I love Vash the Stampede. He’s a pacifist. He’s a hypercompetent gunman. He’s a Christ figure. He’s a sillie little guy. He wears hipster glasses and a gay earring. He’s perpetually in mourning. He’s a manmade horror beyond human comprehension, somewhere between a nuclear reactor and a biblically accurate angel. He’s pathetic. He likes doughnuts. If you squint at the lore, he’s transgender. There’s a cute cat that follows him around. He falls in love with a man. The tall-tale-sounding legends about him are true, and he’s miserable about it. No, I meant it about that manmade horror thing, he can vaporize cities like it’s nothing. There’s a scene where he obliviously dances his way into a hostage situation. He wears a trench coat in the desert heat. He has an evil twin. He’s emotionally perceptive but horrible at communicating. If conflict is a trolley problem, he solves it by chucking himself onto the tracks, and he’s riddled with scars from it. He’s a century and a half old and is destined to watch those he loves wither and die around him or fall to darkness. He loves everyone anyway, fiercely, recklessly, though usually from arm’s length. When he does truly let someone in, love changes him in ways that will haunt me for years. He’s painfully human