#time they talked about it bc wolfwood is being hypocritical too. as he always is!!!! but i think as they get more intimate

[ruporas]

asking and receiving (bonus below readmore)

[ID: A black and white, digital Trigun comic of Vash and Wolfwood. In the first panel is a close up of Wolfwood's mouth as he says, "Vash". Accompanying it is a close up shot of Vash's eye, widen and cheeks flushed. Wolfwood presses a knee against the open space between Vash's legs and says, "Tell me everything you want from me." Wolfwood's face is equally as flushed. He continues to say, "I'll give it to you. Everything." As he talks, a wide shot shows the both of them in white space. Vash is sitting, leaning a little back with both hands pressed against the surface he's sitting on. Wolfwood is in his white dress shirt, stripped of the blazer. He's still leaning in with one knee in between Vash's spread legs, his right hand touching Vash's lips and his left hand behind his back.

The shot closes in on Vash's mouth and Wolfwood's hand against it, pressing down on the lower lip as he says, "You have to ask though. Go on." His hand moves down to Vash's chin, gently holding it. With a shy and uncertain expression, Vash hesitantly asks, "Um... K... Kiss... Please?" Wolfwood, without wasting a second, leans in and kisses him and indulges by pressing deeper, eliciting a small noise of surprise from Vash.

Wolfwood moves away from Vash first and with a smile, asks, "What else?" Vash tugs on Wolfwood's left sleeve, wordlessly budging Wolfwood to give him his hand that was still behind his back. In the next panel, Vash utters, "Hold me..?" He's holding Wolfwood's left hand with his own while his right hand is reaching for his waist. Wolfwood complies, moving his left hand to Vash's shoulder and his right hand continues to touch Vash's cheek. Wolfwood asks again, "What else?"

More comfortable now, Vash leans in to kiss Wolfwood. Wolfwood catches him immediately, pressing his thumb against Vash's lips to stop him before demanding, "Hey. Ask." Vash looks back in surprise and Wolfwood meets his eye with a quiet, insistent look. They're quiet for a moment before Vash leans in again and curtly requests, "Kiss. Me." Wolfwood says "Good", smiling as he lifts his hand away, and meets Vash's lips. In the next shot, Wolfwood had adjusted his position, sitting on Vash's thigh. The hand that was once on Vash's cheek has moved its way to Vash's nape, pushing away the collar of his jacket with his pinky. His other hand continues to grip on Vash's shoulder. Still kissing, Wolfwood asks again, "What else?"

In the next shot, Vash is starting to turn, moving Wolfwood with him. Vash asks, "Let me on top of you?" Wolfwood says, "Mhm" before asking again, "What else?" The next panel shows a close look of Vash's face. He's looking down, flushed and shy just as he had been at the beginning, but now, more decisive. Vash asks, "Wolfwood... Let me have you..?" A panel of Wolfwood taking Vash's hand into his, pulling it towards his chest. The next panel shows Wolfwood lying down where Vash had laid him. Vash's hand is on Wolfwood's chest, covering the cross of his rosary while Wolfwood's hand lingers against his, loosely pressing Vash's hand in place. He looks up at Vash with a shy smile of his own, flushed cheeks. He says, "All yours."

A panel shows a close up of Vash's tender gaze before he leans down to be closer to Wolfwood. The final shot is a front view of their positions, Vash's face turned away from the viewer; Vash is leaning over Wolfwood who's lying down with his right leg draped over Vash's legs. Wolfwood's left hand holds onto Vash's left arm. With finality, Vash says, "...Mine." End ID]

[ID: A follow up bonus comic in a looser, sketchier style. They're laying comfortably in bed when Vash asks, "What was that earlier?" referecing to the start of the previous comic. Wolfwood glances away and says, "To get you used to it. Asking. And getting what you ask for. Since you're alwasy hesitant about it." Vash's eyes widen, tight lipped. Wolfwood continues, "Knowing you, it'll be a tough habit to break..." When he says this, Vash can't help but laugh, unable to deny it. Wolfwood slowly brings a hand to Vash's cheek and continues to say, "So I'll keep trying -- whatever ways I can... to get it through your thick skull." Vash takes Wolfwood's hand with his, kissing the the palm gently. Wolfwood's eyes soften and holding onto Vash's cheek, he leans in to try for a kiss. Vash says, "Hey..." before stopping Wolfwood's lips with the back of his hand, a smug look on his face, "Ask." Wolfwood's embarrassed and with little irritation, asks, "Really?" Vash smiles, saying, "You're in need of practice too." They pause for a moment, Wolfwood looking contemplatively, before he's leaning in again, asking, "May I please kiss you?" Vash looks him in the eyes and says, "Yes." The comic ends with a "chu", indicating an off-panel kiss. End ID]

[wander-wren]

let me go through this one line by line rq. i did talk more about wolfwood and rollo in a different branch of this post, but it was less well-written/thought out bc i did it more on the fly so let’s not worry too much about it. also, disclaimer, i love all of these guys, especially vash, and that’s why i’m being a little mean to him right now. dude’s complicated. ALSO this is only based on stampede, i do not know enough about the original story yet to comment.

i will also acknowledge that this steps pretty close to some real-world issues/debates/etc that are very important to me, so i care perhaps more than i should.

anyway! let’s break this down.

“rollo didnt want to die though. yeah i know wolfwood says it was mercy. wolfwood is projecting”

maybe, and also yes. crucially, we don’t KNOW what rollo wants. wolfwood IS projecting onto him, but equally vash is imposing what he wants, not what rollo wants, because rollo literally does not speak except to say vash’s name and once, his own. his younger self seems pretty attached to the idea of living, yes, but it’s been more than a decade since then (i’m not sure how old rollo is meant to be, but i wouldn’t say more than 8).

he has been modified and turned into a monster, he apparently drove out or killed his entire town, and it’s unclear if he’s been isolated in the village for a while or if he only arrived recently—my headcanon is the former, especially since the success of wolfwood, livio, and elendira would’ve rendered him an outdated model, but they could have still used him. regardless, he’s hardly living a normal or happy life. given his limited speech, it’s not even clear if he has the same level of cognitive function he used to—he definitely doesn’t have the education or socialization of you average 20-year-old.

i’m not advocating for killing rollo at all. i’m just saying we don’t KNOW what he wants. in an ideal world he would have been taken somewhere safe, treated like a person, and made as comfortable as possible while they worked out how to communicate with him and figure out what he actually wants. but they do not have the resources or the time for that, wolfwood and vash are both very biased, and rollo is semi-invulnerable and trying really hard to kill them.

i’m not really sure there’s another way for that story to end, honestly. and that’s the tragedy of it.

“i do agree vash does impose his will on other people, to a degree that’s not a million miles off from knives’s bullshit. and yes vash is also a hypocrite - he can forgive anyone but himself.”

cool! 👍 again, i’m not saying vash is bad and evil, or even that he’s not good. he’s just a guy with 150 years of trauma doing his best, but the thing about unresolved trauma is you don’t always make the best decisions.

“but vash does not want to use people. he wants them to have autonomy so they can choose for the better. and death is a denial of autonomy.”

okay, this is the one where i’m a little less nice. i agree that vash doesn’t consciously want to use people, objectify them, put his needs above theirs—that’s his brother’s deal. i do, however, think he’s so desperate to not have anymore blood on his hands that he is willing to “use” people to get to that end, and he isn’t even aware of that. hurt people do this all the time, when their pain and fear and suffering is so great that all they can focus on is trying to mitigate it, and they completely steamroll “the right thing to do.”

we haven’t seen vash do this yet, really, at least in stampede. i’m being purely hypothetical. i’m saying i see this instinct in him, in his actions, and it only hasn’t happened yet because this is a fictional story and he’s the protagonist and there isn’t really time to explore this yet. vash is also very willing to use himself, his health, and his wellbeing in the exact same way, which also separates him from knives.

i agree that vash wants people to have autonomy. sort of. he never says this that i remember, he’s a lot more focused on their right to be alive (also very necessary), but it’s in line with his belief system so yeah, for sure.

here’s the thing, though: so they can choose for the better? where is this coming from? the only thing i can think of is luida and the “flora” project, but it’s meryl and roberto who learn about that. vash presumably knows, but i don’t think he ever mentions it. meryl is the one who argues (with zazie and conrad) that humanity can be better, with time.

vash doesn’t want people to be free and safe so they can choose to be better. he wants people to be free and safe because they are people. and also because he can’t stand the idea of having more blood on his hands. he also does want them to be better, true (see: nebraska, rollo, nai, wolfwood), but that’s not his primary motive.

because really, “better?” who is vash, who are any of us, to decide what’s “better,” or that the only people who deserve to live are those who are working towards it? vash’s whole fuckin’ deal is that he doesn’t kill anyone, no matter how bad they are. he’s not out here weighing their goddamn ability to redeem themselves. ironically, this is a deeply (culturally) christian way of thinking, in a story where vash is allegory jesus, one of the most misinterpreted guys of all time.

finally, death as a denial of autonomy? mm, no. here’s the thing about autonomy: it allows people to do “bad things” to themselves. assisted suicide, regular suicide—that is autonomy at work. keeping someone alive against their will is a denial of autonomy. that’s not to say you shouldn’t try to help a suicidal person, because damn, please do that, but also: people have just as much a right to die as a right to live.

we’re not even talking about vash anymore, i got sidetracked. my point here is that we never actually see vash in this situation, due to the nature of the story. we never see him forcing someone to be alive that no longer wants to, etc (except himself, potentially). what i’m saying is, based on what we are shown, i think there’s a good chance he would in the right circumstances.

vash is a good guy. he’s not out here running around thinking that other people’s wants and needs are less than his own. but he’s got a big gaping hole in him and he’s very good at justifying the ways he tries to fill it. just because it hasn’t gone badly so far doesn’t mean it can’t in the future.

was talking last night about nai’s obsessive tendencies and the way he views everyone, even vash and tesla, as an object. he keeps tesla alive, in pieces, immediately after the fall and presumably for the next 150 years given all the technology he has, despite the fact that killing her would be kinder, just because he wants her. he nearly leaves vash a hollow shell of a creature just because he would rather that than a vash he can’t keep close.

he’s selfish and cruel and so isolated from the world that what he wants is more important than what anyone else wants.

but also…

vash has a little bit of that tendency in him, too. we saw it with rollo especially, and a bit with livio and the sand steamer—though those ones worked out for him in the end. vash is so full of guilt over the idea of killing anyone, even indirectly, that he will keep them alive to spare himself the grief.

and that’s a nobler pursuit, and i think a lot of people also instinctively don’t want to think about death being a mercy sometimes, but it’s still going to get vash in trouble if it hasn’t already in the last century.

i think it’s interesting, too, in light of the fact that vash himself is sort of passively suicidal at times. he’s pretty close to immortal, but he has no sense of care for his own wellbeing. vash doesn’t believe he deserves to live, but i don’t think he believes he deserves to die yet, either. which implies a double standard in his belief system—death is too good for him, but a tragedy for other people.

“an independent must fix what an independent has done. this is my atonement.”