own needs and justifies his actions through a belief that he’s undertaking a selfless path. (“I’m an altruist now, I live to help other people[…] Community’s what it’s all about.”) He needs the world to need him and deteriorates when his role is threatened. In his time leading the West, people loved him and relied on him, but that wasn’t enough for him. Because he’s soc-blind and sx-dom, he only feels truly seen, fulfilled, and appreciated when he has attention and approval through a one-on-one relationship, such as with Coffin, Fragile, Amelie, etc., and he obsessively pursues the same recognition from Sam. (It’s worth acknowledging this is also indicative of disordered attachment, anxious-avoidant type.) When he fails, he falls back on the self-pres instinct, so… pizza, anyone?

Amelie initially lured him with the deceptive promise of enough power to create the better, freer, fairer world he was striving for. In his mind: save the world = save himself. Can’t save the world? Can’t save himself, time to take the whole thing down with him and call it mercy. That’s an unhealthy 2 heart center, believing he can only meet his own needs by rescuing everyone else, projecting his own turmoil onto others. He convinces himself he’s doing the right thing, giving the world what it needs. While his thirst for wide-scale justice is genuine, he exhibits an intense craving for attention, intimacy, and recognition, becoming suddenly naive and vulnerable when someone offers what he lacks. Conversely, he’s antagonistic, aloof, aggressive, and ego-defensive when his needs are denied or threatened.

Conclusion

Higgs' most basic of needs were denied from a young age, and as an ENTP, he's inherently driven to hedonism, has a need for an intellectual playmate/trustworthy equal, and craves a balance between novelty and safety, so he’s gluttonous towards intimate relationships and a sense of security. His sx7 alignment means he dreams big and loud, constructing kingdoms in his mind and a personal narrative where he's the hero in shining armor, free to explore the world as he wishes and save it while he's at it. His sp7 secondary means he thirsts for his own means of survival and the assurance of it, going out of his way to endear himself to others and become indispensable to guarantee that survival. His 8 fix means he's assertive, strong-willed, aggressively self-protective, and highly possessive of anything he views as "belonging" to him. His 2 fix means he needs others to need him, needs to feel important in his loved ones' lives, needs to have his efforts rewarded, needs a larger role to fulfill, and most of all, needs to know that he's allowed to need things. As an sx7, he's comfortable with wanting things, but that 2 fix means needs are unacceptable for him to express.

Becoming Higgs—embodying a self-righteous, pharaoh-inspired persona—was the only way he could cope with the injustice and deprivation he suffered. (Coffin: “There was such a fear in him, but beneath that a terrible anger[…] That poor boy…”)

Mature-but-unhealthy ENTP 782 at its finest. Feet on the ground, head in the clouds. In conclusion, I want to fuck him so bad it makes me look stupid. What a man.

#literally obsessed with the fact that he has the exact mirror of my personality type #intj: ni-te-fi-se. entp: ne-ti-fe-si. alter egos. he's 7w8 i'm 8w7. he's soc-blind and i'm soc-dom. so on so forth #i could fix him and he could make me worse <3 #to sum up: this is a horse girl movie and i imagine myself to be The Special Girl who's the only one that can ride (😏😏😏) the wild stallion #i'm delulu about it actually. very fun. highly recommend. but watch out it'll hurt your sanity forever and people will def look at u funny #:)))))))#✨✨self-awareness✨✨#mbti #enneagram #personality typology #character study #entp #higgs monaghan #death stranding #logan.txt

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