Heyo, let’s talk about my girl Meryl and why she’s so critical to the plot of Trigun Stampede and Vash in particular! (Well, that’s true for any Trigun, but Tristamp theories are rotting my brain atm.) Some spoilers for Tristamp and vague talk/references to the other series ahoy!
Meryl gets way too many accusations thrown at her for doing nothing/not enough in Tristamp. To the point that I started a rewatch to see if I was misremembering, but absolutely not! Those first three episodes alone, she’s critical to how things develop! She’s a foil to Vash, just like Wolfwood is!! She’s essential to his humanity!!!
But it took until I was watching ‘98 for the first time this weekend for it to crash into me like a freight train exactly what Meryl means, just like it took Trimax for the full weight of Wolfwood to click into place for me. Because she’s set up a lot like her older anime counterpart (though no one gets the same amount of character interaction—Tristamp, I adore you, but please slow down and let these poor folks breathe). She doesn’t understand Vash at first, she even goes so far as to call him a coward in a really low blow for what she easily recognizes as his bravery (and sometimes stupidity) later. And while they both (well, pretty much all the Trigun protags, let’s be honest) share their bullheadedness, I see a lot of people say she’s just like Vash... And I disagree, sorta.
She’s just like Rem. Just look at that last episode.
The two women don’t have the same belief systems, they have wildly different paths, and they come into Vash’s life in incredibly different ways. Meryl may keep Vash in check sometimes, but she’s not a mother figure imo. But they still play a similar role.
After over a century of traveling alone, we see (especially in other versions of Trigun) that Vash is often used and abandoned. Even when he makes genuine friends, they let him drift in and out of their life—and to their credit, he’s good at that! He can’t handle any more pain, so he slips away before the hurt catches up. But not Meryl! She ain’t gonna let that happen!!! At first, yeah, she follows him because of her job, but it never takes her long to go from frustrated and fed up to growing fond of Vash. And I especially love the career shift in Tristamp allowing her a complete out, to walk away and abandon Vash when things get rough, and no one would blame her for it.
But she stays. Because she sees that he’s good and worthy of the love that he denies himself. She sees this vile, hopeless world that they live in through his eyes, and sees the beauty in it too. She’s the first person to have faith in Vash not just as a savior, but as a person—unlike anyone has since Rem.
When all hope is gone, when Vash has lost his way, when he stumbles and falls, Meryl—who starts off doubting him!—is the one there to pick him up and remind him that he’s loved, that his love for humanity isn’t for nothing. Throughout the entire series, she has faith in him. She chooses Vash even when he won’t choose himself. She’s tired and done living in this selfish world of awful people, and she becomes the anchor that ties Vash down to what’s good in humanity. She’s just as critical as Wolfwood in taking a distant, disheartened, and broken Vash and reconnecting him to a world that cast him aside. And we’ve already gotten so much of that in Tristamp. It’s most obvious in the ending, but it’s built up so beautifully imo. She’s not as flashy as our fighters YET, but she’s absolutely essential to Vash, and I will die on this hill. I can’t wait to see her come crashing back into the picture with Milly next season.
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Do you ever just lay awake at night, turning over in your head the stark difference in delivery between Hewson's Van saying--steadily, unshakably--"it's just something that's happening to you...happening to us" and Cypress' Taissa saying--imploringly, whiningly--"this was not just my dream, this was our dream"?
Do you ever just turn it over and over, how often Tai tried to scare Van away, and how it only made Van set her feet more firmly? How Taissa's first love was this person who saw a problem fall into Taissa's lap, a problem that was quite literally trapped inside Taissa's body, and decided unflinchingly: No, that's an us problem now? How she refused point-blank to walk away even with blood in her mouth, how she flatly informed Tai "I'm never gonna be scared of you", and promptly turned a moment of pain into a declaration of love? And how this would etch itself into Taissa for the rest of her life? How she'd take these things that worked with Van--with the person Van was, with the bond they shared--and try so hard to run through an identical script with Simone?
Except Simone is her own person. A completely different kind of person. A person who hasn't been offered any of the context, any of the realities going on inside Taissa. So: naturally she doesn't respond the way Van did at eighteen--and will go on to do all over again in her forties. Naturally, she hears our dream as the excuse it is, not as a plea for connection. Naturally, she is scared away when Taissa pushes, and shouts, and begs. Because there isn't blood in her mouth, not yet, but there will be. And they have a son to worry about. And she isn't eighteen and a special kind of immortal, a special kind of romanticized. She's a grown woman with responsibilities, with priorities, with an understanding that you can't fix someone just because you love them. And Tai can't just perform a revival of the play she and Van had memorized twenty-five years later with a whole new performer in the works, and expect it to shake out the same.
Of course it doesn't work. But look at Taissa trying it. Look at Taissa trying to reframe her first love through a new lens. Trying to recast it. Trying to play it through again. Van taught her love was sticking out the blood, shaking off the pain, making a you problem into an us problem. Does it ever just eat at you, how tragic it is, watching Taissa try to shape her marriage around a woman who isn't even wearing a ring?
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... my ass actually got like 6+ images deep before realizing i hadn't posted shit-- oops
my tmnt iteration (where everyone made it past their 20s, splinter’s alive just old, venus is here, and they deserve some goddamn respite and shenanigans)
tmnt iteration part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5 | part 6 | part 7 | part 8 | part 9 | part 10
tmnt iteration omake 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11
lny visit 1 | 2
IDW spoilers below, teeechnically Mirage & Next Mutation spoilers too ig?
blah blah blabbering because that's one of the many things you can do on tumblr.com
bloopity bloopin, turtles all being traded on the black market as pets, medicine, or decor to be... "prepared". 'cept Jennika, keeping her IDW origin because it's badass and I like it. eco vigilantes freed them one fateful night, same night someone(s) stole some mutagen for a rival company to TGRI, boom collided in their getaway routes, away floated Venus just like in NM and some others who lalala may or may not be some mutanimals
playing mostly with coloring, Rise introducing markings is such a nice and refreshing change from the all sam green turtle, different bandana color turtles I grew up with. fanon taking that concept and applying it in conjunction with actual turtle colorings also scratches my visdev brain node just so
hm... still fiddling with their plastrons... Venus' and Jennika's are fine though
Leo
funky li'l ringed map turtle
can't see it but, he got them little ridgey-spikies on his shell
christ, I'm finding a way to attach Iris symbolism to him, either through markings or something else
Iris in hanakotoba is... basically all Leo; nobility, bravery, honor, courage, heavy samurai association
5'2"
Raph
McCord's or Amboina box turtle idk idk idk can't choose
stuck on coloring him with a scale mail feeling to match the box turtle photos I found
....I needa draw him beefier, he can stand to be beefier
5'6"
Donnie
literally just googled which turtles exhibit the highest INT, wood turle consistently listed plus some have funky geometrically patterned/shaped shells
tossing on how do the plastron coloring, really liking the dark spots on it
probably keep the lightened belly/inner limb coloring
...probably... lol idk
5'8"
Mikey
my perfect chonky boy, no notes except he (and his brothers) need plastron do-overs
and now i am stuck with the heart-on-his-sleeve marking
canon 2 my iteration it is done
he gets to be the slider this go round, if just 'cuz he's technically the first born (in terms of creating TMNT and its story and world)
let him have the fluttering, finger drumming on everything and everyone because he's bursting with "i love you" energy anyway
5'4"
Venus
"my pretty daughter" iykyk
sea turtle as per last couple iteration posts
cultivator instead of "shinobi"
"i aM ShiNObi"... guh, just, I dunno, the term "cultivator" wasn't really known back in '98 like that, but she had the medicine box, she worked to learn how to throw a fireball at Vam Mi, she was pleased at her progression when she defeated the counterspell from the staff of Bu Ki. that's cultivator shit right there.
she's still a pugilist more than a iron fan user
looks up to April like a big sister, speaks canto and hakka with her
cuz she's still a linguist scholar like in Next Mutation so duh she speak all the languages (to an extant, she has a lot of studying left to go after all)
the greenified hawksbill coloring is growing on me...
still needa futz more with the plum flower motif on her
also figure out her huadian situation or just scrap it idkidkidk
her bandana + 50% green coloring is also growing on me....
5'10"
Jennika
technically also ringed map turtle since it was Leo who gave her the blood transfusion
I like the idea of bringing her Blaschko's lines to the forefront post-mutation but just... it's a lot of stripes. and goddamnit I ain't even gonna go deep into much of anything with the comics I just... can't not world build rip me
6'0"
April
still so tickled at April being closer to the turtles' ages in these new reboots and fascinated how it's played out
...but mine is a clean 44 yo, so. (turtles in late 30s)
Laird originally conceived April as an asian woman in his notes, Eastman drew her as a biracial woman he was dating at the time (April Fisher) and... idk what to tell y'all, people are running around being mixed in this world all the time, Brooklyn got hella Jamaican/Chinese so there you go
can speak canto and hakka
April being a "weirdo" as I've seen mentioned in Rise can stay, I'm picking that, that's a great trait to her character, big fan of Poly Styrene, loved Rachel True in The Craft
where "weirdo" is just she's into alt subculture and being in New York... she got her hands everywhere in those scenes
She and Chu Hsi get to have the most shoujo fuckin' romance because it's cute
and she's still a living drawing which I'm changing around a bit being why she felt like a "weirdo" and leaned towards subcultures and the turtles, she did eventually begin to destabilize but Venus stabilized her by trapping her in a scroll so she could work on a solution. ...where she has a long, happy relationship with Chu Hsi in the painted world scroll because lol time dilation
saw somewhere on the hellsite that the tooth gap is passed around every iteration... so April gets to have it
5'7"
Irma
i'm not ashamed to say I just reupholstered Nadia from Russian Doll
87 Irma went through a lot so she can have some dry wit and humor and be fly as fuck, big hair, big glasses, and a big attitude
still besties with April
likes moths, they're just neat little guys with rabbit ears iykyk
there is a very specifc size of her hair I am battling to keep consistent the problem it never feels big enough
says "fuhgeddaboutit" and has yelled that she is, in fact, "walkin' here,"
... she might also have a little bit of Myrtle from AHS: Coven sprinkled in now that I'm thinking about it to sum her up
she knows somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody for any random thing you could want to try to find
all the delis and bodegas know her
discusses plot lines from soap operas with Splinter on weekends, they get heated
5'5"
... god all this and I was just gonna have them play spades and play a round of pickup street ball in silly little comics
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