#and Vash thinks that if he kills somebody then she would truly die

[yellowocaballero]

ZAZIE/WOLFWOOD?!

AHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA YEAH.

It would have been dishonest to be too explicit about it so I just had to write them flirting and desperately hope that it would come through. If it didn't for somebody I don't blame them. Wolfwood doesn't show how he feels with words. He mostly just observes. Sometimes very aggressively.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but Zazie/WW had to happen. I struggled a shitton with the epilogue (this is a theme with this story), and I debated with myself a lot over if it was truly necessary. Eventually I had to decide that it was. This was partly because of Zazie - I felt as if they were a big loose end that I needed to explain ("What was up with what they did in the hidden city? How come they wanted WW to join the Gung Ho Guns? Where did Wolfwood get that gun? Were they helping Vash or Knives or what?"), and I didn't want to let Vash's story end on nothing more than a desperate desire. And I needed to prove the point that this was Wolfwood's story.

The gigantic barrier in the epilogue that sent it skidding to a halt was the fact that, basically, if Wolfwood saw Vash being ""besties"" with another twelve year old he would kill him or die trying. And there is no way he would ever, ever buy the amnesia story. Ever. So he had to get the amnesia story from a source that a) knew and knew for certain, b) had a reason for telling Wolfwood this, and c) that he trusted (kinda). Only Zazie made sense. So I had to figure out why Zazie would do that. Lots of reasons, for thematic and symbolic and foil reasons, but Zazie helps WW a lot, and why does WW trust him anyway, and...WELP. Romance: helpful for explaining irrationality.

The implication for me personally is that an essential trait of WW that persists across dimensions is that he's into aliens. Which. Sure. Why not.

The epilogue felt bizarre to write and read for a lot of reasons. Through Wolfwood's eyes, it's truly a different story. I don't think Knives understood how deeply Vash fucked Wolfwood up. Knives doesn't really see the consequences of his actions and his true impact. Good and bad. In many ways Knives was Wolfwood's Rem. That feels like...the final thing to me. A big thread through the story was "What is the impact of your actions?", because Knives and Vash had done things that had catastrophic impact that determined the future of humanity and Choices Have Consequences, but Knives lives based on creating the best impact and Vash lives based on following the best intentions without truly understanding the horrible impact (which is a big thing in Trigun itself). Wolfwood was the best way to show those impacts. And Knives leaving the impact of Rem on Wolfwood changed his life. It created a good person. Out of everybody, you know, Wolfwood deserved the chance to be a good person. I'm glad that the story worked out so he could have that. And date a bug person. Why not.

[yellowocaballero]

Now I'm picturing a scenario where rem just. Unexpectedly comes back to life a la some deus ex machina plot twist and getting scared about what will happen when she finds out what roleswap vash became...

Okay! Well! That's sad! You get how sad that is, right? I don't even like thinking about that! Good god!

I think Vash is the most militant pacifist I've ever read in fiction, and is probably the character most frequently challenged on that pacifism. It's literally The Entire Thing. It's The Point. Trigun explores what it means and its very real consequences with incredible depth. And I always found it really interesting how, for the vast majority of 98, what keeps Vash adherent to his pacifism isn't really any kind of philosophical reason. It's because killing somebody would be killing his mother - who died a hundred and fifty years ago - and he can't bear that. One hundred fifty years later and he still can't lose her. At what point is it no longer...about the pacifism...

It kind of means that thinking about an alive Rem in Trigun breaks the brain and shuts down the computer. Rem as a character doesn't work if Rem's a person. She's an idea, she's a ghost, she's your peace and innocence. She's the reason for living and she's the salvation of humanity and she's why it should be saved. Mother fucking Mary up in here. Rem, alive, would...just be a guy...everything would break down. I can't imagine what it would do to Vash.

Anyway, roleswap wise: Rem would still love him. She would love him and forgive him. She wouldn't hold an ounce of resentment or anger in her heart towards him. It would reassure her to know that Knives still loved Vash as much as ever, and that he still looks after Vash as an adult. It would break her heart. It would terrify her - not Vash himself, but that something could hurt him so badly that he would turn into this. She would realize that her kids were aliens who she could never truly understand or predict, only influence. She would believe that he could change and get better, and nothing would ever convince her differently. If she ever saw him trying to hurt anybody, she would stand between Vash and his victim and refuse to move. If Knives and Vash told her that they caused humanity to fall, she would forgive them. I think she'd accept that her influence wasn't enough to prevent Knives and Vash from doing what they did, and she'd come to peace with that - that she'd tried, and she failed, and that maybe this was fate.

I think all of this would push Vash truly off the brink. Whatever he would come up with to reconcile the fact that she didn't actually want him to run around murdering people - that she just didn't understand and needed to be convinced, that somebody turned her against him, that obviously this wasn't really Rem because Rem would support what he was doing - wouldn't be good. I think there's several scenarios in which he would kill her.

Meanwhile Knives would be having a WAY more banal weird 'interacting with your parent as an adult' experience. The gang would die of shock that somebody so nice raised the two worst sapients ever. Wolfwood would think she was cute, then feel weird about it.