I’ve recently been thinking on why there’s people who interpret Kuro in such a drastically different way.
And something I notice is that you can easily tell how someone experiences the series, based on what they think of the GWA.
The way you interpret the Green Witch Arc is indicative of of how you have been interpreting the story so far, and how you’ll interpret it going forward
Generally, there’s two interpretations:
1.- The Reaction Ciel had to the mustard gas, are his true feelings coming afloat
2.- The Reaction Ciel had to the mustard gas, isn’t how he feels.
The first interpretation (and I’m really not trying to be mean about it this time) comes from a very, uhm, shall I call it Teenage-Like? mindset of how pain and trauma works.
I call it Teenage-Like, because I’ve seen it in mostly literature aimed at teenagers, be it fanfics or YA. It comes from an inability for teenagers to actually voice how they feel towards their parents. A helpless feeling of being ignored.
I don’t wanna point fingers but this is the basis of a lot of Self Harm tendencies (physical, emotional, psychological, or others like EDs or digital self harm) come from. A need for people to notice you are in pain. But because you feel like you cannot voice it yourself (or don’t deserve it, it can vary) you start to lash out. Put yourself in higher risks, to have someone find out there is something wrong with you.
So the moment the main character finally breaks down, or has a moment of weakness, it’s interpreted as someone finally being truthful.
This is how Ciel’s reaction is interpreted by the first half.
The mustard gas is simply a trigger of pain, that causes all of Ciel to unravel. He’s in pain right now, cause he’s always in pain. He’s avoidant to Sebastian, cause he’s always been scared of him. He doesn’t trust him. He doesn’t trust adults. Finny is the only one who actually cares.
This makes the fact that Sebastian ,essentially, slapped him to get him to react, come off as cruel.
The boy is finally being honest, and you just tell him he’s being childish? Horrible.
Obviously, that’s not my interpretation.
Okay so, what happens once you’re not a teenager? Once you don’t have an adult figure to take care of you? What happens once you start avoiding telling your parents the pain you’re in, not because you think they won’t care, but because they’ll care too much and get worried and you don’t want them to get worried?
You start to realize pain is not the end of the world.
While, when being a teenager, getting sick meant someone gets to take care of you and maybe notice you aren’t okay, as an adult getting sick potentially means - not going to work. Which means your won’t have money to buy food, which means you’ll probably go hungry.
So getting sick becomes less of a way to get away from the responsibilities you have, and more of a burden.
That’s why you’ll see, in media aimed at adults,mental breakdown less depicted as an opportunity to be honest, and more of a sickness that needs to be healed.
You can have a more honest and truthful conversation, while you are sound of mind. There’s no power dynamic between friends, like it would with adult figures and children. So this song and dance, isn’t necessary.
You don’t have to be sick to be understood. And your friends will rather try to help you, than understand you when you’re suffering. That’s the nature of adult relationships.
This is more or less the framing that comes from Ciel’s breakdown (in the second interpretation).
The Mustard Gas isn’t showing Ciel’s true nature - it’s showing Ciel at his most vulnerable. This means, not in his sound mind.
Saying things he normally wouldn’t, hurting people he normally would hold close, and clinging to people he generally would never try to get close to.
Simply put, it isn’t just “a bit of pain to make him unravel” but a “Ciel is getting psychologically tortured by a weapon used for chemical warfare”.
He’s past being honest. He’s having such a severe reaction, that he cannot function. He’s being tortured and broken, to the point he is no longer himself.
He isn’t being “truthful” he’s scared.
And fear can make you do things that, in your sound mind, you would never do.
The point is that, Ciel isn’t saying what he truly feels or being “honest”. It’s him scared out of his mind, saying everything and anything to make the fear stop.
And the biggest proof is how he treats Sebastian.
The fact that Ciel asks Sebastian to “go away” or “not come near” is perhaps the most glaring reason as to how badly this Gas messed with him.
I’ve said this before but to Ciel, Sebastian is a lifeline. He’s the only tool he has for his revenge. The thing that, even after he lost r!Ciel, he was willing to sacrifice it all to achieve.
And at this point in time, Sebastian is also the only emotional anchor Ciel has.
As far back as the second episode, Ciel has asked Sebastian to stay. Even when he’s having flashbacks, even when he’s having an episode. In fact, Sebastian leaving him is a great source of anxiety - since as seen in BoC in the Asthma Scene, without him Ciel feels powerless enough to die.
He feels more protected with him, because he KNOWS Sebastian will protect him and that Sebastian will follow his orders.
Again going with the analogy of a dog - He feels more comfortable having the chained beast by his bed, simply bcs others are trying to hurt him and the beast won’t eat him right now.
So him asking Sebastian to go away, is throwing away his biggest safety net for a surrogate for r!Ciel, just means he’s reverting to the mentality he had during the cult.
If Sebastian is constantly telling him “it’s okay, they can’t hurt you anymore, you’re outside the cage, you can do what you WANT”
Ciel clinging to Finny is him going “no, im staying in the cage bcs at least the cage is familiar”
And no matter what the first camp tells you, staying in the cage, trapped inside your pain ISNT the healthy option.
(We could argue Ciel’s need for revenge rather than healing is also unhealthy, but no one in the second camp would even call Ciel anything other than a villain in someone else’s story)
So, Sebastian slapping him and going “no, that’s not what you want”, isn’t as cruel as it would be in the first interpretation. Because as we see, he’s right. That’s not what Ciel wants. And it’s proved by the next scene where Sebastian talks to Ciel about what he truly wants.
Rather than Sebastian telling Ciel to “get over it”, it’s closest to a “snap out of it, something’s wrong”
This is further proved by the fact that, Sebastian first instinct isn’t to scare him. He does back away, he does try to wait and gently coax him. But Ciel literally cannot reason with him.
That small but significant difference in interpretation has wildly different outcomes in how you perceive both, the characters and the story.
If you pick the first, you’re reading Sebastian as an enemy. Someone who does not respect Ciel. You see his attempt to eat Ciel’s soul as a breach of trust, and proof that he doesn’t care for him.
But if you pick the second option, you see Sebastian as an ally. Someone who’s running out of time and ways to save Ciel. His actions, while crass, ultimately help Ciel. What he was trying to do, was help.
Yana, very clearly, wanted the second interpretation. However, I cannot, in good conscience, tell you it’s the only interpretation. People are free to pick and chose how they read the text, irrelevant of how little of the actual text they’re reading.
But I will say, picking the first is symbolic of a less mature way of thinking. Common on those who like to infantilize trauma and trauma responses. It’s the easy, safe and comforting way of reading the text. As I said, it’s common in those who want their pain to be acknowledged.
That reading of Kuro is one that speak to me, that you’re not really ready to confront pain. And someone with that mentality, is not someone who’s reading of the text I find particularly interesting. Sure, you can share it, I’ll never stop you, but know you’re speaking to me in an entirely different language. You’re interpreting the text so differently, that I don’t think it’s even the same text anymore.
Again, you’re essentially writing analysis on fanfiction. And I’m not all too interested in dissecting your own trauma sloppily painted over British Aesthetic.
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