Two Plants and a Girl by Thunk (PG-15)
Title: Two Plants and a Girl
Fandom: Trigun
Pairing: Meryl Stryfe/Millions Knives, Vash the Stampede/Milly Thompson
Categories/Genres: Action/Adventure, Amnesia, Angst, AU, Drama, Family, Fluff, Friendship, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Kids, Post-Canon, Pregnancy, Romance
Length: Epic (74,073 words)
Warnings: Minor (OC) character death, Non-descriptive mention of child molestation, Descriptions of gore
Author on LJ: N/A
Author Website: Thunk
Summary:
Meryl becomes more important to Vash than he wants to admit. But Knives sees it. Knives capitalizes on it. But he finds it increasingly difficult to exploit the Insurance girl, for reasons far too old, and not buried deep enough.
Review:
I'm not entirely sure how I've gone this long without reccing this fic. Probably because it's posted on FF.net. No, don't run away! It's good, I swear!
Two Plants and a Girl is an AU fusion of the Trigun anime and the backstory that's revealed in the manga. It picks up from where the anime leaves off, with Knives slowly recovering from his fight against Vash in the anime's finale under the watchful eyes and tender mercies of Vash, Meryl, and Milly.
What I really appreciate about this fic is that Thunk knows their stuff. The bits and pieces of background and worldbuilding incorporated into the fic are sourced from the manga and thoroughly contemplated, providing a much more nuanced and believable Knives than the anime's straight-up-psycho interpretation. He's still an unrepentant asshole, but his canonical actions have weight and meaning and consequence that don't sit easy with him even a century later.
Thunk also presents a reasonable and quite logical plan to give Knives and Vash what they both want, pushing compromise rather than conflict in an anime/manga that basically centers around the conflict between the two. That's not to say that Thunk sucks all the friction out of their relationship, however.
Thunk also deals with Knives' massive damage with deft storytelling. The pacing of the story, which jumps over various stretches of time, can make it seem contrived on occasion, but the emotional depth of the events and the consequent growth of Knives' shriveled little soul signal to the reader a rocky but definitely substantial progress that is satisfying to watch.
There are some moments that are oddly OOC, mostly related to the forced early attraction between Knives and Meryl, and the very end, when Knives is so overcome with guilt and grief that he becomes a weepy parody of himself, but barring those, the interaction between the two is pretty damn great.
If you ever watched the Trigun anime and clicked away from the finale wondering, well, now what?, you absolutely read this fic. Yeah, I know it's on FF.net, but would I ever lead you astray?
Don't answer that.
Two Plants and a Girl
Fandom: Trigun
Pairing: Meryl Stryfe/Millions Knives, Vash the Stampede/Milly Thompson
Categories/Genres: Action/Adventure, Amnesia, Angst, AU, Drama, Family, Fluff, Friendship, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Kids, Post-Canon, Pregnancy, Romance
Length: Epic (74,073 words)
Warnings: Minor (OC) character death, Non-descriptive mention of child molestation, Descriptions of gore
Author on LJ: N/A
Author Website: Thunk
Summary:
Meryl becomes more important to Vash than he wants to admit. But Knives sees it. Knives capitalizes on it. But he finds it increasingly difficult to exploit the Insurance girl, for reasons far too old, and not buried deep enough.
Review:
I'm not entirely sure how I've gone this long without reccing this fic. Probably because it's posted on FF.net. No, don't run away! It's good, I swear!
Two Plants and a Girl is an AU fusion of the Trigun anime and the backstory that's revealed in the manga. It picks up from where the anime leaves off, with Knives slowly recovering from his fight against Vash in the anime's finale under the watchful eyes and tender mercies of Vash, Meryl, and Milly.
What I really appreciate about this fic is that Thunk knows their stuff. The bits and pieces of background and worldbuilding incorporated into the fic are sourced from the manga and thoroughly contemplated, providing a much more nuanced and believable Knives than the anime's straight-up-psycho interpretation. He's still an unrepentant asshole, but his canonical actions have weight and meaning and consequence that don't sit easy with him even a century later.
Thunk also presents a reasonable and quite logical plan to give Knives and Vash what they both want, pushing compromise rather than conflict in an anime/manga that basically centers around the conflict between the two. That's not to say that Thunk sucks all the friction out of their relationship, however.
Thunk also deals with Knives' massive damage with deft storytelling. The pacing of the story, which jumps over various stretches of time, can make it seem contrived on occasion, but the emotional depth of the events and the consequent growth of Knives' shriveled little soul signal to the reader a rocky but definitely substantial progress that is satisfying to watch.
There are some moments that are oddly OOC, mostly related to the forced early attraction between Knives and Meryl, and the very end, when Knives is so overcome with guilt and grief that he becomes a weepy parody of himself, but barring those, the interaction between the two is pretty damn great.
If you ever watched the Trigun anime and clicked away from the finale wondering, well, now what?, you absolutely read this fic. Yeah, I know it's on FF.net, but would I ever lead you astray?
Don't answer that.
Two Plants and a Girl