#a rare occurrence on the 'year old asks in my drafts folder' blog

[neversetyoufree]

do you think it’s possible vanitas could somehow mark noé one day? cuz i was going through a few pics (vampire vanitas art and chapter 11) and i was wondering if you think this is a coincidence or not

[Image Description: Two images of Noé Archiviste's hand and wrist. The first is a cropped section of the cover illustration for the Winter 2022 issue of エス Magazine. Noé is holding bright red rose petals, and blood is running from the petals down his wrist. The second image is a cropped section of a page from the Case Study of Vanitas manga. It shows Noé's hand below a text box reading "The regrets of that day..." Noé's hand and arm are spattered with blood. End ID.]

Oh interesting idea! I'm assuming by "wondering if this is a coincidence," you mean the double occurrence of blood on Noé's wrist?

If so, then as of right now, I don't think I'm inclined to read that as foreshadowing for a mark. In particular, in the chapter 11 example, both Noé and Vanitas's hands are pretty blood-covered in the full version of the image, so I don't think we can read into the blood on Noé in particular.

[Image Description: A full version of the above Case Study of Vanitas page. It shows Noé reaching down toward Vanitas's hand. Both of their hands, as well as some of the surrounding space, are covered in spatters of blood].

If one specific bit of blood was meant to be significant, then why let it blend in with all the rest of the splatter, y'know?

As for the magazine cover image, then, I don't think you can make much of it without support. If there were other specific images of blood on Noé's (and only Noé's) wrist/hand, then that might be something, but since I don't think we have that, I'm inclined to read the blood in the vamp vanitas pic more as standard-issue bloody flower imagery.

However, I noticed that the version of the chapter 11 panel that you used (and the one that I used) has some funky white lines on Noé's wrist. I originally thought those were a quirk of the scan, since I couldn't find them in other versions, but @torterrachampion says they're actually a detail mochijun added for the volume reprint only. And that's really interesting! The fact that she went out of her way to add them suggests that they're important, but I couldn't begin to say what they are. They remind me a bit of both the Book's constellation motif and Vanitas and Misha's Mark cracks, so I suppose it's not out of the question that they could be a Mark from Vanitas.

So overall, Vanitas marking Noé is a neat idea, but I don't think the images you've provided work as evidence to prove it for sure (provided I've understood your meaning correctly, at least). It's possible those white lines could be something, but it's hard to say for sure what. I'd love to hear others' thoughts on the subject!

(Also, note that I did just rewrite a chunk of this post since Torterra pointed that out for me, so if you saw the older, more negative version. whoops).