#badass meryl stryfe

[anime-grimmy-art]

As is custom I can only put much effort into a meme.

Shikimori meme cos I thought it fit and Meryl rly does deserve a badass moment.

I also needed an excuse to draw blushing Vash.

[nekofra]

I think we should talk more about these two

[nouverx]

My own take on Meryl's timeskip design for season 2 (⌒▽⌒)☆

[museqmeg]

Wolfwood barreling into a situation with "guts and grit"

Meryl doubting

Meryl bringing the "guts and grit" to Knives

[pawpotato]

Can we please talk about the BALLS on Meryl here? A 5-way inhuman standoff, and MERYL shoots first

[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

[saltonice]

Thinking about the trigun main four and that trope where someone gets injured and their partner picks up their weapon to protect them. I'm gonna go insane

[zivillyn]

I'm torn between really loving Trigun Stampede and finding it trying as hell. When I'm watching it, it's great, but then I think about it and can't help but feel it missed the whole point of the original. The original had themes dealing with identity and morality that the remake is completely ignoring, and to my mind that's what made the original do good in the first place. Rather than LEARN who Vash is, and his struggles and history, over time, we're just told and thus robbed of impact. The reveal that Wolfwood is a member of the Gungho Guns carries an emotional turmoil for the viewer in the original because we got to know him and then found out he was one of the bad guys all along, but the remake reveals this in the episode he's introduced. There's something to be gained by keeping information from the viewer for emotional impact and the remake doesn't seem to understand that.

[ihadtoposttrigun]

VASH MERYL

MerylVash is probably more apt. She's the one being proactive and doing all the emotional work.

BUT YEAH VASHMERYL VASHMERYL VAAASSHU-MERIRUUUUUU

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.

[comfy-sofa]

Episode 10 Rants and Thoughts

I'm not Ok and neither are y'all so let's get into it

July looks gorgeous! And look! There are people now like my goodness. Also this city gives me ff7 city vibes (I can't remember the name but iykyk)

K U R O N E K O MY SWEET BBY GIRLLLLL

Ok, vash sneezing at the wrong time and ended up getting caught is so Vash of him lmao

But him just taking the bullet???? Yeah this man is so fucking depressed and is not hiding it at all. And then he just walks away??? Sir please seek THERAPY

THE SCARS???? Like is that exposed muscle???? Him just taking the bullet out like its nothing...honestly speechless (good now give him more)

Side note: The animation for when Vash turned was different! It felt more 2d, I'm digging it.

Elendira's nails! I'm still upset at her design like the badass nail lady with great fashion sense was RIGHT THEREEEE

R.I.P Roberto De Niro...we saw his death coming fucking MILES away TIME FOR MERYL STRYFE TO BECOME THE BADASS CHARACTER SHE DESERVES TO BE (now who's her first victim I'm betting Conrad lol)

Fucking Elendira and Wolfwood bickering, fucking chaotic sibling energy

CONRAD C O N R A D THE FUCKING PICTURE IM NOT OK IM NOT OK NO T O K

Does knives plan on using the red plants to make vash a full plant like him??? Is he trying to restore Vash's energy??? I NEED TO KNOW NOWWWWW

We're getting close to end yall and next episode is definitely trauma central like I hope orange fucking pulls all the stops on this one like I need to have my shit rocked mentally like BRING IT.

Like hit me like a TRUCK with this ending, make me FEEL for Vash and Knives, like make me feel for the people in July who are about to die. Give me flashbacks, hallucinations, nightmares ALL OF IT. I want stampede to get the season-ending it deserves, with Vash in the debris of the city blaming himself and wishing he ended himself right then and there. Meryl traumatized from seeing the death of THOUSANDS in the most inhumane way possible. Wolfwood questioning what monster he guided to the largest city and watch it be reduced to nothing. GIVE👏ME👏ANGST👏

Ok thanks for coming to my Ted talk

[severalspoons]

Liveblog: Rewatching Trigun, Episode 19

I like this episode even though the villains here are a real letdown after the Gung Ho Guns. I’m sure none of you are surprised.

Poor Meryl is still having nightmares about the hole in the fifth moon. It’s affecting her performance at work.

Of course Meryl’s obnoxious coworker’s name is Karen. 

There’s a very 1990s contrast between our smart, brave, somewhat androgynous looking heroine and this Barbie-doll-pretty, makeup and high-heels wearing, and of course much taller lady. “That attitude gets all the dangerous jobs...there’s no way you’ll ever achieve womanly happiness.” Just pretend to be incompetent and then you’ll get a man and be happy ever after. ::retches into the closest receptacle:: 

“How did it make you feel?” ...Really?

Millie sounds so excited about being punished by cleaning the window. I’m telling you, she’s a literal ray of sunshine.

Late 20 times in a row? Millie must have the worst case of ADHD and no way of waking herself up in the morning. Someone get that girl an alarm clock.

Meryl, your fake anger is even less convincing than usual. 

Karen: “It’s no use...there’s just some girls who’d risk their lives.” What’s it to her? Does she actually want to “help” Meryl, or just act superior?

Wolfwood is awful at desert travel. Vash was either brave or suicidal to journey with him. Wolfwood blames Vash, of course. 

Okay, I can see why @badwolferosewrites​ thinks they’re fighting like siblings. If said siblings were on a synchronized swimming team or something. Great comic relief.

Vash says he wants to go to a different town than their ultimate destination. A town where trouble is about to be brewing. This is why I think Vash has the plant equivalent of a “spidey sense” for trouble. How? Headcanons welcome.

Meryl sounds almost proud of Vash and his reputation.

“That’s ridiculous! When I saw him, he was weeping and eating piles of donuts at the same time.” Classic line. Vash must have been miserable. Why was he eating his feelings this time?

The radio announcer sounds like Vash did when he was trying to run everyone out of town a few episodes back.

“It’s not like it’s anything new, this kind of thing happens all the time. Even the most peaceful folk take up arms all the time if someone happens to threaten or kill a family member.” Wolfwood describes Gunsmoke in a nutshell. Being only human, he just accepts it and moves on with life. Considering that this happens in every town, pretty much all the time, and Vash takes responsibility for all of it, how does he decide where to intervene, and how does he make peace with the fact he can’t be in multiple places at once? (Or does he?).

“I’ve always had my suspicions you were no mere mortal, but I never imagined you were actually...a cat.” XD And of course Vash runs off and leaves Wolfwood with the tab. Rude.

“Let’s enjoy the peace while it lasts.” Famous last words. Millie knows it. But even for dramatic irony, that was fast.

Vash is such a sweetheart that even the Grumpiest Old Man is glad to see him. <3

I love how everyone gathers around the site of the sandsteamer crash and hostage situation as if they couldn’t be pelted by stray bullets any time. As if it were just a show to them. Wonder how often they’ve observed scenes like this?

lol at Wolfwood still eating that pasta he couldn’t afford, and yes he 100% deserved that punch in the head.

Did Meryl just shoot Millie’s gun with her foot?! Badass. When/where/how did she learn how to do that? Now there’s a fic I would read.

I love this SpiderVash moment:

Vash certainly hasn’t skipped working out his back muscles. 0.o

I love how utterly blase Vash’s voice sounds while singing about an ocean of blood and genocide. It’s more intimidating than if he were screaming and growling about it.

...OK Wolfwood, you can eat that noodle now. 

Nice rocket launcher, but don’t you think that’s overkill?

Best Wolfwood quote. Actually, one of the best quotes in the anime. I think he’s right. That said, this only supports Vash’s idea that we shouldn’t be the ones to decide who lives or dies.

You know Wolfwood’s troubled by the way he looks like he’s smoking, but the cigarette just dangles out of his mouth. We saw him do this in Episode 11 while deciding whether to go after Milly and the runaways.

“You people aren’t human!” That sounds like Steve... (Even on Earth, dehumanizing people like this is one of the most common ways we justify killing people, or locking them away permanently).

TBH, I don’t think Vash is very convincing. No moral or emotional arguments, just pleading. And letting himself be beaten up. I don’t get it, why does that work?

“You could never understand how I feel?” Wanna bet? In some sense, Vash feels responsible for everyone on Gunsmoke almost as if they were his children, and he watches them kill each other every day.

“The twelve idiots, myself included, were set free.” Ha.

“You’ve got to learn to take care of yourselves. Luck and persistence won’t last forever.” Then you’d be pleased to know how the insurance girls got themselves out of trouble this time. As for Vash, he additionally relies on cleverness, reflexes, using his reputation to manipulate people, and gunslinging skills.

...Um, Wolfwood, surely your mission isn’t over. Where are you going?

Aw, Meryl actually being nice to Vash for once. The ensuing conversation is pretty awkward, though. Not even a friendly greeting? Poor Meryl.  There continues to be 0 visible chemistry between them.

[tiganas]

Meryl Stryfe is a badass

[ihadtoposttrigun]

Let me hop on that bs train choo choo

Thaw me out choo choo

has anyone drawn this as vashmeryl yet

[severalspoons]

Have I mentioned recently how much I love Meryl Stryfe being badass?

I like the use of color and the stylized smoke!

Meryl Stryfe! 💣

[stampededtree]

YEES!! Meryl my beloved,, she looks so good here 🥺🥺🥺💕💕💕

My own take on Meryl's timeskip design for season 2 (⌒▽⌒)☆