#lena's trigun nonsense

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Post-July, Wolfwood tracks down Amnesiac!Vash living as Eriks and says 'you know what, fuck it, this is fine' and just settles down in the town as the local undertaker/holy man (he's terrible at it, but it's a small enough town that no one can afford to be terribly picky about these things) to keep an eye out for any bounty hunters who might get funny ideas and interrupt the only peace Vash has probably had in the last 150 years.

It's the first time Wolfwood's had anything close to a 'normal' life since he left the orphanage, even if he insists it's just a job (that he assigned himself, with no pay, and no end in sight), and it's... actually kind of nice. Maybe. Boring, but he's gone long enough without having to chug a vial of the serum that he can almost forget what it tasted like, and the kids here are kinda cute and not too spooked by the preacher man in black, and when Eriks smiles it looks real.

Everything is fine.

[portraitoftheoddity]

Trigun: Stampede, Wolfwood, and Food

So, I think a major part of any worldbuilding should always involve food, and where it comes from. The worldbuilding around No Man's Land in Trigun: Stampede is a little tricky in this regard, since there's shown to be no real agriculture or plant life (Meryl's utter shock at the "flora" on Ship Three as a total foreign phenomenon suggests it's more rare than in the manga) so sustainable human-friendly food sources are rare and not really addressed. We see characters eating worms, and presumably there's whatever it is worms eat, and beyond that, it's suggested that pretty much all of humankind's nutrition comes from plants.

The desert dudes living off worm meat refer to "plant-based food" as an "extravagance" in the opening scene of episode 4 (aptly named "Hungry"). Meryl, by contrast, is grossed out by the idea of eating worm meat -- I think we can infer then, that Meryl, being a college-educated city girl, probably had regular access to Plant-generated food, while Outlanders are more dependent on alternative sources of nutrition.

Wolfwood, I think, falls closer to the latter category -- He's very used to eating worms, as we see in this episode, not even flinching at grabbing and devouring a whole worm, and even smoked dried worm legs as a kid in a later flashback, so supplementing his diet and other aspects of his life with worms is probably something he's used to doing for survival:

And I gotta say, the way Wolfwood antagonizes the others about eating worm-based food?

Yeah, it's a power play in some respects -- he's making a point to Vash about 'kill or be killed' to survive when he catches and throws a worm at him, and he's taunting Meryl to get a rise out of her with the roasted worm meat at the end of the episode.

But there's something very "Gross Big Brother" about it -- he's antagonizing them, but there's also some underlying level of care in it. He is showing Vash how Wolfwood thinks it's necessary to survive; he's bullying Meryl into eating the food that's available, because Wolfwood probably grew up with the understanding that you couldn't afford to turn your nose up at whatever food you got.

It's food, it's there, it's a valuable and scarce resource, and as much of an asshole as Stampede!Wolfwood is, he has those ingrained big brother instincts to look out for those around him. And food is an important part of that, because when you live with scarcity, food is life.

The whole bit with Zazie in disguise might be a charade (assuming Wolfwood already clocked Zazie from the get-go and it didn't take the worm devouring them for that card to be revealed) but it still pulls from Wolfwood's characterization in the '98 anime where he gives two of his last pieces of food to a couple of hungry-looking kids:

And the sentiment of "you still deserve to eat" as an expression of care is still real for him, especially given his smile when Vash repeats his words, finally eating some of the worm meat at the end of episode four:

Our worldbuilding implication is that food is scarce and rare in the Outlands, and Wolfwood is someone who knows how to survive by any means possible -- including eating whatever is available -- which is something he's nonetheless willing to share with others, because at his core he's a decent person who isn't as selfish as he may pretend to be.

And food is one hell of a love language.

[portraitoftheoddity]

Really vibin' with the Vashwood dynamic of "Saint who would rather die than hurt anyone" and "Sinner who would kill anyone who laid a finger on him"

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I am dying from these "creator comments" about Millions Knives. I know they're two distinct sentences, but their juxtaposition seems to imply that, both Knives and Vash will just pick up violent weirdo prettyboys they find in the desert for shits and giggles and keep 'em around because why not.

Which, I mean. Fair.

[portraitoftheoddity]

I like the headcanon that Wolfwood has enhanced senses from the Eye of Michael's experiments, because it puts such a great twist on his "cool guy" sunglasses and smoking. He's happy to let everyone think it's an affectation, and not that his vision is too sensitive without the dark lenses filtering things out, or that the cigarettes help blunt his sense of smell and taste so he isn't constantly picking up on the tang of gunpowder and blood.

[portraitoftheoddity]

Fic where Vash is stuck in a timeloop trying to save Wolfwood over and over again--

Call it:

"If at first you don't Succeed, Tri Tri A-Gun."

[portraitoftheoddity]

TriStamp + Cigarettes:

Okay, so, in Wolfwood's flashback, we see him, as a small child, smoking what appears to be a dried piece of worm:

Now, it could be a kid just being gross, but he and Livio seem to get actual worthwhile smoke out of it, so it seems more likely to be something he picked up from other down-and-out-adults who were looking for a cheap and accessible alternative to cigarettes. And it seems probable enough that parts of certain worms, smoked or ingested, could have certain physiological or psychotropic effects on humans, who have a long history as a species of finding bonkers ways of getting any kid of buzz.

However: there's no functional agriculture in TriStamp's Noman's Land, so there's no tobacco being grown, unless Plants are somehow producing it.

...So what's in the cigarettes?

Let's look at the boxes of Roberto and Wolfwood's respective packs:

Roberto's "Wams7 Natural" has what looks like a stylized worm on the box. And Wolfwood's "Skulls" are branded as "organic wams" --

'Wams' is a noun here, and sounds a lot like a bastardization of 'worms.' And 'Natural' and 'organic' could be used to indicate they're not artificially plant-produced -- and therefor not made of tobacco.

Which leads me to the conclusion that these boys are out here the whole time smoking crushed up dried worms in the form of cigarettes.

And that makes any scene where Wolfwood lights up in front of Zazie ten times funnier.

[portraitoftheoddity]

Vashwood bathtub scene from a narrative RP with @magebird!

(Wolfwood dumps in like... a whole thing of bubble bath on accident.)

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Some quick Trigun doodles

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....I mean, technically...

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A quick Livio from RP with @magebird, where he is recovering and raising thomases as a cowboy (birdboy?)

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Stampede AU where Nicholas succeeds in breaking out of the Eye of Michael and takes Livio with him...

(neither of them are unscathed)

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Crybaby Livio the Doublefang

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Portraits of the TriStamp gang I've done so far!

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Watching the original Trigun anime and my favorite thing is that the character with the most cleavage is the "priest"

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Meryl Stryfe

(deserves the world)