When we’re back to present, do you think our!Ciel will order Sebastian to kill real!Ciel after his imminent mental breakdown?

Hi Anon! Okay so, seeing how Ciel totally blames himself for what happened to his brother…

I don’t think he will be able to face him at first, so I doubt he’ll be able to order Seb to take care of his twin either.

In fact, I hope that Seb will be absolutely irrelevant to how this confrontation will turn out for our!Ciel, because we know he’s not particularly good at being sensitive and helpful whenever our!Ciel faces his trauma (ch95 anyone? -_-).

It’s as I wrote here, I think this arc is supposed to help our!Ciel with confronting most of his issues surrounding his trauma and what happened with his brother, so I don’t see how Seb is supposed to be the means to an end here (unlike all the previous arcs before), not when he’s the one who ate the twin’s soul in the first place.

No, in my opinion, if the twin is to die before this arc ends, then I think it’d make a lot of sense for him to be stopped by anyone but Seb.

Obviously, right now the most symbolic ending for the twin would be to be stopped by our!Ciel himself, since that’d also imply that our!Ciel found enough strength within himself to face his brother despite how much he was blaming himself for his death, and a catalyst to such an ending could be Lizzie herself.

I mean, if the twin hurts/allows someone to hurt Lizzie (which I think is likely to happen) then…

…in my opinion it could be shocking and despairing enough that our!Ciel would realize he has to stop his brother.

Other candidates for the same job would be Soma (since the twin attacked him and Agni), Lizzie herself (since she realized a while ago in ch113 that she “couldn’t save the twin”), Ed possibly (if he’s angry enough should Lizzie be hurt) or Tanaka (since surely he’d notice that the twin hardly is the boy he used to be).

So nope, Seb killing the twin again would just… not help our!Ciel with the fact he’s constantly blaming himself for what happened to his brother.
Seb can go face the other star Lords (like Polaris, who’s real!Ciel’s butler and who apparently was strong enough to kill Agni), or the mastermind behind the arc (UT? someone else?), but the twin isn’t going to be his call in my opinion.

I hope it answers your question, have a nice day Anon!

Soma is such a cinnamon roll <3. Do you think he is going to forgive our Ciel? Will he stay caring and naive after the loss of Agni or he'll keep a more mature, serious nature/behavior?

Hi Anon! Okay, so I’m so sorry for the delay but Soma is one of these characters for whom I’m currently really uncertain about what will happen to him.

Personally, here’s what I want him to do…

…which means that he’d learn about the 2CT and realize that our!Ciel had nothing to do with Agni’s death, that he’d stay by our!Ciel’s side despite everything that happened… because Soma is one of the few characters who really understand Ciel, despite Ciel keeping a lot of things to himself and sometimes acting harshly.

In other words, Soma becoming the Diedrich to Ciel’s Vincent would be amazing, because Ciel needs more people like him and Lizzie in his life.
Of course Sieglinde and Edward are other characters who are slowly becoming closer to Ciel, but neither share the proximity that Soma has with Ciel in my opinion (Lizzie being yet on another level).

The problem (and the reason I’m not really certain of anything) is that Agni died. So, while I do think that Soma will most likely find out about the 2CT (thanks to Sieglinde and/or Ed probably), the question remains whether he’ll stay in England afterwards or not.

It’s a problem I initially had with Sieglinde back in the GW arc before Ciel made sure to save Wolfram, because how is Soma going to do on his own, without his khansama? Where will he live, what will he do?
That’s why I can’t exclude the idea that Sensei maybe intends on leading him back to India until the final arc or something… ://

Of course, it’d be a development that I currently am not fond of, because I want Ciel and Soma to bond even more, I want Soma to tell Ciel what he really thinks and I want him to stay, but if Soma stays now that Agni is dead and that it really shook him…

it will possibly lead to Soma slowly becoming one of Ciel’s new Evil Nobles (so acting more serious indeed) and this might clash with what Agni wanted for his master.

Agni wasn’t very happy when he realized how Soma was used in Ciel’s plan to take the Sphere Music Hall down so, if Soma still decides to become Ciel’s Agni after everything that happened, it will most likely lead to more schemes like this, which is also why I’m not certain of what Sensei wants to do with Soma.

In my opinion, there are two big possibilities once the twin is dead/this arc is over:

Soma will stay and decide to become Ciel’s Agni at the end of this arc
Soma will realize that Ciel didn’t kill Agni but he won’t be able to stay in England after Agni’s death and so we will say goodbye to him until at least the final arc.

For now I’m really hoping for #1, because I love Soma and I think that everything he said in ch126 is relevant + would be helpful to Ciel’s character (especially since him and Ciel do parallel each other), but Agni’s death is creating a lot of uncertainty. ://

Mainly it depends on what Sensei wants to do with Ciel’s character. I mean, if Soma stays because he’ll still want to be Ciel’s Agni, then it implies more positive development for Ciel. If Soma attacks Ciel or if Soma finds out about the truth but still decides to leave however, then Ciel will blame himself even more…

and clearly this isn’t what he needs right now. ://

Sorry that this seems so confusing, Anon. I just… don’t know what’s more likely at this point. Hopefully Soma will stay, I truly hope he will for many reasons, but the master/servant dynamic is such a pattern in Kuro that, after being deprived of his, it kinda throws Soma’s character off-balance…

That’s why we’ll have to see what he does in this arc first, about the twin and about his anger.

Have a nice day Anon!

What are your thoughts on our Ciel self-esteem (both past & present)? I don’t think it’s that bad as everyone claims to be, because what he stated in the latest chapter was not enterely wrong and our Ciel now is a pretty confident person (even though he still has to work on it) so I’d like to hear your thoughts on it!

Hello Anon! I don’t know though, you tell me…

Because when I read this, I think our!Ciel’s self-esteem was rather very low, which would be why we’ve been talking about him having an inferiority complex as well as survivor’s guilt?

As for currently…

He does sound like he still has a rather crappy vision of himself, so I’m afraid it’s as bad as everyone claims it to be.

The thing is, I think it’s very important not to confuse our!Ciel’s “self-esteem” with his “resolve” based on his duality about initially wanting to make it all about his brother, except that it became mostly about him over the years:

Our!Ciel’s low self-esteem implies that he thinks he’s a horrible human being mainly because “he sacrificed his brother” (when Seb more or less put this idea in his head because that’s not what happened), which means that he probably sees the contract as a fitting punishment for “the horrible person he is”.

This also implies, as Soma pointed out in ch126, that he’s terrified of being happy because he didn’t come back for that and he thinks he “doesn’t deserve it” anyway.

About our!Ciel’s resolve now though, it’s definitely one of his strong points as a character compared to his self-esteem, which is possibly what you meant by “self-confidence”:

Because considering what he went through, it’s really impressive that he decided to take on whatever he had to in order to make things right for his family (ch137) and then also for himself (since I don’t think he lied about that specific part in ch95), when a big part of himself probably just wanted to hide and never face the world again (as we could see during his PTSD episode of the Green Witch arc).

Obviously though, his low self-esteem and his strong resolve are linked, which is why he’s such an interesting character in the first place, since it’s because he has such a crappy vision of himself that he believes he has to make things right using all that he can, until the day his punishment finally comes in the form of Seb taking his soul too.

TL;DR 4 years ago, our!Ciel convinced himself that he was a useless person who sacrificed his brother and that, both for his remaining family’s sake as well as real!Ciel’s, he should dedicate his life to becoming his brother and taking revenge for his sake (that’s the low self-esteem part).

However, the strength he found within himself to do all of that…

always always always was his from the very first day onward and that’s his resolve.

So Anon, in the newest chapter, our!Ciel was wrong because he didn’t sacrifice his brother and his family would have

obviously

welcomed him back very happily. That he convinced himself otherwise is all about having an extremely low self-esteem due to survivor’s guilt, or so I think for now. :3

I hope it answers your question, sorry for rambling and you have every right not to agree as always. Have a nice day!

I can’t help but wonder how much truth there is in the “you sacrificed your brother” statement. Like, undeniably, OC was the one who summoned Seb. Even if he didn’t kill him. It was an accident, right? So does that count as a lie or just twisting the truth? OC has been asking Seb if he lied about something a lot lately. What is it that he refers to? That RC could never come back, or OC sacrificed him? The order to never lie was presumably after. Both the “can never come back” and ->

Hello Anon. 🙂 Soooo, to address your different remarks:

Sacrifice vs Accident

To quote you, “it’s an accidental summoning any way you look at it” in my opinion as well!

@cielsama14 explained it well enough as well here, so all I’m going to say is that our!Ciel definitely is the one who turned his back on God and called for Seb, which is why his brother’s soul was used to pay for Seb’s summoning.
However, considering that he said…

I can’t call that a sacrifice, seeing as it’s not something he did consciously or willingly.

After reading the chapter, I also don’t think Seb lied, because he definitely heard our!Ciel calling and the fare for crossing was paid, so his interpretation that it was a sacrifice, especially considering the settings he found our!Ciel in, makes sense (even if we readers know that it’s not exactly what happened).

However, manipulation from Seb’s part is also rather obvious where I’m concerned, because he definitely decided to show up for a reason…

And his way to try and play it chill isn’t exactly fooling anyone…

…since our!Ciel didn’t really have any other option besides making that contract to survive the cult.

So in the end, it’s as William said…

About Frances

Frankly, whether she knew or not about which twin our!Ciel was, I don’t think it really matters nor that it will trigger such a huge reaction out of her in case she didn’t anyway. x) Besides, sorry but she clearly wasn’t wrong in ch132, I mean…

she never said that our!Ciel wasn’t clever enough for the job, more like he was too physically weak and we’ve had enough occasions to see for ourselves that, without Seb, Ciel would have indeed died many times in the past.

I mean, no worries, I can understand wanting Seb to mess with her a little, since she’s always keeping such a perfect composure, but I actually enjoy the fact that she, as well as Nina and UT, can give a demon cold sweat even though they’ll never be as strong as him. Besides…

this is Frances “tricked” by Seb in ch14, so I think she’s more level-headed than maybe you give her credit for (not that I can blame you for that, seeing how Yana uses her for comic relief most of the time xD).

Anyway, as I explained when ch132 came out, my opinion is that Frances doesn’t care about the Phantomhive family being successful or well-seen or anything, she just cares about its survival because she cares about her family. So the only moments we might see her falter…

…will probably always have to do with if/when she feels powerless about helping her family and maybe only our!Ciel (and not Seb) will ever have an influence on her in that aspect.

We have time before anything like that happens though, haha, so as always feel free to disagree. 🙂

Thanks for passing by Anon! I do agree that the Seb/Ciel dynamic is very interesting especially, since the more we advance, the more I see hints that they might end up clashing at some point, and that even though UT is counting on Seb to protect Ciel for now indeed. :))

Have a nice day!

A Face You Fear…

shinigami-mistress:

When Sebastian first appears, we see many different forms in the mist. Such as as a snake…

…a wolf…

…bird and a horned creature (a ram or a goat maybe?)…

…and a bat to name a few.

It’s clear that Sebastian has a lot of power of the form(s) he chooses to use.

When he wanted to take on a human facade, he choose to look like a (devilishly) handsome man.

A man who happens to look a bit like Vincent.

While this could be a coincidence, perhaps this is just another one of Sebastian’s forms that he thought could stir emotion and even fear inside of our!Ciel. After all, our!Ciel had been convinced that he had sacrificed his brother – that he had committed this horrible, unforgivable crime. Who do children fear seeing when they’ve done wrong? Their parents.

Our!Ciel would undoubtedly fear his parents ever learning he did such a thing. While they are dead, that thought would be in his mind. He wouldn’t anyone to know that he had sacrificed his brother – especially not his father.

And now he has to stare into a face that looks similar to his father’s face each day – a face belonging to someone who knows exactly what he did.

To the rest of the world, they only see a handsome man, but to our!Ciel it’s a reminder that his parents, particularly his father, would have been horrified that he, the weak son, had ‘sacrificed’ the chosen child.

Thoughts?

shinigami-mistress:

Random Musing: Our!Ciel didn’t make the contract in order to escape the cult and live a few more years. He made the contract in order for his brother to live a few more years, if only in name, while he sacrificed himself for revenge.

Translation Ducky made: “Ciel could have survived.” BABY, NO, YOU SHOULDN’T BE OK WITH “it’d be fine if Ciel sacrificed me!” I’m not ok. My god. Though I’m a little peeved the flashbacks are continuing, I wholeheartedly agree that this deserved a chapter to itself. (But seriously Yana, we get it now.) We just need the contract, the ring and action of Seb killing the cultists, right? (Where u @ Elizabeth.) I feel like it’ll take a lot of curves to avoid OC’s name. The lack in the flashback

Hi Anon! No worries though, you’re free to have a different opinion about our!Ciel’s name, and it’s not because I personally think we won’t learn about his true identity in this arc (if at all) that I’m right or anything, as always. :3

I can totally understand people being annoyed with him not being “called” in the flashbacks (or in future chapters), but personally I’d rather have him only referred to as “Ciel” in the story, so I’m not particularly bothered by that, haha.

To address the rest of your asks:

what’s left of the flashback?

I think it’s likely that next month will be the last chapter because there shouldn’t be much left to cover + it will be the last chapter of volume 27, so in my opinion next chapter will cover until this moment:

In other words:

Ciel will be taking the ring from his brother’s belly
Seb will annihilate everyone else
Ciel will ask Seb to burn it all to the ground (his brother’s body included?)
“I name you after my dog”
Ciel will be going home to Tanaka and find out that the whole house burnt down for a reason yet explained.
Ciel will possibly meet Ann and get Vincent’s other ring back from her

Ending the flashback on our!Ciel facing his dead family would be very moving and symbolic, that’s why I think Sensei could stop it there. And if so, then April’s chapter will have us back in present time and might be a recap chapter (like ch121).

However, Sensei may also decide to continue with the flashback for a little while longer into vol28 and possibly take us until Ciel officially became “Earl Phantomhive”, which means that we could address the following moments…

Ciel finding out/being explained about the Watchdog duty (~~this is when I’m hoping Frances or Tanaka might explain stuff about the family but I’m probably dreaming since it’s not really the point of that flashback~~),

Ciel meeting Elizabeth (or more generally the Midfords) again,

Ciel meeting his father’s Evil Nobles (Dee, Klaus, UT, Pitt…) as the new Earl Phantomhive.

Overall I think it depends on if the whole point of the flashback is to show why our!Ciel took on his brother’s identity, or if it’s also to explain all of his initial motivations when he became “Earl Phantomhive” (if so we’ll be joining up with Seb’s record).

I guess we’ll have to see next month, no can do. :3

About Lizzie “instantly” switching side

I hope we agree there that, presented like that, it would be bad writing if such a thing were to happen xD without mentioning that it’d make Lizzie incredibly shallow as a character (something that the Campania arc debunked completely).

In the first place, as I explained before, I’m not exactly sure what to make of Lizzie’s role in this arc and because of the awkward pacing in Kuro, Sensei tends to have me on the fence with this kind of theories.

So, currently, my personal take is that Lizzie is hopefully not taking a side despite how confusing the situation must be for her, it’s just that…

real!Ciel possibly currently needs her more than our!Ciel does (or so she thinks).

That’s why, when this balance inverts, because our!Ciel will very possibly break down when confronting his brother, she will most likely decide to support him instead (as always, just my opinion though).

What Lizzie knows or doesn’t know isn’t clear at this point. We don’t even know for sure why she is so sad, but (and that’s the difference with Soma) Lizzie had her suspicions about Ciel hiding something before this arc rolled in, so my personal take is that her crying has more to do with…

the twin being involved in something extremely fishy than “omG I fEll in loVe wiTH the wrong CIel”.

Besides, wouldn’t you agree that, since our!Ciel’s issues are partially expressed through thinking he disappointed his family because “the best twin” died instead of him…

…Lizzie’s role isn’t to “switch back to his side”, but rather to reassure him that he shouldn’t have had to become his brother for her sake or anyone else’s in the first place ?

So the concept of Lizzie taking a side, although it’s one I considered for a long time during this arc, is really irking me nowadays and that’s why I hope Lizzie’s sadness isn’t about our!Ciel lying but rather about the whole arc itself.

Sorryyyyy for rambling! I hope it makes sense? :3 Please have a nice day Anon!

midnight-in-town:

I know I have 10+ answers to write now that the chapter is out, but I just wanted to say that this is the whole point of the current arc, the 2CT and Ciel facing his brother in my opinion, because it will mean finally confronting the survivor’s guilt and inferiority complex that have been holding Ciel back from developing much further.

Initially, it’s a decision that was taken to become the Ciel his brother wanted to be (& I don’t doubt that he really meant it to be that way), but over the years this issue just turned out to be about who the current “Ciel Phantomhive” really is.

We’ve been introduced to the idea a while ago that our!Ciel was “different” from the rest of his family (and thus from his brother)…

mostly in the sense that he’s more selfless and @her-majestys-watchdog did a great job in giving some examples here.

And the thing is, until now our!Ciel is probably the only one who never wanted to acknowledge that fact (because of survivor’s guilt and inferiority complex) despite everyone else around him having noticed a long time ago…

and that’s why this upcoming confrontation is significant because this mentality is something that needs to change.

Elizabeth didn’t fall in love with him because he was called “Ciel Phantomhive”, Soma didn’t become his friend because of that either, and let’s not mention Tanaka who kept his mouth shut probably because he thought Ciel had his reasons and he didn’t want to address a very painful and traumatizing topic.

Besides, I have no doubt that Ciel Phantomhive will remain his identity until the very end, but by now it needs to become a choice made because he wants to keep it and not because he thinks he still has to pretend doing all of this in his brother’s stead.

The twins’ confrontation is symbolically a chess game onto which Ciel walked in ch129…

but that duality within him (his inferiority complex mixed to survivor’s guilt pushing him to think he had to become his brother when, in fact, he acts and thinks differently from his brother most of the time because he’s his own person) has been existing for a long time…

and that’s why it finally needs to be addressed in the current arc.

^^^ This. I 200% agree with you Anon and I caught on that as well!!

Besides the fact that I really relate to characters suffering from inferiority complex for personal reasons (so I love our!Ciel so so so much and totally understand why even UT would catch on him being different), our!Ciel literally decided to “become his brother”, not in order to live on as strong as he thinks real!Ciel would have been, but because he thought he owed it to his brother and to their remaining family. ;_;

Of course his thoughts were influenced by the horrible life he led for one month and by Seb taunting him (because he certainly didn’t willingly give up on his brother, as ch136 confirmed), but still even in his trauma, we can still see signs that he’s not the worst human being Seb made him believe he was.

In fact, this decision was so not made to benefit himself initially that…

in my opinion, that’s why to this day he still sees the contract to Seb as a punishment he totally deserves.

An inferiority complex is a painful mentality to break from, especially when for our!Ciel its roots mainly originate from a trauma he hasn’t learnt yet to cope with and also when Seb generally makes sure he doesn’t start to see himself as a very outstanding human being.

That’s why I need as many people as possible

(Lizzie, Soma, Sieglinde, the servants…)

to make him understand that learning about his twin brother won’t change their bond with him. That he has a right to admit that he’s enjoying some aspects of this life he built for himself.

That the current “Ciel Phantomhive” became mostly about him and not his brother and that, not only is it okay that it turned out this way, but some people can now tell him that they’re happy he’s the one who came back.

Anyway, it’s a lot to wish for and it’s hard to believe that it will happen through just one confrontation, but I doubt our!Ciel will stagnate in this mindset after everything Sensei revealed in this flashback. Narratively speaking it just wouldn’t make much sense, or so I think. :3

Thanks for passing by Anon, let’s hope the next chapters won’t be too hard on our boy, although I already totally doubt that. ;_;

Have a nice day!

I know I have 10+ answers to write now that the chapter is out, but I just wanted to say that this is the whole point of the current arc, the 2CT and Ciel facing his brother in my opinion, because it will mean finally confronting the survivor’s guilt and inferiority complex that have been holding Ciel back from developing much further.

Initially, it’s a decision that was taken to become the Ciel his brother wanted to be (& I don’t doubt that he really meant it to be that way), but over the years this issue just turned out to be about who the current “Ciel Phantomhive” really is.

We’ve been introduced to the idea a while ago that our!Ciel was “different” from the rest of his family (and thus from his brother)…

mostly in the sense that he’s more selfless and @her-majestys-watchdog did a great job in giving some examples here.

And the thing is, until now our!Ciel is probably the only one who never wanted to acknowledge that fact (because of survivor’s guilt and inferiority complex) despite everyone else around him having noticed a long time ago…

and that’s why this upcoming confrontation is significant because this mentality is something that needs to change.

Elizabeth didn’t fall in love with him because he was called “Ciel Phantomhive”, Soma didn’t become his friend because of that either, and let’s not mention Tanaka who kept his mouth shut probably because he thought Ciel had his reasons and he didn’t want to address a very painful and traumatizing topic.

Besides, I have no doubt that Ciel Phantomhive will remain his identity until the very end, but by now it needs to become a choice made because he wants to keep it and not because he thinks he still has to pretend doing all of this in his brother’s stead.

The twins’ confrontation is symbolically a chess game onto which Ciel walked in ch129…

but that duality within him (his inferiority complex mixed to survivor’s guilt pushing him to think he had to become his brother when, in fact, he acts and thinks differently from his brother most of the time because he’s his own person) has been existing for a long time…