u ever sculpt something and think well now I have to make five more of these immediately
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this one is also an exercise in how tonally contrasting I can make the two sides of its face, in turn confusing the idea that it has a true face at all
also I didn’t want to make a mold to copy the nose shape
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ALSO! this is a riff on a guy from the first ever batch of fellows. going back to my roots and those roots are pointy mask. except for the big one here I broke both points (separate occasions)
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the baby got GLAZED! and the glaze dripped and I had to grind off the drips! but it’s all good now and I’m excited to make more weird monks :)
This post is going around today and I thought I should add that I am successfully accumulating weird monks
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sticking a few more weird monks on this post just for posterity
So I was rereading chapter 4, and uh, this little lie of Vanitas’s gets a lotmore uncomfortable given the new info we got in 55.5.
It’s so interesting to me how there’s certain things that Vanitas is quite sensitive about and does not want to discuss, unless he can turn that discussion into theater and weaponize it against those around him.
Like, the most obvious example of this is his speech at the bal masqué, but he’s totally doing the same thing here. He parades his desire for revenge as part of his introduction speech to the vampires, then lies about not really wanting revenge when Noé asks him about it in the morning, because the truth is his vengeance is a sensitive subject.
Here, meanwhile, he’s weaponizing the fact that nobody else knows what it means to be the kin of the blue moon. We know that the loss of his humanity is an incrediblyvulnerable thing for Vanitas, and something that he avoids bringing up to anyone for as long as possible, and yet here he is referencing that very idea. He can’t admit that he really is being made into something inhuman by his use of the book, but he can lie about having a powerful, presumably inhuman “true form” due to his kinship with Luna, because that’s what will win him this fight. He just has to turn up the false theatricality to eleven in order to say it.
What he says here is really quite close to the sensitive truth, but he’s fine, because it’s all part of the act.
Not to go trying to make VnC into Moulin Rouge again, but I’m thinking a lot about young men in Paris with lost loves and stories to tell and how it all fits into Vanitas and Noé.
Vanitas is going to die. He’s a living reminder of death. He’s been doomed since chapter one. But, though this technically hasn’t been confirmed, I’m certain that Noé is using the written story of him and Vanitas as a form of preservation.
Along with that idea, I think about this line from mémoire 1 way too often:
Because, unless future context majorly changes the meaning here, I’d like to think that will Vanitas accepting Noé’s method of preserving him.
His death is going to be tragic no matter what, but if Noé drinks his blood, if he comes to know him totally, his memory will be preserved as best as it possibly could be. And though it’s a mushy idea, I’d like to think that maybe Vanitas and Noé can both take just a small bit of comfort in the idea that, even after his death, a part of him will live on with Noé. And by writing the story down, Noé can make that preservation permanent.
She didn’t attack like the prim, excitable girl who had been trained by cautious Vorin society. She attacked like the frenzied child who had murdered her mother. The cornered woman who had stabbed Tyn through the chest. She drew upon the part of her that hated the way everyone assumed she was so nice, so sweet. The part of her that hated being described as divertingorclever.
shallan vs the midnight mother (oathbringer ch 30)
