my descent into kurohell was quick
Applicant Info
◎ Name: Christy
◎ Journal:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
swagu
◎ Contact:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
swagu
Character Info
◎ Character's Name: Ciel Phantomhive
◎ Character's Canon: Black Butler
◎ Character's Age: 13
◎ Canon Point: Chapter 95 + post endgame for![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
dreamsland
◎ Background/History: Here
◎ Is the character a hacker and/or do they have a sixth-sense? He is neither!
◎ Personality:
As a general note, this app does contain some pretty big spoilers that have only been clarified as of recent chapters, so if you haven't read Kuroshit in a while, this is just a general warning that there's going to be mentions/discussions of this spoiler, as it's quite important to Ciel's character.
---
Ciel is a character that is fundamentally trying to be more than he is in many senses. For one, he's a young boy trying to fulfill the role not only of a nobleman, but a nobleman whose title carries a dark purpose. He wishes to uphold the ideas of nobility and cold grace that he believes suit his status, even to the point of being cruel, but this is all a façade to cover up the cruelties and injustices he has personally suffered. Ciel is acting as the Earl of Phantomhive, a noble title with a wicked purpose of investigating murders and often killing people themselves, and yet, despite how he would like to project an image otherwise, Ciel is still a young boy, though one that is significantly damaged and trying to overcome his traumas.
In the classic Faustian legend, the scholar Faust trades his soul for knowledge and worldly pleasures. On the surface, Faust has everything he ever wanted, but as the story progresses, he also gradually realizes at just what a great cost all of this comes at, and also how having this wishes granted didn't bring the happiness he had hoped for. The Faustian legend is influential, to say the least, and this influence even extends to Kuroshitsuji, which is simply another telling of the Faustian story. In Kuroshitsuji, however, Ciel is the Faust analogue, and yet, is not a scholar who trades his soul for knowledge, but instead, a young boy that trades his soul for the power to save his own life.
SPOILERS AFTER THIS POINT.
After his family was killed and his home burned to the ground, Ciel was kidnapped and sold to the black market, only to be bought by a cult for the purpose of being sacrificed to summon a demon. This was successful, obviously, since Sebastian was summoned and contracted to Ciel, and yet, there’s an ambiguity there. Recent chapters as well as going back and looking at old clues imply that Ciel is, in fact, a twin, and it was his twin brother that was truly sacrificed, and Ciel was the one that lived to make a contract with Sebastian. However, this is complicated further, since it’s also implied that Ciel isn’t really Ciel at all—That is, the boy that was sacrificed was the one named Ciel, and “Ciel” (whose real name is still unknown) stole his name for the sake of being able to inherit his title as the Earl of Phantomhive.
SPOILERS DONE.
This event is undoubtedly the event that has impacted Ciel the most, leaving him traumatized and with a severe case of PTSD, but also with a heavy dose of survivor’s guilt to go along with it. Though Ciel has healed in the time since he returned, he’s still plagued by nightmares and triggered by certain things (essentially, anything that reminds him of being imprisoned or the day of sacrifice), and it’s very messy. Ciel responds to his fear with violence, since Ciel has a very harsh personality. For example, after a nightmare, he points a gun at Sebastian’s head fully intending to shoot, or on the more extreme end, a severe episode spurns Ciel to have Sebastian not only kill multiple people, but to set a building with children in it on fire.
And this, in a sense, represents the very worst parts of Ciel’s personality. He’s harsh, selfish, and unforgiving, though he is aware of these parts of his personality. His experiences have hardened and tempered him, making him a rather cruel person who is willing to kill people for the sake of either protecting his own life or for the sake of his end goal of revenge. He’s often blinded by his own biases, and once he has his mind set to something, it can be very difficult to change his viewpoints. He also tends to keep people at arm’s length, not wanting people to get close to him at all, so overall, this makes him seem like a very bad person, to put it simply.
And yet, like Faust, Ciel is a tragic hero of the story, because these flaws are hardly all he is.
Despite that ruthless sort of darkness in his heart born from his experiences, Ciel’s major personality trait that most people comment on first is his nobility. This is why Sebastian is especially fixated on Ciel’s soul, for example, since Ciel apparently possesses an extraordinary quality of it. Ciel may be cold and distant, but it’s not without reason—He tends to prefer keeping people at a distance because he knows his time is limited, so he’s so wholly focused on his goal that he doesn’t want to bring more people down with him. Yet despite that, Ciel can be incredibly generous and kind, such as offering outcasts of society (such as an escaped human experimentation subject) a place amongst the staff of his manor, even if they have no skills for serving whatsoever. He’s thoughtful and protective towards his fiancée Lizzie, often doing his best even at things he hates for the sake of making her happy. Ciel also has a great quality of presence and charisma, being able to speak to peoples’ hearts with ease despite his age, and truly gives the impression of wisdom and grace beyond his years at times. He’s intelligent, wise, and just overall surprisingly charming when he wants to be.
It’s also important to remember that despite his insistence otherwise, he’s also very much a thirteen year old boy, and a spoiled one, at that. Even with the hardships in his life, Ciel has spent most of his life waited on hand and foot, and expects nothing less than perfection from those around him. So, to put it simply, he’s a brat. He doesn’t know basic skills even such as dressing himself, having relied on servants to do such things, and yet will still have sarcastic comments for anyone that chooses to insult him. He’s also incredibly petty, enacting small schemes of revenge against those that have wronged him, from pouring hot tea on Sebastian’s hands for mocking him to a scheme to ruin a classmate’s reputation that had embarrassed him. It’s moments like these where Ciel’s age shines the most, since he’s prone to tantrums, getting flustered, and just generally showing a sour disposition in a way that’s not at all threatening like he hopes.
Overall, Ciel is the tragic Faustian hero, only made more tragic by his young age. He’s stuck in a situation he can’t escape from, slowly marching towards his death while doing reprehensible things along the way, and yet, Ciel does have a great strength of character. Despite the terrible things he’s experienced and done, Ciel’s resolve very rarely wavers. He knows that what he’s doing is wrong, and he does care a lot about that, though he would say otherwise, but he believes that even so, it’s the only path he can take to continue forward. He’s noble in appearance and personality, being friendly, if distant, which makes his situation all the more tragic. Ciel could grow up to be a great nobleman that would touch many peoples’ lives, since he has already, and yet, so long as Sebastian is there, he won’t get the chance.
◎ Powers/Abilities:
Ciel is a perfectly normal, average human boy, save for the fact that he's a contractor to a demon, but this in itself grants him no special abilities. He's particularly intelligent and clever, and is well-trained in many skills as to be expected of a stereotypical English nobleman from violin to marksmanship, though he does have weaknesses in areas like dancing. Otherwise, he has no abilities of note.
◎ Weapons & Other Special Inventory:
◎ Element: Fire
◎ Sense: Sight—While the brand in Ciel's eye is an obvious connection to sight, there are also a few other times in the series where Ciel's sight is affected and his character changes dramatically, signifying its importance.
◎ Seven Character Traits: ( Noble, Dedicated, Intelligent ) | ( Selfish, Cold, Ruthless ) + Damaged
Samples
◎ First-Person Sample:
Here!
◎ Third-Person Sample:
Already in the game!
◎ Is your character retaining any previous game memories?
Yes—Ciel will be a CRAU from the short-term mafia gamedreamsland.
This game is a Mafia styled game where characters arrived in an abandoned amusement park called Dreamland. The mafia of this game was called the VIPs, which was a group of seven characters. In addition, there were the roles of the detective and buddy cops, who could learn character alignments and the medical team, which could save someone if they were targeted, which comprise the traditional mafia roles. There were also three game specific roles that went along with the setting and rules. All characters arrived with a bracelet to track their locations, and as found out later, an explosive embedded in them. This allowed two other roles, the detonator, who could pick a player to receive a key that could detonate another player's guest identification bracelet, and the bomber, which was a mystery role that acted as an OOC way to trim down the numbers more quickly. In addition, if characters chose not to vote for anyone, the VIPs could convert a character to become a VIP, leading to another role of the conversion busters, where they could block someone from being converted if the opportunity arose.
Premise aside, Ciel was (fittingly) one of the VIPs. To ensure that the game proceeded, the VIPs were all brainwashed with the idea that killing people in the game meant that they would wake up safe and sound, as well as the VIPs gaining prizes if they won the game. Some VIPs were pretty heavily brainwashed to go along with this, but Ciel was not, or at least, not so much. His prize was information about who had killed his family, so that was more than enough to selfishly motivate him, and as such, he became one of the more ruthless members of the VIPs. While the VIPs started out trying to be as kind as possible to their victims, an outside force manipulated them into believing that the more brutal the murder, the more peaceful the transition that person would face, and Ciel was the one to suggest many of the gory murder methods, if not killing people himself.
For a while, it seemed like the VIPs had the advantage, at least until three members were taken out in one day, which turned the tables drastically. This left three mafia members, one of which had their alliance known, which meant they would be killed the next day. This left Ciel and Mabel Pines, who had been converted after the first IC day, and was someone that Ciel was fiercely protective of, since he didn't want her to lose her childhood and innocence by killing others like he believed he had. As such, as the game shifted towards endgame, Ciel took upon the burdens of his role almost single-handedly, since he stubbornly refused to let Mabel experience this.
However, while it seemed like the VIPs would lose, another path was offered from Oz Vessalius, one of the Buddy Cops, and Nanami Kiryuu, the Detonator. They approached Ciel privately, since they knew his alliance at that point, but Oz (being Oz), offered Ciel the chance to work together, since at this point, it was clear that the VIPs were being brainwashed, and he didn't believe they were bad people or very responsible for their own actions. Ciel and Oz had also become friends over the course of the game, so with the other option being his certain death and also simply trusting Oz, Ciel agreed to go along with a plan for the VIPs to not kill anyone.
However, the same outside force that had encouraged the murders to become more brutal wasn't going to allow this. Ciel was brainwashed even further and betrayed Oz by choosing him to kill, since Ciel believed that betraying Oz was the best course of action, since it would allow the VIPs to wake everyone else up the next day, which was also the last day before those remaining alive would truly be killed. Yet, cruelly, Ciel was coerced into recreating the ritual sacrifice that had traumatized him so badly.
Ciel had a pretty messy breakdown when he discovered the body the next day, since his brainwashing had been so heavy that he had been under the impression that he had been doing something else entirely. Still, he had to get it together for the sake of saving everyone (with a happy bit of brainwashing to go along with that too), and so he confronted the survivors with the intention of killing them, but was beaten pretty severely, and likely would have been killed, if not for the fact that the calvary of the dead characters (who had been waking up elsewhere) arrived to stop them.
It wasn't quite a happy ending, since Ciel was left traumatized (again) and pretty badly beaten up, but everyone was alive and mostly alright. While the idea was that the characters would be returning home, Ciel instead came to Cerealia.
◎ Name: Christy
◎ Journal:
swagu◎ Contact:
Character Info
◎ Character's Name: Ciel Phantomhive
◎ Character's Canon: Black Butler
◎ Character's Age: 13
◎ Canon Point: Chapter 95 + post endgame for
dreamsland◎ Background/History: Here
◎ Is the character a hacker and/or do they have a sixth-sense? He is neither!
◎ Personality:
As a general note, this app does contain some pretty big spoilers that have only been clarified as of recent chapters, so if you haven't read Kuroshit in a while, this is just a general warning that there's going to be mentions/discussions of this spoiler, as it's quite important to Ciel's character.
---
Ciel is a character that is fundamentally trying to be more than he is in many senses. For one, he's a young boy trying to fulfill the role not only of a nobleman, but a nobleman whose title carries a dark purpose. He wishes to uphold the ideas of nobility and cold grace that he believes suit his status, even to the point of being cruel, but this is all a façade to cover up the cruelties and injustices he has personally suffered. Ciel is acting as the Earl of Phantomhive, a noble title with a wicked purpose of investigating murders and often killing people themselves, and yet, despite how he would like to project an image otherwise, Ciel is still a young boy, though one that is significantly damaged and trying to overcome his traumas.
In the classic Faustian legend, the scholar Faust trades his soul for knowledge and worldly pleasures. On the surface, Faust has everything he ever wanted, but as the story progresses, he also gradually realizes at just what a great cost all of this comes at, and also how having this wishes granted didn't bring the happiness he had hoped for. The Faustian legend is influential, to say the least, and this influence even extends to Kuroshitsuji, which is simply another telling of the Faustian story. In Kuroshitsuji, however, Ciel is the Faust analogue, and yet, is not a scholar who trades his soul for knowledge, but instead, a young boy that trades his soul for the power to save his own life.
SPOILERS AFTER THIS POINT.
After his family was killed and his home burned to the ground, Ciel was kidnapped and sold to the black market, only to be bought by a cult for the purpose of being sacrificed to summon a demon. This was successful, obviously, since Sebastian was summoned and contracted to Ciel, and yet, there’s an ambiguity there. Recent chapters as well as going back and looking at old clues imply that Ciel is, in fact, a twin, and it was his twin brother that was truly sacrificed, and Ciel was the one that lived to make a contract with Sebastian. However, this is complicated further, since it’s also implied that Ciel isn’t really Ciel at all—That is, the boy that was sacrificed was the one named Ciel, and “Ciel” (whose real name is still unknown) stole his name for the sake of being able to inherit his title as the Earl of Phantomhive.
SPOILERS DONE.
This event is undoubtedly the event that has impacted Ciel the most, leaving him traumatized and with a severe case of PTSD, but also with a heavy dose of survivor’s guilt to go along with it. Though Ciel has healed in the time since he returned, he’s still plagued by nightmares and triggered by certain things (essentially, anything that reminds him of being imprisoned or the day of sacrifice), and it’s very messy. Ciel responds to his fear with violence, since Ciel has a very harsh personality. For example, after a nightmare, he points a gun at Sebastian’s head fully intending to shoot, or on the more extreme end, a severe episode spurns Ciel to have Sebastian not only kill multiple people, but to set a building with children in it on fire.
And this, in a sense, represents the very worst parts of Ciel’s personality. He’s harsh, selfish, and unforgiving, though he is aware of these parts of his personality. His experiences have hardened and tempered him, making him a rather cruel person who is willing to kill people for the sake of either protecting his own life or for the sake of his end goal of revenge. He’s often blinded by his own biases, and once he has his mind set to something, it can be very difficult to change his viewpoints. He also tends to keep people at arm’s length, not wanting people to get close to him at all, so overall, this makes him seem like a very bad person, to put it simply.
And yet, like Faust, Ciel is a tragic hero of the story, because these flaws are hardly all he is.
Despite that ruthless sort of darkness in his heart born from his experiences, Ciel’s major personality trait that most people comment on first is his nobility. This is why Sebastian is especially fixated on Ciel’s soul, for example, since Ciel apparently possesses an extraordinary quality of it. Ciel may be cold and distant, but it’s not without reason—He tends to prefer keeping people at a distance because he knows his time is limited, so he’s so wholly focused on his goal that he doesn’t want to bring more people down with him. Yet despite that, Ciel can be incredibly generous and kind, such as offering outcasts of society (such as an escaped human experimentation subject) a place amongst the staff of his manor, even if they have no skills for serving whatsoever. He’s thoughtful and protective towards his fiancée Lizzie, often doing his best even at things he hates for the sake of making her happy. Ciel also has a great quality of presence and charisma, being able to speak to peoples’ hearts with ease despite his age, and truly gives the impression of wisdom and grace beyond his years at times. He’s intelligent, wise, and just overall surprisingly charming when he wants to be.
It’s also important to remember that despite his insistence otherwise, he’s also very much a thirteen year old boy, and a spoiled one, at that. Even with the hardships in his life, Ciel has spent most of his life waited on hand and foot, and expects nothing less than perfection from those around him. So, to put it simply, he’s a brat. He doesn’t know basic skills even such as dressing himself, having relied on servants to do such things, and yet will still have sarcastic comments for anyone that chooses to insult him. He’s also incredibly petty, enacting small schemes of revenge against those that have wronged him, from pouring hot tea on Sebastian’s hands for mocking him to a scheme to ruin a classmate’s reputation that had embarrassed him. It’s moments like these where Ciel’s age shines the most, since he’s prone to tantrums, getting flustered, and just generally showing a sour disposition in a way that’s not at all threatening like he hopes.
Overall, Ciel is the tragic Faustian hero, only made more tragic by his young age. He’s stuck in a situation he can’t escape from, slowly marching towards his death while doing reprehensible things along the way, and yet, Ciel does have a great strength of character. Despite the terrible things he’s experienced and done, Ciel’s resolve very rarely wavers. He knows that what he’s doing is wrong, and he does care a lot about that, though he would say otherwise, but he believes that even so, it’s the only path he can take to continue forward. He’s noble in appearance and personality, being friendly, if distant, which makes his situation all the more tragic. Ciel could grow up to be a great nobleman that would touch many peoples’ lives, since he has already, and yet, so long as Sebastian is there, he won’t get the chance.
◎ Powers/Abilities:
Ciel is a perfectly normal, average human boy, save for the fact that he's a contractor to a demon, but this in itself grants him no special abilities. He's particularly intelligent and clever, and is well-trained in many skills as to be expected of a stereotypical English nobleman from violin to marksmanship, though he does have weaknesses in areas like dancing. Otherwise, he has no abilities of note.
◎ Weapons & Other Special Inventory:
1. A pistol and leather holsterCEREALIA-Specific
2. A small set of letters from characters at Dreamland that Ciel received
3. A rather colorful, handmade sweater
4. A half-filled glass jar of off-brand candy
5. His family rings
6. One of his fancy poncy outfits
7. A Bitter Rabbit plush
◎ Element: Fire
◎ Sense: Sight—While the brand in Ciel's eye is an obvious connection to sight, there are also a few other times in the series where Ciel's sight is affected and his character changes dramatically, signifying its importance.
◎ Seven Character Traits: ( Noble, Dedicated, Intelligent ) | ( Selfish, Cold, Ruthless ) + Damaged
Samples
◎ First-Person Sample:
Here!
◎ Third-Person Sample:
Already in the game!
◎ Is your character retaining any previous game memories?
Yes—Ciel will be a CRAU from the short-term mafia game
dreamsland.This game is a Mafia styled game where characters arrived in an abandoned amusement park called Dreamland. The mafia of this game was called the VIPs, which was a group of seven characters. In addition, there were the roles of the detective and buddy cops, who could learn character alignments and the medical team, which could save someone if they were targeted, which comprise the traditional mafia roles. There were also three game specific roles that went along with the setting and rules. All characters arrived with a bracelet to track their locations, and as found out later, an explosive embedded in them. This allowed two other roles, the detonator, who could pick a player to receive a key that could detonate another player's guest identification bracelet, and the bomber, which was a mystery role that acted as an OOC way to trim down the numbers more quickly. In addition, if characters chose not to vote for anyone, the VIPs could convert a character to become a VIP, leading to another role of the conversion busters, where they could block someone from being converted if the opportunity arose.
Premise aside, Ciel was (fittingly) one of the VIPs. To ensure that the game proceeded, the VIPs were all brainwashed with the idea that killing people in the game meant that they would wake up safe and sound, as well as the VIPs gaining prizes if they won the game. Some VIPs were pretty heavily brainwashed to go along with this, but Ciel was not, or at least, not so much. His prize was information about who had killed his family, so that was more than enough to selfishly motivate him, and as such, he became one of the more ruthless members of the VIPs. While the VIPs started out trying to be as kind as possible to their victims, an outside force manipulated them into believing that the more brutal the murder, the more peaceful the transition that person would face, and Ciel was the one to suggest many of the gory murder methods, if not killing people himself.
For a while, it seemed like the VIPs had the advantage, at least until three members were taken out in one day, which turned the tables drastically. This left three mafia members, one of which had their alliance known, which meant they would be killed the next day. This left Ciel and Mabel Pines, who had been converted after the first IC day, and was someone that Ciel was fiercely protective of, since he didn't want her to lose her childhood and innocence by killing others like he believed he had. As such, as the game shifted towards endgame, Ciel took upon the burdens of his role almost single-handedly, since he stubbornly refused to let Mabel experience this.
However, while it seemed like the VIPs would lose, another path was offered from Oz Vessalius, one of the Buddy Cops, and Nanami Kiryuu, the Detonator. They approached Ciel privately, since they knew his alliance at that point, but Oz (being Oz), offered Ciel the chance to work together, since at this point, it was clear that the VIPs were being brainwashed, and he didn't believe they were bad people or very responsible for their own actions. Ciel and Oz had also become friends over the course of the game, so with the other option being his certain death and also simply trusting Oz, Ciel agreed to go along with a plan for the VIPs to not kill anyone.
However, the same outside force that had encouraged the murders to become more brutal wasn't going to allow this. Ciel was brainwashed even further and betrayed Oz by choosing him to kill, since Ciel believed that betraying Oz was the best course of action, since it would allow the VIPs to wake everyone else up the next day, which was also the last day before those remaining alive would truly be killed. Yet, cruelly, Ciel was coerced into recreating the ritual sacrifice that had traumatized him so badly.
Ciel had a pretty messy breakdown when he discovered the body the next day, since his brainwashing had been so heavy that he had been under the impression that he had been doing something else entirely. Still, he had to get it together for the sake of saving everyone (with a happy bit of brainwashing to go along with that too), and so he confronted the survivors with the intention of killing them, but was beaten pretty severely, and likely would have been killed, if not for the fact that the calvary of the dead characters (who had been waking up elsewhere) arrived to stop them.
It wasn't quite a happy ending, since Ciel was left traumatized (again) and pretty badly beaten up, but everyone was alive and mostly alright. While the idea was that the characters would be returning home, Ciel instead came to Cerealia.