#the more confident and powerful he acts

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.