#hey this wasn't the best written thing i've done and there's more nuance to it than i was able to capture here but i hope you still enjoy

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

Trimax Thoughts Vol. 5 Pt. 2

I want to talk about Knives for a sec. Up to where I've read in the manga so far, we really don't have much of an understanding of him yet. I think I may have a slight advantage in having watched one of the shows before starting (I've watched Tristamp) because otherwise I don't know if I would quite get what to make of him so far.

I won't say anything about Tristamp here since I'm not going to assume everyone in book club has seen it, but I did draw a conclusion from it that, after reading volume 5, I am almost positive applies to the manga version of Knives too.

Knives treats Vash as if he were an extension of himself.

[ID: A panel from Trigun Maximum volume 5. Knives stands casually, holding a cup and smiling as he greets his brother in Vash and Hoppered's shared flashback to July. Hoppered thinks "It's him..." as Knives says "Hey Vash." End ID.]

Ok so first off I need to establish something because it's important. Listen. I have no doubt that Knives loves his brother. I do not doubt that. But his behaviour towards Vash is actively and deeply cruel. Knives is friendly up until Vash disagrees with him, and then his mood suddenly changes for the worse - he has gone so far as to specifically target people Vash loves just to break the ideology he disagrees with, shifted culpability from himself to solely on Vash several times, violated his autonomy, and has on a few occasions physically restrained him. <- That's. Really bad. I would argue that these behaviours are in keeping with uh... pretty textbook manipulative/abusive behaviours.

However, here’s the thing: these kinds of behaviours are typically perpetrated because the person wants power over the victim. I think it's easy to read that into it, but I honestly don't think that's Knives' intention at all. He wants Vash with him. If anything his little "Watch it!" when Vash shoves him away just after the colony ships fall reads as genuine confusion. He's incredulous every time Vash points his gun at him. After all, as Knives puts it: they're brothers. They only have each other.

If Knives wants power over anything, I'd argue it's power over Rem, not Vash. He sees Vash's suffering and believes it was her who "made him like this", disregarding his own accountability in both Vash's continued pain... and her death. I do have to wonder if his attempts to break Vash's pacifism is also an attempt to make Rem's ghost leave them both for good, because there is no way Millions "I thought I'd spare her but now I see she was just as flawed" Knives felt no sadness or remorse over her death.

[ID: A screenshot from Trigun Volume 2. Knives sits in the escape ship with most of his face shadowed. He is hunched slightly, with a difficult to read, rather blank expression. End ID.]

^He is totally not bothered by this, definitely a-ok with her death. /j

But here's the thing: I really do think Knives believes that without Rem's influence, his brother will think and act exactly like him; that she has "corrupted" him somehow. This plays out in the way he's almost eager to show Vash their Plant abilities, apparently completely ignoring that Vash is confused and terrified - there's a serious dissonance to their interactions, where Knives seems less uncaring then oblivious to Vash's obvious distress. A good first indicator is directly before Fifth Moon, where Knives realizes that Vash has blocked out the memory of July, and is more intrigued than alarmed by this. Idk man if that was my brother I would be. Concerned.

See, if you read Knives as wanting power over Vash, then it's kind of reminiscent of the older sibling who thinks they know what's best for the younger. Indeed, that is the role Knives seems to take on at times.

But Knives is not actually older. They're twins.

Zazie also has an intriguing line after seeing the lengths Vash will go to in order to protect those he cares for: "It definitely isn't in Knives' nature to fight for anyone." <- This is an odd conclusion to come to for someone who is supposedly doing everything for a new world that's safe for all Plants, including Vash. I'm choosing to take Zazie at their word since I don't think they would have any real reason to lie or really see the point in lying.

So, what this implies is exactly what I stated earlier - Knives makes little, if any distinction between him and Vash. The world is divided into "same" and "different", "family" and "threat". It unfortunately allows Knives to continuously undermine Vash's autonomy - it's fine to forcibly activate Vash's angel arm because it's "our" power. It's fine for the doctor to poke and prod at Vash's arm to get readings because Knives is supervising it. Vash will stick with him because they're brothers, right? Of course he will. And if he doesn't... well that can't possibly be Vash. It's Rem's corrupting influence. And that makes him violently angry as he attempts to destroy any last trace of her that persists in his brother. Because surely, without her, Vash would be just like him, right?

One last note I'd like to make is the way Knives keeps obscuring Vash's face when he forcibly activates Vash's angel arm.

[ID: Two screenshots from Trigun and Trigun Maximum. The first image shows Knives grabbing Vash's face as he forces him to activate his angel arm during the Fifth Moon incident. The second image is of the same during the July flashback. End ID.]

The thing is, you can't argue this is necessary to activate the ability. In the July flashback, Knives actually has his hand placed rather gently on the side of Vash's head... up until Vash tries to resist. That's when Knives slams his hand down over his face instead and shoves him onto the floor.

In the context of Knives seeing Vash as an extension of himself, it could take on a few different meanings. If he muffles Vash's screaming and crying, perhaps he doesn't have to see the clear distress on his brother's face. Maybe it's representative of stripping Vash of his personal choice in these scenes. Maybe because this is the truth of the matter - Knives does not want to see the person Vash is if that person is so wildly different from himself, to ruin the illusion of twin as extension instead of a separate person.

Meanwhile, Vash is trying so hard to be everything Knives isn't. Knives' face is shadowed in flashbacks to create distance between them until July reveals the destruction they both caused and Vash can no longer deny the harm he too is capable of causing. The twins cause me emotional damage man.

[bitsbug]

i have a ton of question/suggestions for slug sign: 1. how do you indicate emotion in SS? my best guess is using cycles but talking about smth like sadness cant really be done that way 2. is there a specific way youre supposed to type out SS in english? 3. SS seems pretty heavy on context adding a kind of adjective system may help to fix issues with specification as well as free up room for more words. an example would be making words for "cycle", "food", "region", and "direction" and then changing the current word for "cycle" into "specify" so you could say [cycle] [<specification>] to talk about the specific cycle and plan or [direction] [<specification>] to talk about a specific direction and where you may want to go.. etc. words without specification still work but use context. 4. is there a way to explain advanced movement in SS, stuff like a flip or roll. 4.5. if not id suggest adding words for stuff like "sprint" or "crouch" and to go with it "then" to explain stuff for example [jump] [then] [crouch] [forward] would be a way to explain sliding

5. did you ever have concepts for a written version?

hooh momma! thank you for all the questions!

1)

Slugsign has a few emotion indicators, but not all of them are signs. We hop around a lot and dance and flip when we're happy; hopping in place is kind of a "this is good!" while hopping sporadically is "I'm excited!"

Using "loser" repeatedly or shaking on the spot expresses frustration, alongside signing "no" a lot and hitting eachother with rocks. Also insulting whatever you're mad at, we love to insult things.

Recently we've started using "peace" as a way of saying sorry, which wasn't even intentional it just developed during a play session. Sadness is characterized by a lot of "sorry" and crouching without movement and trying to shove yourself into corners. [Me] [loser] is used to express guilt.

2)

Oh hey, you actually use the exact method we use in this ask. We transcribe signs by placing them in brackets, for example: [give?] [Moon] [quantity-lots] [scav][object]. There's no official way you're "supposed" to though, that's just what we do.

3)

What you propose sounds like an interesting idea, but idk how much it'd be utilized. I mean for direction you can just.. point in the way you want to go. And "cycle" in reference to a day is considered the current one by default- you'd use "later" to specify a future one. I think what you're wanting is an abstracted "this" sign? which yeahh WOULD be nice actually..

I've thrown out the idea of having a grammatical word order thing, like [cycle] [food] and [food] [cycle] having different meanings, but Phen's worried that'll be really hard to memorize and cause confusion. Idk I still think it's cool and would add a lot of nuance, I'm gonna try to convince her on it.

4)

We probably could add those signs if y'all really want? I know people use it for their own co-op now, but in me and Phen's sessions we both already know the movement tech. It sounds really funny to teach someone about rainworld using slugsign though, I like that.

I could see condensing all those into a single "movement" or "example" sign: you use the sign and then do the action you're demonstrating. So a backflip would be like.. [example-run] [example-turn] [fast] [example-jump].? Could probably use some workshopping.

5)

..no not really!! I'm not a linguist or a language hobbyist, me and Phen are just winging this shit according to need, and I have NO idea how I'd go about making a written variant beyond transcripts. Besides idk if we'd really.. use it? That sounds super good for the worldbuilding aspect, but we already have the legend to reference. Anyone else who wants to take on the idea, by my guest.

[settsplitt]

Hey, may I ask why you disliked The Kite Runner? No hate, I‘m just genuinely curious 🙌🏻

Hello anon! Thank you so much for asking, I love talking about my opinions, and oh boy, do i have Opinions on this book.

I should preface this by saying, it's been three? four? years since i read this book, so i don't remember all the details of what exactly i did and didn't like about it. I have a bad memory for books i like, even worse for ones i dislike. I've reviewed it a bit for this, but i'm still a bit fuzzy on the details!

So first, I want to start with my critique of the actual text:

I generally dislike the prose. There are occasional moments of competence, but i would say its a general weakness of the book. I dislike the dialogue as well. I don't think its a particularly well written book.

There are redeeming aspects, though, for the first two general sections. I particularly like the relationship between the main character and his father. I think the portrayal of a pre-soviet-invasion Afghanistan is well done and feels very grounded in reality. (I, however am not Afghani, nor was i alive in the 70s. It could be a load of horse shit.)

I am not surprised that these aspects of the book are well executed; It seems these sections are almost completely inspired by the authors own personal experiences, and the translation of experience to the page is competently done. I remember when I first read this book I was, for the most part, genuinely liking it for the first two sections!

The problem with this book is that it goes completely off the rails 200 pages in.

(this is where i'll drop a content warning for: mentions of violence, SA, and pedophilia...among other things. proceed with caution)

Like, suddenly everything is comically, exaggeratedly black and white and, in my opinion, overly gruesome. The reader becomes so bombarded by scenes of taliban induced misery, public stonings, child prostitution, bombed out orphanages, that everything just starts to lose its effectiveness. The select scenes of violence from the first section of the book get completely left behind and forgotten.

The worst part of this section is, by far, the villian. He is so ridiculously evil it makes me angry. I genuinely cannot imagine what line of thought could have led to the creation of this character. He is a half-white, nazi-praising, psychopathic heroin using pedophile taliban leader. He's also the main character's childhood bully, and the perpetrator of a sexual assualt on the main characters best friend, which serves as the source of the main characters internal conflict throughout the whole book.

This is a bad character. Obviously, he is evil, but I think it's bad that this character is evil. It absolutely destroys the authors credibility as a serious storyteller and destroys any chance this story could have had of serving some sort of larger purpose. In fact, it leads it down a different, much worse path instead. This leads me, conveniently, into my next point:

So, this book came out in 2003, two years into the United States' 20 year occupation of Afghanistan, and approx. one month out from The US' invasion of Iraq and overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi government. Basically, America was in desperate want for art that would make it feel better about its ongoing horrorshow.

I have no doubt that the praise this book recieved when it came out, including from first lady laura bush herself, is intrinsically linked to its portrayal of the evil of the taliban. I think if the last section of the book wasn't included it wouldn't have been anywhere near as successful.

This is not to say the taliban is not evil; I just think its incredibly stupid to portray this through a psychopathically evil character, and incrediby convenient to make him an irredeemable evil pedophile nazi. It avoids any ounce of nuance that could come from portraying this "other" as anything more than deplorable and fundamentally nonhuman.

(for some reason it makes me think of the period of time in the 2010s when ISIS members were on twitter. How terrible it was to be confronted with the reality that people who do terrible things, believe terrible things, and believe them righteously, use twitter just like you. If only Hosseini had played more with this concept. alas.)

The worst part is, it presents all of these things through the view of someone who (suppposedly) has connection and insight into the country (Hosseini had not visited Afghanistan in 26 years at the time of the book's publication), legitimizing this perspective to an audience that conveniently doesn't have any better frame of reference.

Thus, American readers get to read this book, with its tragic portrayal of the afghan people and its portrayal of the taliban through this evil half nazi cartoon villian, and feel comforted about 100k+ troops in Afghanistan, about wedding air strikes, and by extension, about approx half a million civilian deaths in Iraq. Because americans are stupid like that.

Anyway, yeah. This leads me to the conclusion that, intentiionally or not, it functions as a piece of propoganda meant to manufacture consent for America's wars in the middle east.

Also its not a very good book.