黒執事

BLACK BUTLER

“On the other hand, I’d been a loner caught up in the culture all by myself for fourteen years. Like the one kid in the hood who watches anime, I was the Chinese kid in Bay Hill doing the Bankhead.”

—Eddie Huang

I found Black Butler when I was a kid. My friends and I were on the cusp of weebhood. Always joking about Ishimondo and how we were the weird kids hanging out in the corner while everyone else talked about boys and shopping. They liked Ouran, Soul Eater, Mirai Nikki, but it didn’t speak to me.

Like all the western kids, I found the anime first. It hit the points I needed it to, had that dark appeal all the emos vibe with, but you gotta be honest: It didn’t make any sense. It required mad guesswork to understand characters’ motivations, and not in the good way. My eyes were darting all over the screen wondering how the fuck some tea in a dude’s basement was connected to eating souls, why Claude was such a drama queen, why we were pulling swords out of hoes’ throats. I just interpreted everything as metaphors and moved the hell on.

I knew about the manga, knew the anime diverged from it, but didn’t take it serious until years later. Something compelled me to check up on it and next thing you know, I’d read everything my mans Yana had written up to that point. Ain’t stopped since. Looking back, I understood why it struck as hard as it did. Ciel’s experiences left him cynical, cruel, uninterested in people beyond what benefits they offered him. He was focused on that paper, keeping a distance from the people he loved most ‘cuz he knew there was no future to look forward to but you knew he’s still a kid, the way he acts sometimes. I was edgy, weird, sardonic, but immature. I let pessimism shape my worldview ‘cuz that was all I knew once I got smart enough to understand what was up with me. Maybe I hadn’t been through the shit Ciel had been through but I understood. Having these insane experiences no one else around you knows about knowing they’d never understand, carrying the memories no matter how badly you want to forget, knowing it changed the way your head works, the way you see the world, for the worse – it was indescribable how much it resonated with me.

I ascribed my own narrative to Black Butler when it wasn’t really there, but it made sense. Ciel’s brand was a physical manifestation of what he’d been through but he stayed casual about it. I knew what that was like: what felt like an inescapable hell when it was happening had lost all its power years down the line. I learned to accept it as a fact of my life rather than an indicator that I was some doomed tortured poet. Yana Toboso never hides that Ciel is still suffering, never shies away from depicting trauma the rawest, realest way possible, but the kid doesn’t stew in his own misery 24/7. He proceeds with his life. It was an important lesson for the fool I was. OK, shit happened. OK, it was awful. OK, it's an injustice. But does your ass want to remember, let it get you down, keep you from advancing, or to be as normal as you can be and succeed in the rest of your life?


Some time ago I had this dream where singer/rapper/whatever Drake released a new album inspired by the (FICTIONAL BTW) Phantomhive family. This was, in my dream, an extra big deal because Drake was sitting for interviews and publicly explaining the lyrics & meaning behind every song on the album. For those who don't know, IRL, Drake rarely does interviews, & he typically responds to rumours/statements about himself in his songs rather than acknowledging them through spoken word...so this was mad out of character for him.

He revealed that he was a mega fan of the Phantomhives, found their wealth, power, & strategy inspirational, & he was moved by their numerous family tragedies. IG My subconscious mind headcanoned that the contract would be fulfilled pretty soon after the manga's canon, because dream Drake was going onnnnn about "it's a real tragedy that Ciel Phantomhive (referring to O!Ciel) died so young :("

It's aight though - I had fun with it. It was weird. Random. But SO up my alley. When I woke up, I felt inspired to write the below "article" - a journalistic interview piece/fanfic????? between Drake & some unknown fake interviewer. IDK what this is meant to be but it was IN my head. Felt like I had to do smth about it. Hover over the image to zoom in & read :3









THE FADING CROW’S FEATHER: OR: Your Individual Morality is your Trauma Response to Capitalism!

“Fading Crow’s Feather.” LMAO. Borrowed some edgy tendencies from my teenage self for that one.

Browsing the negative-five-ish translated Yana Toboso interviews that exist on the webs, I came upon this, 2021, wherein Toboso dwells upon some vital manga themes. Including, uh, the obvious: “The idea of justice varies from person to person.”

There’s the ticket, right? Near to every damn character dons a subjective “morality,” 80% of which is their ironic spin on just plain Being a Person. Ciel, though… as a title, “aristocrat of evil” fails where the kid is concerned. Like the identity theft, the overtaking of titles, the very decision to solve mystery after mystery when so simply he could order Sebastian to knock ‘em all out, our Ciel only defies morality in allegiance to a higher order. He finds Big Boss Queen Victoria kind of annoying, if anything, kind of a nutcase auntie.

My man doesn’t even allege himself to this family of his, no. Arguably, the threat of your entire existence falling ash to the mobs is reason enough to skip town, but couldn’t he have tried when R!Ciel showed up? Couldn’t he muster up some enthusiasm for the brother who haunts him so?

My rationale behind this: should R!Ciel have been friendlier, should he have returned just for a family reunion, it still wouldn’t go over well. O!Ciel is too disenfranchised from such cornball shit as “a happy family” or “living out his childhood dreams.” He also knows what the deal with Bizarre Dolls is, would maybe sic Sebastian on some good blood sources, but I doubt he’d think the constant maintenance that zombies require is worth it. Easier to put The Thing That Was His Brother out of its misery. Besides that, reuniting when his last memory of R!C was a desecrated corpse in worse-than-hell circumstances would just be too painful. PTSD NIGHTMAREEEE.

I’m saying, Ciel doesn’t, like, GAF. Literally every decision he autonomously makes is motivated by a filial obligation that was never his to begin with. If the kidnapping didn’t occur, he’d likely have opened his little toy shop and distanced from the family, appearing where needed yet withering with unease. After all, they’re connected to so much crime that it’s easier for the unneeded second son to duck out of frame entirely.

And I think that this is all a funny contrast to how others perceive him. Lau likes to jest that he won’t dare cross clan Phantomhive, as does the Undertaker. Deidrich doesn’t approve of this whackjob family. The queen keeps them around for the precise fact of their danger. Because no one knows him, because he is a mere plank in a dynastic scaffolding, Ciel remains unseen, misunderstood, weaponised. It’s like a coworker who hates their job yet thinks the boss enjoys theirs.

By that logic, everyone in Kuroshitsuji performs for a system. How very late capitalist for a story set smack-dab at the final edge of the industrial revolution. Grim reapers are the most glaring example — they’re literally office wagies who work because they “have to,” aware not at all of if/when the job ends, whether reaperdom is mercy or divine punishment… all they know is that they (probably) can’t leave. A handful, namely William T. Spears and Sascha (ILY QUEEN YOU WILL ALWAYS BE A WOMAN IN MY HEART), may not feel like performers, but you get the sense that it’s mostly cope.

The difference is that turning reaper is more like group therapy. Those conniving Phantomhives always seem so fake in the flashbacks, don’t they? The twins only actually had each other. One’s an asthmatic spare*, they were mostly raised by servants, and the family’s ultimate goal was to flatten them into a growing criminal empire. You know, like corporate new hires who eventually become CEO. But at least grim reapers get to hang out with fellow suicide-commiters. They have a meaningful support system that makes their new lives worthwhile, offering freedom to heal, rebuild, work towards a new purpose.

So, then, for O!Ciel to lose everything only to return to the same droning mundanity of aristocrat life is for O!Ciel to participate in that very same capitalist system without actually reaping the rewards. He is the poster child for an employee of the industrial revolution, yet he’s the one who exploits them, yet he doesn’t gain anything of real substance from it.

With or without the cult, Ciel would be born into the kind of wealth that’d make any dream come true. There’s no pride in being a self-starter, Funtom’s CEO, grower of an empire, even this young, because he outsourced to a magic servant. In Ciel-Phantomhive land, compliance is morality. Killing people, colluding with far more despicable criminals, lying to everyone he knows and loves, using others as a means to an end… it’s not nice, but someone’s gotta do it. That’s not selfish when you look at the big picture: Phantomhives don't Phantomhive = Crimes remain unsolved = The Queen’s work isn’t getting done = People killing, people dying = Great Britain becomes even more unstable.

I’m saying: we humans invent all kinds of excuses to justify living the way we live. I’m saying: maintaining the status quo is easier than being better, living better, acting better. I’m saying: the reason capitalism has worked this long isn’t only because of power imbalances between those affected, but because most have had support systems to motivate them even when they feel shitty living as cogs, as wagies. And what better example of that than your local 12-year-old emo?

*don’t get me started on the hate, though — when I say “spare,” I mean “second in line,” not that his family had evil plans like everyone seems to think.