hiii i was in your inbox a few months ago about your trigun and religion posts and YOU ARE SO RIGHT ABOUT WOLFWOOD!!! people don't analyze wolfwood's trauma in a particularly meaningful way in these readings at all. ofc the fandom is aware of it and talks about it (i do feel that the abuse he went through outside of the experiments tends to fall by the wayside in discussion but i digress), but nobody wants to acknowledge the fucked up implications religious readings tend to have??? like, for example, a common interpretation is that wolfwood worships vash, but nobody appears to realize how incredibly toxic and unhealthy that would be in the context of his backstory. and then there's the stuff that comes with that interpretation that makes it even worse. you could argue it's SUPPOSED to be fucked up but i don't think their bond is supposed to come across that way (lowkey if that's what you want you might be looking for millionsummers)
Yeah, I’m always a bit put off by the idea that Wolfwood needed to do Catholicism better, if for no other reason than…. He’s literally an abuse victim and was trafficked by a priest. People are okay with discussing the experiments, because I think they’re easier to keep in a more fictionalized view. (Even if that does happen in real life, and the fact that Wolfwood is Not White makes if even more unsettling due to ya know… the history of the world…) Meanwhile, I think grappling with the entire implications of What the EOM is doing to children is much worse.
Chapel did literally groom children, and at the very very best reading, had Wolfwood stripped before his experiments in TriMax, which is sexual assault. The idea that a child that was sexually assaulted by a priest needs to follow a better version of the same religion is… not a great idea, actually.
Wolfwood clearly loves and adores Vash, but never worships him. Their relationship can honestly come off as idealized in the manga, with them being so intertwined they have an almost physic connection. Even though, I think the series wants Vash to be in the right when he says that Wolfwood gives up on himself too easily (which is shown to be the case and something he’s done since he was a child), it also shows that Wolfwood is right to call out Vash for literally letting anyone harm him, for being the sort of person that will light himself on fire to keep others warm. They help each other grow as people, and did want to stay together forever.
I don’t think the bride symbolism, of being *Vash’s* bride, is to show Wolfwood as being a follower, either, and the idea of that is very off putting to me. I don’t think Vash wants someone to *follow his ideals,* and I think it would be incredibly toxic for the both of them, but especially for Wolfwood.
But also, yeah, if you want that… Millionsummers is right there and is DELIGHTFULLY fucked up and toxic! :) I also think people are scared to engage with Legato’s character deeply, due being unable to engage with Knives’s obsession with and implied rape of Vash, but that’s another thing entirely.
