#kuroshitsuji boyband arc they could never make me hate you <3< /div> Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[kaymarie-bell]

proper British gentleman with a strict mom and a need to follow rules that secretly longs to be in a band

Riddle Rosehearts 🤝 Edward Midford

[bizarre-dollhouse]

Discussing the intersection of expectations, culture, and narrative structure when it comes to suspension of disbelief and perceived narrative quality (using Kuroshitsuji and Sherlock season 4 as examples)

The title makes this sound kind of smart but in reality this is another really really long and totally incoherent ramble that accomplishes nothing it’s just something I thought was interesting and wanted to rant about. I’m sorry. One day I’ll go back to writing clever text posts I just don’t know when that day will come.

TL;DR: I thought of what it would be like to describe the 2ct becoming canon to someone who’s never heard of it and it sent me on this long spiral of thought where I concluded that the cleverness of a plot twist can be weighted on toooootally different criteria depending on who you ask.

Honestly the 2ct becoming canon is the most bizarrely conflicting plot twist to ever happen to a fandom.

Like, on the one hand I legitimately think that it was a good twist although who knows it could fall apart in the future only time will tell. I say that because in retrospect it was blatantly obvious (especially in the Boat arc and the Green Witch arc) but Yana still framed everything in such a way that it still felt ambiguous. Evidence piled up piece by piece so each thing on its own could be like “nah, it’s just a coincidence” but once it’s all together it starts to be like “....that’s a lot of coincidences.....hmmmmmm”

Plus, it’s a fun twist even if you figure it out before hand. Also, if you did put all of the pieces together you get that fun feeling of accomplishment that comes with solving a puzzle. 

On the other hand, one of my friends was really into to kuro, but (as far as i know) she’s not caught up past the green witch arc and she doesn’t keep up with the fandom on tumblr, so she probs doesn’t know about the 2ct or that it’s canon (and even if she does then idk make this a hypothetical friend it still works).

I’m like

What would she even say if I told her that Ciel has a twin brother? I can’t imagine it being anything except for “what the fuck! that doesn’t make sense and came out of buttfuck nowhere!”

Which is weird bc, as stated earlier, I think it was a plot twist which was easy enough to figure out, but maybe if you weren’t looking for hints then it’s actually a bad twist.

But on another level, that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me either. Because a twist that you can figure out is good, but if it’s too obvious then it just feels like a stupid non-twist. And, like I said, I think Yana did a really good balance of “in plain sight” but also kind of ambiguous (that’s also just my opinion, though). 

Sooo...why do I think it would feel so out of left field and terrible if you didn’t figure it out?

I think the elephant in the room is the fact that it’s the most cliched plot twist in the history of western media. Ever. Any parody of a soap opera being used for comedic purposes shows how corny and stupid soap operas are by showing someone had a secret twin. Fucking Gravity Falls had the twin twist but they still had a fake show to make fun of how cliched their own canon plot twist was. It’s mostly only annoying if it’s to create artificial drama or legitimately comes out of nowhere (which I’ll get into later), but it’s still a joke at this point from being used in the past.

it’s a cultural meme.

And this is super fucking unfair because, as akumedeenglish points out, it’s not a trope in Japan, so for Yana and her Japanese fans this is probably purely and unironically rad.

But for any member of the Western fandom who hasn’t heard of the 2ct or just thought the idea was stupid, it feels really stupid. 

If I were to tell someone who doesn’t get into kuro theories something like “hey, John Brown turned out to be a grim reaper!” their reaction would probably be more positive even though there is waaaaaaaay less evidence for that actually being a thing even though i want that to be a thing.

But at least you can take it seriously.

I feel like the main reason people hated the 2ct even before it became canon is because it is physically impossible to not think it’s dumb on some level just because it’s been made fun of so much, even if from a technical writing structure it makes perfect sense.

Expectations and specifics can greatly affect the public perception of a good twist. My absolute favourite comparison to make is the twist in Sherlock season 4, which is literally the worst twist of all time ever. In that show, Sherlock also has a super secret sibling, except it makes no fucking sense. Sherlock apparently magically forgot about her, and apparently she had the ability to mess with him at anytime but just...chose not to for several years.

Also she can fucking control people and see the future in a show that is not science fiction and is supposedly set in reality.

Like nothing was building up to the twist except for like one line where Mycroft says something about “the last one” or something implying maybe there was another Holmes. Still dumb, and still last minute. But because of that people weren’t dedicated to an expectation that the sibling theory wasn’t canon, so there was no disappointment, just shock.

Followed by disappointment when the next episode aired.

But what made me paranoid was that my mom (who also hated season 4 of sherlock by the by) had a coworker who totally thought that it made sense and wasn’t contrived as shit. My mom said something that made me rethink the entire structure of a show like Sherlock compared to the Kuro manga.

“He was defending it”.

So of course I sat down to have an existential crisis about the nature of plot twists and narrative structure. “Am I just defending a shitty plot twist by telling myself it wasn’t shitty?” I thought to myself while sitting with my fist under my chin in an intellectual position of philosophical thought.

No, with a “maybe” on standby in case this whole Phantomhive twin thing totally sucks in future chapters.

Like i said, the 2ct follows the structural rules for creating a good plot twist. It makes narrative sense, and you could figure out before hand while still having fun with it. The same fucking plot twist was total bs in Sherlock for the reasons mentioned above (btw I should point out that I actually like the first two seasons of Sherlcok before anyone has my head. I would also like to point you towards the 1.5 hour video where someone describes how Sherlock doesn’t work as a mystery bc in that video there is a clip of the directer/writer saying “ah man, if we dove into Sherlock’s backstory, that would be a mistake and no one would buy it!” ....but you did. ah yes. clearly the sibling thing was a brilliant and well thought out twist and not something you made up to look clever. way to be consistent.)

Kuro is dumb, but it’s not stupid.

Sherlock looked smart but turned out to be incompetent. 

Plus, even though I love kuro, I’m not gonna sit here and be like “oh man, that boyband arc was totally necessary and not stupid at all! I’m sure glad Yana spent 3 whole volumes describing Ciel having wacky antics at a public school!” I may have Stockholm Syndrome when it comes to this manga but I also have standards. (Actually in all honesty I was falling out of love with the series because I hated the boyband stuff so much, but real ciel brought me back XD).

(Actually, I think a valid point about the 2ct becoming canon is that the timing was baaaaaad because it happened right after a point where people where drastically losing interest in the series).

But in the end, it is a legitimately bad twist for some people for a multitude of reasons. It is cliched, even if Yana didn’t know that and it only affects western readers. It can change people’s perception of the main character in a way they don’t like. If you’re an audience member who has never heard of the 2ct, it can really feel like it came out of buttfuck nowhere. Plus, for every reader, it kinda turned the series in a weird direction??? I legitimately have no idea where this is going. It could totally suck balls. Yana could unintentionally make it follow the evil twin cliche to a point of nausea. My only ray of confidence is coming from the fact that she had a plan for this and I have foolish optimism.

So I guess at the end of the day it comes down to suspension of disbelief and level of investment/curiosity? Like, how much are you willing to accept it as a twist that makes sense and are you interested enough to see how it plays out.

But like I said, I still think it’s a good twist based on dramatic stakes, narrative consistency, and the fact that it was set up in a clever way. This becomes a lot more obvious when Kuro is compared to Sherlock season 4.

That’s my rant. bye.