#syanalyses

[ceoandslutler]

a short analysis on the theme of kindness in kuro, in defence of the morally reprehensible protagonists.

i previously spoke about sebastian pulling a "not like other humans" line on ciel but the things he's actually saying in this chapter are crazy...

chapter no's and pages in alt text!!

media illiterate (most kuro fandom antis') logic is that ^this guy's^ the big bad villain of kuro, there's so much to analyse about the theme of kindness and humanity in kuro but ultimately people are blind to it because sebaciel are not the kind, happy-go-lucky type of protags many people are used to and people struggle to purify them. there are so many people in this story "more innocent" than them and less morally grey which makes them look like worse people but the fact is that they are the "worse" in a world full of the "worst". they're there to show you how despicable humanity can be but they have their moments of 'good' (otherwise they'd be lacking in likability), especially moments like this can be quite odd in this story about corruption and evil because in those pages, these two do not seem like the deplorable, manipulative and conniving characters we often see them as. this moment reminds me of another very dear chapter to me which two volumes comes after this.

this is such an interesting part of the manga (it's why the blue cult arc is my favourite arc of the manga despite all the popstar/idol shenanigans that threw a lot of people off). the way these two behave in this arc is not normal, they do not need to go above and beyond for these people. it is not necessary for sebastian to go this far for ciel AND his tenants (who it is important to note he has no contractual obligation to care for, especially not to the extent of giving them the "time of their lives") and it is certainly not normal the way ciel treats these people with zero contempt even when they 'disrespect' him as a noble. these two are genuinely weird for their time, blue cult arc also gives us an unforgettable seb moment (link).

this chapter also serves as part of the transition between the blue cult arc and the blue memory arc which is also...

one of the most intriguing parts of the manga... what's interesting here is that ciel HAS kept his tenants happy as proven by the halloween chapter (the page below from this same chapter talks of infrastructure needs having to be met and we read that ciel has fixed the roads since becoming earl and even an old donkey can transport milk from across them- that's how good the quality of the roads are). however, what i want to focus on is undertaker previously saying ciel, despite having phantomhive blood is not like his predecessors. in fact, the flashback chapter shows he's not even like his own identical twin brother!

i really wonder what exactly undertaker meant by saying that right as ciel saves joanne in the school arc and also what vincent was thinking about his sons in this flashback sequence. did vincent think o!ciel is different too? and what is it that makes him so odd? or rather, what makes him an exception in the phantomhive family? i look forward to whatever yana has in store for us and hope to see where these wonderful characters with such bizarre morality (or lack there of) end up.

i will talk about this theme more in the future but if anyone has something specific to add, please do. and even if it's not too detailed or you're unsure, feel free to tell me what you think about the use of 'good' and 'evil' for the main characters of kuro overall! some things to consider:

fundamentally why are ciel and sebastian the way they are? and more importantly, do you think yana intended either of them to be read as strictly "evil"? a lot of people make the case of the fandom purifying them but i never see that these days, usually it's only ciel that's sanitised of all sin and sebastian that is demonised (although occasionally both are demonised as solely "bad guys"). i joke about them being narcissistic and not the nicest people (which is something i genuinely believe) but i do not think they are the root of all evil; which is a take you can have without absolving them of any and all misdeed they may have committed. i think what i'm really getting at is that sebastian is not ""evil""? and he's not innocent either. but he's a force for "good" in the story. he works for the phantomhive estate and the people living on that land more devotedly than a demon with a 3-clause contract with the master of the land should and he shouldn't be excluded from the phantomfam and only seen as horrible/evil but nor should he be solely seen as a silly little cat loving parent. and you don't need to ship sebaciel to see him this way, just read the source material with your eyes peeled, really think about what sebastian does and says. he's so interesting and he's so much more than the fandom makes him out to be. but interpret him however you want, i guess.

[ceoandslutler]

respectful disagree because i think the found family trope fits the phantomfam really well actually, my posts have mostly been about the heteronormification of their dynamics (eg dadbastian and kids, or sebard ft mombastian and kids or, let's exclude sebastian from the household and just put bard as the dad and call it a day). here are two of my recent posts showing these phenomena: excluding sebs from phantomfam and a long post about seb's relationships with the servants (the tags to this rb basically explains what antis do with phantomfam recently).

imho the found family trope is so good because it does not bind itself to the heteronormative idea of family with parent figures & children or sibling dynamics or age patriarchy. those things don't need to exist! it's a queer invention- a group of friends who are outcasted by society are found family regardless of having a "dad/mom" figure in the group or not, a bunch of drag queens doing shows together who are ostracised by society/family/peers can be found family even if they don't have siblings dynamics and some of them act more like friendly coworkers, a couple of lonely people who are neighbours in a decrepit apartment building with limited financial resources who take care of each other are family (regardless of what dynamics they have with each other). family is such a strange, unquantifiable concept, there are limitless possibilities to what a found family might look like.

popular media has twisted found family into heteronormative only, eg films about reconstituted families [those heartwarming films about stepparents, recently stepmother manhwa has gotten super popular], adoption stories [so many hollywood movies] or even stories like spy x family where the characters aren't related but become family. they're all heteronormative, even the same sex parent stories like buddy daddies, the shape of the family is always turned into something heteronormative with a parent and kid(s with sibling dynamics). popular stories that use the found family trope have warped its meaning into something much smaller than it is, it's a massive trope, encompassing many different ways people can find 'family'. sebaciel are quite clearly suggestive and romantically coded and there may not be a mom/dad & kids situation but they're found family anyway- in their own way. they don't translate into the antis definition of a found family but that doesn't mean they aren't one, sometimes a family is just a bunch of servants (one of which being a demon) and their little lord! <3

anyway they're not a '''normal''' found family but i think yana has written them as a found family and they consider themselves as the parts of one household.

Broke: Ciel is Sebastian’s adopted son, and Ciel likewise views Sebastian as a stand in Father figure.

Woke: Sebastian views his servants as his unruly adopted children, and Ciel in turn views his servants as his family.

Bespoke: Sebastian’s Relationship between Ciel and his servants does not evenly translate into the found family troupe, and that’s okay as they’ve got their own dynamic going on here.

[ceoandslutler]

a short analysis on the theme of kindness in kuro, in defence of the morally reprehensible protagonists. pt2

focused character analysis: ciel phantomhive (ours)

before getting into this, i highly recommend reading my last post which received a great response from @plague-of-insomnia (very much appreciated additions that i will be referring to), i wanted to do a part two to my analysis and i will likely do a post of sebastian too but for now it's ciel who i want to focus on and how he is 'different' to other humans.

firstly i would like to follow up the points i made about the blue memory arc

our ciel wants to open a toy shop because of his own condition of being stuck at home with limited activities, he wants to make indoor toys. his brother says "nobles don't sell toys" and in this chapter it is alluded multiple times that he, as the second son, should have either become a 'vicar' or 'doctor' as they are respectable jobs, unlike being a toy maker/seller. another point is that o!ciel establishes here that he knows he can't be like the other members of the phantomhive bloodline (see: pt1 talking about undertaker's quote "he is unlike his predecessors"). back to the second son point, we already know how frustrating it is to be a second son:

but o!ciel has not once shown himself to be jealous of his brother, nor was he frustrated that he couldn't be earl. in fact he constantly reassures his brother in the blue memory arc that he is like their father and he'll make a great earl. he also makes it clear he does not desire the popularity that comes with being a vicar. (we see the vicar in their land is a manager of affairs with a lot of power/responsibility/direct access to nobility and when seb takes on the vicar disguise, ciel makes it clear that he is a "popular" person, akin to a "celebrity"). roles of religious importance are shown as vain in kuro.

it's interesting because the chapter we see the real vicar rathbone is the same chapter o!ciel says he wants to make toys and r!ciel says nobles don't do that and the murder arc where sebs is disguised as an alternate vicar rathbone is the same arc we find that o!ciel reads working class magazines because the consumers of his toys/funtom products are "common folk", he even reads punch!

..that's it for vicars, those are the only two instances we see them mentioned. the doctors we see are different. we have madame red who became a killer and used her skills to kill prostitutes out of spite (edit: as well as viscount druitt who does have a medical licence and we saw him doing human trafficking although i forgot about him, thank god plague-of-insomnia reminded me lmao) but we have two other doctors characters that are very important.

this nasty piece of work ^^ in the circus arc, very selfish and inhuman, uses VERY unethical methods to create prosthetics, morally bankrupt doctor similar to madame red

this stoker guy who is also a doctor. selfish, doesn't understand what medicine he's even using on people, just generally a egotistical awful guy.

in both these arcs, we see o!ciel show humanity

he's going to the workhouse baron kelvin supported and is going to recommend it to a philanthropist. although there was no workhouse, those children were likely already the doctor's victims.

in the campania, he not only goes back for lizzy, he is very considerate of a servant who not only tried to kill him with his snakes but also doesn't even call him by a formal title (snake called him 'smile' until the end, ciel never took offence to it despite being a noble)

he not only shows this amount of consideration, he also gives up his seat in the boats which plague-of-insomnia mentioned when they rb-ed pt1 of this analysis. i genuinely think the way o!ciel treats snake is extremely perplexing, he is too considerate... perhaps guilt? perhaps the empathy he feels as he too lived a lonely and alienated life as compared to the rest of his family? he felt like his family did not tell him anything and just died/disappeared, leaving him to have to wait for the killers to come back for him just so he can get his self-righteous revenge.

finally i would like to point out a little tidbit, o!ciel generally does not seem to care at all about society's expectations. his relationship with his tenants and servants is abnormally humane. i would also like to point out his confusion at elizabeth's sobbing about being the scary kind of woman he doesn't like (something r!ciel had implied)

this boy has never shown that kind of expression towards femininity or women... even when it sounds like he's being sexist, it's usually a poorly done translation, i don't know japanese well but before anyone pulls this up, i found the japanese raw to check over it myself:

he did not say "ladies don't come in such monstrous heights", he said something more along the lines of "it's impossible/i can't stand to dance with a tall/big lady in this way"(?)

[please correct me if i'm wrong, i don't know japanese well and my forte is indo european languages]

the point of this analysis is not to say ciel is solely "good" or 'pure cinnamon roll uwu' (i would never), but just to say he is capable of humanity... in a story about horrible humans, he as a one of the morally grey main characters is capable of being a force for good. he's also pointed out to be different to others and shown to not contain the same bad aspects of the other pathways he could've gone in life e.g. vain vicar or diabolical doctor. he is at his core, a character who shows humanity and compassion and that is why he is likeable even when he does heinous things. he is more than an innocent baby and more than an evil aristocrat with zero morals. although the head honcho of this story is sebs but i will get into him in another post, he's also a VERY interesting protagonist.

[ceoandslutler]

have you heard kuro dubbed in any language other than english? or in any other asian language other than korean or chinese? well i found a persian one and it's so fucking bad that it's hilarious.

(also stay tuned to find out why the persian dub of kuroshitsuji being so bad has directly to do with anti-shipping sentiment and puritanism)

i would like to politely invite anyone who's ethnically from/lives in/speaks the language of a country with an ultraconservative government to contribute to this post if they know a dub of kuro (fandub or licenced by a company) in their language to contribute to this post (agree or disagree that policing media causes a drop in its quality and accessibility in other countries) but let's keep it civil. if you are not from a country like this but have something to say, feel free to add anything on, the conversation is open to all :)

so i just heard the homemade persian dub of kuro's first ep made by some young people who sound like they're in uni (probs 18-23 yr olds), tears have been flowing from my eyes for the past 20 mins

(link under the cut)

to save time, go watch the bits i linked below or just laugh at the whole thing (full link) but don't blame these kids for being awful at this or just skip to the end of the post. as i said, there is a reason this dub is so bad and no official dub exists and it has to do with... anti subculture?!?*

but first, the funny stuff

ciel's voice is awful but just listen to the goofy dub laugh seb's va did at the start I'M FUCKING SOBBING (00:15-00:35), and also not ciel's va MOANING after the op song (2:35) ??? i REPEAT the woman who VA'd ciel was fucking MOANING, the YAWN was the worst part, dub team shotacons???

also SHEEL FANTOMHAYO?? THE KID'S NAME WAS DUBBED AS SHEEL FANTOMHAYO. (refer to 6:30 in the video linked)

now this isn't because we lack a 's' in our language (my alias is literally a persian name meaning shadow aka ✦sayé✦), we've just transliterated it as shiyel, but SHEEL???

the other guy calls him fantomhayo too (8:25) and the fantomhayo condition strikes again with sebastian's va talking about the fantomhayo hospitality at 12:40 ish in the video.

this is particularly bizarre because we do have a V in persian, please guys, use it!

please note: i have nothing but good things to say about finny's va... the way the va says "sebaastiyaan!" (12:43) is so cute <3

at 13:00, we get this golden crumb "meyrin... oh meyrin" from this college aged dude doing sebastian (who is SO lost) then he proceeded to say in persian "i beg you, ON MY LIFE, just pour the fucking wine in the glass and walk away" save me from the bad dub, ono daisuke, save me...

the furnace scene is just gold (18:50 onward is comical, the scream at the end... priceless), these people deserve an award, im tempted to do subs on this whole video because the translation is so wrong yet absolutely too hilarious to leave untranslated. also, i like how you can hear other people talking in the background constantly, they didn't even bother finding a quiet room 😭😭

finally i translated some of the best comments under the vid (everyone fuckin hated it 😭)

..tldr: irani/persian speaking netizens are brutal. but also, it shows that persian speakers are used to quality dubbing, otherwise this wouldn't be so offensive. if we were used to badly done dubs, the comments wouldn't look like this. many famous kdramas and jdramas and indian/turkish films have been dubbed. animated movies e.g. disney films and most commonly 70-80s anime have huge followings in iran and were dubbed extraordinarily well. in fact, in iran, many of our own films are dubbed especially if the original footage did not capture the audio well enough/the director was unhappy with the actor's delivery and it's usually hard to tell if this has happened because it's done very well. shockingly, dub is more popular than sub. so why does kuro not have an official dub? why is the fandub so bad???

PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING

*IMPORTANT: an anime like this is not allowed to be legally dubbed by studios in iran because iran is under an islamic theocracy (the islamic republic) and all media that promotes devil worshipping and blasphemy is banned, homosexuality is too (anyone can tell kuro has homoerotic undertones, the homophobic heads of media would never let this queer gothic romance through). oh and trans people are "allowed" on TV but only if they're not vulgar/explicit (not even then, half the time) & grelle would not make it into the anime AT ALL. even if we ignore all the devil worshipping and queerness, sex is banned too (as well as lewd appearances of women), so season 1/2 & boc would never make it. oh and alcohol, bom would never make it. oh and also, women's empowerment is banned too so boa would never make it. when will it end? will someday everything be banned? sure looks like it. but isn't this what anti shippers want? i mean kuro IS problematic media, it never condemns people for having sex or partaking in drinks, not even murder is condemned.

moving on, the subtitled version of the episodes are very well done for what they are but it's still not good, you won't understand what's going on properly. meanings are lost. a dub is much more accessible to those who can't read subs and generally a necessary option. people NEED dubs. don't get me wrong, the iranian fansub team are dedicated however subs are much easier for fans to do than dubbing. as you heard, kuro's persian fandub was frankly terrible. these kids didn't even know how to pronounce ciel's name and it's NOT because of the language barrier, my theory is that because the internet access is so limited, they had to figure out how to pronounce ciel's name purely from the japanese original or another lang dub and had no access to the eng dub. as you can see, they are not able to follow the mouth movements either (don't have editing software); i assume the internet restrictions targeted streaming platforms w the dub on it (because the government wants to CONTROL what media people consume) so they had to figure everything out from japanese or another language, (they probably used another fandub to translate since the ed seems to credit the eng vas while they can never be heard in the bg) which is not easy. unfortunately english is taught in schools around the world not japanese so the dubbers' translation was quite honestly terrible- after all, they had no official script to base their translation off. BUT if a professional dubbing studio (e.g. iran's glory entertainment) got their hands on kuro, it'd probably be dubbed very well. if mehrdad raissi, CEO of glory, was on for seb's role, it would be glorious (pun intended). if he did flynn rider well, he can do sebs well too. but that studio often has their shows played on state televisions and the last thing they want is to get blacklisted and arrested for dubbing the gay demon butler anime. please do not take this fandub as representing all persian-language dubs. and remember, kuro itself is banned for being problematic media in counties like iran... no sebaciel needed (although anyone can definitely see the gay undertones to the story from a cover alone).

if you want to ban people from shipping things or making fan works that are problematic... soon you'll have to get rid of problematic media in general. and already, antis sound like the media people in charge under a dictatorship. "violence is okay, murder is okay but s-sex?!? women in scandalous clothing!!! oh good heavens..!" this is the kind of mindset which leads people down the rabbit hole of "this is problematic!! let's ban it!!!" until there's nothing left, a slippery slope. imagine this was the english dub of kuro. imagine it was banned in western countries and a team of young'uns had to gang up and make their own dub using only the japanese raws. imagine problematic media like kuro wasn't picked up the west because it's "shota" and that's bad. we'd be stuck looking at the same sanitised stuff and if we wanted to watch kuro, our options would be trash dubs (no offense) like this one. pretty scary to think this could be the state of the english dub if puritanism was as bad here as it is in countries like iran. policing media and deciding what creators should or shouldn't create will take you to the side of theocratic dictatorships and you will fall into alt right puritan lunacy, fanpoll are about as woke as a dictatorship, remember that.

don't sound like this:

NEVER sound like this.

it is clear that conditional freedom is no freedom at all. there should be zero criteria to the media we want to create, no religion or purity culture to it. just be media literate. let nobody control what you want to create or consume! (or you'll end up in a world where the media that is deemed "problematic" is maintained but only through underground circles, losing quality and accessibility day by day, until these channels are shut down too and only a sanitised husk of options for media consumption remain)

[ceoandslutler]

when it comes to the murder arc

there are a lot of reasons as to why i really love the murder arc (above are just two of my fav seb funeral moments) but i just want to highlight some of my favourite moments

(beware of the long post ahead:)

1. sebs and his cats

this panel is my fav ever:

2. sebastian just not liking lies

when accused of lying by arthur:

when ciel lied to snake:

these 2 moments 1) after ciel lies to snake and 2) after sebastian is done faking his death and comes out the coffin:

1)

2)

just this entire moment:

gay stare

3. how much sebs suffered and yet...

he liked this way too much... WAY too much

he did not like this one, his masochistic tendencies are very selective

and after all that shit he put up w...

he revealed himself to arthur just so he'd write more since ciel likes his writing and when ciel acts as though he didn't care so much about the writing, sebs just says HE wants to read what he writes next and it's all so good, such a perfect set up for campania arc, this is one of the first times we see an actual sign of emotion in this demon and we see it in the arc that is connected to the circus arc where ciel embraces humanity's more demonic side, we see sebastian embracing his more human side by becoming someone's inspiration USING his demonic nature in order to later read how a human perceives him... and also to entertain ciel since he feels something to him, probably not 'love', especially not at this point and i doubt he ever will but something akin to 'care', he did this without any contractual obligation and that's what makes it so special, for this dynamic, the little things really count

[ceoandslutler]

if you have no clue what im talking about, here's pt 1 & pt 2 of the analysis posts

im leaning more into long post personally but if like 90% of people don't want it like that then i will try to change it, although it will be messier separate since i want to connect arcs to each other

[ceoandslutler]

welcome to my blog - started 13/04/23

was recently on hiatus, semi active

hello, i'm sayé (pronounced SAA-YEAH) or just sy (pronounced SIGH), this blog is a space where i muse all about sebastian and o!ciel from kuroshitsuji/black butler and share all my other silly lil thoughts about the kuro world, i usually do not interact with people first unless they seem nice (courtesy of online social anxiety and fear of 🐜s) so i will probs rarely/possibly never reblog random stuff unless i have something substantial to add (srry i can't tag that well and don't want to dilute my stuff and also i have autism brain lol so if my blog's not neat, i will literally DIE). also feel free to send me an ask/message, i will probably respond (90% of the time, teehee) but tbh it's like poking a dead person with a stick and seeing if they're alive.

this is just a place for me to share my musings about my fav evil boys and share writing if i ever get around to doing it, also this blog is not for minors, stay out, minors/-18!!!

also i am evidently a proshipper, antis shoo!!

i write, do edits (occasionally), cannot draw for the life of me and love love love sebaciel with a passion with an incline to sub bottom sebs (he's just so babygirl to me, i'm sorry).

RESOURCES FOR FIC WRITERS: • what fics sebaciel nation like to see | more coming soon

MY FICS: Stained Wedding Sheets | more coming soon

tags listed below

as promised, tags to navigate through the swamp this blog will become:

#symuses - for all my random little thoughts, fic/au ideas, hcs etc

#syanalyses - for when i read the manga for the trillionth time

#sywrites - for when/if i post fanfics

#sybitches - for when i complain

#syshitposts - for shitposts (obviously)

#syedits - if i do any manga editing (rare)

#sydraws - won't happen but just in case (extra rare!!)

alternative links:

#symuses

#syanalyses

#sywrites

#sybitches

#syshitposts

#syedits

#sydraws

[ceoandslutler]

i really agree with the first paragraph; he is very professional and he does not act emotionally or parentally towards the servants. i just want to add say that sebastian is not only masculine rather he takes on a myriad of personas that depend on what situation he's in or sometimes it just depends on what ciel needs. this analysis post is very much focused on the masculine presence of sebastian juxtaposed to his moments of femininity, narratively and aesthetically he's used as a masculine image while ciel is his feminine foil but there is a lot of nuance (which that post i linked delves a little more into, sebastian and ciel are very much balanced in the blue cult arc). personally i think the anime made him a lot more masculine while the manga teeters on the edge of making him androgynous while keeping his masculine edge. yana has steadily made him less solely masculine and more fluid in his personality. while sebastian's care for ciel is quite clearly non-parental, he is still the character who cares and nurtures ciel, not always in an erotic or sensual way (and often the other characters). we do not see his full dynamic with the servants (since the focus on kuro is not his relationships with humans but rather with one human–and that's ciel) but we do know he is strangely patient with the servants as he takes into account that their abilities are battle-centred and we've seen him tuck finny into bed and reassure the servants when it matters. below is a panel that is probably all over the dadbastian tag:

but it is proof that sebastian is more than trash demon, less than a parent. parents do not wake up their children to delegate roles to them. but similarly, superiors do not tuck other employees in. sebastian is just a wildly interesting character.

more importantly, when he is doing the care and nurture, it is not always sexually charged, sometimes it's just plain romance, literally my header

or the arc that's getting animated

the care he shows ciel is not solely sexual, it gets the romcom treatment, he swoops in, carries the boy to the nurse's office, takes care of him while he whines and throws a tantrum and he mocks him. mothers do not typically mock their children (except asian mothers tbh) and that's when it clicks: he does show some maternal(and paternal) style affection, however it's not painted in a parental way. the style of care is there but it's not enough to limit him to that. it's why i always say "he's more than that".

sebastian is very interesting and multifaceted, his care for finny in that panel was not painted in a suggestive way but his care for ciel often is but at the same time, the suggestive care isn't always sexual and sometimes just comes off as romance with little to no sexual undertones. he often appears 'parental' but you'd have to have no media literacy if you thought he was solely a parent character, he's not and antis are wrong. he appeals to those with mommy/daddy issues but that's it really and ciel has those issues so go figure; they're perfect for each other.

again, thank you for your addition, love hearing from you under my posts.

following up my recent post, i discovered this which proved me right about how antis view sebastian

STOP MOMIFYING HIM PLEASE, HE'S MORE THAN THAT, THEY DONE GAVE HIM THE HETEROSEXUAL CIS WOMAN TREATMENT😭😭😭

through gritted teeth, i say that i don't care about interpretations, be as wrong as you want HOWEVER the kuroshitsuji manga does not present mombastian/dadbastian as a canonical fact and your fanon interpretation is no more valid than sebaciel—in fact, sebaciel is much more embedded in canon.

where is the media literacy?

[ceoandslutler]

"true evil doesn't come from demons but from other humans"

this is a sentence i heard from my own mother after we watched and read kuro in its entirety. it's fascinating how people with media literacy (especially novelists like prev and my mum) can reach this conclusion so easily but antis online who come in all ages cannot. i genuinely believe this is the true point of kuroshitsuji and im honestly shocked how it links directly to antis hating sebastian. my peabrain assumed they were just being edgy by hating the sexyman of the story or guessed that they likely hated him as part of the "problematic" main couple (a lot of antis don't deny sebaciel being indicated but paint sebastian as a predator with ciel having no input in their relationship which is an odd interpretation but it justifies sebastian slander which antis love to engage in) but i now see it could have its roots in them fundamentally misunderstanding the point of the story. some of these people may genuinely think yana is writing sebastian as an antagonist and the fact they could have possibly misunderstood this story THIS badly is a terrifying thought- what has this fandom come to?

also @enmus-favorite-dream, you can't just hide this fantastic addition in the tags

not to always complain about antis but why do they read/watch kuro if they hate sebastian this much

he's the mc how do u have beef w him so bad, interpret him however u want but if you genuinely dislike him... why put yourself thru the torture of reading his story (and this is about him, no way to argue against that)

like are you just gonna ignore all his development with the other servants... he is the epitome of an allegorical queer coded outcasted non human character who finds kinship in other odd (queer) people. how are you ignoring that lol

you can interpret main characters as morally grey or evil (a lot of times they are) but atp it feels like antis hate him and ignore any changes or developments in his personality, at least acknowledge him as part of the 'phantomfam' he helped to create. there would be no phantomfam w/o sebastian because there would be no o!ciel and phantomhive manor w/o sebastian,,, hell, there'd be no kuroshitsuji w/o sebastian. actually fun fact it's called 黒執事 kuroshitsuji (black butler) not 貴族子 kizokuko (noble kid).

they hate him until they sexualise him into the molds they want, usually within the ships they like [nothing wrong with those ships per se but they're viewed as 'correct' while the most canonical ship is wrong(?)] or they only love him after they take away all his sexual characteristics and turn him into a cat loving spinster, a dad/mom figure with no other characteristics other than (1) love cat, (2) dad/mombastian, (3) cooking and cleaning, nothing else but that ruins him because he's not that flat of a character in the original work... from what we've seen he likes a lot of things, he enjoys playing this butler game with ciel, he likes being mean and flirty, he likes being around certain humans like agni who he genuinely seemed to respect despite being a demon, he likes the concept of death and finds it beautiful, he has an eye for fashion and a lot more.

the way they treat him is akin to how society treated women in the victorian era... either the angel of the house (maternal figure, or in his case, paternal but they do momify him a lot, no sexualised identity or made limited and very 'pure'/'demure') or the hated demonised prostitute (evil evil demon taking advantage of little boy, no parental feelings and no feelings AT ALL, worthless). it's laughable how half of the fandom have such an innate dislike of sebs that they want to deny the changes within him or in the best case scenario, they'd minimise it. not to mention how they want ciel to be the perfect little sex-repulsed victim but other people have made posts about that before. my focus is on sebastian who is so grossly mischaracterised by antis, they are either purposely misunderstanding him or just very obtuse.

you guys have two interpretations of him and both are either dead wrong or at best extremely misinformed lol

[ceoandslutler]

i agree so much with you it's crazy. although i will attach the best bit of that outing!!

he's so fucking fine here <3

i also just made a follow-up post i wanted to share, mentioned your rb in it too.

a short analysis on the theme of kindness in kuro, in defence of the morally reprehensible protagonists.

i previously spoke about sebastian pulling a "not like other humans" line on ciel but the things he's actually saying in this chapter are crazy...

chapter no's and pages in alt text!!

media illiterate (most kuro fandom antis') logic is that ^this guy's^ the big bad villain of kuro, there's so much to analyse about the theme of kindness and humanity in kuro but ultimately people are blind to it because sebaciel are not the kind, happy-go-lucky type of protags many people are used to and people struggle to purify them. there are so many people in this story "more innocent" than them and less morally grey which makes them look like worse people but the fact is that they are the "worse" in a world full of the "worst". they're there to show you how despicable humanity can be but they have their moments of 'good' (otherwise they'd be lacking in likability), especially moments like this can be quite odd in this story about corruption and evil because in those pages, these two do not seem like the deplorable, manipulative and conniving characters we often see them as. this moment reminds me of another very dear chapter to me which two volumes comes after this.

this is such an interesting part of the manga (it's why the blue cult arc is my favourite arc of the manga despite all the popstar/idol shenanigans that threw a lot of people off). the way these two behave in this arc is not normal, they do not need to go above and beyond for these people. it is not necessary for sebastian to go this far for ciel AND his tenants (who it is important to note he has no contractual obligation to care for, especially not to the extent of giving them the "time of their lives") and it is certainly not normal the way ciel treats these people with zero contempt even when they 'disrespect' him as a noble. these two are genuinely weird for their time, blue cult arc also gives us an unforgettable seb moment (link).

this chapter also serves as part of the transition between the blue cult arc and the blue memory arc which is also...

one of the most intriguing parts of the manga... what's interesting here is that ciel HAS kept his tenants happy as proven by the halloween chapter (the page below from this same chapter talks of infrastructure needs having to be met and we read that ciel has fixed the roads since becoming earl and even an old donkey can transport milk from across them- that's how good the quality of the roads are). however, what i want to focus on is undertaker previously saying ciel, despite having phantomhive blood is not like his predecessors. in fact, the flashback chapter shows he's not even like his own identical twin brother!

i really wonder what exactly undertaker meant by saying that right as ciel saves joanne in the school arc and also what vincent was thinking about his sons in this flashback sequence. did vincent think o!ciel is different too? and what is it that makes him so odd? or rather, what makes him an exception in the phantomhive family? i look forward to whatever yana has in store for us and hope to see where these wonderful characters with such bizarre morality (or lack there of) end up.

i will talk about this theme more in the future but if anyone has something specific to add, please do. and even if it's not too detailed or you're unsure, feel free to tell me what you think about the use of 'good' and 'evil' for the main characters of kuro overall! some things to consider:

fundamentally why are ciel and sebastian the way they are? and more importantly, do you think yana intended either of them to be read as strictly "evil"? a lot of people make the case of the fandom purifying them but i never see that these days, usually it's only ciel that's sanitised of all sin and sebastian that is demonised (although occasionally both are demonised as solely "bad guys"). i joke about them being narcissistic and not the nicest people (which is something i genuinely believe) but i do not think they are the root of all evil; which is a take you can have without absolving them of any and all misdeed they may have committed. i think what i'm really getting at is that sebastian is not ""evil""? and he's not innocent either. but he's a force for "good" in the story. he works for the phantomhive estate and the people living on that land more devotedly than a demon with a 3-clause contract with the master of the land should and he shouldn't be excluded from the phantomfam and only seen as horrible/evil but nor should he be solely seen as a silly little cat loving parent. and you don't need to ship sebaciel to see him this way, just read the source material with your eyes peeled, really think about what sebastian does and says. he's so interesting and he's so much more than the fandom makes him out to be. but interpret him however you want, i guess.