#trimax wolfwood isn't much better he threatened to eat it

[feniverse-unfiltered]

Frog saga with wolfwood continued

Frog be upon ye

[hikennosabo]

musing about vash and knives (trimax vol 8)

a full post on vash and knives's relationship will have to wait until i finish the manga, if i can even muster up the ability to write something that long and detailed, but i wanna write about some scenes in volume 8 separately from my general volume 8 post...

both of them use their respective family-turned-symbol-for-their-own-ideals to try to appeal to the other's emotions.

knives chooses not to answer vash about rem. but vash answers knives about tesla. he gets so emotional that he even breaks out of legato's control briefly.

vash understands knives's pain - he's the only one who can. he understands it better than knives does. and he tries to reach the part of knives that's hurting.

"don't do this - don't make the same mistake again. there will be no coming back from this." all of vash's dialogue in this scene tells me that despite everything knives has done to him (and what he's CURRENTLY doing to him), vash still sees knives's pain and cares. he's still holding onto hope that knives will see reason, that he can change. but of course knives isn't willing to listen.

now i wanna talk about the scene where vash jumps off the ship with wolfwood.

he's talking like a kid. "dont go, vash." he's so desperate, it betrays his loneliness. and then ofc he threatens to kill vash here lmao. because the only thing he knows how to do is threaten and use violence and force to try and get his way. because it's the only thing he's BEEN doing for over a century.

i'm biased because i watched stampede before everything else so it's the lens through which i've been viewing knives, but in stamp there's a lot of emphasis on knives's loneliness without vash, and how much knives loves vash. which is summed up concisely here: "we only have each other." knives has no one else. as i just said, vash is the only one who can understand him. and the tragedy of it is knives's love for vash being so twisted by his trauma and loneliness and fear that it ends up as control and abuse.

and then when vash jumps out of the ship... it's similar to the earlier scene where knives does a swan dive and vash calls out to him.

and then knives tries to catch him, at first with his plant appendages...

and then we see just his hand.

just his hand, because that's knives. the plant appendages disappear, and all we're left with is knives's own hand reaching for vash. at his core, he just wants to be together with his brother.

leading us neatly into this, which makes me want to eat glass!

"i felt his true self being absorbed." dude. that must be so scary. for vash and for knives both. vash felt his brother disappearing. and knives... he's losing himself. it's like he's dying. when vash said there's no coming back from this, he wasn't lying. vash slipped away from knives physically, but knives is slipping away from vash mentally.

also, when knives's feather touches vash in this moment, this is how he reacts. is it like a two way street, or...? did knives feel what vash was feeling, too?

and then as knives proceeds with his plant-absorbing crusade, he thinks this.

at his core he loves vash, and now he's deliberately trying to get rid of that core by absorbing more plants. to push that part of himself away, for the sake of his mission. trying to forget vash, who is the only person who ever had a chance of bringing him back from the brink. losing that part of himself. drowning out the love he has for vash by making "himself" disappear.

it's so fucking over. at the end of the day there is still love between vash and knives but knives is too far gone and they can never be a family again. i'm experiencing shrimp emotions.