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There has been some discourse on vnc twitter because of vanijeanne and as we all know one of the main reason why people don't like the ship (I said one ok) is because of the way Vanitas approached Jeanne

People often say that they'd be on board for this ship only if Vanitas didn't do that, often asking "why does this scene exist" but they actually have a point

Jun sensei very likely knew that she didn't needed to have this scene and people would still like the ship anyway, if any proof is needed, Oz and Echo were supposed to be endgame yet there was no such scene between the two (but there was between Oz and Alice). However, in general when they ask this question it's only rhetorical, they don't expect an answer but what if we tried to actually genuinely ask the question : why does this scene exist ?

( warning : discussion of heavy topics such sa, non-con/dub-con, abuse etc)

What's important to understand this scene is that VnC touches on topics regarding consent, agency and autonomy in general

For instance, we know thanks to Noé that drinking someone's blood without their consent is seen as reprehensible. In the 19th century, when vampire novels were becoming a popular genre, it featured scene of blood drinking which nowdays are seen as erotic acts while the vampire is seen as monstrous being because he represents everything that was looked down upon in the 19th century : unrepressed and uncontrolled sexuality. That's why they are portrayed as predators. Gothic is all about the fascination for evil and taboo, to quote Kaya "taboos are made to be broken" is basically the philosophy gothic novel explores that's why they discuss a lot of heavy topics and why vampires novel enter this category as well.

The modern image of the vampire changed a lot especially with the success of works like Twilight that also features themes like this, notably through Edward's way of treating Bella : "yes it raises red flag, but also" type of thing. Basically, it's submitting to an experience that makes pleasurable something that would bring great pain in real life while still maintaining the tension generated by such behavior.

There are 2 video essays that dwell into this : Countrapoints essay on twlight and this one by bazazilio

To answer the question as to why people would enjoy such scenarios, one common explanation is that because people (especially women) are very often placed in situation where they are shamed for expressing desire and denied any agency, so they play this scenarios so they can succomb to the temptation without having to say "yes". They can still say "no" and have the pleasure they were afraid to express. Again, this is link to context of heavy sexual repression. Just to give you an idea, if you ever read Romeo and Juliet, one of the reason why the play needs to have Romeo randomly step in while Juliet confess her love and make it seem like it's an accident is because at the time, it was seen as very bad for a woman to outright declare her love to the man, Juliet herself says that she'd go back on what she just said to not seem "frivolous" and play hard to get as it was expected of woman at the time to show that they are chaste and pure. This extended into a whole genre of heroine called the ingenues that were expected to constantly display a behavior of "good girl" and refuse any sexual scenario while the male character would represent temptation and her enduring while his behavior turned loving was seen as a victory of virtue. The ingenue is also featured in vampire stories, such as Laura from Carmilla, and they are left into these dangerous but still intriguing experiences. I could also add the Marquis de Sade's fascination with evil and trying to genuinely make compelling point about his own philosophy.

Because all of these names or concept are present within VNC. We are given a different look and definition of what vampires are in VNC, they are more humanized and much less this mysterious ghostly creature that represent both what the century hated but also what it secretly craved. What I said about dubcon/ and non con is by no means the only explanation found to try to answer as to why there is a fascination for such stories but given how the theme of autonomy and agency plays out in VNC, this is probably going to be the most useful, especially considering the examples I will bring up.

In VNC, vampires are not all blood thristy creatures with no power to control themselves, only a type of vampires belong to that category, the curse bearers. This not only allows for the rest of vampires to seem more "human" in contrast since there is discussion of discrimination and of "what truly distinguishes vampires from humans" in VNC, but it's also worth noting that this means an ill vampire = an unrepressed and blood thristy monster which perfectly mirrors how the 19th century viewed sexuality and how the vampire and many other monstrous figures were created as way to symbolize this.

What I find intersting with this illustration is how this is how vampires are portrayed at the very begining of the story. This is how humans believes vampires are like, reflecting our own imagery of the vampire, an image that is going to be completely contradicted. In fact, I'd say the aim of VNC is to contradict this image that is very much a stereotype of the vampire, mostly because of the infleunce of Dracula. But the emphasis on the blood drinking as a way to scare and the mention of victims drained of blood also aligns with the depicitions of blood drinking as a pleasurable but life draining activity for the human, leaving the vampire, the unrepressed sexual monster, to be the only one experiencing true pleasure with no downside. All that to say that Sensei is playing with our "perceived knowledge of what a vampire is like", in contrast Noé and Amelia are presented in way that contradicts that image and are meant to be first identified as humans by the reader because of this conception of the vampire the reader is expected to have.

This goes as well for blood drinking when it's presented as something that requires consent, but also implied to have similar conotations as seen per the way Vanitas insinuates things regarding Noé drinking Dominique's blood or the fact that, in Bal Masquee, there are vampires drinking each other's blood in the background like they are having a romantic rendez-vous. Noé doesn't view it that way because he sees blood as food in the same way he views tarte tatin as food. However, we know that because of his power as an archiviste he doesn't like to pry on people's memory without their consent and that vampires (and humans in the case of Vani) fears that he might still see memories if he drink of their blood. That's what I am talking about when I say that VnC discusses consent in general : do I have the right to access to the privacy of people, their deepest hidden selves ? Noé's power gives him the possibility to violate the intimacy of anyone whose blood he can drinks and to see a peek of their true real self, the thing they hide in public, that is expected to be concealed. I have already said it regarding Bal Masquee, but this chapter examplified how people all wear mask including Noé, and by giving us a glimpse of his past, we access to his intimacy without his knowledge. The voyeuristic dimension of reading has been a subject of discussion for while but the point I am making is that Noé is treated in the diagesis as a "reader" when he see memories : it's a past experience where he can see everything, nothing is hidden to him but he also cannot do anything himself. This is why his name of Archiviste having also a tie to the universe of book (most specifically records) place him as someone who can know the history of someone, and not just what is public history, but also the hidden face, the dark side of the moon, what a person never delivers to others when they are alive. Terrifying power and meta references aside, Noé's blood drinking brings a downside to his pleasurable experience in how it makes him access something that is supposed to be hidden. Much like how vampires have a true name to protect, Noé's blood drinking brings in a voyeurstic element he dislikes and feels bad about.This brings in the consciousness of the reader and makes it all the more interesting that he chooses to write about his and Vani's story, meaning he is consenting to the intimacy of his own life and others to be seen, read by others, breaking the voyeurstic connotations.

That can be compared to the way Naenia corrupts Vampire, let's take a look :

Naenia is always shown kissing the vampires to corrupt their true name, even Faustina does the same to Chloé, and they then turn into the more traditional depiction of vampire : blood thristy uncontrolled monsters made to represent deregulated sexuality.

Naenia is essentially violating the vampires in more ways than one but I choose Amelia specifically because the picture of the beautiful flower field being defiled is probably the more explicit example of what I mean : Naenia defiles their names, their nature by making them uncontrolled and this can be assimilated to the role that vampires were assigned in gothic novels of the 19th century. As corrupting the humans by dergulating their sexuality and taking advantage of them.

I could also quote other examples such as Ruthven's power of pledge which has been so far always excered in cases where the victim wasn't consensting such as Noé, Jeanne and Chloé and maybe more as time goes on

Now, you might be thinking "well that's interesting and all but what's the link between Vanijeanne and all this ?"

Well, Vanijeanne follows a similar dynamics but instead of Vanitas being shown defiling Jeanne, his actions are what's landing her to progress

Allow me to explain

We can all agree that Vanitas kissing Jeanne without her consent is messed up, in fact, other characters agree with us and Jeanne literaly hates him for a while because of this and think of him as nuisance

However, I don't think it's accurate to say that Vanitas robbed Jeanne off her agency in that moment due to the fact it would imply she had any prior to this moment. Allow me to explain. From her vey introduction, Jeanne is presented in a passive way. When Luca and Jeanne are facing Vani and Noé for the first time, it's Luca who do all the speaking. Meanwhile, in the end of chapter 2, Jeanne not only had her face covered by her hoodie but was portrayed in a way that made her seem violent and savage, with Luca trying to moderate her, already giving hints that Jeanne was reduced to a killing machine with no agency and the only thing being able to restraint her being Luca. When Luca messed up by revealing of his brother's condition, Jeanne does attack but she asks that Luca gives her orders. Because, she is a tool so she can't act entirely without the accord of her master. And do not get me started on when Vani managed to trick Noé into kidnapping Luca, and that Jeanne broke down and began to cry. This introduction gives us enough hindsight to understand that 1) Jeanne has no agency and 2) she needs Luca to restrain herself but also 3) that if something unexpected happens, she quickly lets go of the cold facade and reveals herself to be more vulnerable. As the story goes on, Jeanne lack of agency is not only more apparent but even worse than what the early series implied it to be : we learn that she is a curse bearer, meaning that much like her violence needed to be restrained by Luca, she needs to be restrained in general which leads her to develop a complicated relationship towards Luca where she cares about him and he gives her a reason to live (cf. Mon Trésor) but she is also terrified at the idea she might be hurting him in the near future. And then, we also learn about how her survivor guilt was exploited for the sake of reducing her to an object, meaning that she also has to restraint herself or else "people are gonna get killed because of me". Jeanne has to be restrained in 3 context : 1) violence 2) blood drinking and 3) her own autonomy. This means she is being repressed and left with no agency at all nor possibility to express herself.

In the case of violence, it's not even that Jeanne revels in it, she isn't a sadistic character, but the objectification of the senate and using her to slaughter thousands upon thousands as lead her to become desentized to it to the point of viewing it as the sole solution, even thought it only contributes further to her objectification and current condition. The blood drinking brings, much like for Noé, an unpleasuring dimension to something that is supposed to make her feel pleasure.

Given how she hasn't gone completely crazy unlike Amelia who reveled in her drinking blood state, I think Jeanne's expression here could be paralleled with guilt over sexual desire or even act. In these moments, she plays like the vampire of the 19th century meant to embody lack of restraint, but she ultimately showcases guilt and more importantly fear of that lack of restraint. She cannot enjoy fully drinking Vanitas's blood because she immediately think of the "what if" that could ensue from the pleasure, which is to say to drink other people's blood including Luca. The panel showcasing Luca constast a lot with the erotism of her drinking Vani's blood and brings dread into all of this.

And the last one is by the far the worst : the implications that Jeanne literaly only existed to serve as a doll, the trauma she endured that allowed people to exploit her as doll that continues to torture her to this day, her belief in violence as the solution showing she doesn't believe in salvation etc.

Jeanne had no agency from the very begining which might also be the reason why Luca is shown to be more reactive to what Vanitas does to Jeanne than Jeanne herself. Don't get me wrong, she is still shown to hate Vanitas because of that but given how she had NO agency or autonomy at all, the scene needs to be put in that perspective

While Jeanne is repressed, Vanitas present himself as unrepressed, free to do whatever he wants and he reveals in that. But that itself is only an act, a desperate attempt from Vanitas to retrieve autonomy because of what he had experienced. And that kiss and the many moments Vanitas says suggesting and teasing remarks including in public is also part of that act.

Vanitas is essentially doing something that is extremely shocking but made worse by the fact he lives in 19th century France. In an interview, Sensei talked about how she wrote Vnj with the idea of playing with power dynamic reversal, in that aspect, Vanitas fills in the role usually fulfilled by the vampire in showing no restraint and expressing sexuality freely. That's what this first kiss scene represents (at least to me), Vanitas feeling something and just going along. Obviously it's bad, and it's also showing Vanitas's messed up sense of boundaries (like not only does he immediately starts to bable about marriage but when Luca ask him to apologize to what he did to Jeanne and very earnestly so, he just answer "I am sowwy"). There is more to that such as the fact that Vanitas was trying to test her because he likes to see different expressions on her face, which is why he mess with her so often and also the fact he expects her to never love him back showing he can only feel save in a relationship where this is no reciprocity because he doesn't feel he is worth it and that idea makes him extremely uncomfortable. That wouldn't even be the first time Vanitas force la main of someone, after all he did the same with Noé (even if there was no kissing involved) but my point is that it's part of Vanitas thinking process that requires that the other party does not reciprocate anything for him to feel secure and most importantly in control. Because Vanitas feels in control, he can stay secure and make all these jokes and innuendos without feeling shame, that's at least the face he is trying to keep.

But in the case of his relationship with Jeanne, what this marks is the begining of Vanitas slowly leading Jeanne to become her own person. Yup, you heard that right, even though he did to her many things that count as stealing her autonomy, this is actually what leads her to become more autonomous.

In my last post about Jeanne, I touched briefly on the fact that despite the power balance Vanitas and Jeanne were on equal terms because the way Vanitas approached Jeanne, supposed to make him have power over her, ended up making her not feel inferior in his presence. To put it simply, since Jeanne was led to feel hostility towards Vanitas, she was also made more comfortable in not showing any reference towards him. While her relationship with Luca and Domi is more complex than that, the main takeaway is that Jeanne feels inferior both in rank and situation towards them so she is using formalities towards them rather than feeling perfectly equal. With Vanitas, she can feel like she has the right to not owe him any formalities as seen per how she calls him "human". And while Vanitas approached her in a way that gave him power over this relationship and that he always find a way to keep this control, he also progressively puts her at ease with him. Yes, he does blackmail Jeanne into drinking only his blood, but putting aside all the possible pragmatic reasoning behind this decision (protecting Jeanne's secret, avoiding her going on a full rampage like what almost happened in their date at Paris etc), the most important take away is that it places Vanitas in a position where Jeanne has to rely on him and where he becomes a source of support for her. I also think it's interesting that the second condition of Vanitas's blackmail involves Jeanne calling him by his name. Given how many other characters call Vani "human" I don't think it's because he is being petty here, I think it does fit with what I say about Vanitas and Jeanne (somehow) finding themselves on equal grounds.

Now the main difference with instances of Jeanne drinking Vani's blood while also being uncomfortable with indulding in her desire is that she explicetely feeling desire for Vanitas's blood, but when he kissed her she didn't. So isn't that contradictory ? Not really, but to explain that further I am gonna need some examples of similar tropes

If you are familiar with Maid Sama, you probably know that Takumi Usui approached Misaki in a way not too disimilar what Vanitas does to Jeanne, and Usui is probably worse given the number of moment where he does that, but I don't think it's just there because it's an "old shoujo trope that aged like milk" because Maid Sama is about Misaki having to put a facade in order to restraint boys in a school where the power dynamics between boys and girls is imbalanced, this leads her to develop a complex with her feminity, notably her job as a maid, an acitvity that puts her in a situation where she can no longer appear as "strong" to these boys because it reflects her own feminity that she conceals, a univers of hyper feminity you can even argue. And yes, feminity is an important part of Maid Sama, but Usui's approach of Misaki plays a part in leading her to a path of acceptance and stopping in restraining herself be it as showing feminity or regarding love and sexuality.

Another example I can take is Diabolik lovers. Now disclaimers, I haven't played the games yet but I did watched the anime (long long ago) and some snippets of gameplay, but the principle of the game ties with what I am talking about perfectly. Yui is pretty much a ingenue who find herself stucked with 6 vampires who display sadistic behaviors which are result of their own trauma and there is dub/con in it, especially in the anime. But I did notice that a criticism people made regarding the franchise itself was that if it wanted to partake into BDSM or role play, it was failing to understand these notions because "Yui is never showed to consent into a role play with any of the Sakamaki brothers". This argument is supposed to show a lack of understanding of non con role play and bdsm but I don't quite agree because it misunderstand what the franchise means by those terms. Let me explain. The criticism they are adressing is linked to what's happening from a watsnonian angle, the in diegesis logic featuring Yui never being shown consenting to what's happeneing to her. But when people who argue in favor of DL talk about role play, they mean in it in the extra diegetic sense. While Yui didn't consented, the player did, in fact, the otome game choice system makes it even more explicit that the player is consenting to what is happening to Yui. Yui is designed to be a self insert, but rather than it being the player's projection, I think it's much more useful to say that the player is playing the role of Yui via simulation. All video games involve some level of role play thanks to the simulation system, and in the case of otome games, the player is role playing as the heroine and they consider everything that is happening as part of the fantasy. Fantasy isn't necessarily about "romanticizing or glamoziring" something unlike what people believe, it's about getting to experience something while having full control over the experience, which is what makes the exploration in these themes in fiction compelling. You get to see and even live something in a safe space and you can choose to stop the experience at any moment. Yui isn't role playing because she is the role that the player is meant to role play, so the fact that she doesn't express consent or desire to role play diegatically speaking doesn't change the fact that, outside of the story, in the real world, someone bought the game out of their own accord, decide to play it out of their own accord and decide to select X or Y option that Yui might object to later out of their own accord. The player consented to it but Yui is simply meant to be their persona in what is a giant role play with imaginary problematic vampires. This ties back to what I was talking about regarding Noé embodying a voyeurstic reader, none of the character ever consented to us, the audience, reading every corner of their personality and live and history including their intimacy, but that's what allows us reader to live an experience we might or might not ever face. The main difference is that the player is allowed to play a role by being given an avatar or at least something they can project unto to try this new experience. And the player or reader is safe in their room with the possibility of closing the game or the book if they stop consenting to the simulating experience.

This might sound a bit out there but the same was said about why we enjoy horror stories, even though what happens in there is something no sane person would ever want to experience. Our brain is able to tell that the situation isn't real and thus we can stay in passive mode instead of staying alert and this allows us to find pleasure in something unpleasurable in normal times. These games operates on the same logic, so when they tease stuff like "you are a bad girl aren't you" they are really talking to Yui, but to the player. yes, this was all 4th wall breaking the entire time.

Obviously, the whole deal is a lot more complicated than what I am saying here, but the main take away is that when series involves such scenes, even if it's not trying to advocate for it in real life, it still acknowledging it's wrong but they also have a double function of helping a heroine that is being repressed by her complex relationship with womanhood or religion into indulging into pleasure and even in becoming unrestrained or at least losing some of their complex towards said thing.

And yes, I am arguing that it is what happens with Jeanne and Vanitas and that first kiss scene was to prepare Vanitas's role as someone who helps Jeanne express her needs and wants because the manga literaly prove me right on that. Their previous dynamic was that way because Vanitas is the one forcing himself on Jeanne to break her walls and Jeanne is mostly the one getting embarassed because she is repressed, too repressed to indulge in. But by the point where the Gevaudan arc ends, we get a scene that is meant to parallel that first kiss.

(to me) this scene is meant to parallel that kiss and signify the shift of the dynamic between Vanitas and Jeanne. Jeanne is no longer repressed in that moment, she hugs Vanitas with no restraint, she drinks his blood not because of her being out of control but because of desire and she even kisses him. She is the one instigating all these actions while Vanitas is passive. And this marks Jeanne being more open about her feelings and less repressed.

Since her arc is about learning to be her own person and that she is has the right to have wants and needs, the fact she can admit with honesty that she wants Vanitas because she loves him and that it makes her happy instead of feeling ashamed shows that Jeanne overcame the state of repression she was being put through.

Now, Vanitas on the other hand ...

I think that this reversal of dynamics also shed light on how Vanitas's unrestrained act was really that, an act. In reality he is very repressed to because of his own self loath and nihilisim. Vanitas is desperate for control so when he approached Jeanne, he had power over her which helped him feel decomplexed. He might not even have realized that Jeanne and him were slowly getting on a more equal ground, but he had control so it was fine. But now ? Now that jeanne is the one initiating the romantic actions, Vanitas loses control in the relationship and cannot feel fully secure anymore. This is why he feels so alienated in chapter 44, because this is something out of his control and if Vanitas doesn't feel in control, he completely loses all his composure. This isn't to say Vanitas lost his agency, but rather that in helping Jeanne regains her, Vanitas exposed himself to a relationship showcasing that he wasn't as secure as he appeared to be and that he too is repressed, he just tries to hide it. Maybe not consioucly, but he does.

That's what I think Jun sensei was trying to accomplish. Now, I said in the past she also wanted to make us uncomfortable with that scene, and I still stand by it because one scene can fulfill many objectives but also because uncomfortable means many thing. And it's not just disgust, it's more importantly a desire to challenge to audience. Vanitas is a character that constantly challenges the audience, he doesn't care about being liked he cares about retriving agency and fufilling his objectives, because he wants to heal. But most importantly, he doesn't want people to know the real vulnerable he, this leads him to do many messed up things to push us the audience, away from trying to get to know him and to stay a secret to us. When Sensei write Vanitas in such way, she delivers us an unfiltered and non sanitized look at what trauma can do to someone and doesn't expect us to tag along but to be stubborn like Noé or Jeanne. Chapter 1 ending with the death of Vanitas cause some people to drop the manga because "well I already know what will happen so what is the point", and while I don't agree with this view point, I think it shows well that Sensei is aware of the many risks she takes with the stories, but she commits to it anyway because challenging the reader is more important than pleasing him. Especially when the story is presented as Noé telling us about Vanitas's life in it's authenticity, I think this imply that Noé might have evolved to become a reliable source that doesn't try to censor things to make Vanitas appear as better or worse than he actually was. That doesn't mean I believe Narrator Noé is entirely reliable, but enough that he doesn't try to filter even the bad moments, including his own bad moments. What makes Vanitas feel authentic is the fact the audience is expected to adapt to Vanitas rather than the reverse. The reverse would probably reveal the fictional character of the whole story because we'd never be challenged by anything ! Why ? Because fiction is what you create and you can do whatever you want with it, so you can easily erase everything that could make you feel uncomfortable in favor of something comforting you but not necessarily challenge you. Humans don't like doing things outside of their zone of comfort, that makes sense but that means that when we have the occassion, we only stick to what is familiar because it feels safe and many seems to think fiction as a whole should work this way, hence why they might or might not condemn a piece of fiction for addressing heavy issues regardless of the point said piece of fiction is making about this issue or they tolerate it only when it's to teach that said thing is bad, conforting an already existing status quo that people don't even seem to realize does exist. So when a piece of fiction takes an approach more complex or different or more nuanced, that can easily cause some to be lost.

In my view, VnC is such case because of how it constantly challenges the reader. But in that case, wouldn't that mean I am contradicted myself ? I spent quite some time explainging theories of why dubcon/noncon fantasies exist and the main point was that since the reader is experiencing things that are fictional through the character, he can gain pleasure without any downsides from a situation that would be traumatizing in real life ? And now I am saying that Vanitas is meant to challenge us because to understand someone, you need to adapt to their rythm which made Vanitas felt more authentic

Well, that's because fiction's capability of seeming authentic is inherenly limited, moreover I would argue that presenting things in such way is still pretty challenging for readers since it teaches us that not everything is necessarily portrayed as criticism or approval of a behavior and that it's up to us to choose whether or not we are still interested in knowing who Vanitas is when he constantly does things to push the reader away.

Now that being said, I am not an expert in the human psyche and I am not Mochijun, I can only guess what she was trying to do and you might not necessarily have the same views as me regarding an explanation as to why this scene exist and that's ok. But I do think it's tiring that people trash the scene without considering that if Jun sensei wrote it there might be a reason, and an actual reason for it. I am by no means telling you you shouldn't feel uncomfortable by the scene, you feel how you feel. But there is having discomfort and using that discomfort as an excuse to criticize something like it's inherently bad or potentially dangerous for making you uncomfortable. What Vanitas did to Jeanne is inexcusable in real life, but they are fictional characters, symbols, signs that the writer created to communicate something. That's why Vanitas's actions have meaning that they wouldn't have in real life, because this isn't real life, even if it tries to create the romanesque illusion.

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