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lil punkass nerd
PLAYER INFORMATION
Name: Christy
Age: 24
Contact:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
swagu
Current characters: n/a
CHARACTER INFORMATION
True name: Ciel Phantomhive
Given name: Corbin — The name is composed of the parts corb, "crow, raven," and a diminutive suffix, hence "little crow," like from his dream.
Canon: Kuroshitsuji
Canonpoint: Chapter 95 — Sebastian declares that Ciel has broken their contract and starts to eat him as an attempt to "wake him up" from the sort of regressed state that he was in at the time. In canon, this leads to a dreamscape where he ends up confronting his guilt and issues (poorly), but ultimately wakes up. However, for the game, Sebastian really does eat Ciel, since he was 90% serious about it. Thanks, Sebastian.
History: Here
Personality:
In Canon:
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.
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.
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.
In Game:
Ciel will be largely unchanged from his canon-self, since even without the core memories that act as the "why" behind his grumpy personality, he's still a disagreeable, young teenage boy.
One primary difference would be in how he approaches other people. Ciel will absolutely still be conniving, but this won't be true in his actual relationships with people he meets. One of the reasons that Ciel is so closed off is that most of the people that he's met since he contracted with Sebastian have been under false pretences. It's either very basic, since he's technically presenting himself as someone else, or it's having to do with his work, such as in the Cricket arc. Ciel is almost always lying to others in canon about who he is and why he's coming to visit them. In the game, he won't have these reasonings, and as such, he'll be more honest with how he relates to others than he might be ordinarily. So for example, Ciel is absolutely willing to play at being a cute, unassuming boy of his age when it suits him in canon, but in game, he'll never have that sort of reasoning. Essentially, he won't be quite as manipulative in how he deals with others.
Another difference would be that that Ciel's temper won't be quite as bad, because many of the instances of his anger in canon are inspired directly by things he faced. Instead of a true, occasionally vicious anger that he would show, his anger in game would largely be outbursts that aren't quite as serious in nature. He'd be much less likely to get beyond huffy anger until he received and accepted (which will be difficult for him) some of his memories that would make him have that kind of anger.
Finally, his traumas will be lessened quite a lot, since they're all based in his history, which he won't remember, obviously! Since Ciel is triggered quite a few times throughout the series, this is far less likely to happen. His triggers may make him anxious and uncomfortable in the game, but they won't lead to full-blown breakdowns (at least until he might get some of those memories back).
Powers:
None! Ciel is a perfectly ordinary 13-almost-14 year old boy. He does have a curse in his right eye, but it gives him no powers whatsoever.
Memory bank:
Here
Job:
1) Post Office Messenger
2) Tutor (but he has a terrible personality for it...)
Dream:
It's dark.
It's the kind of darkness that swallows up everything, and for a moment, the boy wonders if he's blind. He holds up his hands in the darkness to try and see, but even with his hand in front of his face, he can't see it at all. His heart hammers in his chest, because there's something terrifying about this darkness that he can't quite place. He can't see, but he walks (almost half-runs), because instinct alone makes him feel nervous just waiting where he is. His hands are outstretched to feel before he'll bump into anything, but he doesn't make a sound. He's afraid to. If there's something in this darkness, it would surely find him if he called out for help.
He's only all the more assured of that when he hears a crow call out in this darkness.
The boy's mouth sets into a tight, thin line, and that gets him to move a little bit faster. It's just a crow, but any sound is startling in this dark. He moves, trying to find something, anything, but eventually, he does meet something in the darkness. Or rather, it meets him.
A hand reaches out and grasps his own, and the boy immediately screams in startled fear, and he tries to pull back, but the hand is insistent. It holds his hand firmly, but gently, not letting him pull away. He feels like his heart is jumping up into his throat, like he might throw up, and he hears the crow again. The hand pulls him forward insistently, and it's then he realizes the direction of that caw. It's behind him, isn't it? The hand in the dark is pulling him forward and away from that noise.
It's warm.
He realizes that there's a warmth in that hand that contrasts against the cold against his back that he hadn't quite been aware of. He becomes acutely aware of that chill, and with it, he gets a sense that he can only go forward or look backward. There's nowhere else to go in this pitch black. He doesn't trust either. He wants to let go and run in his own direction, since if he runs away on his own, he'll escape both.
But the chill contrasts so much against the warmth of that hand. There's something familiar about it, something that almost burns in his chest with that warmth. He's not sure what it means, but he finds that he can't let go of the hand now.
The crow caws again, but the boy doesn't look back. He steps forward towards the hand, towards that warmth, and all the sudden, that enveloping darkness turns to a blinding light.
The light comes as the boy opens his eyes blearily. Everything is out of focus and indistinct in his just-woken state, and he's uncertain of where he is. Yet he still feels the lingering warmth in his palm from where that hand had been holding his. He looks down at it, uncertain of what it's supposed to mean, but it's all that remains from the dream.
That, and the call of the crow.
Trial:
In short, Ciel's trial will be to learn to trust others and not rely so much on himself and himself alone. But for Ciel in particular, this is far easier said than done. In a sense, Ciel faced this trial in canon through a dreamscape sort of scenario, but he also essentially failed it, in my view, since when confronted with the people whose deaths he holds guilt over, the conclusion that he came to was that he was justified, since he took power to save himself for himself and for no one else.
What I hope to tackle with Ciel's trial in particular is the idea that as these memories come back bit by bit to see how he'll confront them differently from how he does in canon. My general idea here is for Ciel to use the setting of the game to form more normal relationships that he doesn't quite allow himself in canon. Ciel intentionally closes himself off from others for a variety of reasons, but in my opinion, they all come back to his self-loathing and not wanting people he does care about to be hurt by his actions. By removing those stressors or even the memory of them, Ciel won't have his excuses to fall back on for pushing people away, and as he regains his memories about what has happened to him or what he's done, he may confront those memories very differently than he does in canon. He won't have his justifications (or at least not to start), so Ciel will have to approach these memories more objectively than he does in canon.
I expect Ciel to face a lot of difficulties in his trial, and he may ultimately fail as well, which is why I'm interested in putting him in this setting. Ciel is a character who is independent to the point of it being a flaw, and so relying on others is something very difficult to him. One difficulty will be from confronting his memories in the first place, since many of them are fairly harsh, so he'll have to reconcile the fact that he has done terrible things and not justify his actions away. I think to successfully do so, he'll have to come to the realization that he can trust and rely on others, at least to some extent, but whether he actually accomplishes that or not is where his success hinges! As such, his secondary difficulty will be in that respect, since his natural instinct is going to be to bottle up these memories and hide or deny them, so the more obvious difficulty and the one tied strongly into this trial will be overcoming this habit.
For me, success in his trial will be Ciel regaining all of his memories and maybe not necessarily accepting what he's done and what's happened to him, but at least recognizing that despite those things, there would be people that care for him and that he doesn't have to push away. Failure will be essentially taking the same route he did in canon in that he comes to the conclusion that he's not worth being cared about, and so he'll bear everything alone without letting others help him.
SAMPLES
Memories:
He's wandering in a dark forest, and someone is at his side. He can't quite tell who, since they're little more than a dark shape without much form at all. It's a person he trusts, so he stays at their side. That darkness will protect him, no matter what. That's the sense that he gets, and it's a good thing, since he also knows that wandering here is dangerous. The fog curls around him, and he swears that in the moonlight, it has a slightly yellow tint. But he must be imagining things. At the very least, it matters less to him when his eyes start to water.
"What is this?" he asks with some alarm as he starts to rub at his eyes, and the dark man steps closer. He's fussing over him, and he's annoyed by that. Like he needs someone fussing over him, dammit, and he says as much as he rubs at his eyes with annoyance. Just leave him alone, since he's fine.
His eyes blur more with tears, and he's sure he sees a figure in the fog, but the dark man won't let him pursue. Fine. Whatever. He trusts his judgement, and so he's taken back to a castle in the woods.
But it burns once the man leaves.
He feels like he's on fire, from the skin on his face to the inside of his chest. No matter how much he coughs and heaves to try and clear it, it just burns worse. Blood drips out of his nose, but he doesn't even care about that.
He's alone. He realizes that all at once, and he looks back towards the balcony's door as if hoping for the man to return.
"Dammit," he curses with a cough even as his stomach heaves to try and be rid of the miasma, and he watches the blood from his nose drip into his open palm. It hurts. It hurts, and he's afraid, because it's burning him up from the inside out.
There's no one here to help him. In that moment, he feels that with certainty.
---
There are bars all around him. There have been for a while, and so he's almost used to them now. The cage is so tiny that he feels like he can't move, but he's also afraid to. When he hears footsteps, he tries to shrink up as little as possible, because he thinks that maybe they might ignore him if that's the case.
He tries not to watch as someone else gets a funnel shoved in their mouth. He can smell the stench of the "food" forced in it from where he's curled up, and he tries not to vomit at the smell alone. He knows what comes next, even though he doesn't remember why he knows that.
Just as the other boy retches, he's pulled forward until he smacks roughly against the bars. They don't care about him. Animals are treated better than this, and as the man's hands hold him in place, he trembles. He tries to be quiet and not resist, but he still shakes when that nasty food is forced into his mouth. It's not supposed to be like this at all. He's supposed to be at home. How could something like this even happen?
It hurts. He's scared. He just needs one person to reach out and help him, save him, but he watches as he's released while the other man grabs one of the other boys that had been huddled in the cage. They grab his dirty tunic, and he falls limply. He can't see the boy's face clearly. It's blonde hair and a sallow face.
"Ah, this one's dead."
The face becomes indistinct, and he's sure that for a moment, it's darker hair instead. It's him. He's sure it's him, or at least it will be him. Someone has to save him. He'll die here, and as he watches them drag away the boy like he's nothing more than a sack, he grips the bars tightly and he feels like he knows. He'll be the next one to die like that.
"Don't worry," a warm voice says, and he feels the touch of a small hand like his own on his arm, "I'll protect you."
He's afraid, still trembling, but under that warm touch, it stops.
That's right.
He still had—
RP sample:
Name: Christy
Age: 24
Contact:
Current characters: n/a
CHARACTER INFORMATION
True name: Ciel Phantomhive
Given name: Corbin — The name is composed of the parts corb, "crow, raven," and a diminutive suffix, hence "little crow," like from his dream.
Canon: Kuroshitsuji
Canonpoint: Chapter 95 — Sebastian declares that Ciel has broken their contract and starts to eat him as an attempt to "wake him up" from the sort of regressed state that he was in at the time. In canon, this leads to a dreamscape where he ends up confronting his guilt and issues (poorly), but ultimately wakes up. However, for the game, Sebastian really does eat Ciel, since he was 90% serious about it. Thanks, Sebastian.
History: Here
Personality:
In Canon:
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.
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.
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.
In Game:
One primary difference would be in how he approaches other people. Ciel will absolutely still be conniving, but this won't be true in his actual relationships with people he meets. One of the reasons that Ciel is so closed off is that most of the people that he's met since he contracted with Sebastian have been under false pretences. It's either very basic, since he's technically presenting himself as someone else, or it's having to do with his work, such as in the Cricket arc. Ciel is almost always lying to others in canon about who he is and why he's coming to visit them. In the game, he won't have these reasonings, and as such, he'll be more honest with how he relates to others than he might be ordinarily. So for example, Ciel is absolutely willing to play at being a cute, unassuming boy of his age when it suits him in canon, but in game, he'll never have that sort of reasoning. Essentially, he won't be quite as manipulative in how he deals with others.
Another difference would be that that Ciel's temper won't be quite as bad, because many of the instances of his anger in canon are inspired directly by things he faced. Instead of a true, occasionally vicious anger that he would show, his anger in game would largely be outbursts that aren't quite as serious in nature. He'd be much less likely to get beyond huffy anger until he received and accepted (which will be difficult for him) some of his memories that would make him have that kind of anger.
Finally, his traumas will be lessened quite a lot, since they're all based in his history, which he won't remember, obviously! Since Ciel is triggered quite a few times throughout the series, this is far less likely to happen. His triggers may make him anxious and uncomfortable in the game, but they won't lead to full-blown breakdowns (at least until he might get some of those memories back).
Powers:
None! Ciel is a perfectly ordinary 13-almost-14 year old boy. He does have a curse in his right eye, but it gives him no powers whatsoever.
Memory bank:
Here
Job:
1) Post Office Messenger
2) Tutor (but he has a terrible personality for it...)
Dream:
It's dark.
It's the kind of darkness that swallows up everything, and for a moment, the boy wonders if he's blind. He holds up his hands in the darkness to try and see, but even with his hand in front of his face, he can't see it at all. His heart hammers in his chest, because there's something terrifying about this darkness that he can't quite place. He can't see, but he walks (almost half-runs), because instinct alone makes him feel nervous just waiting where he is. His hands are outstretched to feel before he'll bump into anything, but he doesn't make a sound. He's afraid to. If there's something in this darkness, it would surely find him if he called out for help.
He's only all the more assured of that when he hears a crow call out in this darkness.
The boy's mouth sets into a tight, thin line, and that gets him to move a little bit faster. It's just a crow, but any sound is startling in this dark. He moves, trying to find something, anything, but eventually, he does meet something in the darkness. Or rather, it meets him.
A hand reaches out and grasps his own, and the boy immediately screams in startled fear, and he tries to pull back, but the hand is insistent. It holds his hand firmly, but gently, not letting him pull away. He feels like his heart is jumping up into his throat, like he might throw up, and he hears the crow again. The hand pulls him forward insistently, and it's then he realizes the direction of that caw. It's behind him, isn't it? The hand in the dark is pulling him forward and away from that noise.
It's warm.
He realizes that there's a warmth in that hand that contrasts against the cold against his back that he hadn't quite been aware of. He becomes acutely aware of that chill, and with it, he gets a sense that he can only go forward or look backward. There's nowhere else to go in this pitch black. He doesn't trust either. He wants to let go and run in his own direction, since if he runs away on his own, he'll escape both.
But the chill contrasts so much against the warmth of that hand. There's something familiar about it, something that almost burns in his chest with that warmth. He's not sure what it means, but he finds that he can't let go of the hand now.
The crow caws again, but the boy doesn't look back. He steps forward towards the hand, towards that warmth, and all the sudden, that enveloping darkness turns to a blinding light.
The light comes as the boy opens his eyes blearily. Everything is out of focus and indistinct in his just-woken state, and he's uncertain of where he is. Yet he still feels the lingering warmth in his palm from where that hand had been holding his. He looks down at it, uncertain of what it's supposed to mean, but it's all that remains from the dream.
That, and the call of the crow.
Trial:
In short, Ciel's trial will be to learn to trust others and not rely so much on himself and himself alone. But for Ciel in particular, this is far easier said than done. In a sense, Ciel faced this trial in canon through a dreamscape sort of scenario, but he also essentially failed it, in my view, since when confronted with the people whose deaths he holds guilt over, the conclusion that he came to was that he was justified, since he took power to save himself for himself and for no one else.
What I hope to tackle with Ciel's trial in particular is the idea that as these memories come back bit by bit to see how he'll confront them differently from how he does in canon. My general idea here is for Ciel to use the setting of the game to form more normal relationships that he doesn't quite allow himself in canon. Ciel intentionally closes himself off from others for a variety of reasons, but in my opinion, they all come back to his self-loathing and not wanting people he does care about to be hurt by his actions. By removing those stressors or even the memory of them, Ciel won't have his excuses to fall back on for pushing people away, and as he regains his memories about what has happened to him or what he's done, he may confront those memories very differently than he does in canon. He won't have his justifications (or at least not to start), so Ciel will have to approach these memories more objectively than he does in canon.
I expect Ciel to face a lot of difficulties in his trial, and he may ultimately fail as well, which is why I'm interested in putting him in this setting. Ciel is a character who is independent to the point of it being a flaw, and so relying on others is something very difficult to him. One difficulty will be from confronting his memories in the first place, since many of them are fairly harsh, so he'll have to reconcile the fact that he has done terrible things and not justify his actions away. I think to successfully do so, he'll have to come to the realization that he can trust and rely on others, at least to some extent, but whether he actually accomplishes that or not is where his success hinges! As such, his secondary difficulty will be in that respect, since his natural instinct is going to be to bottle up these memories and hide or deny them, so the more obvious difficulty and the one tied strongly into this trial will be overcoming this habit.
For me, success in his trial will be Ciel regaining all of his memories and maybe not necessarily accepting what he's done and what's happened to him, but at least recognizing that despite those things, there would be people that care for him and that he doesn't have to push away. Failure will be essentially taking the same route he did in canon in that he comes to the conclusion that he's not worth being cared about, and so he'll bear everything alone without letting others help him.
SAMPLES
Memories:
He's wandering in a dark forest, and someone is at his side. He can't quite tell who, since they're little more than a dark shape without much form at all. It's a person he trusts, so he stays at their side. That darkness will protect him, no matter what. That's the sense that he gets, and it's a good thing, since he also knows that wandering here is dangerous. The fog curls around him, and he swears that in the moonlight, it has a slightly yellow tint. But he must be imagining things. At the very least, it matters less to him when his eyes start to water.
"What is this?" he asks with some alarm as he starts to rub at his eyes, and the dark man steps closer. He's fussing over him, and he's annoyed by that. Like he needs someone fussing over him, dammit, and he says as much as he rubs at his eyes with annoyance. Just leave him alone, since he's fine.
His eyes blur more with tears, and he's sure he sees a figure in the fog, but the dark man won't let him pursue. Fine. Whatever. He trusts his judgement, and so he's taken back to a castle in the woods.
But it burns once the man leaves.
He feels like he's on fire, from the skin on his face to the inside of his chest. No matter how much he coughs and heaves to try and clear it, it just burns worse. Blood drips out of his nose, but he doesn't even care about that.
He's alone. He realizes that all at once, and he looks back towards the balcony's door as if hoping for the man to return.
"Dammit," he curses with a cough even as his stomach heaves to try and be rid of the miasma, and he watches the blood from his nose drip into his open palm. It hurts. It hurts, and he's afraid, because it's burning him up from the inside out.
There's no one here to help him. In that moment, he feels that with certainty.
---
There are bars all around him. There have been for a while, and so he's almost used to them now. The cage is so tiny that he feels like he can't move, but he's also afraid to. When he hears footsteps, he tries to shrink up as little as possible, because he thinks that maybe they might ignore him if that's the case.
He tries not to watch as someone else gets a funnel shoved in their mouth. He can smell the stench of the "food" forced in it from where he's curled up, and he tries not to vomit at the smell alone. He knows what comes next, even though he doesn't remember why he knows that.
Just as the other boy retches, he's pulled forward until he smacks roughly against the bars. They don't care about him. Animals are treated better than this, and as the man's hands hold him in place, he trembles. He tries to be quiet and not resist, but he still shakes when that nasty food is forced into his mouth. It's not supposed to be like this at all. He's supposed to be at home. How could something like this even happen?
It hurts. He's scared. He just needs one person to reach out and help him, save him, but he watches as he's released while the other man grabs one of the other boys that had been huddled in the cage. They grab his dirty tunic, and he falls limply. He can't see the boy's face clearly. It's blonde hair and a sallow face.
"Ah, this one's dead."
The face becomes indistinct, and he's sure that for a moment, it's darker hair instead. It's him. He's sure it's him, or at least it will be him. Someone has to save him. He'll die here, and as he watches them drag away the boy like he's nothing more than a sack, he grips the bars tightly and he feels like he knows. He'll be the next one to die like that.
"Don't worry," a warm voice says, and he feels the touch of a small hand like his own on his arm, "I'll protect you."
He's afraid, still trembling, but under that warm touch, it stops.
That's right.
He still had—
RP sample: