#I just love Meryl man

[revenantghost]

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.

[ohitslen]

Millymeryl eheh :)

Just one more.

[ruporas]

post ep 11

[spaltedrat]

what the polygun!!!

[varilien]

given that i've ran this blog for as many years now i think i should get much credit for this being what, only the third dick joke i've ever made here hdfkhkj

anyways. there's this point in the story where vash and wolfwood have to go their separate ways for a while, but neither of them are dealing with it particularly well

(image id below the cut since it's a longer one)

[image ID: a rough, doodley 5 panel digital comic of vash and meryl from trigun, but from my leaden skies au where they've both been lightly redesigned to fit into the setting of monster hunter. vash is a wyverian with long pointed ears, wearing a red coat with gold trim and buttons. meryl is a human wearing a beret as seen on other guild girls, but her all-white outfit is a practical two-piece blouse and shorts set. the whole comic is comprised of warm colors, orange and yellow and dark purple

panel 1: vash sitting in the foreground at a brown desk covered in candles and books, with a book opened in front of him that he flips through with a bored expression and his cheek resting against his hand. he appears to be in a library, lit by candles on dark grey chandeliers hung from the ceiling. meryl is in the background stretching up to reach a book high on a shelf, and beside her is a table which is also covered in candles and several tall stacks of books

panel 2: a closeup of vash's face as his eyes widen and his ears prick up. something in the book has apparently caught his attention

panel 3: a closeup of the page vash was looking at, an illustrated info sheet about the flying wyvern, khezu. a candle in the table brightly illuminates the colored page

panel 4: meryl has come around by vash's shoulders with a stack of books held in her arms. she quirks a brow as she looks over vash's shoulder at the book. vash has a neutral, hard to read look on his face, but his ears are still up and his eyes are still shiny and wide as he seems to consider the page for a while

panel 5: a yellow word bubble comes from vash, who huffs a long sigh and says, "maybe i should call him...". his head has tipped to the side as he rubs his neck and frowns, blushing a little with his ears drooping. meryl physically recoils from him and her face scrunches up in disgust, saying, "eww" and, "there's something wrong with you"

end ID.]

[deadscell]

[nanomooselet]

Little but Fierce IX

By the end of the finale, Knives is excused attendance on account of self-immolation. Vash, though alive, is understandably in hiding. Wolfwood's pulled a Stampede of his own and fucked off, and his whereabouts remain unknown. Roberto's gone. Meryl mourns him.

She is the last one standing.

This has changed her. Her clean white has been darkened, and her reflective shades conceal her expressive eyes - a shield between her emotions and the world she never had before. Something Vash and Wolfwood both had the right idea about. She's dispensed with her poofy jacket and her oversized shoes, and of course one cannot help but fail to notice: she's not intimidated by a hint of sexuality anymore. (Or maybe I'm just too much of a lesbian to avoid noticing the tits, I don't know.)

She wears brown slacks. Hooped earrings. A grey shirt. She carries the weight of the people she lost in a dozen other little ways, something Vash himself does. Like him, she's come into herself - though she was always a little ahead of the boys in that respect. Girls often have to be; it's expected. But she was lucky, too, to have a stable base to grow from, which neither Wolfwood or Vash had for very long.

Overlooking her was Knives's greatest tactical error. Vash keeping his distance from her might also have been a mistake. Because she played a part neither of them ever could have - and not as Rem, and while Roberto openly drew a comparison between her and Vash, not him either. As reluctant as he is to assume the role just at the moment, Vash does do a pretty good job being Vash the Stampede all by himself.

It still always comes back to the twins. Wolfwood, as I said, has more in common with Vash than not. Meryl's different. She tries to be a nice person, tries to be like Vash. But the twin she most resembles isn't Vash.

It's Knives.

Or perhaps a better way to think of her would be as Nai - the solemn little boy Vash knew all those years ago, before he became the horror he is now.

Vash has always been a pragmatic guy, very concerned with what's of tangible benefit. He's practical. He's concerned with the physical. The flower is pretty, but is it edible? (It'd be better if it was.) He's good at improvising and thinking on his feet. He's all about what's real, what's here and now, not stories.

Nai was the idealist. Emotionally-driven. Intuitive. The one who knows little of the world, but tries to learn more. The one who looks for the truth, and judges. The one who seeks and observes and remembers. The one who makes structures and strives for efficiency. The one who tells himself stories inside his head.

Just like Meryl.

Meryl is aggressive and self-righteous. She's ambitious, determined to be on top. She's angry, and her anger motivates her. Whatever she decides to do, she wants to do it well and plan it out as thoroughly as she can - like Knives, she's a perfectionist. She doesn't have the raw physical strength to smash walls, so she's had to learn to be a little smarter than that to survive which... well, is maybe a lesson Knives could have benefitted from learning. But then if he was capable of learning these lessons, none of them would be here.

Meryl has emotions like solar flares; she's intensely expressive to the point of comedy, just like Knives has every single feeling he feels written all over his silly face. And her jacket made her look bigger. Like him, she makes an effort to seem physically imposing. It's just rather less effective on her and she looks like an angry blueberry cupcake instead of a Greek statue.

You know how Knives saw Tesla's remains, and later all those Plants go through the Last Run, and he justifiably freaked the fuck out? Meryl got to see, firsthand, Dr. Conrad's handiwork, her mentor's death (which, despite his assurances, was her fault) and then poor Vash slowly having his identity and memories ripped out of him until he was a husk.

They both had older men trying to shield them from danger and retaliation. One whom we all knew was doomed to die - even him, I think - and who tried his best to make the time he had count. With his death, he freed Meryl from his strictures, but left behind all the lessons he taught her. Meanwhile Dr. Conrad is held hostage to the fulfilment of Knives's wishes, and would have been freed from them with his own death. With Knives's defeat, he remains trapped. Still bearing his cross.

And call me delusional but… something about the way he's lingered on here makes my brain tickle.

He has to be thinking of what Roberto said to him. Conrad insisted he "did nothing to demean" his subjects, innocuous phrasing for a revolting suggestion. Roberto mocks him for thinking it absolves him, telling him yeah, I bet you didn't, you seem too uptight. My feeling is that it's a moral line Conrad is very purposeful in not crossing, the same way he tells himself he's giving those lost kids purpose.

Looking out at all these poor violated Plants, can he still believe Knives shares even that single principle? Is this what the endpoint of atonement looks like? Is this "freedom" the Plants themselves would welcome? He said it was a hundred and fifty years too late to save humanity... but Roberto's triumph may yet still echo into the future.

Anyway, Meryl's also someone who imposes her will, albeit mostly by scolding. She assumes superiority and will not bend to compromise. While she can't kill people with demon blade tentacles, now she's Derringer Meryl, counterpart to Millions Kni(ves).

But she differs from Knives in a few key respects. While both are (or once were) determined to find and know the truth, Meryl doesn't close her eyes to it once she does. She has the emotional strength, or perhaps a steadier foundation, to withstand such deep shocks to her worldview, and to learn from them, as a good investigator does. Which makes her a liar's natural predator - she's a counter to Knives and his delusional manipulations, a living tool to dismantle his falsehoods. And now that she's endured all she has, she assumes her own identity, leaving behind the insecurities which Knives found he could not abandon.

She can extend trust. (I can't get a shot that makes it clearer Vash is picking Knives up, sorry.)

She remembers the past, but is not consumed by longing for it.

She's proven herself worthy to bear and reveal the truth.

She's grown up. Now she's as strong as Knives wishes he could be, and she didn't have to kill a single person to become so.

And there's still more to come. She's getting a newbie of her own now, rather more reliable protection than a single derringer, and we know Vash's story is not yet complete. Nor can they be sure that Luida's plan will come to fruition. (And, I mean, we know even getting himself melted to a skeleton didn't kill Knives. There's no way it did. Personally I'm little concerned that he might, for once, have learned from his mistake, and remembers Meryl.)

Whatever comes, though, she'll have an important part to play in it - as important as Wolfwood, the right hand to Vash's left.

Don't overlook her. She matters. Ship or not, remember her. It would be a terrible pity if all the work that's gone into her story turned out to be in vain.

Fin. Final phase can't come soon enough. Possibly unwelcome personal insight: it was in fact partly due to her that I found the courage to identify as a lesbian, so my intentions here aren't entirely honourable. I demand more sexy fanart of Meryl.

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

Part VI

Part VII

Part VIII

[savroseline]

A little valentines Vash ;-; him in little heart shaped glasses has been living rent free in my mind for months

[orcelito]

OK MORE ANALYSIS

towards the start of trimax, we get this little bit here. aka Meryl's birthday, & ALSO when there are official sightings of Vash reappearing. so we can assume that Wolfwood finds Vash again in February (ish) of 0113

this. the beginning of the end. happens on July 21st of 0114, the exact ten year anniversary of the July Incident (July 21st of 0104)

and Vash & Knives' birthday.

which that's a whole big can of worms that's gonna have me needing to run through my fic again for dates bc i didnt realize it was Literally exactly 10 years passed between then and now.

but MORE IMPORTANTLY...

when you think about the dates. between february 0113 and july 0114, that's 17 months. Vash spent 7 ish months on the arc (maybe 8, sometimes they say 8)

this means that Vash and Wolfwood traveled together for a total of about 10 months, give or take.

ten months, largely just the two of them.

i think i need to sit down lmao

[diana-daphne]

Okay so I haven’t been able to watch the last to episodes of omitb until today and omg??? Cinema at its finest don’t read the tags if you don’t want spoilers I’m going on a rant

[huginsmemory]

Absolutely LOVE that Wolfwood is canonically a foodie, and here's some of the panels:

Bonus: Wolfwood just trying to enjoy food and Vash immediately getting into trouble. Rip this man.

[revenantghost]

Nothing is ever going to beat introducing a beloved character by absolutely obliterating him with a car

[duncanor]

Watching Vash and Wolfwood interact in stampede is like

"They so fuckin' emo, goddamn"

But watching them interact in the manga is like

"THEY'RE SO FUCKIN' GAY AND STUPID AND HUMAN AND NOT AND CURSED BY THE NARRATIVE AND AND-"

[writterings]

im not even done with the first trigun series (havent even read the manga or watched the other series) but meryl x vash is yaoi. TO ME. it's also yuri. but at the same time it's still a het ship.

[red-elric]

god the vash/wolfwood/meryl/milly crew is such a SQUAD we got mlm and wlw solidarity for wolfwood and milly, bi4bi hostility for vash and meryl, t4t supremacy for vash and milly, morosexual gang wolfwood and meryl....... oh and i guess vashwood and whatever the meryl/milly ship name is are both cute too teehee

[ourhouseishaunted]

70% of my trigun thoughts are abt how plants (independent and dependant) work and what they symbolize and their relationships with other characters and the world and stuff and the implications of independent plants coming with the earth forces and what it says about how earth has progressed since SEEDS left the planet, 20% of my thoughts are "hope those guys (meryl milly vash livio ww knives) are having fun" and 10% is rotating trimax Rem Saverem around in my head at all times