[naet]

It's definitely not a perfect metaphor but I enjoy working with vanilla JS or without a framework and I think it's very different from "no JS" (I mean... seems obvious given that it's JS).

You can technically do anything a framework does in your own JS, since they're all just opinionated JS libraries. You can make your own SPA or implement your own VDOM or SSG but it might take a long time and not be as battle tested. On the other hand you're also free to make your own optimizations that might work well for your needs without worrying about a huge framework.