#His willingness to sacrifice himself is less a matter of conscious value placement on his own life

[panvani]

VnC spoilers this is sort of meaningless rambling but oh whatever

There’s also the thing of how Vanitas hurts people, and he hurts people in a way that’s terrible and spiteful and malicious and he knows he’s hurting them, but there’s a very consistent framing of the hurt he inflicts upon other people being something he perceives as ultimately for a greater cause. (Which is extremely something Mochizuki has written before, lol.) Even his instances of seemingly random cruelty are motivated by some degree of attraction or fondness, on the basis that he believes any affection towards himself is repulsive. The reason Noé was able to get close to him was because he deliberately frames his actions of clear concern and genuine liking for Vanitas as something he does spitefully, or out of pathological fascination rather than... Noé is nice, he thinks Vanitas is interesting, and on least on some level he considers Vanitas a friend.

Vanitas finds the idea of someone making sacrifices for him to be repulsive as well. Codependency is attractive to him- he revels in the idea of being Jeanne’s executioner and is all too happy to frame their relationship around her impending insanity and death. He certainly takes at least some degree of pleasure in extracting things from others, or else why bother? But Noé himself acknowledges that Vanitas considers any amount of hurt by others for his own sake- even if the relative hurt to others would be less than Vanitas’ had they not acted- to be something despicable.

Which is what’s currently driving me up the wall about the latest chapter, because it means whatever Vanitas wants to hurt Noé over, it’s not something Vanitas believes he personally would benefit from.

#Vanitas and Vincent are Very Different Guys but also this post is kind of what is going on w both of them lol #Hence the comparisons... #Important distinction tho is that Vanitas is far more impulsive and far less principled #His willingness to sacrifice himself is less a matter of conscious value placement on his own life #And more a lack of concern #As he outright openly characterizes it #He simply doesn't care if he lives or dies or if bad things happen to him #And subsequently doesn't actually really care about the potential harm and benefit of his actions in a conscious sense #So much as he just... hates himself very deeply and seeks to be punished #Which kind of yeah there are different kind of twists u apply w antags vs protags #Anyway #logxx #logam