*sigh* Okay, I’m only going to reply to this topic once and this is in reply to each of these messages I’ve received about Lizzy. Because I was really looking forward to this chapter when seeing the spoilers and then all this Lizzy hatred really spoiled my mood a little.
First of all, you don’t have to like a character. It’s okay to dislike Lizzy for whatever reasons. But the amount of hatred I’ve seen going around now and the accusations people make about her never having loved our Ciel or how she’d better be off dead are really unjustified.
Yes, Lizzy made the decision to stay with the sect and with real Ciel and yes, she’s accusing our Ciel of lying. But our Ciel really did lie. She’s not wrong about that. And because she loves him his lie is so much worse for her.
Just try to put yourself in her situation and see it from her perspective. She doesn’t know everything we as readers know. She doesn’t know what the twins have gone through and what led to our Ciel’s decision to return under Ciel’s name. To her, ‘Ciel’ returned and all this time (nearly four years) he let her believe he was Ciel and she grew to love him. She dedicated her whole life to him, sacrificed a lot to be how she thought she had to be in order to be the perfect wife for him. She was happy with him, worried for him, fought for him, showed her true self to him and she loved him.
She always wanted our Ciel to be happy. She never pushed him even though she felt that something was wrong and that he was keeping secrets from her. She wanted to let him know that he could trust her with everything. She gave him time in hopes that one day he would open up to her.
And now she learns that he has lied to her all this time.
And this terrible truth has crushed everything for her.
It must have been such a great shock which turned her whole world upside down. Lizzy is hurt! Terribly hurt! And rightfully so. She must worry what else was a lie and so she questions everything now. It’s no wonder she wanted to escape from all this because this was too much. And her reaction isn’t stupid or naive. It’s human!
She feels betrayed by the one she loved. And she hasn’t gotten any explanation other than the one real Ciel, Bravat and those at the cult have given her. And those are surely not the ones who would be neutral on that. They probably want to separate her from our Ciel so who knows what else they told her. We have no idea what happened all this time while Lizzy was in that sect. But what we do know is that she is quite unhappy. She is desperate and doesn’t know what to do, who to trust or what to believe anymore. And given her situation that’s totally understandable.
Even now when accusing our Ciel of lying she has tears in her eyes.
Our Ciel surely never intended to hurt Lizzy but that doesn’t change the fact that this is what happened. She has been lied to and feels betrayed now. She loved him and I think she still does which makes this betrayal even worse for her. So naturally, she couldn’t stay with the person who she feels she can’t trust with anything right now. And that surely made her an easy target for the sect’s manipulations which added to her desperation.
Lizzy is probably the one (aside from the twins themselves) who is most affected by our Ciel’s lie about his identity. And that’s why I think she has a very important role in this arc. And while she’s now acting on real Ciel’s side I believe that before this arc ends she’ll return to our Ciel or speak in his defense. They will need to have a long talk and this gives great opportunity for character development on both sides. And then we’ll see how all this will affect their relationship and their future.
So this is all I’m going to say about this. Please consider the circumstances, Lizzy’s characterization throughout the whole manga and her perspective in the current situation before accusing her of being false, naive, stupid or “a b**** ”.
I’ll end this by referring to these great posts about this topic by other bloggers: x, x, x, x, x
I’ve been thinking quite a lot about Mephisto and how he makes a wager. In true faustian spirit, Mephisto creates a wager/contract to steal a person’s soul The person is usually ambitious and decides to make a trade for power, prestige or knowledge. In chapter 101 young Shiro makes a wager with Mephisto to be the next Paladin, allowing him to escape section 13 and become a powerful exorcist. Demon wagers seem to be a two-way street, Shiro must abide by the agreed terms to appease Mephisto and Mephisto must hold up his end of the bargain. It’s only natural that Mephisto would become almost like a friend to Shiro, they would need to collaborate. Is Shiro really Mephisto’s victim in this situation? Not really. Shiro would have probably died young in some gruesome section 13 experiment, so in a sense Mephisto did provide him with a longer life. Shiro’s life was bittersweet to say the least. Young Shiro in the beginning seems pretty much obsessed with power. Adult Shiro didn’t seem to care much about power whatsoever. He preferred the love and company of his two boys.
Shiro’s end of the wager most likely required him to be killed by Satan which would progress Mephisto’s plans. Regardless of whether or not Mephisto was involved, Shiro does this selfless act out of love for his son. Shiro would do whatever it took to save Rin from Satan.
It was obvious that Shiro knew for quite a while that he was living on borrowed time. He contacts Shura and asks her to train Rin. He wouldn’t have asked this of her unless he knew his death was imminent.
Shiro, eariler in time also lectured Shura about the direction she was taking with her life and how he didn’t want her squander it. Shiro would be the best person to give her guidance and advice, as he was under a similar demon contract to Shura.
I completely agree that he knew he was on borrowed time, and all of his “children,” including Shura share aspects of his personality and person plight. Yukio was a child soldier, Shura under demon contract and a very unorthodox childhood, and Rin as a potential vessel for Satan (technically, Yukio too).
However, besides that, it really does make me wonder about the contract being Faustian, since he didn’t technically say his soul was on the line, but it is a safe assumption. Going with that belief, although Mephisto bartered for “one favor” in return [as almost everyone agrees: raising the boys] that released any hold on his soul (any other deals, notwithstanding.)
That brings us to Shirou’s ultimate sacrifice. As a Catholic priest, he would have been very well aware that he was committing a mortal sin by taking his own life, and he would have must likely been told how things might end (possession by Satan) or figured that it was indeed a possibility as it had happened to another Azazel clone already, so he’d need a fallback plan. Yes, it was done under extenuating circumstances, but killing himself would be damning his soul, anyway. That’s also assuming there is a version of heaven and God in this series [apart from the bevvy of supernatural entities we’ve seen]. If so, then perhaps it’s considered repetence in stopping Satan, and he’s automatically cleared of damnation.
Going with the non-deus ex machina route by automatic repentance, if there is a contract still open (another bet lost) and his soul was going to hell (Gehenna) anyway, wouldn’t the “best” demon be Mephisto to have as a “keeper?” I and use those terms loosely, because damnation and eternal servitude to Mepphy? Yeesh. I can only hope they truly did for some sort of twisted friendship that would provide him with perks, if that’s the case. Or there was an addendum/caveat that although his soul would be sent to Gehenna, being under Mephisto’s possession, perhaps he could do the unheard of thing and release him.
Just imagine that conversation, lol.
M: “Shirou, I need to borrow your soul for a short while. Don’t worry, I’ll give it right back!”
me: “i SWEAR UT is such an IDIOT for not mourning properly! LOOK at how SELFISH he is, look at the trauma for the children, how can he even NOT REALIZE that he’s really on the wrong road?! He needs to wake up RIGHT NOW otherwise he just has to DIE because he’s SO USELESS”
Our Ciel: Let’s assess… Government officials and many civilians are dead from illegal blood transfusions, Blavat is still at large, Violet is in the hospital, the rest of the Starlight Four are on the run, a butler is dead, Soma probably wants to kill me, I just had to relive the worst trauma of my life, my dead twin brother whose identify I stole has been brought back to life by a rogue reaper, 2 more reapers have shown up, Scotland Yard has shown up, the Midfords have shown up, Lizzie is against me, my brother is being super creepy, everyone and their dog is in my entrance hall, and my window is broken. What’s next? Undertaker’s going to tell me he’s my grandpa?
I want to make another point, despite that a lot was said on the subject already: you should never ever forget about context whenever new content is released, which is what a lot of Kuro readers seem to be doing about the cliffhanger with Lizzie.
…Though considering that a good part of these readers possibly already disliked Lizzie’s character before and are just using the cliffhanger as a pretext to have more discourse, this is probably a moo post but still, I’ll try.
Obviously it’s not the first time this has happened: to give another example, before we tackled this part in the recent flashback, a lot of readers used to be on our!Ciel’s back because they thought he had deliberately sacrificed his elder brother, in order to steal everything from him because he was jealous of his brother being the official heir.
We now know that this explanation couldn’t be the furthest away from the truth.
The same goes with Lizzie: as I already said yesterday, we don’t even know what she was told of the situation. Hell, for all we know, she could have been told that Sebastian is responsible for real!Ciel’s death and, since he’s always following our!Ciel’s orders, she could have reached a wrong conclusion. So Lizzie is in need of the truth, that much is clear.
And that’s why replacing in context always matters. Context relates to whether or not you honestly think that Lizzie will never get to hear or understand our!CIel’s side of the story. If you think she’ll stand by real!Ciel’s side and will despise our!Ciel forever for lying, then you’re not taking context into account and honestly that’s what’s bothering me besides the usual bullshit about her character, because context is 100% plot-related.
Context is what Sensei previously said and showed about Lizzie’s feelings for our!Ciel.
Context is the fact that Lizzie’s role model in life is her mother and, I might be wrong, but I believe there is a reason Frances apparently doesn’t show up in the current arc (I personally believe that like Tanaka she knew everything from the beginning
[x][x][x] but chose to keep quiet because she knew our!Ciel must have had his reasons for lying).
Context is Ciel and Lizzie needing character development and facing hardships in order to learn better and grow up even more.
Context is that Ciel’s lie led to a lot of people now misunderstanding (Lizzie, Soma too) and he has to acknowledge that there are always consequences to face about any decision he took (the same will probably happen later for the contract).
Context is any new development leading somewhere for both the plot and characters.
So you wanna shit on Lizzie? As regrettable and a sign of being narrow-minded as it is, being the main girl she has it tough and that can’t be helped.
¯_(ツ)_/¯
However, if you read Kuroshitsuji, that means you’re in it for the story too, so spouting bullshit about one cliffhanger when the series is 27+ volume long and this arc is not close to being over makes little sense.
That’s why, please do everyone who enjoys the series a favor and always try to make an educated criticism about Sensei’s writing.
midnight-in-town 