I found this super-adorable drawing of small Redmond and Bluer, when I was looking for a specific entry on Yana’s blog the other day:
According to Yana, they are neighbours and know each other since they were children. (source: X)
Keeping this in mind, I then reread the Weston arc and noticed that
Redmond
always…
calls
Bluer
by his first name. Always.
THEY ARE CHILDHOOD FRIENDS…!!! (´；ω；`) I seriously have a soft spot for characters who are childhood friends
And after rereading the Weston arc I also noticed that I actually like the P4 very much. However, considering the latest chapter as well as the fact that they got totally brainwashed by the Blue Sect, I seriously doubt that this arc will end with a happy ending and that the P4 will survive…
Yana, please have mercy on them… (´；ω；`)
Bonus:
Small Violet looking intensely at an ant… (source: X)
and small Greenhill as the type of child who always wears short-sleeved shirts, even in winter… (source: X)
^ THIS! I hope you read @thedarkestcrow‘spost about the lockets seen in ch113 because this is totally relating to what you’re saying!
Honestly I really love this and it would be awesome if that’s actually what happened! Besides, I took another look at the flashback with Derrick upon reading your ask and…
Violet never says a word about the murders in retrospect during the midnight tea party, it’s mostly Bluer and Redmond who talk, so maybe Violet ended up truly regretting that tradition became the wrong reason for murder even before the Blue Sect arc.
I agree with you, I think the reason he’s playing his part in the S4 quartet of Bravat’s sect despite “not feeling the magic” might because he doesn’t want to leave his friends completely manipulated because they want to forget their shame and what they did. Their hands are stained and it will never go away, but while Bluer, Redmond and Greenhill tried to feel better by forgetting, maybe you’re right and Violet remembered Soma’s words and how they had killed 7 people for no good reason.
I really love this and I hope Violet will talk more with Ciel to explain why he’s staying around despite knowing Bravat’s sect might not be such a great place. As I said before, I wouldn’t mind more time for Violet and Cheslock to shine in this arc, so here I am, hoping!
Thanks a lot for sharing your thoughts, Anon, and have a good week! 🙂
Ok, so there’s a lot that smells funny about this recent chapter–it’s more than just the rotting corpses.
Referring back to Chapter 111, Bravat told Ciel that he was under the protection of the first-magnitude star of Sirius. However, the reaction that follows raises a few questions for me:
Maybe it’s just something with the translation–or I’m blowing this out of proportion–but how is Ciel the first person under Sirius these people have seen? Violet is under the protection of Sirius and there are more people besides Ciel when he walks into the Canis Major door.
Even though they’re just a small handful of people, I believe it’s safe to assume they are all consistent visitors of the events at Sphere Music Hall–especially Violet since he and the rest of the P4 are leaders of the bunch and are therefore required to be there. If Ciel was the first person under Sirius for some of those people to have met, then why? Social recluse though he may be, Violet, at least, is there all the time.
Moving on from that note, I’d like to point out something else: The way to tell which star a person is protected by from their bracelets is by counting the numbers of star charms the bracelets possess. Ciel, being under the first-magnitude star, only has one charm on his.
As opposed to those under Vega or Polaris which have three and four charms respectively.
Everyone is required to have these bracelets as form of identification: Everyone, except the P4. Instead, they often have an accessory for their outfits which mark their star protection. Last time it was two necklaces, one earring, and an armband: This time, they’re buttons/brooches.
This is just a small mark in the difference of treatment between the P4 and the rest of the group. Now, compare the picture above with the next one I’m about to show you:
Yes, there is a definite change of attitude among the members, but notice any parallels?
In this chapter, the P4 we’ve always known are now referred to as the S4, or the Starlight Four. In the same way that they were revered as the top dogs of Weston College they are given celebrity status in this new arc, and the groups that they each lead individually are now divided by star protection instead of what characteristics separated their houses.
Sphere Music Hall is literally a recreation of Weston College for P4. Instead of moving forward from their sins, they’re clinging to their old identities and reliving them in a new environment. Nothing’s changed and–based on this chapter–Violet is possibly the only one who can see that.
(This post is based on a conversation I had with @midnight-in-town.)
As @glacierspirit has noticed, Violet is wearing an accessory on his outfit that looks very similar to Undertaker’s mourning lockets.
Assuming that these are mourning lockets as well, it raises the question to whom they refer to. It looks like there are six lockets, so has Violet already lost six dear people in his young life?
But, remember the Weston arc? The (former) P4 killed Derrick, his friends and vice-principal Agares. So in total they killed six people:
Could Violet’s lockets stand for these six people? That would mean that he’s mourning their deaths and therefore, regretting his actions.
That kinda contrasts to what we’ve seen of the former P4 in the current arc. Like Greenhill has told Edward, they seem to have found their happiness again. But as analyzed it this post by @erebuscheslock or here by @midnight-in-town, Violet doesn’t seem to be that enthusiastic about this cult as his fellow comrades and Bravat’s influence doesn’t work that good on him.
So maybe these lockets are a sign that Violet still regrets what happened at Weston.
This grave that Sebastian found at the end of the chapter is probably connected to what’s happening at the meetings of this sect. So it seems like the former P4 haven’t escaped from their past but have stepped yet into another situation that involves murder. Maybe Violet wants to help the others to escape it before it’s too late.
My and others’ belief that Violet will go rogue and turn on his fellow prefects, or at least do something to thwart the cult’s objective and, perhaps, become an ally to Ciel, grows ever stronger.
As suspected, Violet is not happy with the cult and not happy being part of it. He even admits as much to Ciel’s face. Clearly he wants to find common ground with Ciel and present himself as a potential ally, or else he would have remained silent. Hell, he even tries to ingratiate himself with Ciel by giving him more gifts than necessary, and simply being more talkative and helpful than at Weston.
At Weston, Violet rebuffed Ciel’s attempt at conversation, and the two, to my knowledge, never spoke since. Quite a change. It could be that Violet regrets not having approached Ciel sooner. Who knows, perhaps if Violet had spilled the beans and allied with Ciel at Weston, things would have gotten resolved a lot faster and we may even have not gotten to where we are. The prefects may well not have gotten into yet another cult because the one member among them who can see the bs remains silent.
Finally, Violet voices his objections.
[PS: Further proves my theory that Cheslock was recruited by Violet for the purpose of his eventually going rogue. Holy hell I want to see him soon. Also Ciel and Violet teaming up… now that will be something to see!]
Black Butler Chapter 113 can be bought here for $2 here (as an e-book).
As always, only my thoughts part 1 on 2 (so I can get them out of my head) so you don’t have to read and even less to agree. 🙂 There might be a little of chemical/medical stuff
so I’ll try to stay simple, but as always feel free to ask for explanations.
Spoilers for ch113 and below is a littleTL;DR/summary in case you want to be sure you won’t waste time reading something completely uninteresting lol (nah because it turned out to be long and I don’t want to bore you with everything, so pick up your favorite subjects and read what you like):
“Too lovely corpses” -> D’aww, thanks UT!
“Please join Bravat’s blue sect! We’ll make sure to intoxicate your body with chloroform to the point you’ll never wake up.”
Violet aka the MVP of this chapter, a new candidate for the place as Ciel’s best friend
The end with a small parallel to ch108
Now that it’s been proved I am actually not funny, here’s the actual post under read more for the interested 😉
Violet could also be a mole. I’m spending too much time in tvtroupes. We don’t know if he’s being kind with Ciel for a secret reason, who knows which one. Think about it, Violet, a known-I don’t dance guy, comes to Ciel to tell him he’s not as happy here as you would think. Ciel totally felt for that, it was incredible easy (as of now, maybe Ciel is still catious lol, he should), and maybe it was on purpose.
Why not to have several spies doing different works to screw with Ciel? That sounds smart. Either way, I think Violet could potentially be the spy guy who after a while realizes he is going to be with Ciel (now honestly) after all. It would be interesting to see that kind of narrative with Violet. But I’m just rambling.
Also it’s practically canon Undertaker and Bravat are related, we just need the confirmation lol.
Ah this could totally be of course, thanks for mentioning it! 😀 I just took it as a nice gesture because:
the P4 are probably the ones checking to make sure everybody wakes up, so in case someone dies during a session it’s their job to tell whoever will then go bury the corpse. -> As such that makes them accomplices
once more
(or even murderers since we don’t know who’s handling the gas) and I thought Violet, apparently not buying Bravat’s crap, could be super tired of all this but not knowing how to escape (and since Ciel “helped” before…).
Why would Violet try to screw with Ciel in the first place? I doubt anyone within the sect wants Ciel to die actually, otherwise they would have done so while he was out cold + while Seb was busy playing with cats and looking for corpses lol ^_^
I agree Violet’s definitely resisting to whatever “spell” the other 3 fell under (like Lizzie it seems but I won’t digress on this) and that kind of narrative would be awesome, but for now I’m not buying it yet with just this chapter. 🙂
Thanks again for your input though, it’s always interesting, and thanks for reading! ^^
(and omg so true about UT and Bravat! Yana will go “HAHA are you surprised readers?!” and people will be like “err no?”)
As always, only my thoughts part 1 on 2 (so I can get them out of my head) so you don’t have to read and even less to agree. 🙂 There might be a little of chemical/medical stuff
so I’ll try to stay simple, but as always feel free to ask for explanations.
Spoilers for ch113 and below is a littleTL;DR/summary in case you want to be sure you won’t waste time reading something completely uninteresting lol (nah because it turned out to be long and I don’t want to bore you with everything, so pick up your favorite subjects and read what you like):
“Too lovely corpses” -> D’aww, thanks UT!
“Please join Bravat’s blue sect! We’ll make sure to intoxicate your body with chloroform to the point you’ll never wake up.”
Violet aka the MVP of this chapter, a new candidate for the place as Ciel’s best friend
The end with a small parallel to ch108
Now that it’s been proved I am actually not funny, here’s the actual post under read more for the interested 😉
The “lovely corpses”
(Special kudos to thedarkestcrow for our great discussion on this month’s chapter)
Let’s begin by the end…
When you die, several phenomena happen within your body like rigor mortis, algor mortis and livor mortis also known as “postmortem lividity” (for more details look here). Funnily enough, postmortem lividity is nowadays one of the means used to determine the time of death in forensics, but getting back to the main point and the cause of death aside, it is really strange that the police found the corpses to be as Abberline described them.
Basically, that’s the difference between a corpse going to its funerals and a corpse found by the police (because of a murder for example): generally a corpse going to its last ceremony is made as “pretty” as possible (by morticians) so the relatives don’t have to face the gruesome reality of what’s happening to a dead body, which is not the case for a corpse found by a police (otherwise forensic doctors can’t do their job).
As always this is just speculation, but if we consider that somehow our favorite mortician is involved with Bravat’s sect, it is not impossible to think that he made sure those corpses would look lovely since it was once his job (remember Ann’s funerals? she looked pretty too, that’s the job of a mortician amongst other things), hence the general agreement that those corpses look indeed too lovely to be buried anonymously.
The question is why would the Undertaker do that though? Knowing him, it would make sense to think that he would rather experiment on them for his BD project after all. Unless he’s not making Bizarre Dolls anymore or his role inside Bravat’s sect is different? Or he found another way to do what he wanted which doesn’t involve corpses anymore?
I have nothing but speculations to offer for this part, so we shall see with future chapters but I just take this as one more hint for UT to be involved in this arc 🙂
“Lovely corpses fast asleep”… like Ciel at the private event?
(I love the cat)
Now that’s one of the most interesting parts of the chapter. ^^ About those corpses, Abberline said…
“There are no external wounds in sight and they look as if they’re fast asleep…”
If we’re to guess that those corpses are linked to Bravat’s little sect (logically lol), then it would be interesting to think about why Bravat would get rid of people and what he could use to make them look like they’re just asleep.
And, considering what Ciel experienced during the exact same chapter, the answer is probably related to that…
It’s sleeping gas, very probably chloroform considering the time period.
Without going into too much details, chloroform was mostly used as an anesthetic for surgeries back at that time, but like every organic compound, it has a certain toxicity for human and animal bodies (which is why it’s not used anymore in medicine nowadays, too toxic).
Back to the chapter, Ciel fell asleep due to him inhaling chloroform and, while he turned out to be mostly okay after just this one session, it doesn’t mean that accidents can’t happen, especially for people who would come over every week. So in other words, I’m proposing that those corpses are actually people who didn’t wake up after their own private sessions at the Sphere music hall.
((Chloroform toxicity can trigger heart and/or respiratory failure which is why the corpses look like they’re asleep: they inhaled chloroform like Ciel, but at some point after being under anesthesia, the toxicity of the compound (because they’d often come to these sessions or simply because their organism couldn’t tolerate the dose they inhaled) provoked a fatal heart and/or respiratory failure and they died in their sleep.))
So these corpses would be the result of accidents because human beings don’t all react similarly to a particular organic compound. Taking the example of Ciel: he was the only “child” in the room, so obviously, while he looks to be okay, he still inhaled the same dose of the sleeping gas as the adults with him, but being younger and thinner, that means the toxicity certainly was higher for him than for the adults.
I’m not saying that Ciel will die of this of course (though imagine Kuroshitsuji ending because Ciel has a heart attack lol), but this is how accidents happen, because there are a lot of factors to consider when using products like that. 🙂
This was a one time thing for Ciel though, so despite the dizziness, the sleeping gas is probably not what we should be worried about. When it comes to the corpses though, their ‘asleep’ state due to death by chloroform toxicity would also explain why there is no external injury visible.
(I know this part can be a little complicated, so again don’t feel ashamed if you need a different explanation. Besides I might totally suck at explaining things like that since English is not my first language and finding the accurate words is more difficult than usual)
Orange gifts and Violet
I said before that chloroform toxicity could provoke a heart failure, which could be how those corpses passed away in their sleep, but when it comes to the majority of people who wake up…
…They’re apparently given orange products after every session. And, while it could be just as thanks, the fact that a compound of oranges (the ascorbic acid/C vitamin) was proven to have a preventive and protective effect against heart failure could also be why everyone gets them after a session.
Honestly, this part just depends on what kind of knowledge Yana has about all this: technically the preventive action of the C vitamin stays a very minor thing (otherwise no one would ever die of heart failure), it’s not a miraculous cure, but I guess that it might help somehow against chloroform toxicity possibly causing heart failures. (C vitamin is also effective against tiredness by the way)
Speaking of that, I have to point something out about Violet’s attitude: as @erebuscheslock pointed out here, it seems that Violet isn’t under Bravat’s influence as much as the other 3 are…
And keeping in mind what I just said about the orange gifts, it’s quite peculiar to see that…
…Violent went out of his way to give a lot of orange gifts to Ciel with the advice to “eat them all”…
…after noticing that Ciel was maybe a bit too dizzy because of the sleeping gas (again Ciel is biologically a child, so that means something when it comes to tolerating an anesthesic like chloroform the way an adult’s body would).
Basically, Violet tried to give a hidden advice to Ciel and I’m pretty sure that he doesn’t buy the whole thing about Bravat’s sect but just plays along because the other 3 are totally into it (because they want to escape the harsh reality that they’re murderers) and he might be worried for them.
So kudos to him and here’s to hoping Cheslock and Violet will have a bigger role in this arc, because they’re awesome like that. 🙂 Also for more on the subject of Violet’s character in this chapter, feel free to check out @thedarkestcrow’s post. 🙂
A link with ch108?
The last part is even more theoretical than all the others but taking a look back at ch108, when UT made Ciel drink that *something*, he also did this…
…taking his wrist, as if checking his pulse maybe?
Honestly I’m still not sure what this really means, but considering the last chapter with Ciel falling asleep, there is definitely a parallel with chapter 108, if just because UT emphasizes the sleep part (it could go deeper if UT is actually checking Ciel’s pulse as if to verify whether or not it would be okay to use chloroform on him though this would be so very inefficient/useless as a check up lol).
I’m just stating possibilities anyway, that’s what I always do, nothing is canon unless Yana says so, but these are my thoughts about most of the chapter. I intend to do a separate post for the scene between Lizzie and Ciel, because it’s a tad more complicated and open to interpretations (unless someone writes a post conveying similar thoughts before I do), but in the meantime if anything is unclear feel free to say so. 🙂
In this most current chapter, it seems like the P4 have it made. They are ‘idols’ who sing and dance happily.
They even have fans who sing and along and scream their names.
In a way, this seems unfair. We’re talking about four people who killed, even it this act was in a misguided effort to hold up traditions. Other than being expelled, they weren’t really punished for their actions. They do seem to have guilt, but this cult has even gotten rid of that. They can just be happy. They can laugh and dance. Perhaps, they can even think they are doing good name by staying with a group that doesn’t worry about class.
However, I don’t think things are as cheery for them as it appears. Right now, it all looks good, but I think that they are just stand-ins for the real ‘stars.’ Right now, it seems that each one represents one of the four major stars.
But we already know of at least two people that really represent those stars – Ciel and Lizzy. In fact, the one little boy told Ciel he had never met anyone who was protected by Sirius, so it’s unlikely that Violet was told that he had protection of the same star. He’s just a stand-in.
Bravat appears to be looking for those who are protected by these stars. Perhaps it has something to do with those doors.
The P4’s punishment is still at hand. Once everyone returns to their normal state of mind and is no longer being influenced by Bravat, they might even see all this dancing and singing as foolish. Will this happen? Only time will tell.
midnight-in-town 