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jamjumpingjambore · 1 year

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Ideals

Who wants to hear me talk outta my ass about philosophy and Trigun thoughts I’ve been forming over two years? No one? Too bad, I’m going to anyway--

Now that season one of Stampede is over, I’ve been seeing a lot of discussion over which twin is “correct”-- which is cool, I like analysis and debate (genuinely) -- but personally I think they’re both wrong. The twins are opposite ends of extremes, neither fully addressing the core problem of Plant use in a substantiable or ethical way.

[ Heavy spoilers for Trigun: Maximum and Trigun: Stampede. ]

(btw forgive me if I don’t use the correct terms, I was an art major, I’m working off vibes and vague definitions.)

Vash is too individualist and altruistic at his own expense. He believes in the best of humans, insistent on his solution of the butterfly-spider paradox being to “save both” and not letting anyone die. He puts up with the cruelest, ugliest parts of humanity just to keep more blood from spilling. Full disclosure, I also believe that humanity is inherently good, but I also acknowledge trauma, fear, and desperation can drive anyone to do horrible things. The people of No Man’s Land are struggling for survival. They were never meant to be here, never meant to live past The Fall, and yet they continue. Humanity always finds a way to prevail and unfortunately the only way they can in this situation is to wring the plants dry for every last drop, fighting over the scraps.

They’re trapped between endless seas of sand and rock, the only non-synthetic food they have access to are massive bugs and blue emus. Luida’s flora wouldn’t be viable without extensive terraforming or construction of more glass domes-- a tall order when most of their manufacturing seams to be stripped ship parts and whatever the plants can fabricate. It makes sense for them to rely so heavily on them, and Vash isn’t incorrect in believing they need to work together to lessen that strain.

But in the past hundred years he hasn’t influenced any real systemic change. He treats the symptoms-- offering aid to individuals, families, sometimes even whole towns-- yet the clock keeps ticking. The child he brings back to their mother can suffer a living hell the moment he leaves, a town he visited before can have their plant break down again. NML has seven cities large enough to have their own governments. Knives basically puppeteers Ju-Lai through Conrad so he has the funds and resources to do stuff like create a whole-ass cult as a front for his plans and keep himself from becoming an active target. If Vash was smart he’d have tried to diplomat his way into a city too, but it feels like he’s too caught up in his complexes and fretting over what Knives is doing to really approach a situation where he’d have to compromise on long-reaching decisions.

Vash has to stop running and dig his heels in on something concrete. The planet will only get worse before it gets better and more plants will shrivel up in the meantime. Not everyone can be saved, no matter how badly he wants it.

Meanwhile Knives is too doomer/anarchistic/nihilistic, he thinks all of humanity is irredeemable, that they’ll just keep taking and taking until the entire planet is a husk. But they’re only taking so much because he caused the crash. If the fleet had succeeded in finding an earth equivalent-- or even landed on the planet intentionally-- the humans probably could have adapted to the ecosystem and utilized the plants more sustainably. They had to have a procedure for colonization, the Earth Federation fleet implies pockets of humanity had settled down comfortably elsewhere while the twins’ was still searching/struggling to survive. Knives also claims to want to protect Vash and their siblings, but he ends up doing the exact same unethical experiments and exploitation that the humans did to Tesla and the dependents. He forces/encourages Conrad to treat human children like lab rats, creating test tube babies like Elendria to eventually replace humanity with more pseudo-plants (which, damn, you can really read some Implications into that if you want), and then strips Vash down to becoming a tool-- a living generator to forcibly create more independents through the rift core.

He does care about the plants, but he has a one-track mind. Knives just wants to fling his pain back tenfold, and he’d be happy sitting on a desolate rock with just his brother if given the chance. If he won, who would tend to the plants still dependent? How would he heal the dying plants if Vash remained a tree? What if some of the new independents were more like Vash and needed to eat? Could he justify making a plant produce again to feed another?

He could gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss himself through it all but he’d still be no different from humans-- and in the worst ways.

Knives also claims the sisters don’t have souls, but really? When they reach out to Vash throughout the flashbacks and on the steamer, do they not communicate? Something is shared in that moment. It may not be verbal but we know they can scream and the twins can hear it. They feel, and that’s enough to prove they deserve a minimum of respect imo.

In the manga there’s brief hints of characterization for the plants. One that sticks with me often is Vash referring to the runaway steamer’s plant as “the selfish little girl:”

[Image ID: Manga panel of Vash, face close-up and covering his mouth with his hand, thinking and looking at the viewer intently. Dialogue: “I see.” “In other words... All I need to do is babysit the selfish little girl?”]

Admittedly It’s early in the series, in the Trigun chapter that first properly introduces them and the volumes that Trigun: Maximum frequently retcons parts of, but I still think it’s fascinating that a version of Vash would refer to one this way. Like he knows/assumes the plant is just throwing a temper tantrum-- and seeming to be correct as calming the plant down keeps it from overloading while the emergency brakes are pulled. Another big one is the flashes of the merged plants’ memories later on in Maximum. Dependents have had positive interactions with technicians and the humans they provide for alongside the cruelness. Knives is visibly shaken when he sees it; proof that unity’s not exclusively a sentiment of Vash’s. He ignores it and continues to decimate No Man’s Land in the last chunk of the story. Stampede Knives writes them off without ever being seen connecting with them.

Knives has never asked what the other plants wanted. Vash has never asked either-- nor relayed any messages between species. Not until the final confrontation in Maximum.

The twins are in a unique position to serve as ambassadors between humans and plants. Rem thought so as well-- but she’s just as overly optimistic as Vash and flawed in other tragic ways. You can easily read her treatment of the twins as being fueled by guilt over Tesla and her clear favoritism towards Vash also contributing to Nai’s worldview in a myriad of little ways. But I think she had the right idea with them potentially emerging as an olive branch. I think a lot of the conflict on No Man’s Land would be helped if everyone could just sit down and talk to each other more often. People barely know plants are alive to begin with.

But Nai is dead and Knives’ most likely going scorched earth in season 2, while Vash is just now dealing with one of his most traumatizing moments of the series. The chance of these two ever reconciling is off the table (for now).

Which brings me to the after credits tease that made me physically throw shit across my room in excitement:

CHRONICA AND DOMINA, BABYYYYYYY!!

[Image ID: Three panel manga sequence of independent plants Domina (woman with shoulder-length, mid-tone, messy hair), and Chronica (woman with long, light hair and parted bangs), having a conversation between their individual space shuttles over radio. Key dialogue from sequence-- Domina: “...Haven’t you already encountered many fused entities in the past?”]

I need you to understand every time I think about them I want to run around in circles like a zooted cat. There is SO MUCH potential with them and it’s a shame Nightow had to juggle their introduction with six other events at once in that breakneck third act with no room to explore their implications (I’ve already griped about Maximum’s ending here and to discord buddies, no need to rehash it again. It still has charm as is).

These two are the only other independent plants we see in the series. They’re part of the Earth Federation crew. Domina is implied to be younger and inexperienced while Chronica is a seasoned member who the ship captain constantly defers to for expertise in engaging rogue plants. Apparently the wacky fusion shit Knives does has happened before to lesser degrees and all current dependents have been genetically altered to be incapable of fusing to prevent it. Vash and Knives are around 150 years old and can fuse with the plants on NML. Their ship had two spontaneous dependent pregnancies within 50 years before the crash. It’s unclear how many fleets left Earth.

This opens a pandora’s box of fuckery that could have happened off-world in the span of 200+ years.

How many goddamn independents do we got running around? What’s the 4-1-1 on how other, successful/space-faring colonies treat their Plants?? Hey, why does it sound like independents consolidating power and being put down isn’t an uncommon thing---

Nightow can’t just drop this worldbuilding on me in the 11th hour and expect me to be normal about it.

The EF are shown to be competent but coldly strategic at times-- the captain almost nukes the planet in a desperate attempt to kill Knives despite his Ark being above the heavily crowded Octovern, the last city still standing after Knives’ assault. The greater good is most important, survival at all costs. Chronica expressly shares this sentiment, going forward with the plan to attack Knives first.

[Image ID: Five panel manga sequence of Chronica and Domina arguing over whether to missile strike Knives over radio. Key quotes-- Chronica: “It is our top priority to gain the advantage through a preemptive strike.” “You must forget they were once a plant like us. Because that thing down there is a massive threat to us all.”]

Chronica acts like a solider. She sides with humans and enacts swift punishment on any threat, including her own species. She’s the worst compromise of the twins’ views, cruelty to protect human lives. Another form of exploitation.

Knives questions her loyalty through a fused Domina and almost forces her to chose between killing her or saving the flagship before Vash cuts his connection, but she never really interacts with them directly or is ideologically challenged again. She tries to take pot shots at the twins as they fly off as revenge for what Knives did to her partner but Livio stops her. Poor Domina doesn’t get to do much either, becoming a pile of feathers for the rest of her scenes. Hell I don’t even know if Vash knows there’s other independent plants running around now. Knives (predictably) just writes them both off as “slaves” and uses Domina like a spy camera from the moment she enters orbit.

I want to know more about them. My pie-in-the-sky hope for Stampede season 2 is they get larger roles and the twins have to deal with their existence more directly. I want to see Vash’s answer to weaponized plants, to grapple with the paradox happening on an intergalactic level and needing real solutions. I want Knives to squirm under the knowledge that an entire generation of plants were metaphorically castrated, that there are other plants like them who choose to serve humanity at every opportunity in spite of it.

I want Chronica to grab the ideological tug rope between them and start yanking them both over the line. Their black and white could be fun with some gray.

Sorry if this was ramble-y, I hope I got my ideas across okay. I have a lot of thoughts about this series and sometimes it’s hard for me to articulate them in a way that isn’t ramming two dolls together lmao

TL;DR: These self-destructive morons can’t hold a conversation and I am begging Studio Orange on my hands and knees, PLEASE let Chronica and Domina have more interaction with the boys and challenge their ideas about how humans and plants can/should coexist. I’m starving for an actually fleshed out Trimax ending.

#rumble ramble #trigun #analysis #long post #every few years I just go off on a subject and my followers just have to deal with it #chronica my wife chronica i wanna see you so bad #I spent several hours writing this help--#it's 3am as i'm queuing this please forgive typos

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