#noé arqueueviste

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Man come to think of it, it's really funny how at the beginning of VnC once Amelia's saved, Orlock is so "I'm going to put you up in a hotel and keep you within reach and supervise you while you work," but since then, he's yet to ever once willingly give Vanitas and Noé a job.

The bal masqué and Gévaudan had nothing to do with him or with Vieux Paris in general, he didn't know about the amusement park 'til after the fact, he assigned the current miel issue to Dante and co rather than Vanitas, and he specifically told Vanitas not to get involved with the catacombs.

He's like the opposite of a quest-giver NPC. Guy who exists entirely to yell at the protagonists for engaging with the plot and whose office is the setting in which the protagonists get most of their quests, but from any source other than him.

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le petit miaou miaou

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I think this point got a little lost amid the general fandom glee at Dominique and Vanitas bonding (or at least it did for me), but looking back at chapter 60, the implications that this scene has for Vanitas are fucking wild.

It's not the only aspect of her relationship with him, but a huge cornerstone of Dominique's feelings toward Noé is the fact of her absolutely massive crush on him. Like, as much as she's venting about how he frustrates her, Dominique's thoughts on Noé in this scene are the thoughts of a woman that is canonically in love with him. And Vanitas apparently thinks/feels the exact same way.

As their shared venting reaches its fever pitch, Vanitas and Dominique both reach the exact same ending point. Noé is stubborn and overly straightforward and unrelenting, and both of them feel helpless against it. And they say as much!

They say as much, and then they both cut themselves off and flinch away in the exact same way, as though they've said too much. They've revealed some deeper truth about their feelings and the ways that Noé's force of personality affects them.

Dominique reacts this way presumably because she touched a little too close to the reality of her romantic feelings for him. The thing cut off at the end of "Since he's like that, I—" is some expression of the depths of her incredible fondness for and attraction to him. And Vanitas apparently feels the exact same way as Dominique. He expresses almost the exact same outward sentiment and catches himself and flinches in the exact same way. So if Dominique is speaking here in (albeit frustrated) love, then what emotions is Vanitas speaking from?

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Frankenstein—Mary Shelley

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[Image Description: A panel from The Case Study of Vanitas. The Chasseur Ogier waves and says "Your clothes say you're dham information brokers. Is that correct?" End Description.]

Y'know I always thought that Dante and co's little matching suits were really cute, but now that we know it's a dictated uniform rather than a choice the trio made to match each other, it's honestly a little unsettling.

I know lots of jobs have uniforms, but given the power dynamics involved, something about it is just. hm.

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Lord I cannot believe it took me this long to realize this, but. Vnc's refrain of Noé trying to grab Vanitas's hand is a metaphor.

This whole time I've been reading the constant references to "Noé grabs Vanitas and saves him from falling, but one day he'll fail" as very literal foreshadowing for a day when Vanitas is going to fall and get hurt (or die?) and Noé will fail to catch him. And I still think there's a good chance that's true! However, it's also really obvious symbolism for the idea of salvation in general.

I've beaten this drum to death, but Vanitas is more or less the ultimate example of a character doomed by the narrative. He is going to die; the entire story is the buildup to his death. And one of the main conflicts is that Noé wants desperately to save him (and wants it more and more as they grow closer), but by nature of the story, we know he can't.

At least by Noé's definition of salvation, Vanitas is unsaveable. His death and suffering cannot be prevented, and despite Noé's best efforts, he is going to die by Noé's hand.

Enter the falling metaphor.

The absolute certainty of Vanitas's death works like the force of gravity. He is constantly being pulled down and down toward his doom like an endless free fall. But then Noé steps in and tries to save him, and in little ways he even succeeds! In all the little less important ways, he grabs Vanitas's hand time after time.

When Vanitas goes toppling off the ledge in Gévaudan, Noé catches him and shortens his fall. When Vanitas sinks into despair in Moreau's lab, Noé snaps him out of it. And when Vanitas gets lost in his own trauma and self-hypnosis at the amusement park, Noé brings him back to reality. For all of the little free falls, both literal and metaphorical, Noé is there for Vanitas before he hits the ground. The beating heart of their relationship is Noé's constant attempts to catch him.

However, Noé is haunted by the fear that he is going to fail someday. When Faustina reverts back to Naenia and dissipates in Gévaudan, he's shown a vision of Charlatan(?) telling him his hand cannot reach Vanitas. Naenia preys on people's worst fears and weaknesses, and this is one of Noé's. He fears that his hand will not reach the one he's grasping towards, and he will fail to save those that matter to him. The very broad line "you persist in reaching out for them" in the middle of Noé trying to literally catch someone more or less tells us outright that the falling and catching is a metaphor for salvation.

And when he speaks from the future, Noé confirms that this exact fear has come true. Noé in his narration is haunted by the regrets of "that day when I didn't grab your hand." His grand attempt at Vanitas's salvation has ultimately failed, and he didn't catch him when it mattered most.

The night that he first meets Vanitas, Noé throws himself out of an airship in the attempt to catch and save him. And from that point onward, he tries to catch him over and over again. Their relationship is one long straining outstretched hand as Noé attempts to pull Vanitas from his endless plummet downward. He is the one person deeply focused on Vanitas's salvation. However, Noé cannot ultimately stop the forces of tragedy and gravity and doom, and in the way that matters most, he can never quite reach Vanitas's hand.

There is going to be a day when Noé will be unable to catch him, and that day is the day that the entire rest of their relationship (and the entire rest of the metaphor) is building to. Noé is constantly reaching out, but he cannot save a man that is already dead, no matter how passionate the outstretched hand.

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I haven't seen anyone else point it out yet, but this line has to be alluding to something important, right?

I can't think of any context in which the description of "unstable existence" could apply to a normal vampire like Noé or Dominique, but we have seen talk of "stabilizing existence" back with Naenia in Gévaudan.

There's no way to know what's wrong yet, but something is *up* with Teacher. And based on "how long have you been like that," it's possibly a newer problem that he's developed since the last time he saw the lady Archiviste.

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Looking at this cover again in the full context of the chapter, it occurs to me that. this page comes immediately after the chapter is introduced with "this is a story."

This chapter's first two pages say: remember that this is a story, now here's the characters inside a box. Contained like they are within a narrative. Within manga panels.

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I have not stopped thinking about The Vampyre since I read it, so here's some extra trivia for y'all about Lord Ruthven's name:

VnC's Lord August Ruthven is, of course, named after the Lord Ruthven from the short story "The Vampyre." Written by John William Polidori and published in 1819, "The Vampyre" is often cited as the first piece of true modern vampire fiction. It makes sense for Mochijun to want to reference something so genre-founding.

However! The circumstances surrounding this short story (and thus the Ruthven character) are both deeply weird and deeply fascinating.

For starters, do y'all know the famous story about how Frankenstein was written? It started as a challenge between friends stuck inside due to bad weather—write a frightening story for everyone's entertainment. Mary Godwin (soon to be Mary Shelley) and her future husband Percy Shelley were there, of course, but so were the poet Lord Byron and his personal doctor: a man named John Polidori.

While Mary penned the beginning of one of the most famous books in history, Byron's own attempt at horror was abandoned partway through. He wrote a fragment of a novel about an aristocratic vampire and a foolish young man that traveled with him to Turkey, but he never inteded to finish it. However, after learning how Byron thought the tale would end, Polidori eventually came to write his own (complete) version of a similar plot.

The Vampire in Byron's fragment went by the name of Augustus Darvell, but for the majority of "The Vampyre," Polidori's titular monster calls himself Lord Ruthven. This name comes from the novel Glenarvon by Lady Caroline Lamb, a book that openly parodied and mocked Lord Byron (Lamb's ex lover) with its main character.

Now, why did Polidori name the monstrous, cruel, almost parasitic monster in his story after a parody of his patient and boss? That's because their relationship was deeply fraught. I am not the person to speak accurately on this history, so let it suffice to say that Polidori did not have a rose-colored image of Lord Byron.

Byron was famously promiscuous and often in terrible debt. He doesn't seem to have been particularly nice to his doctor. If you read about their time together in any detail, it becomes obvious why Polidori might feel the urge to mock him as a monster.

Polidori wrote a vampire that seduced, tore through, and ruined innocent young maidens. He wrote this after traveling Europe with a man who was forced to flee England with a rake's reputation and a charge of sodomy. He named his vampire Ruthven, after a caricature of Byron, because his own Ruthven was also based on the man.

In other words, the first finished story to create the modern trope of the aristocratic vampire was in large part a parody of Lord Byron. It is a monster inspired by him and named after a character that existed to sleight him. It is also based on a story that Byron wrote.

And in addition to this being generally fascinating, there's something so fun about this in the context of VnC.

The Case Study of Vanitas is its own story, but it's also so chock full of allusions and references that you could almost call it a pastiche. Half its characters are half-crafted out of pre-existing characters and historical figures, but they're only ever halfway stolen. There's always something new built from the base of the reference.

And in a big way, that's what Polidori did back when he penned the first piece of modern vampire literature. His first vampire was partly a reference to a real man, partly borrowed from a pre-existing story (Byron's fragment), and partly conjured from Polidori's own imagination. It's history and literature and new content all bundled together, just like VnC is.

Lord August Ruthven is a reference to Polidori's Lord Ruthven, who was in turn a reference to Lord Byron. He's named after both Byron's Augustus Darvell and Polidori's Ruthven, and Polidori's Ruthven is named after Lamb's Ruthven (who was also based on Lord Byron). He's yet another layer on this tower of self-referential Ruthven-ness, now totally abstracted from any real Byron traits.

As much as Mochijun is playing with the tropes and ideas of this era of vampire literature, it's really fun to see how her tendency toward allusion and reference is itself a nod back to vampire literature's beginnings. It's another way in which VnC slots in as another link in this 200 year old literary conversation.

Anyway, if you want to learn more about the bonkers story behind the Vampyre, here's a link to a not super scholarly but very entertaining essay about it.

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[Image Description: A reply from tumblr user aguacerotropical that reads "do u think he's an actual archiviste or just a shapeshifter? posted bout this earlier but I'd like to kno ur thoughts" End Description].

@aguacerotropical I'm somewhat of two minds about that at the moment.

On one hand, there are a lot of ways that Machina being an actual Archiviste wouldn't make much sense. Sir Francis Varney is a member of the vampire senate. If she's an Archiviste and this is her true form, that means that either 1, she's managed to keep her appearance, gender, etc fully secret from the vampire aristocracy for centuries, appearing at senate meetings and such exclusively in full disguise since the very beginning of vampire society, or 2, the senate knows she's an Archiviste but is keeping her secret perfectly from the rest of the world.

Like I've seen you point out elsewhere, the odds of other vampires keeping the existence of a high-ranking Archiviste secret are pretty low, especially once you get the de Sades involved, which makes me really doubt the possibility of option 2. And while option 1 is possible, it comes with its own kind of logistical dubiousness.

However, on a narrative level, I don't know how much sense it would make for her to not be an Archiviste. She's first introduced (in her lady Archiviste form) in the context of a sequence all about Noé's relationship to the idea of other Archivistes. This is an idea brought up more or less for the first time for the purpose of introducing her. Why, if not set up a plot about Machina, Noé, and the truth of what happened to the Archivistes?

Just for the sake of resolving that thread, if she's not a real Archiviste, then I think she'll have to be tied to the Archivistes in some way. If she's not going to be the vehicle by which Noé learns more about the rest of the Archiviste clan, or at least start pointing him in that direction, then why introduce her like that?

Aditionally, the opening narration of chapter 58 discusses the nature of the Archiviste clan over the image of Machina in her lady Archiviste form, and Teacher refers to himself and Machina as both being "observers." What does any of this mean if she isn't an Archiviste? I suppose both of these things could be red herrings, but to what end? Machina is presenting herself as an Archiviste visually and dedicated enough to their role that Teacher calls her an "observer." If she's not really an Archiviste, then she must have a truly spectacular and somewhat unsettling fixation on them. It's not out of the question, but it would need some serious explaining.

While I'm at it, I'd like to better address the other replies I got to this post as well. I know Francis is a somewhat unisex name! However, my biggest concern here is the fact that Machina's last name is supposedly Varney. Is that a fake surname she uses to cover up the fact that she's an Archiviste? Is Varney her real name because she's an Archiviste by look and power but doesn't have the family name? I suppose that could help explain how she's still around after the others were wiped out. Or is Varney her real name because she's not an Archiviste at all, but merely making herself look like one?

The question of "is Machina's original surname Varney, Archiviste, or something else?" is inextricably tied to the question of whether her true identity is the publicly known Marquis Machina, her current lady Archiviste persona, or something else entirely.

Also, because I am occasionally a pedant, I have to point out that Francis Varney isn't actually that unisex a name. Generally, Francis with an "i" is used as a men's name, while Frances with an "e" is used as a women's name. Maybe this is just a quirk of translation, since you would probably write "Francis" and "Frances" with the same katakana, or maybe Franny was just given a masculine name, but it does feel worth pointing out.

Plus, the name Francis Varney comes from the character of the same name in the old penny dreadful Varney the Vampire, who was very much a man.

Anyway, even if Francis is her real name, it's been made very clear that the general public believes Marquis Machina is a man, and at this point, that doesn't seem to be the case. Either Machina is a man currently presenting himself as a woman, or some seriously fun gender fuckery is happening, or she's a woman who publicly pretends to be a man. If she's faking, why? Who knows besides Teacher?

Personally, I'm betting on Francis Varney being an invented name. There's gender complications regarding Francis if she really is a woman, and there's Archiviste complications regarding Varney if she really is an Archiviste. I think I'm overall leaning a little bit more toward Machina being a real Archiviste, but I could see the case for this turning out to be another trick. There's definitely a lot of explaining to do as to how there could be an Archiviste among the senate.

Okay actually here's a thought. Given this chapter's Big Reveal, it seems like there's pretty good odds that Francis Varney, Marquis Machina's so-called real name, is actually yet another alias.

I wonder if her real name really is something Archiviste

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So while I know it sounds a little counterintuitive on the surface, one of the reasons I'm really hoping VnC goes down the Vanitas/Noé path is that, out of all the routes the romantic plot could take, VaNoé is by far the most interesting outcome for Dominique.

It's been made pretty clear that Noé is going to end up with a crush on somebody in the long run, and the beginnings of that foundation have been in place since all the way back in chapter 12. And of course, given how Domi has very strong feelings for Noé, whoever Noé ends up pursuing is going to have a huge impact on her as well.

Personally, I'm just not very interested in the stories we'd get out of Noé having feelings for Jeanne or Dominique.

Although Domi's crush on Noé is often played for fluffy comedy, it's also clearly tied into a lot of the less than healthy aspects of her character. She tried to completely rewrite herself and transform into her brother to make him happy. She tried to kill herself because she thought it would save him, and the only thing that could snap her out of her suicidal mindset was the fact that her death would make Noé sad. It is incredibly unhealthy to tie your self worth so deeply to another person like that.

Domi's had a crush on Noé since before things got so unhealthy, and she'd probably still have these problems to some degree even if she weren't in love with him, but the fact remains that the two issues are inextricably linked right now. And going further with DomiNoé would mean either leaving Domi's issues about Noé worsening/unresolved (which I doubt will happen), or writing her working through her baggage and learning to value herself outside him, then coming back to her crush with a new, healthier viewpoint. And that could technically happen!

However, I think we would make a much cleaner narrative break if Domi's learning to live for and value herself coincides with her finally moving past her feelings for Noé. Her moving on romantically would be a really good way to symbolize her moving on from her unhealthy dependence on him, and I don't want to pass that up. She needs to have something in her life that isn't connected to all her baggage about Louis.

Also, from the Noé side, I just don't see much practical evidence of him having feelings for Dominique. Chapter 12's romantic foreshadowing coincides with Noé's obvious jealousy over the whole Vanijeanne situation, so I'm pretty sure his eventual crush is going to be on one of them. And that brings me to the issue of NoéJeanne.

As I've said before, I do think there's a small amount of evidence that could support Noé's eventual crush being Jeanne, so it wouldn't be completely out of left field. However, I'm personally hoping this isn't the route Mochijun takes, and the biggest thing that turns me away from this idea is what it would mean for Dominique.

When Misha manipulates Domi during the Amusement Park arc, he uses not just her crush on Noé, but specifically her jealousy over Jeanne as ammunition against her. Because Dominique has noticed Noé's jealousy over VaniJeanne, and she fully believes that Noé has feelings for Jeanne. But the thing is, the Amusement Park arc is almost entirely a story about the destruction and pain that comes from falsely assuming that you understand a loved one. Dominique almost dies because she mistakenly thinks it's what Noé would want. Misha's whole motivation as an antagonist is trying to bring Vanitas back to a family dynamic that Vani no longer wants or believes in. And Noé's big turning point is the realization that he has to look at Vanitas clearly and think about how he actually feels, rather than judging based on his personal feelings.

So with all that said, Mochijun turning around and saying "Domi's right about Noé's feelings for Jeanne, actually" would be really weird and out of place. I'm fairly sure that, although it's implied earlier, the first time "Domi thinks Noé has a crush on Jeanne" is called out explicitly is when Domi and Jeanne talk in chapter 45. This comes immediately before the start of the Amusement Park arc, and that scene in particular serves as the buildup to Domi's imminent breakdown, so her jealousy and the themes of the Amusement Park are pretty inextricably tied.

"Domi makes a false assumption about Noé's feelings, and it leads to her fighting with her dear friend Jeanne for no good reason" would fit very well with the rest of the arc. "Domi is right about the jealousy, but wrong to fight with Jeanne anyway" would be a much clumsier from a thematic and storytelling perspective, and I'm inclined to think Mochijun knows better than that.

In short, Noé having feelings for Jeanne is possible, but it would make Domi and Jeanne's part of the amusement park arc a lot worse.

So would Noé having feelings for Vanitas be better?

For starters, Noé having feelings for Vani would make Dominique's jealousy of Jeanne incorrect, which solves the thematic problem outlined above. Beyond that, though, Noé having feelings for Vanitas would also allow for the most interesting interpretation of the original "Noé is jealous" scene from chapter 12.

In that scene, it's obvious that Noé is jealous over Vanitas and Jeanne's new romantically/sexually charged blood drinking situation. Noé thinks it's because he's jealous that Jeanne gets to drink Vanitas's blood, and Domi thinks it's because he's jealous that Vanitas is getting close to Jeanne sexually/romantically. Noé being correct is frankly not worth considering, and we just addressed why Domi being correct creates problems. However! If Noé is jealous that Jeanne is getting close to Vanitas in the romantic sense, then Domi and Noé are each half right in a way that I find both logical and compelling.

Noé struggles to understand his own feelings on a deeper level, but he can understand his own physical cravings for blood, so it makes sense that, even when feeling other types of attraction, blood is the one thing that gets through to him. Meanwhile, Dominique dislikes Vanitas and is pretty obviously attracted to Jeanne, so it follows that she'd assume Noé thinks the same way. They each have an insight into Noé that the other doesn't, and they're both also a little bit misguided, which seems pretty in keeping with their characters and VnC as a whole.

Then, on a wider scale, a "Noé's in love with Vanitas" angle would also do some really interesting things for Dominique. My best guess right now is that Domi's arc will eventually end with her finding some self worth/reason to live beyond Noé, but she'll have a long and painful process getting there. And Noé liking Vanitas would help facilitate exactly that! It could force her to accept that she's not going to get with him, which could in turn help her move on and find her self worth elsewhere, but it would also put her through. just. so much suffering. On the pettier level, she'd have to watch her dear friend and crush fall in love with someone she finds rather despicable (and for the second time!!). And on the more serious level, she'd have to watch Noé once again link his heart to a doomed man and have to reckon with the aftermath of his death.

That sounds about like the kind of growth to angst ratio that Mochijun likes to go for.

So tldr: Noé's eventual crush is almost certainly going to be on Domi, Jeanne, or Vanitas, and out of those three, Vanitas is the only option that wouldn't get in the way of what I think/hope is Domi's narrative arc. In order for her to accept that she's been misunderstanding Noé and properly start building self worth, she can't end up dating him, and Noé can't have feelings for Jeanne. That leaves VaNoé as the best and only option for Dominique.

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Mochijun said you will consider the intimacy of leaning back to back against a loved one

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For real though I have so many thoughts about Vanitas and how he’s expressing affection

He’d rather die than admit to caring about/loving someone, but he tells Noé he’s done making him do what he wants (translation: he’s accepted and come to count on Noé’s promise to stay beside him) and that he wants him to be the one to kill him (translation: he trusts and cares for him deeply). And then later that same day, he goes unprompted to cook Noé his favorite desert.

Whether you read it as romantic, platonic, or somewhere in between, Vanitas has been showing so much open love for Noé these past couple chapters. It’s clear that “I will never set you free” and everything else that went along with that moment had a huge positive impact on him and his relationship to Noé, and it’s really cool to see.

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I've been thinking a bit about why Noé resonates so much with me as an ace person, and I'm realizing that, in addition to the depiction of his actual romantic relationships/attraction, the way that Noé fits into Vnc's erotic blood drinking symbolism is extremely familiar.

Overall, when someone in VnC gets their blood drunk consensually, it tends to be portrayed as part of a sexual relationship. Vanitas, for example, is attracted to Jeanne, and one part of that attraction is that he wants her to drink his blood. The blood drinking itself feels good, and he enjoys it, but his desire to be bit is not the entirety of their relationship, and Jeanne's eventual attraction to him is much the same. She likes drinking his blood, but she also pretty explicitly says she wants to sleep with him. It's a part of the whole.

Or, to give a non-VaniJeanne example, when Veronica starts going into detail about her "fling" with Marquis Machina, Domi refers to it as Veronica talking about "her sex life." So while we don't see everything she says about the encounter, I think the fact of the joking censorship itself implies that Veronica's describing something more graphic than the blood drinking we do see in other scenes. Beyond the blood drinking itself and how it feels, the broader context of the act is portrayed as sexual (and often part of a sexual relationship).

And then we have Noé.

Unlike almost everyone else in the series, when Noé talks about his desire to drink blood, it is completely abstracted out of its sexual context. When he gets The Blood Talk from his teacher, he says that he likes drinking blood because it tastes good, and though he's grown into an adult since that point, his reasoning doesn't seem to have changed. The implications of Louis's "sweet talk" suggestion (you have to charm/seduce someone before they'll let you do this physical thing with them) go completely over his head even in the present.

Furthermore, when he does drink Domi's blood, he does so completely without the further sexual context shown elsewhere. Mochijun does not shy away from showing us when characters are attracted to one another (even when they're not couples), and though Noé's perhaps a bit more complicated, since we know he struggles to identify/understand the feelings of attraction he does have, it is never once suggested that he finds Dominique attractive.

Noé enjoys an act that is objectively a bit sexual (given the physical acts/sensations involved), and that clearly has an erotic context for others who do it, but he enjoys it for more or less non-sexual reasons. He's interested in something erotic because he enjoys the physical act (the taste) of it, and probably also the general closeness/connection, but he shows no sexual attraction to his partner.

And let me tell you, for more sex-favorable ace people, that whole previous paragraph has to sound pretty familiar. Because while blood drinking doesn't work as a 1:1 parallel to real world sex, given that actual sex also exists as a separate but related option for Vnc characters, "engaging in sex-acts without the need for sexual attraction" is just. what ace people do. And so to people familiar with that experience, Noé's whole weirdly non-sexual relationship to blood starts to feel extremely ace-coded.

Even with Vanitas, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that Noé's relationship to wanting Vani's blood also really resonates with how some ace people do experience attraction. Because again, we're never given any particular indication that Noé finds Vanitas sexually attractive, or even particularly good looking. Even accounting for the fact that queer-coding might have to be subtler or the fact that Noé's bad at recognizing his feelings, it's just not there. I'd even argue that there's better evidence of Vanitas finding Noé attractive than vice versa.

Yet, despite all that, Noé really wants Vanitas's blood. Not only that, but he wants Vanitas's blood in a way that is inextricably tied to his desire to understand him as a person. He wants him because his blood smells good, and also because he wants to see his memories, and this intense desire for physical intimacy and understanding (completely absent of sexual attraction) works really well as a metaphor for what attraction can feel like as an ace person. The metaphor, again, isn't 1:1, and it doesn't apply to every kind of ace experience, but still. Here's a character who wants to do something erotic with someone he's not sexually attracted to, and he wants to do it because 1: he thinks he'll enjoy the physical act, and 2: he thinks it'll further his relationship with/help him better understand the other person involved.

That is a really good representation of why some ace people are drawn to sex within romantic relationships.

And while in any other case I'd insist that suggesting Mochijun's queercoding is an accident is a bit insulting, I honestly have no idea what to make of this. I have no clue how known/visible asexuality is among people in Japan, but I know that in my own experience with American media, intentionally ace-coded characters are incredibly rare, so I struggle to think that I might be so lucky as to find one in shonen manga of all places. At the same time though, vnc is a series filled with a lot of different kinds of queer coding (and occasionally straight-up queerness), so if anyone was going to do it, I suppose it would be Mochijun.

But intentional or not, it's really striking to me just how well Noé's relationship to blood works as a metaphor for being interested in sexual acts as an asexual person, which I think is why so many of us end up reading him and saying "hey same." Even if you don't sit down to unpack all the symbolism, his experience is just. familiar.

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I've been thinking more about the visual parallel between the leans in chapters 55.5 and 18, and there's one difference between them that really stands out to me.

Though it's a small change, I think it's really significant that this time, Vanitas is the one supporting Noé.

After the catacombs, this scene marks a shift in their relationship, and Vanitas laying against Noé shows how he's finally beginning to place a little trust in him. He's accepted Noé's insistence on staying beside him, and after "not yet," he's beginning to see that Noé could even be a support system sometimes. Thus, in a moment of exhaustion and weakness, he's using him for physical support.

However, though this is a nice first show of vulnerability from Vanitas, it's not exactly a comfortable moment for Noé. The fact that Vani leans on him is clearly a shock, and up until this moment, he's been sitting and worrying about whether it's okay to ask Vanitas about his past. Their connection is budding here, but it's unstable, and Noé is quite aware of that instability. He's treading on eggshells to try and make sure he doesn't hurt his friend.

Compare that to how Noé acts in 55.5.

As soon as Misha leaves, before Vanitas has said a word about their fight the night before, Noé collapses against Vani's back. Vanitas even protests as he does so, but Noé needs support and to be close to him in that moment, so he leans. Their relationship is so strong by the end of the storm that, even without having talked things out yet, Noé knows on some level that he can count on Vanitas supporting him. Gone are the eggshells.

It's not that Noé never has to be careful with Vanitas anymore, but their relationship has become fundamentally more reciprocal than it was in the catacombs. Vanitas has begun to do his share of helping and supporting Noé, and has let slip that he really truly does care about him, so Noé knows he can lean on him physically as well.

We've gone from Noé being Vanitas's stubborn, unwanted tagalong supporter to them being a partnership of equals that can each count on the other when they need to, and it's really nice to see.

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My taste in favorite characters is very specific