#sad carts

[s2z]

Preston East, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. 2024-06-24 08:10:21 by stuart murdoch Via Flickr: What a mess One of several projects, that explore photography as evidence amongst other ideas. Tumblr | Instagram | Photography links | my Ko-fi shop | F*#kYeahTrolleyed | s2z digital garden | pixelfed.social | vero | Dpreview albums | my work archived on trove at the N.L.A.

[impactrueno]

season 4 lydia

[neversetyoufree]

Looking back, I wonder how much of Vanitas's choice in this scene is tied to the fact that he was given a choice in the first place.

So much of Vanitas's character is centered around the theme of self-determination (and the lack thereof). He is absolutely deprived of any control over his body and/or destiny at many of the key points in his life, and nowadays he's always desperately grasping at what few shards of self-determination he does have. This is why he freaks out when Roland talks about him being "under the vampires' power" in mémoire 15. It's why he's hung up on the idea of freedom as isolation from others' influence. It's why his main response to being triggered is to do something crazy and cause a scene; it puts him in control of the situation.

All that to say, when Luna destroys Moreau's lab and agrees to take Misha away, Vanitas must be desperate to feel some form of in-control, but I do not think he expects to be given any choice in what happens to him next. He's been conditioned not to expect that despite how much he wants it.

Vanitas certainly doesn't have much agency in how he lives his life as a child, as no kid gets to pick their parents or circumstances, and Vani has it especially rough with the death of his mother hanging over his head. Then his father dies protecting him, and he dies in a situation in which Vanitas is utterly powerless. Horror erupts into his life out of nowhere, and his dad throws himself in front of some fangs, and there's nothing Vanitas can do but watch it happen.

Next there's Vanitas's brief time training as a chasseur, which is one part of his history we know little about, so it's hard for me to say how free his choice was. He may have been pressured into joining, as we know the Chassuers aren't above pushy/manipulative recruitment of children (Astolfo), but I could also see his choice to hunt vampires made as a trauma response to the powerlessness of the vampire attack he survived. "I was powerless, so I'll claim the power to enact violence and make sure they can't hurt me or others again."

Then Vanitas is abducted by Doctor Moreau, which strips him of his agency just about as awfully as anything possibly could.

Vanitas the test subject has no bodily autonomy. He is poked and prodded and experimented on, because his body is an object of science to Moreau, not the vessel of a person with rights or self-determination. His only big active choices during his captivity are the choice to not run away for fear of somebody else suffering and the choice to volunteer in Mikhail's place. The only choices he can make are the choices to stay and throw himself even deeper into his own violation. Even his relationship with Misha is something that just kind of Happens to him. The kid is a force of nature that Moreau dumps on him without his say.

(This isn't Mikhail's fault, as Misha is just a child that wants affection, but having a needy, vulnerable little brother figure suddenly dropped on him in the midst of all that horror couldn't have made Vanitas feel less out of control).

Then Vanitas's torment by Moreau hits its climax, and Vanitas is told that not only has his body been violated by way of pain and torture—even his basic humanity has been and will be stripped from him. He now feels the disgust of having the blood of something he hates inside of him without his consent. And he's about to be killed, turned into a mindless husk of a "living key" instead of a person.

And that's when Luna shows up. This mysterious, incredibly powerful being appears and wreaks havoc on Moreau's lab like an avenging angel, and it agrees to Mikhail's request to take "us" along with it. Everything in Vanitas's life so far has taught him that he is powerless in the face of others' great power. Horrible shit just keeps happening to him forever, and this monstrous person sounds like they've just agreed to carry him off on Mikhail's request without a word of input from him. Of course he doesn't expect to be given a choice.

But he is.

Luna scoops up Mikhail, then they turn to Vanitas and ask if he would like to come along with them as well. After months or years of absolutely all of his autonomy and power being stripped away from him, the most powerful being Vanitas has ever encountered stops and gives him a choice about what he'd like to do next. They give him the option to go off on his own and decide his own fate rather than go along with them. And that's why Vanitas doesn't run away.

These are the images that flash through Vanitas's head right before he gets up and runs to Luna:

These moments are what inform Vanitas's choice. The memories of his father's death and Moreau's final experiment on him—his two most awful moments of abject helplessness.

When Vanitas runs to Luna and accepts their offer, these moments are what he's running from. He's fleeing from his inability to do anything or control his fate. He's running from a life of stolen agency. He's running toward the one adult who actually stopped and gave him a choice about what he'd like to do next.

Vanitas chooses Luna because they, despite having the power to kill or subdue him, give him the freedom to choose to accompany them in the first place. He's drawn to them not for protection, but as an escape to a life where he gets to keep making choices and grasp some agency.

Luna is the savior that gives Vanitas his freedom and autonomy back after it's stolen by Moreau. That's why it's so tragic that Vanitas carries their Mark in the present day. It's undeniable proof that, in their right mind or not, some version of Luna violated the fundamental trust and gift of autonomy that brought Vanitas into their family in the first place.

Luna's bite, both the physical violation and the transformation into inhumanity that it brings, is yet another way that Vanitas is stripped of all control of his body and fate.

[etrevil]

breast nibbler and the lady whose breast were nibbled

[solsticesoda]

Here's Cooper my TADC oc in @sm-baby 's Carnival AU. He is playing Roller Coaster Tycoon and you are the unfortunate guest.

[kopiken-d]

How is it that we have so little of their backstory still…I just read the entire series and watched a few episodes and I mainly just wanna know about these two

A note on the The Case Study of Vanitas: I really wanted to like the series as a whole buttttt I cannot stress how tired I am of some of these shonen romance/love story plot lines. Can we stop treating sensitive/inappropriate/potentially triggering situations as gags??💩

The art and writing is generally very pretty though and the world building is cool! Idk much about French history(?) but it seems to be cleverly interwoven into the events of the series.

[boxheadpaint]

if I look back on my earliest of posts (which I will not do for my health) I’ll feel the need to ask that young man how he feels and if he knows how he feels. Did something come out of sync along the way between emotion and language and expression to resemble something like fear or was this always the trajectory. Would also ask him not to eat entire cakes by himself in his room in the dark looking at a laptop on the floor which all on their own are fine but combined is like actively inviting chaos into your life (Ants and migraines)

[bibleofficial]

yea i’m 100% certain this batch of carts are straight up spice lol

[autiwara]

I'm gonna pretend this was on purpose, for my own mental health 🫶

[bookdragonquotes]

[chuusins]

omgg??? CASE STUDY OF VANITAS?? IN THIS ECONOMY??

i lowkey dont see many people writing for vnc, its so underrated 😭

and the fics on wattpad dont satisfy my hunger for vanitas that well 😔

THISS

went back to the tag to see if there were any new works since I left the fandom and there were like 5. i left 2 years ago

[callilemon]

"Blood will stain"

Tribute to @noes-pillow, who is an incredible writer and friend!

PLEASE CHECK THEM OUT AND SUPPORT THEM!!!!

[retracexcviii]

Vanitas no carte Stage play comic translation (part 2)

Hi there again. Last cleanings and edits. All this translations were made again by J, check the link:

https://www.instagram.com/_jolene_c/

Note 1: last 2 comics are not related to the stage play. One is about a song singed by Chloé and JJ voice actors and the other is when the anime ended, but since they were presented as tiny comics we decided to make them too.

Note 2: there are a lot, a very big a lot, more comics like this made by Jun that I never cleaned and were never translated. You can visit the author's Twitter to find them

Note 3: I made a drive with my cleaned versions in case someone wanted to use them to translate to other languages. I share it with you too:

[daguerreotyping]

Carte de visite of a Union soldier with identification on back reading "This is David Williams his photograph," c. 1860s

[gobbluthbutagirl]

my phone made me a video called “on this day june 1, 2022” and it’s just like 10 upper-half-of-the-face-only selfies i took in front of the pride flag that was falling off the wall in the target break room set to “landslide” by fleetwood mac. Ok

[fairladybellaphram]

I don’t remember if I made a post about this already or not

I’m glad the mess of the Bratz mean girls drop has everyone angry and boycotting scalpers and everything but it’s so weird to me that I see a lot of people acting like this is the first time something like this has happened? I’m sorry I still remember the picture of a scalper who managed to get 110 Jack and sally doll sets and nobody was screaming “don’t buy from scalpers we need to do something about this!” Like genuinely this is how so many of the Skullector drops have gone but it’s specifically a Bratz problem? Idk I feel like a lot of the doll community has a lot of double standards with monster high and other doll lines lol