ruthven

[ruthven]

Jokes aside, there's something grossly and darkly ironic about seeing Ogier (a human) lusting after Domi (a vampire) one chapter/a few in-universe minutes after he displays such spectacular hatred of and violence toward Dhampirs.

I think there's a reason Mochijun chose to have a Chasseur hit on a vampire he's fighting for the first time at the top of this Dhampir-centric arc. Dhampirs are the children of humans and vampires, yet now we see how the very people who hate them are happy to indulge in interspecies lust when it suits them. It really distills how Ogier's actions are part of this larger cycle of sexual violence and discrimination; his declared attraction is just another weapon to inflict.

The topic of dhampirs' place in this society and the topic of sexual/gendered violence between humans and vampires feel. linked. even if not all or even most dhams result from violence.

[ruthven]

ETA Hoffman's Tomcat Murr and Noé Archiviste: A Tale of References Referencing References

(A sculpture of German writer ETA Hoffman (1776-1822) and his cat Murr in Bamberg, Germany that inspired the creation of Noé Archiviste and Murr in The Case Study of Vanitas by Jun Mochizuki.)

So, this is a long post with a lot of quotes. The idea is that Mochijun took the general structure for the manga from this obscure text by otherwise well known writer ETA Hoffman. The pictures speak for themselves, but the introduction to the text recalls a lot of VnC's themes.

This is the text im using: The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr (1820). (link to Anna's Archive).

From Fantasy and Science Fiction:

This complex, truly wild fiction, created in the mid-1800's, is the autobiography of the tomcat Murr, written on the backs of the pages of a manuscript he has clawed to pieces. Interspersed with Murr's musings is the biography of Kappelmester, Johannes Kreisler, Murr's owner. Kreisler was the pseudonym under which ETA Hoffmann published his brilliant critical essays on music, and Murr was the real name of his cat. Through these two entities, he pieced together the fragments of his own shattered psyche and commented on the relationship of art and artists to society

And now I am simply going to cherry-pick some quotes from the book's introduction. I wanted to write a long essay on them, but that is simply not happening any time soon. VnC fandom theorists - knock yourselves out:

On Plagirism and References:

“Murr’s wilful destruction of Kreisler’s book, by which his work becomes a palimpsest, signals the novel’s fascination with reflections and plagiarism. This is also evident in the innumerable quotations from Goethe, Shakespeare, Mozart and many others.

Literature arises through a dialogue with earlier art, being both imitation and aesthetic cannibalism.

On the protagonists:

“The protagonists prove to be opposites, too, Murr (Noé-ish) being the lovable cat, a calm, integrated, vain, self-satisfied and confident bourgeois who enjoys an unproblematic relation to his comrades and the opposite sex. (Alright the opposite sex bit barely applies sexually or romantically, but there is an air of innocence that is familiar.).

Kreisler (Vanitas-like) by contrast, is the neurasthenic, anguished genius, unable to find a niche in society or to satisfy his desires; an artist whose wildly pendular moods swing between radical extremes, from the plainly ridiculous to the loftily sublime.”

On The Shapelss One and Marquis Machina On Master Abraham:

“The novel’s two halves are linked by Master Abraham, Murr’s owner and Kreisler’s mentor."

“The mysterious, Faust-like magus Master Abraham is closely associated with his machines and curiosities, like his ‘marine trumpet’.

On Noé Murr:

"As in a human Bildungsroman, the story relates how the cat repeatedly succumbs to delusion and reawakens to higher knowledge. "

On Humanity:

“Personality seems unstable. The self seems liable to split and confront its doppelgänger, being at the mercy of strange outer forces or inner impulses.

Thus the plot demonstrates the intricate but fragile bond that unifies the human family, a family which seems to be acting out its fate as mechanically as one of Master Abraham’s gadgets.”

On Time and Chronology (and Time Loops).

(small explanation- these are two narratives in one. Murr's is linear, while Kreisler is out of order and circular, which is what these quotes are referencing).

“The structure of the novel plays fickle games with time. The Murr action lasts only a few months and occurs chronologically in the interval between the first and last Kreisler chapters.

Chronologically, the first Kreisler fragment in the novel actually follows the last: at the end, Master Abraham invites Kreisler to the celebrations he describes at the beginning.

(Like come on the end being the start is literally the first chapter of the manga.)

“Linear time belongs to rationality and cannot encompass the ultimate truths the novel seeks to convey"

“The Kreisler narrative is thus entrapped in circularity.”

“When we eventually discover the Kreisler story’s reverse chronology, we ourselves begin to enter time’s infinite loop, approaching the absolute to which Kreisler aspires, where past, present and future merge as one.”

note: if Vanitas (circular time) is a stand-in for Kreisler, Noé (chronologically) for Murr and Abraham (The Shapeless One) tying it all together well...... interesting. Personally I think the references could point to Noé being an unreliable narrator who describes a circular, winding, unstable narrative. He currently speaks with an authority that seems to radiate objectivity and detachment, marked by the scientific sounding main title The Case Study of Vanitas, but the reality of his subjective emotions is given away in the secondary title The Memoires of Vanitas, which is, in itself, an example of a reference to the dual autobiographies in Kreisler's novel.

(Also a theory floating around (not mine) that this "Vanitas" refers to Noé himself after turning into a Blue Moon vampire. I quite like this theory. Or Vanitas lives. Or he writes part of the book before he dies, like Murr did)

On Tone:

“ Humour and irony themselves engage in a dialectic. Irony – the novel’s constant weapon – exposes the negative.

Humour reveals the positive, and entails the acceptance of, and thereby the elevation above, negativity.

On Magic and Worldbuilding (or Babel in Vnc)

“The spiritual realm beyond appearances frequently makes itself felt among the characters. Dreams, strange affinities, correspondences, animal magnetism and electric shocks all point to the existence of an arcane region, beyond empirical fact.

On the Tragic Ending:

Hoffman's cat died before he completed the second volume, and the he died before he completed the third volume. His protagonist was supposed to have a happy ending - but there was no ending instead

“Ironically, Murr’s death means that his well-planned book will remain a fragment. His papers will instead be inserted into the hitherto fragmentary Kreisler tale. In a further irony, it now seems that the Kreisler story is destined for completion.” but wasn't because the author died.

Now I did my job. Go forth and theorize! (and tag me please! I wasted valuable grad school time to write this!)

[ruthven]

[ruthven]

[ruthven]

bloo man

I was gonna finish this but I got busy so it's going on the back burner for now

...I'll finish it one day

[ruthven]

feel really bad for mochijun, she posted about how she’s unwell and can’t keep up pace with the manga but will still continue it when she can. im honestly shocked by the amount of work she does regardless, such as all the merch for the anniversary, preparing the 11th edition with 2 covers and the sketchbook, etc. i take weeks to write 1 measly article. anyone who disses her is an asshole who has never seriously considered the difficulties of creative work and disability in their lives.

[ruthven]

Jun didn’t give us Vincent in 20th anniversary collab because she knew these two together would be unstoppable / unsafe / unstable

just so you know, originally I intended to type only “unstoppable”, but t9 kept suggesting other words and they made sense so~

[ruthven]

I forgot to post this Klimt/Elfen Lied inspired piece! 💙💜

TW//blood

[ruthven]

Vanitas from the case study of vanitas

[ruthven]

Gnawing at the bars of my cage wondering what personal hatred Olivier is referring to here.

Does he mean hatred is "the reason he's standing here now" as in it's the reason he's reached his current point in life? The reason he's stayed with the chasseurs and become a paladin? Or does he mean "the reason he's standing here now" as in the reason he's still alive?

He brings up his own relationship to hatred in the context of people clinging to it for their very survival, but he also dismisses his own feelings as "trivial," so I can see an argument for either way.

Olivier sees himself in pre-trauma Astolfo, which means he must have grown up relatively privileged and comfortable. The tiny glimpse we've seen of his childhood seems to support that. What desperate straits did he end up in that forced him to rely on hatred? Was it despite or because of that privilege? Despite or because of his involvement with the chasseurs? He doesn't seem that intense in his hatred for vampires (not relative to some other chasseurs, anyway), and we've yet to see him express particular dislike for anyone besides when he got into a fight with Gano over cruelty to Astolfo, so it could be almost anyone that he's talking about here.

I was never that interested in Olivier before these chapters came out, but MAN I'm curious about his history now.

[ruthven]

I’m a staunch proponent of women in STEM:

Senate

Tennis

(homo)Erotic Blood-drinking

Machines

[ruthven]

Since writing my last post about how Vanitas understands "salvation" as the preservation of one's self, even at the price of death, I've been thinking about how that plays into Vanitas's thoughts on resurrection. It's only two short lines, but I find the view he expresses in this scene absolutely fascinating.

Vanitas tells Misha that the dead "don't come back," and the fact that he phrases it that way stands out to me. He doesn't say that resurrection is impossible on a physical level; he implicitly concedes that maybe Misha could "bring back" something that looks and acts like Luna. He doesn't quibble about the practicalities of reanimating someone whose body turned to ashes or bring up whatever concept of the afterlife he may have.

Instead, Vanitas says that a resurrected Luna would simply be "something else that looked like her." A resurrected Luna would lack some fundamental part of whatever it was that made Luna who they were in their first life.

But what would they lack? I don't think he's implying that a resurrected Luna would lack their soul—not really. Setting aside the absence of souls as a conceptual presence in VnC, I think that would be too concrete and specific for what Vanitas is gesturing toward. Rather, he's conceiving of the Self in a somewhat ineffable way. On a metaphysical level, a version of Luna brought back from the dead simply Wouldn't Be Her, and he can't put it in more concrete terms than that.

So why does he think this way?

I think the concept of resurrection is awful enough to Vanitas that he has to reject it outright for his own stability. He cannot even slightly entertain the notion that resurrection might be possible, because that would destroy one of his main coping mechanisms.

Resurrection is nightmarish to a man that relies on death as an escape. Vanitas is suicidal, but beyond his self-hatred, his relationship to death is very particular. He's someone whose body and being has been corrupted and violated several times—through violence, through experiments, and through Luna's bite, and he's desperate to retain control of himself in the aftermath. He's desperate for control in regards to everything in his life, but especially his body and his death.

Vanitas is being slowly transformed into something inhuman, and he plans to die someday to escape that fate. The idea that after he's gone, someone could override that decision and force him back into living a life he doesn't want must be unacceptably horrific to him. He dismisses it out of hand because he has to.

Vanitas says a resurrected Luna would, on some level, not really be Luna. Whatever comes back might look like them, but it would lack some fundamental self that makes Luna "Luna." Thus, if Vanitas himself were ever "resurrected" after his death, it would be the same. Death remains an absolute escape for him, and even if someone contrives to bring back something that looks like him after he's gone, it won't be him. That life won't be his problem.

In addition to whatever beliefs Vanitas might have about death and afterlives the feasibility of resurrection, I think this is a key part of his relationship to the concept. He lives his life knowing that death waits for him as an escape valve. He needs that looming death as his salvation. Thus, faced with the concept of resurrection, his argument basically boils down to "nuh-uh." He shoots down the concept and declares that a resurrected person wouldn't be themselves in some nonspecific way, because the possibility of anything otherwise isn't something safe for him to consider.

[ruthven]

calmed down

[ruthven]

Originally, I wasn't going to post anything more, but for the sake of people who can't give me a bonus, I'll show you some of my favorites

Especially for @darkstarshine

MOST OF THIS WILL BE VANITAS BECAUSE NOE HAS CHANGED LITTLE OVER TIME

I LOVE seeing Vanitas with an umbrella and there will be a lot of it here

Both things, the umbrella and the small pipe, have a lot of history and I will mention it briefly so as not to take up much of your time. Vanitas was originally a vampire and that's why he carried an umbrella for protection from the sun, and that's such a sweet concept in my opinion shsjnsndbdka The thing about the pipe is that Jun, wanting to show that he is older, gave him a small pipe around his neck

Jun wrote that when she looked at it she thought it was "a character that Jun Mochizuki would definitely like"

I LOVE SEEING SO MUCH PANDORA STYLE HERE

This is probably my favorite Vanitas outfit, I would love to see a lot of fanart of him dressed like this 😭😭😭

You can also see Noé here!! Noé wore glasses at the time and for a very long time because Jun stated that very few brown characters had glasses and she would love to see that (He looked so damn serious my godddd T///T)

I love the amount of Vanitas falling/jumping or whatever ITS JUST SO CUTE EVERY TIME

It looks like I don't have room for photos anymore 😭

What more can I say? The thing that I think is very cute and should be kept is that Noé was originally a very romantic person, he loved hearing about love and wrote romance novels himself under a female pseudonym

Jun also described Vanitas as an "idiot falling in love with an idiot" or maybe it's my translation error because I can't translate very well, the book is in Japanese and I'm just some little Polish idiot 😭 ANYWAY, IM GASLIGHTING MYSELF THAT IT WAS ABOUT VANINOE

[ruthven]

WELCOME TO THE NEXT PART BECAUSE IN THE LAST EVERYTHING I WANTED TO SHOW DIDN'T FIT!!!

I will also say that I am sad that we didn't get any sketches of Dante or Olivier and I hope that we'll get to see them in future (I will spend the rest of my money on it as I did this time) 😭

BACK TO THE TOPIC

I thought I'd share more Noé

BC OMG LOOK AT HIM

The initial idea for Noé reminds me a lot of Kunikida from bsd and I'm very happy about it because Kunikida is my favorite character

Also, as you can see, Noé has been working as a waiter for a very long time

FSHFAHARSUTJSTSJGKDGKDG

I'm sorry that some of the photos have a different color, but I took them under a different light 😭

I AM 100% SURE THAT THIS GUY DOESN'T HAVE A DRIVING LICENSE

At one point, Mrs. Jun said that she was missing something in the character of Vanitas and when she asked her friend for advice, he said that he was very much in the style of her main characters. When asked to present his vision of the main character's appearance HE SUGGESTED THIS HAIRSTYLE

Jun ultimately rejected it BUT some of it was preserved in Vanitas' bangs! As you'll notice earlier, his hair was much messier and then it started to look more cut

Personally, I think he looks like aph Poland

I think that's all I've prepared???

BUT I'M HAVING A GOOD DAY SO I WILL SHARE SOME NICE ART EHEH

Nice art in question

Yes, I'm one of those people who watches this one scene from the opening on a loop (⁠・⁠// –⁠ //・⁠;⁠)⁠ゞ

[ruthven]

VnC timeline

I’m mostly an artist in this fandom, but sometimes inspiration strikes and leads me in completely weird directions, such as… figuring out dates of every event in VnC!

With the invaluable help of @retracexcviii, who has created timelines for VnC events before (thank you forever and ever💜) and helped me to avoid some really silly mistakes, I’ve done… this monstrosity of a text, which includes every important canon event I could think of.

— All events are distributed by centuries, starting with XVI and finishing with XIX, and after listing all the events of each century I will put screens of the same texts with correlating manga pages. Additionally, there are numbers of chapters for most of the events.

— Some dates are marked with ~, which means that this date could fluctuate a bit (could be a bit earlier or later). 

— Events that I couldn’t put anywhere specifically are in “UNKNOWN MOMENT” category. I still tried to differentiate them between centuries.

Alright, here we go! 

XVI CENTURY

1493-1500 — creation of an engraving; plague, cataclysms, Paracelsius is looking for a way to save humanity.

(7)

~ 1500 — Babel. The awakening of Faustina, who is considered to be the first vampire.

(19)

1500-1550 — the awakening of Teacher and Machina as vampires. Machina might be younger than Teacher. Creation (awakening?) of Luna? The awakening of Teacher and the creation of Luna — probably around the same time?

(19)

~ 1550-1560 — Chloe is born. She becomes a vampire at the age of 4.

(31)

Between 1550-1600 — Ruthven becomes a vampire. He is currently more that 200 years old, and it’s unknown whether he was born as a vampire or awaken or even when exactly his life began. But looks like an adult in 1650, so he was most likely alive in 1600. He is also younger than Chloe: when she calls him a “child”, he doesn’t correct her.

(31)

Presumable order of awakening of the oldest vampires: 

Faustina —> Teacher —> Machina —> Chloe —> Ruthven. 

When exactly was Luna born? Does Kresnik exist in this century?

XVII CENTURY

~ 1650 — the war between humans and vampires. Chloe meets Ruthven.

(31)

~ 1665-1669 — Jeanne awakens in a flask in front of an unknown person. She leaves the flask. Later, she is adopted by Eric and Louise, Ruthven's students.

(39)

~ 1669 — Chloe meets Jeanne. Ruthven tries to establish peace between humans and vampires.

(31, 32)

~ 1672 — (3 years after Chloe and Jeanne met, 30 years before the end of the war) Ruthven loses his students, his eye is injured; Jeanne becomes the Bourreau of the Senate; Chloe meets Machina; Machina tells about the fate of Ruthven and Jeanne. Almost immediately, Naenia appears for the first time (indicating that Faustina is already a cursebearer); Ruthven visits Chloe for the last time, they part as enemies. If Naenia exists, does Charlatan exist as well?

(32, 33)

UNKNOWN MOMENT BEFORE 1672 — Faustina becomes a cursebearer.

(33)

UNKNOWN MOMENT BEFORE 1672 — Luna creates the Books of Vanitas, which are considered to be the

reason for the appearance of the Malnomen. Could the books be created to cure the cursebearers in the

first place? Most likely, this happened early in the timeline, since there is a whole folklore about it. Even earlier, someone gave Luna the name " Vanitas", which is also reflected in the title of the books.

(48, 49)

XVIII CENTURY

Before 1702 — Ruthven joins the Oriflamme family, becomes one of the Queen's advisors and a senator. The Queen is still alive, but she is also active as Naenia. Luna sees Jeanne in battle.

(33)

1702 — the end of the war. According to the pact, vampires move to Altus and sell Astermite to humans in exchange for other goods.

(33, 59)

1764 — Chloe spends more than 50 years alone. Death of village girl Jeanne, who speculated to be killed by a Beast, but was a victim of radical anti-vampire group. On the same day, she is visited by Naenia and then meets Jean-Jacques. The Beast conspiracy continues.

(36, 33)

1767 — Chloe witnesses one of the murders and reveals her vampiric powers when she defends herself. After that, the general belief is that Chloe is the master of the mysterious nonexistent Beast and both are the culprits. Her human family is killed. A few days later the Chasseurs (Vampire eradication fraction?) and Ruthven come to Gévaudan. Jean-Jacques becomes a Cursebearer to protect Chloe. Jeanne, now the Hellfire Witch, finds Chloe. Chloe tries to jump off a cliff, but Naenia comes to her again. Chloe also becomes the Cursebearer. Jeanne kills other hunters, but Ruthven saves her, makes her give him an oath (she tries to resist) and puts her in deep sleep. The Beast stops attacks. Conspiracy between Ruthven and the Chasseurs presumably continues.

(35, 36, 37, 43, 39)

UNKNOWN MOMENT BETWEEN 1672-1702 — Luna witnesses Jeanne in a fight with vampires. Later, after 1767, Luna also knew about Jeanne’s sleep.

(4)

XIX CENTURY

1861 — Olivier is born.��

1862 — Roland is born.

1868 — Dominique and Louis are born. Teacher takes Louis.

(46)

1869 — Noé is born.

1870 — Vanitas is born; Dante is born.

1873 — Astolfo is born.

~ 1875 — Olivier meets Roland.

(58)

~ 1874-1875 — an elderly couple finds Noé. They live together for some time.

(9)

~ 1876 — Mikhail is born. Luca is probably born around the same time or a bit later.

~ 1876-1877 — Noé is kidnapped and ends up in a black market, gets an eye injury and is bought by Teacher. Noé meets Domi and Louis (their proportions are quite similar to Astolfo in his childhood flashbacks, where he is presumed to be around 8 years old, but Noé looks younger, so here I’m assuming Noé and the twins could be 6-7 or 7-8 years old). // Probably around the same time, Dante is abandoned by unknown woman. He meets Johann and Riche. Absence of his glasses and bandages indicate that there could be at least a few weeks or months between the two events. 

(9, 61, 62)

~ before 1881 — Vanitas is orphaned and placed under the care of the Church as a potential future Chasseur, but is kidnapped by Moreau for secret experiments.

(49)

1881 — sketch of the Tower of the Sun by Amédée Sébillot, electrical engineer. He worked with engineer Jules Bourdais on this project, but in fact the tower was unrealizable. If the monument designed by Sébillot was real, it would have collapsed under its own weight.

Before or early 1881 — Roland and Olivier move to Paris. Roland is injured, but it’s unknown how it happened. Olivier’s hairstyle may indicate that it happened earlier than the time when Roland almost died. 

(46.5)

~ 1881 — Roland (vice-captain) is injured while defending Olivier. Olivier was injured too. // Misha (who looks about 5 years old??) meets Roland, but later ends up in Moreau's laboratory, where Vanitas is already located.

(47)

~ 1881-1882 — Astolfo secretly meets a vampire. When Astolfo befriends Olivier, he tells him about this secret. The death of the Granatum family. Astolfo meets Carl, Roland (his injuries, which were still visible when he met Misha, have already healed) and other Paladins. Olivier definitely had a title of Obsidian by the time of Granatums’ murder, so some time passes between the day Astolfo met a vampire and the day of Granatums’ murder. 

(48, 58) 

~ 1882-1883 — Louis dies. Domi learns the truth about her and Louis being twins. // Luna saves Misha and Vanitas when they destroy Moreau's lab*. Moreau joins the Charlatan. Misha agrees to be bitten by Luna. Later, Luna loses their true name; Misha loses their arm; Luna dies by Vanitas’s hands. Vanitas and Misha inherit the Books, but are separated, and Teacher takes Misha.

*It is likely that Noé witnessed Louis’s death around the same time Vanitas and Misha were saved by Luna; bonus card features Noé in the same outfit as on the day of Louis’s death together with Vanitas dressed in his lab clothes. 1882 is a possible year for Louis’s death and salvation of Vanitas and Misha. In this scenario Luna dies later than Louis.

(9, 46, 51, * bonus card)

1887 — possible start of construction of the Tower of the Sun (in reality, the construction of the Eiffel Tower started on 28 January 1887).

~ 1887-1888 — Astolfo and Roland have a conflict.

(59)

UNKNOWN MOMENT (after 1702?) BEFORE 1888 — Veronica and Loki, along with Machina, become Beastias, and Antoine enters the Senate. How old are Veronica, Antione and Loki?

UNKNOWN MOMENT (not earlier than 12 years?*) BEFORE 1888 — “death” of Faustina at the hands of her Beasts and Rusven. Luka replaces her on the throne, but the Senate controls him. Strangely, he isn’t even officially presented yet. It’s unknown how old he was when he assumed his current position, but it’s unlikely that the Senate and Beastias would “kill” the Queen without choosing a suitable successor first.

*Alternatively, it could happen earlier, if Loki, Luca’s older brother, was supposed to inherit the throne prior to becoming a cursebearer as well, but was replaced with Luca. But this is a pure speculation.

(38, 13)

UNKNOWN MOMENT BEFORE 1874 — Archivists disappear. It’s unknown whether there are any living Archivists other than Machina and Noé in the present. It’s also unknown why Noe thinks about blood when he thinks about his clan.

(57)

UNKNOWN MOMENT BETWEEN 1871-1888 — Vanitas meets Teacher, or Saint—Germain, who at that time had a different appearance. Were Luna alive at that moment?

(55)

UNKNOWN MOMENT BEFORE 1888 — Machina becomes patron of the dhampires and creates her network of information brokers.

(62)

~ 1888 (before current events) — Astolfo and Roland become Paladins. // 6 month before — Teacher goes somewhere. // 1 month before — Jeanne awakens from her sleep.

(13, 4)

1888 — Teacher asks Noé to witness the story of the Book of Vanitas via correspondence. Current events begin.

(1, 52)

Possible future event — The Exposition Universelle of 1889, which was held in Paris, 5 May to 31 October. The Tower of Sun (instead of Eiffel Tower in VnC universe) was created for this fair. However, at least some of the buildings were ruined.

(44, 20.5, 46, 55)

That’s it for now! I think I will update this post in future when we have enough new information to define unclear dates and add new details and whatnot~

[ruthven]

Five seconds later: 

The truth is… 

O: He’ll fix that report, right, Astolfo? 

A: Yeah! 

*Roland crashes down on the floor* 

O: And that was fifty one. Congrats, you won. 

… the one who gets the child’s vote always wins.

Based on this wonderful art by Jun ⬆️