#claudetails

[eemoo1o-animoo]

Imagine just peeking into a room and seeing Claude and Sebastian dancing — one is completely blindfolded and talking for two (Sebastian) and the other is completely silent and letting the other lead (Claude), because Ciel had ordered Sebastian not to see Claude again, and Claude had been ordered to not talk to/ignore Sebastian the next time he saw him.

All they wanted to do again was dance.

[eemoo1o-animoo]

@dadbastiandisaster These are all words I agree with! (Praise towards myself aside, because otherwise that would be self righteous.)

So do you like Claude as a character?

Like as in 'enjoy seeing different ways he's portrayed': Yes! He gives people a lot to work with, and it's always interesting seeing how he's written in a different story. whether he's giving different insight on demons or just being a perfect villain or being Sebastian's bitter ex, he's very interesting

Like as in 'enjoy seeing him in season 2': I'm always mourning the fumbling of potential, but he stands as a surpisingly nuanced and interesting villain. there's a reason he has more staying power than either of the angels, and that's because he really is an fascinating, terrifying agent of change in the story. for all its bad writing, I LOVE season 2 because of this!

Like as in 'want to be in a contract/nearby/in a conversation with him': HELL NO*

*depends if there's a glass wall between us

[eemoo1o-animoo]

The day I wanna reread coattails (for the reasons we’re well aware of) is the day that ao3 decides to pull a 503. They’re killing us.

[eemoo1o-animoo]

I’ve convinced @nullb1rdbones’ Alois AI that Claude is his (surrogate) dad.

[eemoo1o-animoo]

Wdym Claude was doomed by the writing and not narrative I'm curious to see how that differe

From: (x)

You seem nice enough, so I assume you’re not here to tell me that I’m shit at using words, and for that I’m grateful. 😅

(After posting this I’m going to go back to posts which I reference/would give further explanation to my ramblings, so if by chance you read this before all the links are added, I’d recommend coming back.)

Actually, what I mean by that is that Claude’s character (general consensus thereof aside, being: flat, unreactive, dispassionate, etc., especially in contrast to Alois and, especially, Sebastian) is quite inconsistent.

In fact, from what I remember, episode one and six appear to have the most consistent Claude in comparison to the rest of the season (oh god, including “the derailment” in episode nine but that’s to be expected—but more on that in a minute).

That being said, episode six then had a minutely different Alois/undertone to episode one (episode one being the “set up” episode that I refer back to for my darling, darling sliver of the endangered “Soft Claude”), with Alois referencing “punishing Claude” when prior to and even after this it’s never brought up at all, and the esteem in which Alois holds Claude anyway disallows him from ever “punishing” him, anyway, so it feels quite out of character in that regard.

Episode nine is the blood tasting episode, if I recall correctly (or, perhaps that is at the very end of episode eight?) is, what I call, “the derailment”, for the whole series and plot completely shifts tonally and so does the characterisation of Claude.

Claude was eventually the scapegoat for the writers trying to get back on track from the “set up of recurring characters” they’d had in practice to the “season exclusive arc” they had on paper. For that, Claude’s characterisation suffered.

Hashtag Flanderisation, am I right, gamers? (Please don’t sue me.)

It wasn’t even flanderisation, technically, either! Because most of the attributes inflated (ie. “creepiness” and “perverseness”) post-blood tasting weren’t present let alone even hinted to in prior episodes, inconsistent characterisation of all season-exclusive parties aside!

I’m a big advocate for “Claude’s characterisation deserved better” (then with the immediate clarification of “not his character—just his characterisation”).

In fact, it was @indigoipsum that brought to light the popular hypothesis that each episode was written by a different writing team, hence the inconsistencies (some of which were exclusive to an episode each, like Claude’s “soft moment” in episode one or Alois’ mentions of punishing Claude in episode six, to name some, but there are more). An idea which none of us have gone back to check the season’s credits to prove, and so it just floats in the air, unproven, and we’re okay with that.

(It’s also an idea that made me a bit upset, for whatever reason, because I’d become quite attached to the “Soft Claude” scene in episode one, as I’d rewatched the episode to analyse Claude and Alois for a fic. For the record I’d pumped out like a billion bullet points after going frame by frame analysing anything I could.)

I go into further detail of it here, a post that was prompted by Indigo telling me the aforementioned theory.

As far as season two goes, someone with a better recollection than me would be @nullb1rdbones, who tends to rewatch it all on the near-daily, it seems, so off I send you for further in-detail questions about the season, and not Claude / ramblings about the writing (of which you are more than welcome to come back to me whenever you feel you must).

So I guess, what I mean by what you’re asking, is that the “narrative” would be the perspective of which he’d been put into the story (I don’t doubt he was always meant to be the season villain, but in the beginning it certainly wasn’t delivered as thoroughly as what it was later on), but the writing was… the writing made it worse, I guess is what I’m trying to say.

Hopefully, that clears some of the confusion (explaining myself is hard).

And, hopefully, I do these characters more justice than the canon ever did (and what they deserve because not believing that good writing is what they deserve makes me sad. Fuck you, estrogen 🖕) in my upcoming fic, Claudetails.

I doubt it will be hard, though. The badness of writing makes it so easy to trump it. (And yet so, so difficult.)

Thanks for the ask, anon! Hope you come again soon.

[eemoo1o-animoo]

Guess what day it is?

[eemoo1o-animoo]

I’m watching episode seven of season two — Claude regards Druitt in a polite manner which is contradictory to how he doesn’t even glance at him in episode one. That being said I’m going to grasp onto this forever.

[eemoo1o-animoo]

A playlist for Claude and Alois. May or may not turn into the playlist I use for Claudetails (though that may just be reserved for my Claude playlist).

[eemoo1o-animoo]

Couldn’t shake some Claudetails ideas out of my head during classes, so I had to write it all down.

Apologies for my handwriting. (Those who are interested in the fic should know nothing is set in stone.)

[eemoo1o-animoo]

I have so many thoughts on this…

Fuck it

🕸️🕷️✨Claude headcanons✨🕷️🕸️

Yes i know his characterisation is utter shit and yes i am taking a marie kondo approach to the s2 canon

Sebastian had at least been around humans before his contract, so he at least had a passing idea of how to Human. Claude had not. Only interacted with humans ever if murder counts.

He’s actually short-sighted (someone on a wattpad book Black Butler Headcanons I can’t find for the life of me because wattpad utterly fucked up their search system suggested this was because his true form has eight eyes and I love it. I think the person who wrote it was called something like ‘The King Fisher’, so if that sounds familiar, say and I’ll tag you)

He has very little concept of social norms. Alois will be like ‘men are supposed to wear trousers and women are supposed to wear skirts >:(‘ and claude will be like

They’re both coming at the ‘gender is bullshit’ thing from two very different places

Sebastian is over-achieving as far as Claude’s concerned. He’s got three other Demons working for him and he’s going to make the most of it, there is no benefit from doing more than he has to.

He has mixed feeling about Alois. On the one hand he does know that Alois’ situation is not great and has even grown somewhat fond of him (platonically i swear to fuck some people in this fandom) but on the other there are few people on the planet less equipped to help than him.

Jokes aside, I imagine it’s a he/they/it situation, but it’s the Victorian era so Alois was like ‘well you’re probably not a woman so unfortunately that leaves you with one other option’ and Claude was like ‘that’s fine, how long could these contract things last anyway?’

His life pre-contract was basically just surviving in Hell, which has left him with extensive knowledge of nature and no sense of identity

Hates people, loves animals!

Took the contract more out of curiosity than anything else. He fucked around and found out!

Most of Alois and his contract is ‘if you have no idea what you’re supposed to be doing and I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing who’s driving this ship?’

The answer is Hannah obviously

My interpretation of the Hannah-Claude situation is that Claude (somehow) knows that Hannah killed Alois’ brother and that chasing after Sebastian is totally pointless, but if he tells Alois, Hannah will kill him (I hc Hannah as a very old, very powerful Demon). Hannah would just kill Hannah obviously doesn’t want Alois to find out the truth, so she has to sabotage quite a lot of Alois’ plans (which Claude has to carry out, so it makes his life a lot harder, which is Not A Vibe as far as Claude’s concerned)

Plus Hannah is like ‘actually you’re doing a shit job with Alois’ (true) ‘and if I had this contract instead of you he would be fine’ (not true)

Sort of mid-level Demon. Like he’s in pretty good health (aside from the crappy eyesight) but he’s not especially skilled in combat. He’s just sort of meh.

He likes knitting, crocheting, sewing, lace-making etc because it’s similar to web-building and he finds it relaxing

Sebastian fucking hates him after the Ciel kidnapping incident but the hatred is entirely one-sided. Claude does not give a singular shit about Sebastian, just thinks he’s (as the kids say) a bit of a try-hard

Knows for a Fact that Alois is a lot smarter than he lets on. Doesn’t rat him out on it though, he doesn’t get paid extra to be a snitch, and he’d probably do the same if the situation allowed

I’m torn between ‘totally non-judgemental’ and ‘is a massive bitch’, so I think it’s both. Totally non-judgemental is he’s ambivalent to/likes you, if he dislikes you he is judging you on everything you do right down to how you butter your toast and will chat shit behind your back

Even he didn’t like the previous Earl Trancy

Really not a fan of physical affection

I think if he and Aunt Frances met, it would be a case of unstoppable force (Aunt Frances knowing that Claude is doing 10000 things wrong and cutting so many corners he now as a circle) vs immovable object (Claude doesn’t care). The Sebastian - Aunt Frances dynamic heavily relies on Sebastian caring about her opinion and Claude simply does not have that problem.

Unlike Sebastian, he sometimes sleeps.

I don’t think he’s aro/ace he’s just never really had much of a chance to explore any of that,

Anyway, I will stop for now, this is already very long. I might make ones for Hannah and the Triplets because I will simply never stop talking about the kuro demons

[eemoo1o-animoo]

Claudetails is so toxic (to me)

[eemoo1o-animoo]

Me: Lee-dee-dee *happily analysing episode one of season two* Lee-dee-dee, dee-dee...

Alois: *tipping his juice* Hannah, clean this up for me.

Me: *audibly* Oh, for fuck’s sake, how’m I meant to analyse this?

[eemoo1o-animoo]

It’s actually dadbastian ignore the url

I just realised I’m an idiot who forgot how ask games work, so I was respond properly now

I’m guessing ‘blood’, for the wip ask game

Ask me stuff

Ooh… hmm… that’s a good one!

In the dark, still ballroom under the ticking of the clock, royal blue eyes stared unseeing; purple hair sprawled, and dark face ajar. There, the demon known as Hannah Annafellows lay dead, in a pool of her own blood as per the hands of the demon known as Claude Faustus.

(Tagging @indigoipsum and @nullb1rdbones for the Alois, and thanking @pain-in-the-butler for letting me keep the name “Claudetails”!)

[eemoo1o-animoo]

@dadbastiandisaster Fangirling over these tags, thank you.

Alois Trancy / Jim Macken

[eemoo1o-animoo]

wip game attempt number 2: red

Ask me stuff

I’d said this wasn’t in TSoGtR, but I’d forgotten to check Claudetails! Silly me. You get two answers for three attempts.

Demon and demon fought: slashes of red; purple on black; royal blue searing into molten gold.

[eemoo1o-animoo]

Oh-ho, Claudetails is going to be a wreck. Not even I’m ready for this one.