#Jack the Ripper Arc

[tirnelsutcliff]

Grell being cute. Pocket opened my kindle to this chapter, so I reread it. Completely forgot this was a thing that happened. How strong are you William? And what shampoo does Grell use??

[vvyvernicus]

Phantom's Requiem

A Black Butler Fanfiction

Summary:

Lucia Santoro is a bound to a fleeting life, her gift a curse of creeping madness. Orphaned and isolated, she seeks solace among spirits, resigned to a fate she cannot escape. With a Grimoire in hand and time slipping away, she journeys to England, where a chance meeting with an enigmatic Viscount may rewrite the story of her final days.

A while back I had posted a teaser for a fanfiction. And I said I'd refuse to post it until I had chapter 2 ready to go. Well... Now the time has come and it's currently up on AO3. A little bonus is this cover art I put together for it.

In a world where demons and reapers exist, I thought I might introduce a new class to the mix... Humans! More specifically, rare humans blessed with special abilities that ultimately lead them to early graves.

This takes place during the Red Butler Arc, where events follow canon until they diverge. An OC, a spirit medium, travels to London from Italy, to experience it during her final days before succumbing to madness. This ultimately leads to her infiltrating the Viscount's party, taking Ciel's place when he's looking for a woman to sell at his underground auction.

While it does have a large focus on the OC, it also aims to add more background to Aleister. I wanted to expand on his character, beyond just a silly comedic relief, making it more realistic and shows more of what's happening behind the scenes.

There are some dark themes in this story that fit in well with the general vibe of Black Butler. Warnings are listed in the tags on AO3.

This is a romance, but also a very unconventional one.

They are not okay 🥲

Feedback is appreciated ❤️

[pawrklean]

nothing just this

[grelleswife]

IT MAY ONLY HAVE BEEN ~2 SECONDS OF FLASHBACK SCENES BUT WE GOT GRELLE IN THE CLOVERWORKS STYLE MY SKIN IS CLEAR MY CROPS ARE THRIVING

[whathasangramainyudonewrong]

Wrong #583

So, apparently the snacks were for a Black Butler watch party, which Angra has decided to throw for some reason

He’s not even watching the show, I don’t know what the point was

[eemoo1o-animoo]

Saw this and my immediate thought was Redcliff

[sebastian-ciel-mutual-bullying]

Black butler AU where everything is the same but Sebastian has chronic acid reflux.

[so-bitya]

while in the anime you get that madame red was sad and hurt over her sister, the manga better portrays her envy. however, I still feel at the forefront of her issues is grief. like I do think she she loved Vincent (or more likely an idealized version of him) and hated that her sister took him away, yet.

red seemingly indifferent after losing her husband, well that's after she got out of the hospital. like red just keeps going through something traumatic over and over, and who was at the forefront of her mind? her sister. her sister was the one to stay and help her recuperate from the hospital. her sister is the reason why she got married and have a child, and thus was happy. her sisters face at the wedding she remembers over and over. the sister she is so desperate to replace herself with. her love fuels her hate and her hate fuels her love and she's bursting at the seams she can't take it.

and yes she does love Vincent and all. but whose face is blurred out along with her husband's? And whose face in imprinted in her memory that she says she can never hate, that she can't go through revenge with?

likewise its her sisters face in Ciel that she did so much for, she joined the underground, she kept up the pretense for 3 years, she led him to their confrontation when they couldn't coexist anymore. one of them had to go. She's obsessed with her sister's existence, she's the one following her one step behind, if she can't have what her sister has, if she can't have her, then what's the point of it all?

[wlwanakin]

one thing i think about a lot when it comes to grell and madam red is how historically jack the ripper sent letters to the cops and assuming those letters are legitimate and not hoaxes it means they wrote them in the black butler universe. and it’s just SO FUNNY imagining them writing it and purposefully making spelling mistakes and making up the fucking nickname for shits n giggles. and little details like the dear boss letter being written in red ink just make me giggle even more cuz like. i just have this visual image of grell in bed writing these unhinged letters to taunt the cops in a red gel pen while kicking her feet like a 13 year old girl writing in her diary

[i-like-danmei-ig]

hey guys, since William and Louis grew up in whitechapel, it's likely that they were the children of a prostitute there. And she mostly likely died of some illness when Louis at least was very young (maybe even just a baby)

[nasuversekinkmeme]

guda this explaining pronouns to an older servant(whoever you want) while jack is in the room minutes later jack says they want to be non-binary because it represent all the kids that make them up and it sound cool.

Good for them

[c0rpsedemon]

it's 2023 and i'm still bitter about how kuroshitsuji, a complex slow burn mystery manga, got absolutely massacred by its shitty semi-episodic shota/fujobait anime adaptation

[visualstudiocode]

the number 1 thing that i hate in anime is when they have a character that is supposed to be jack the ripper. thats a real murderer that killed real people not victorian anime boy of the week

its especially jarring in anime that otherwise focus on fictional super natural events and then all of a sudden. BOOM fictional explanation of real murder using some character with super natural powers

[johntorrington]

i read the golden kamuy manga in a really short period of time a couple months back and now i’m watching the anime so i remember what happens i just don’t really remember when or in what order. which is fun it keeps it fresh it keeps it interesting. but like knowing that usami shows up and just not knowing when is a type of fear that i’ve never experience before in my life. on the edge of my seat every episode lest i get little freak jumpscared.

[eldragon-x-moved]

lowkey feel insane enough rn to attempt to hunt down all the parts of the black butler manga where grell shows up because shes been in my brain recently and I have thoughts about her but I need to revisit the source material to form something comprehensible

[so-bitya]

youre so right and you should say it!!! like this is what's been on my mind. yana's writing shines when it comes to her characters, they're so funny, charismatic, and complex, but likewise her biggest flaw is how often she sticks them into status quo.

it's been a common complaint the in the fandom for a long time, esp towards ciel and sebastian. and while i can understand the appeal of characters never changing (sherlock holmes and watson for instance) what about everyone else? because despite having all these characters in the story, none of them seem that present in each other's lives. like the world doesn't move on it's own if that makes sense.

just one special chapter focusing on rachel as a character would add so much insight into every character around her: vincent, madam red, the twins. and i want to see how other characters effect each other like this, just like the recent arc between finny, doll, and snake. even if these interactions doesn't affect the main plot, it adds depth and atmosphere to the story, showing how every character matters and are interconnected.

its also something i think about a lot, what would happen after ciel assumedly dies? what would all the other characters do? while i don't expect yana to show them beyond an epilogue, nor would i care to see it that much, it's nice to assume what might have happen to everyone afterwards. would mey-rin join ran mao as a bounty hunter duo? Would lizzy and soma cope together with ciel's death? would any of these characters make new bonds and keep in contact with each other? or does that not matter

As much as I love the side characters in black butler it pains me to see how many of them are only used as mere comic relief and how often they fall into predictable tropes without any substantial depth or growth. This is especially disappointing for a story that has been released for like 18 years , where characters that have been introduced since the first arcs still haven't get any significant development at all . I'm talking mainly about Tanaka , lau , ranmao , Francis , druitt and Rachel ( even though Rachel is dead she still don't get enough screen time compared to Vincent for example) . But at least I'm glad that the recent arc " blue revenge arc " focused on phantomhive servants and gave us more insight to their past and their motivation .