#this post kinda just turned into me rambling and promoting my other meta posts haha whoops

[neversetyoufree]

What are your thoughts about Vanijeanne and Dominoé? A lot of people think that they’re forced and have no chemistry whatsoever, especially with Vanijeanne. As a Vanoé shipper, I don’t really mind Vanijeanne but I see a lot of people who are annoyed at that ship. Could you give your perspective on this discourse?

Y'know anon, generally speaking my opinion on anything that can be labeled "shipping discourse" is "I am an adult woman with a job and thus physically incapable of caring about this." It takes a lot for me to find other people's shipping habits actively annoying, as I mostly just. ignore and/or block anything that I'm personally not into.

My personal thoughts on shipping are also colored by the fact that I have a somewhat uncommon relationship to the concept. My engagement with fandom has become extremely focused on analysis rather than transformation in the past few years. I am much more hung up on focusing on canon and canon only than I think a lot of other people are. My opinion on Vnc ships is mostly defined by "do I think they're attracted to each other in canon?" which I realize is not how everyone else picks their favorite romances.

I suppose my take on DomiNoé is that I don't ship them, but mostly that's just not really the context in which I think about their relationship. My read on canon is that Domi's crush on Noé is unrequited. I don't think he's shown evidence of being attracted to her, and I also think it would really undermine the amusement park arc's thematic beats if it turned out Domi's jealousy of Jeanne was "justified." I wrote way more about this previously.

I love Domi and Noé's relationship. I find it tragic and fascinating, and there's a lot of love between them. Given the physical/blood aspect of their whole thing, they're like, super close friends with benefits in which one of the friends is madly in love with the other. And also the one that's in love is deeply traumatized and mentally ill and obsessed with not being a burden to the other guy. And the one that's not in love is compulsively unable to recognize both the crush and the trauma. I could write about their weird-ass bullshit forever. How could you say they don't have chemistry?

However, I'm aware that "I think Noé's feelings are platonic and I love digging into their tragic dysfunction" isn't generally what a person means when they say they "ship" DomiNoé. So like, I dunno man. My relationship to their whole thing is kinda separate from the concept of shipping. I'm just here to watch the toxic drama.

And on the VaniJeanne end it's like. Their relationship is a whole complicated can of worms that I cannot begin to get into properly in this post. They're toxic they're in love they're doomed to fail they're each other's parallels. Whether I "ship" them depends heavily on your definition of ship.

Do I want the series to end declaring Vanitas and Jeanne as true love and Vnc's one true couple? No. Do I seek out fanworks about their relationship? Generally no. Do I think their canon relationship is healthy or all unambiguous romance? No. But do I find their whole thing really fascinating? Absolutely.

VaniJeanne is a relationship that starts with an extremely non-consensual kiss. That instance of assault is then followed by multiple scenes of Vanitas goading Jeanne into yet more physical intimacy/sexual contact that she very much claims on the surface not to want. And that, kids, is what we might call sexual harassment and coercion. That is not a foundation that you can build a healthy relationship on.

Furthermore, I will admit that I find it really unsettling when a certain small subset of VaniJeanne fans cannot admit that the non-consensual scenes between them are what they are. Back when the anime was first airing, I saw a lot of people new to the series start talking about how much they shipped them after episode three, when their only romantic interaction was the forced kiss. And I suppose that's my most discourse-y opinion about this whole thing, because I do not like people who cannot tell when something is meant to be a depiction of assault.

I realize that Mochijun abruptly changes tones to comedy during/right after the kiss, but still. I do think uncritically romanticizing that moment speaks to a pretty striking lack of media comprehension. The entire point of that scene (the hostage plan, the kiss, the dhams' commentary, etc) is the reveal that Vanitas is a freaky little asshole (affectionate).

However! Their relationship doesn't stay purely in this realm of exclusively non-consent. They evolve during the date and Gévaudan, and as of my writing this (hello post-57 hiatus), their whole thing has gotten more complex. I think Jeanne is getting a lot out of having Vanitas there for her at this point, and Vanitas is starting to treat her more like a person rather than a prop to bounce his trauma responses off of. I can't say much more about it because I frankly just haven't unpacked everything from more recent VaniJeanne yet. I haven't worked out what to make of it besides that it's compelling and bizarre.

Anyway, if you want my more specific thoughts on VaniJeanne stuff, you can read more about why I think Vanitas kissed her in the first place and why I think the violation of consent motif kinda works for Jeanne and her story. The lack of consent itself is absolutely serving a purpose in both their stories.

VaniJeanne are two deeply damaged people using one another to cope with their respective traumas and illnesses, and it's wild and fascinating and very often (though not always) unhealthy as hell. I don't think "forced" is at all the right word to describe their whole thing. But at the same time, I do find uncritical romanticization of their more questionable moments eyebrow-raising at best.

At the end of the day, like I said, I just don't know if "do you ship them?" is the best lens to ask this question through. I probably don't, by most people's definition, since I'm cheering for endgame Vanoé, but that doesn't mean their relationship isn't interesting as hell. And even I have to admit that I find some of VaniJeanne's later and fluffier moments genuinely sweet and fun.

VaniJeanne and DomiNoé aren't my preferred picks for endgame romances, and I don't personally tend to seek them out in fanworks. And at least in DomiNoé's case, I don't think canon supports a mutual romance. But that doesn't mean I find their relationships annoying or have anything inherently against people who have them as their preferred ships. I think talking about VaniJeanne responsibly takes a bit of care and nuance, given how much their relationship deals with the violation of autonomy and consent, but that doesn't mean I'm, like, against people shipping them.

They're the closest VnC currently has to an official couple, and I am, as established, obsessed with canon. By definition I cannot disregard them.

Also, like I said at the beginning, I tend to just block anyone that I see with a particularly bad take and then move on with my life. Aside from being a bit startled when I occasionally come across, like, some real weird pro-vanijeanne-assault youtube comments or whatever, I devote very little mental space to "shipping discourse"

[multi-void-household]

I don’t like dogpiling so I’ve stayed out but you know I think I actually have something unique and of value to say so idk. I stopped following/reading swamp-wizard’s blog some time ago, when I, personally, felt his meta was taking a nasty and personal turn. I didn’t know until today, when someone provided receipts, that he’d been vagueing me. Specifically, quoting an unattributed passage from Homebrew, a very very very NSFW dirkjake fic I wrote like over a year ago with some shit about how toxic it was and how it’s a great example of how not to write POC characters. And, Here’s the thing, The passage, out of context, without knowing what was in my head at the time, actually kind of does sound kinda shitty, low-key, dog-whistley racist, describing Jake as looking dark and dangerous. In the same paragraph, I make the mistake of pointing out the contrast between his white teeth and dark skin. It was because I just personally think Jake’s smile is his defining characteristic and that flash of shining teeth is just devastating to Dirk and everyone else alive for that matter and you know also that dark wasn’t meant as a physical description and that was what I *meant* and blah blah I didn’t mean blah blah but you know, intent isn’t magic. I didn’t *intend* for the passage to evoke a shitty mandingo cliche, but you know, does that matter? It can easily be read that way and that’s pretty shitty. I’m revising the paragraph as we speak because... why leave something there that could promote a not only negative but honestly pretty dangerous stereotype? So here’s the thing, why I think this post is even worth adding to all the hot takes already circulating today. I *don’t* hateread. So I *didn’t* see the post or even know it existed. I could have looked at and changed the passage months ago if, instead of hatereading my work and vagueing about me on a blog with five times my followers, someone had approached me in good faith, which I have always tried to extend to others, and pointed out the unfortunate implications I hadn’t, in my privilege, noticed. This is kind of a ramble, but what I’m trying to say, I guess, is that vague-blogging from a position of assumed moral authority doesn’t change anything, it doesn’t foster productive dialogue, and it doesn’t push any sort of positive change. And maybe I’m a garbage person who doesn’t deserve that courtesy, I’m the sort of person not even worth educating, but lord, someone actually being triggered by my accidentally shitty phrasing could have been avoided with a message saying “hey, you probably didn’t intend, but ______.” Hatereading, vagueing, cultivating a tone of moral superiority -- it isn’t just mean, unpleasant, divisive, hostile... it’s just fucking unproductive, mate. Awareness, change, and understanding doesn’t come from catty call-outs behind a screen of plausible deniability. (Hi yes I’m aware that the bad faith reading of this post is “haha look at this bitch speaking authoritatively on the morality of positioning yourself as a moral authority,” but also, I raise you, can we not?)