#Anyway tl;dr you're completely correct the way the story treats Noé is totally different from the way it treats anyone else

[panvani]

i’ll be real i did expect hello charlotte to be pulled on me but regardless. i do understand noé feels no *desire* towards children but the majority of the characters who commit acts of sexual violence don’t feel attraction for their victims, but they are still portrayed as vile for it, and noé feels really exempt from this? for example, i sincerely doubt ruthven is attracted to jeanne, but he is still portrayed as despicable for sexually abusing her. similarly, i doubt luna felt such inclinations towards their children, or even had any desire to hurt them, but i have no choice but to call them a pedophile seeing as they definitely sexually abused both vanitas and mikhail. i get the feeling that the author is concerned that fans may dislike noé, and is just running herself frantic telling us he is a nice person. which i don’t really think is a cause of concern since i’m pretty sure people love vanitas despite what he’s done. i guess i’m just not a fan of how the story is handling noé.

I think this is all a very reasonable response to the story and the way it's presented and I in large part agree. The last few chapters especially have, I think, been pretty odd and tonally discordant with the series as a whole. I have a few ideas as to why this might be (including that the author... is evidently having some personal issues right now) but for now I'm treating what has been presented recently in good faith and assuming the story will generally continue with its established themes.

All that being said, I think a very important thing you're missing in this analysis is that Noé is the narrator. Every moral judgement made explicitly by the narrative is, in fact, Noé's judgement, and the thing that makes Noé interesting to me is how effectively this fact is erased, despite his being the narrator having been explicit since the first chapter and repeatedly brought to attention since.

You're in fact completely correct that the story exhibits a lot of inconsistencies in its moral judgement specifically when it comes to Noé; it's also made clear that Noé is an unreliable narrator and extremely inconsistent in his moral judgement. In a particularly obvious example, the chapter immediately prior to VnC's year long hiatus has Noé dismiss his own sexual assault on the basis that Chloé and Jean Jacques are "nice people," which multiple characters immediately acknowledge as disturbing.

The arc in which Noé assaults Misha is by far most overt about emphasizing that Noé is both morally inconsistent and an unreliable narrator. The arc is framed by Domi's account of Louis's death and how it differs drastically from that which Noé previously gave, and its conflict, in contrast to previous arcs, mostly relies on Noé's failures to appreciate his relationships and the effects he has on others. He loves Domi, but is ignorant to the abuse she faces and her feelings toward suicide. He's obsessed with Vanitas, but as repeatedly pointed out, he knows almost nothing of substance about him, and is particularly blind to Vanitas' feelings towards him. In this arc, Noé (who is being presented as 'neutral' narration) contradicts his own account of his first meeting with Vanitas, then acknowledges that he ignored his own capacity to cause Vanitas harm. In this arc, a third party explicitly states that Noé's capacity for violence stems mostly from Noé's self-assurance when it comes to his own morality; Noé understands himself as a good person with strong principles, and so Noé assumes any action he perpetuates is morally righteous or at least neutral, regardless of its effective violence. I do not think it was an accident that all of this happened in the same arc!

I think it's also important to point out that all of this is a very long time coming in terms of Noé's character development. Noé's driving conflict as a character is mostly that he is very principled and very strong willed, but that these principles were developed were developed in effective isolation, and quickly break down when applied in real moral quandaries. Noé is a very good person in the abstract (he clearly has a real understanding of sexual consent, unlike Vanitas and Jeanne!) but has no way of resolving moral problems in material conditions. Thus when he is sexually assaulted during the Gévaudan arc he makes no effort to actually morally analyze this, regarding Chloé and Jean Jacques not as generally well intentioned people who are nonetheless clearly capable of great harm, but instead ontologically Good People, and thus not real perpetrators of sexual assault, even when Noé was perfectly willing to acknowledge their actions as such before getting to know them. Similarly, when Noé struggles in his conflict with Astolfo on the basis that the latter is the child, Vanitas' assurances during the conflict are evidently taken not with respect to the actual conditions, but as an assurance that Astolfo has been removed from an ontological Good category but is now Deserving Of Violence. Noé is incredibly distressed at the idea of hurting Astolfo until he is given permission to ignore the conditions of their fight, at which point he attacks Astolfo with near-lethal force and does no further moral reflection on the matter! And while we are led to believe that in Astolfo's case this force was necessary, it's still, in my opinion important to acknowledge that Noé's conflict with Misha was immediately preceded with Noé being told that he is "allowed" to commit violence against children.

All that being said, I do understand if you think that Noé's behavior surrounding Astolfo does not necessarily precipitate his behavior surrounding Misha, and I do agree that it is a severe escalation. I think another important factor to bring up when I say that Noé's apparent moral degeneration has been very heavily foreshadowed is that Noé is a very clear foil to Ruthven who, as you point out, is clearly morally condemned by the story as a rapist. There honestly isn't much to analyze on this one, it's just kind of true! Specifically, Noé is shown to have the same or very similar ideals to that of Ruthven in his youth, and it's strongly implied that Ruthven's assault of Noé immediately prior to the Gévaudan arc was in some way instigated by Ruthven recognizing Noé as very similar to himself. It's not hard to see what is being foreshadowed in comparing Noé, a scholarly, intellectual idealist whose conflict centers on his attempts to apply his ideals to the real world to Ruthven, a former idealist intellectual-activist who grows into a violent and cynical politician after years of disgrace. Take this also with Ruthven's assault of Chloé and Jeanne, then with Vanitas as foil to Astolfo and Misha, and Noé's patterns of violence begin to strongly cohere.

Sort of the nail in the coffin, however, is evident from the conceit of the story itself: Vanitas' motivation throughout the entirety of the story has been to die and disappear. He wants to hide his past trauma and especially that related to Luna (which, we agree, is that he had been sexually abused by his adoptive parent) and is apparently so scared of having this being revealed that he attempts to kill Noé and risks his own life in his efforts to conceal it.

And we fucking know that Luna raped Vanitas, because Noé killed him then made the fucking Case Study of Vanitas!!!!!!!!!!

#logxx #I tried to limit the scope of this response to the text of VnC itself #But if you are still not sure about the intent of Noé's character #I think what I say here goes from 'what is apparently being set up' to 'virtually text' if you know who Gilbert Nightray is LOL #Sorry for long post #csa ment #rape ment #It is a long post about VnC. #incest ment #Anyway tl;dr you're completely correct the way the story treats Noé is totally different from the way it treats anyone else #Because Noé is the one telling the story #And Noé fundamentally cannot reconcile his self image with his past and his actions