as above, so below

"within the pains of the starving triptych over and under the fields of amber grain lies a moon dripping crimson tears beams of light shining powerfully slow rain as above, so below, even in a thousand years we'll still be under the watch of the harvest ecliptic"

- Defining poem of the Harvest Ecliptic. No known author.

"Let the winds and waves guide me with their current to an entropological ending."

- Vash X

"stranded in an infinite ocean, i accept my eternity and let the endlessness senseless waves wash over me"

trius atlas and vash x are inexorably linked to each other, as well as to dreaming, selfhood, singleness within plurality, the Ocean, the destruction of █████, and the fundamental concepts. however, not all of these are at first indicative--dreaming can be garnered easily enough from vash's title of "Unsleeping Prince," but some others require a fair amount of investigation to dive deeper. along this journey, things like hair color, hyperspecific wording, and ksbd references will be used to make a cohesive argument, along with harder, more concrete evidence.

(note: some links may contain spoilers for kill six billion demons. you have been warned. it's also pertinent to mention that vash is a public domain character, meaning that this analysis and interpretation of them may not be the same as yours, and you are free to ignore this as you see fit if you seek to mold a vash yourself.)

first off, vash's connection to dreaming is most clear. being the Unsleeping Prince, vash appears in dreams often. unlike the other minds within pluto, the vash that dwells within pluto's body only appears to her in dreams, never influencing her during the day (though observing nonetheless). additionally, vash's dreams are haunted by remnants of █████--more on that later. initially, trius appears to hold no connections to dreams, but by examining certain versions of him, we can see him dreaming of both the Tetragrammaton and fragments of █████. with pluto and the Tetragrammaton inverse to each other, and both dealing with fragments of █████, the similarities in their dreaming are there. they also both appear in the dreams of others--in fact, both appear in the dreams of someone who is oft called "resurrected," though a more apt title would be "zombie." their respective dreamees also each have a specific tie to divinity while not wholly being divine themselves, and they would each say that they couldn't live without a specific splinter of the Realm Goddess (the two people discussed here are, of course, reece myer and the aforementioned pluto IX, for trius and vash respectively). additionally, for trius, his orange hair color brings to mind the fundamental concept Sense, its demiurge, I, Turn, notably eternally dreaming. trius, with his joy for life, can also equally be equated to Sense, as trius's happy-go-lucky nature comes off as though he's experiencing everything for the first time.

secondly, vash's themes of selfhood are especially prevalent, especially in the line from vash's eponymous Unsleeping Prince, "my name is Leah Vash, I’m 19, and I can do whatever the hell I want." vash also dyes their hair from ginger to purple, an action of claiming their own appearance, one separate from their twin brother. later, vash splits their hair down the middle, making it one part purple and one part green. although trius initially dyes his hair from black to orange, he later makes the majority of his hair purple, with orange waves, a three-part progression of dying his hair that mirrors vash. these actions of claiming individuality for one's own are also mirrored in the actions of trius and vash--trius is often so unimaginably all over the place that it's hard to imagine a world where you wouldn't call him unique. similarly, vash practices such a degree of self-focusedness (perhaps self-centeredness, but this trait of theirs is not always negative--their focus on themself leads them to help people that they care about, for the suffering of those people would lead to the suffering of vash) that one can't help but feel that they are entirely themself, and no one else.

despite this, trius and vash are both in no way the only people who are themselves--they're significant for both having numerous other versions of themselves. trius, having various wildly different alternate selves, from his version in space who's an engineer, to uriel (a version of himself influenced by the same fragments of █████ he dreams of), to his versions, each under the throne and Tetragrammaton's thralls, has an astonishing amount of relevant alternate selves. vash, on the other hand, tops this by a huge margin. not only does vash have hundreds of different selves that were created as swords, vash is also a public domain character, meaning that they are endlessly open to interpretation, meaning that they garner a perhaps infinite amount of selves. their responses to this differ--vash merely seeks to be the strongest version of all the vashes, while trius seeks to kill all his other selves. more on this in section about the Ocean. along with this, vash also has a strong connection to plurality in general. as i said in my previous analysis, there's a considerable connection to be made to the way that vash and pluto use each other as proxies. only rarely does vash ever take control of pluto, but it's often to make a connection to the destruction of █████--whenever vash takes control, it's almost always to finish the eradication of █████ that they started (this will be elaborated on later). pluto also sometimes uses vash as a proxy, projecting onto vash as though they are her inverse--and their purple hair does bring to mind a resemblance with the Tetragrammaton, which will be elaborated on later. proxy is, in fact, the exact wording used in-story--which, in line with all the themes of plurality, brings to mind the wording using in pluralkit. as said in the pluralkit guide,

"Proxying is probably the most important part of PluralKit. This allows you to essentially speak "as" the member, with the proper name and avatar displayed on the message."

with both vash and pluto acting as each other, and both having themes of plurality (more strongly with pluto's literal housing of different minds), the usage of the word proxy to draw to mind plurality seems very intentional.

when it comes to the Ocean, trius's connections are clear, with his connections to Sense (I, Turn being perhaps the most Ocean-aligned of the demiurges, essentially crafting a second Ocean within dreams. in his hair (specifically his double-dyed form, which perhaps brings to mind super saiyan-esque "final forms" being indicated by hair color? a topic for another analysis), trius has waves of orange in his hair. given Sense's connections to the Ocean, as well as the Oceanlike nature of its demihusk, it's hard to mistake the orange as anything but representative of a connection to the Ocean. trius also holds a strong connection to the Ocean through drowning. in his dreams, trius wades through knee-high water and sees different versions of himself--and he views them as only possibilities that never came to fruition, and for good reason. to trim the hedges, so to speak, trius holds the other versions underwater. similar to trius drowning his other selves, one of vash's sword selves, the black rose, destroys itself as it kills the last Centurion, Centurion Optimum/the Auxiliary Centurion. wielded by louis, the black rose ends up consuming itself, louis, the centurion optimum, and the Ocean all at once. while trius destroys through the Ocean, vash destroys the Ocean. additionally, vash's connections to mercury paint them as an antithetical figure to the Ocean, given that mercury is the exact inverse of water. (that said, in terms of the classical elements, vash's alignment with metal means that they generate water. on our i chart from our first essay, we can see vash's connection to metal in wuxing by flipping our chart and layering it over the wuxing interactions diagram. this means that they are generated by earth, or tyler on the i diagram--a connection of the black rose to black holes, oft representing tyler or represented by tyler, can easily be created [or perhaps, generated].)

vash and trius can both easily be linked to the destruction of █████, with vash appearing as a proxy for pluto to destroy █████ as well as dreaming of walking past (or perhaps through, as their alignment of prince would imply) a remnant of █████ in the aforementioned Unsleeping Prince. interestingly, vash says "a similar change happens in the waking world, but not to the same extent," although this event would coincide with pluto's erasure of █████ in the waking world. we know that █████ is prevalent in dreams, appearing in the dreams of both vash and trius, so perhaps the erasure of him in the dreaming world is a more effective way to rid the world of him. trius, too, acts as a destroyer of █████, ridding his own dreamscape of any remnants of █████, but also by drowning uriel.

vash and trius's connections to the fundamental concepts aren't immediately apparent, but through their hair colors, things become clearer. through trius's orange sections of hair, we can see a connection to Sense, which has already been commented on, but the connection to fear through Sense and spirals is also prevalent through trius, aligning him squarely with that concept. however, as he grows, he also gains large purple sections of his hair, perhaps aligning him with the Tetragrammaton through purple's association with Force, though it could also align him with the Exolvunt through Cycle--however, vash and trius's destroyer archetypes also align themselves more with the utilization of Force to destroy Cycles (an Unsleeping Prince, allowed to dream longer than they should, may metamorphosize into a Wheel-Smashing Lord). vash's split hair also aligns them with Limit--though with Force also present, and vash's history as the black rose, it could be to destroy Limit as well. vash's motifs of freedom definitely seem to suggest this. vash's alignment with Force also logically extends to an alignment with the Tetragrammaton, serving again as a perfect proxy for pluto to project her rivalry and inverseness onto. additionally, trius and vash's hair are also indicative of how they utilize Force in their destruction--the waves through trius's hair are indicative of drowning, while the direct split in vash's hair is more indicative of cutting, symbolizing a sword even in a human form--royalty is a continuous cutting motion, after all. additionally, the Tetragrammaton's themes of plurality link both trius and vash even more perfectly to singularity within plurality.

thea, named for one of the 12 titans (evident from her brother's name being hyperion), is not quite perfectly eponymously synonymous with theia, a titan in greek myth. notably, the i in theia is missing. by analyzing what the lack of an i--or, as we'll learn later on, the lack of a (Sense of?) self--means, we can learn a lot about several characters, including thea tian coeus, slavko i. ranovic, tyler VIII, pluto IX, and vash X.

thea's name is already notable. she shares a surname with her adoptive mother, esther coeus, and in fact, shares more than that--esther's full name is revealed to be thea esther coeus. with this, it's clear that thea's lack of an i is indicative of a lack of selfhood--she is inseparable from her mother in name, an enforcement to not stray from the legacy her mother projects upon her. additionally, while esther uses her middle name, thea's middle name is "unspeakable," with the saying of her full name causing the speaker to die--a curse placed on her by her mother, a direct denial of her selfhood.

inversely of thea's denied selfhood, we have slavko's forged selfhood. while originally merely slavko ranovic, he added his own middle name--or perhaps, middle names is the proper word. while slavko's middle name is represented simply by the initial i, we can see that the middle name changes each time it is mentioned, cycling through:

ishika (an arrow, or one who achieves) [hindi]

iishka (one who has no enemies) [hindi]

iishka (painter's brush) [bangla]

ishka (suffix to mean masculine) [russian]

iskra (spark) [russian]

all these names, though similar, share common names, and all originate from languages that slavko would have been taught in his childhood, particularly by his parents, both of whom lack names (almost certainly intentionally, at least on the part of █████). however, slavko also adds these middle names in defiance of his parents. it can be seen as a sort of synthetic defiance--by synthesizing the languages of his parents together but using them to find names that start with i (again, a notable symbol of selfhood), he escapes from having their legacies projected onto him while still acknowledging his history. additionally, before he gives himself his middle name, his initials would then be SR, the same abbreviation for the word "senior," showing that before his carving of a self and transition (though the two actions are essentially one and the same), his initials (or initial impressions) are just a way for his parents to vicariously live on through him. however, by adding the i, his initials become SIR, a title of respect (respect which slavko seeks to gain) and a masculine title (fitting with slavko, being a trans man). with this, he defies the destiny given to him by his parents and carves his own individuality, simply with the letter i.

on the topic of █████, inescapably a figure devoid of any selfhood, his only remaining shards left behind in the people he harmed, we can also examine tyler VIII and pluto IX, perhaps the most immediately obvious people to have i in their names, but perhaps the least immediately obvious people to dissect the meaning of. however, we can dissect what they mean by taking AWAY their i. for tyler, taking away his is means stripping away his layers of self--first, his billionaire playboy persona, then his genuine friend persona, and then finally his "i have to win" mentality. underneath all those layers, he is simply V. all the children and remnants of █████ have numbered surnames where their name would coincide with █████'s erased name, hence tyler and pluto's roman numeral surnames. the remnant that represents V is perhaps the closest thing to being the last remaining remnant of █████, meaning that without tyler's is--without his sense of self--he is just his father.

on the other hand, if one were to take away pluto's i, you'd find that she'd leave behind X, the roman numeral surname of vash, assigned that surname by pluto herself. vash is known to be associated with the destruction of █████, as well as the subconscious. thus, even if pluto's sense of self were to be stripped away, she would still leave behind her legacy as the destroyer of █████, as well as all the minds that she has amassed/housed within her body, by leaving behind X, or vash, as a proxy for her legacy. more can be said on the use of vash as a proxy for pluto, or the use of pluto as a proxy for vash, but that's for a different post.

although our analysis largely concludes there, there's a few more tidbits to analyze--with i being homophonous with eye, we can also have a look at the eyes of these characters. with her origins as a character inspired by makima from chainsaw man, thea is known to have bands of circles to show her pupils, with tracing lines in-between drawing to mind a spiral--with the spiral being a notable symbol of esther coeus. thus, even thea's eyes are to strike a resemblance to her mother. on the other hand, slavko lost one of his eyes as a child (to retinoblastoma, a notably hereditary affliction), implying a loss of identity linked to his heritage. however, when slavko later starts a band named "sir ranovic and the burning eyes," he essentially gains more eyes through calling his bandmates as such, forging his identity through community. in some pieces of artwork, tyler's eyes are depicted as reminiscent of a black hole, the signature symbol of V, indicative of his relation to it. pluto's eyes are also the subject of artistic depiction, bathed in shadow with only one piercing eye visible, the other shadowed as though not to let an onlooker take a peek into her mind (eyes are the window to the soul, after all.)