Oh, thank you! I am so happy you're doing this. And now I get to obsess some more (as if I weren't doing that anyway).
One of the striking things to me about the first anime series (which is what I found first, and therefore imprinted on) -- and the reason I found myself chasing down a quote from what turned out to be That Hideous Strength about how comrades don't look at each other1 -- is that its overall emotional structure is that of a courtship novel. When we first meet our protagonists they're clearly both interested in each other and more than a little wary of each other; their reactions to each other can easily be read as analogous to the simultaneous peacocking and defensive display of not caring at all that we see from any two people who find each other too attractive to ignore without being sure what they're going to do about it yet. As the series progresses the denial and careful emotional distancing vanishes (and damned quickly, too): by the time we're a few episodes in Ciel is clearly issuing orders for the sheer pleasure of seeing what Sebastian will do with a situation, and Sebastian is just as clearly designing his performances for Ciel's private benefit. (The joke about the chocolate in the curry arc. The whole business with Noah's Ark in the ice fair episode, where Lizzie and Sebastian each try to give Ciel something from his pre-catastrophe world, only Lizzie's Ark is something Ciel has already dismissed as a bad forgery, while Sebastian carves an Ark from ice and then sends Ciel for a ride on it. The private war over Talbot's camera, for that matter. And on, and on.) They may try to avoid letting each other see how fixed their gazes are, but unless they're actually fighting enemies, when they're together anybody who isn't them might as well be furniture that happens to have somehow been given the gift of speech.
Until Aberline, and his death. Which still tracks courtship-story structure by being the occasion for the climactic fight, the big blow-up or misunderstanding or revelation that threatens to part a courtship-novel couple. And sure enough, our couple here decide they have been dreadfully deceived in one another, don't talk about it (and for good reasons for once, it's not as if these two would ever talk about this kind of thing), have no obvious avenue by which to defuse the tension, and go storming off in counterproductive fits of rage. Over which they are miserable until they are able to demonstrate to each other that they're worthy and everything the other thought them, and can reconcile.
Which Ciel and Sebastian do, strikingly, by actions that reaffirm their essential darkness. As you say, on Ciel's part it's that order for Pluto's death; on Sebastian's, that he comes back and what brings him back. Which twists the courtship trope into all sorts of interesting shapes, emotionally, but doesn't change its formal structure, which hurtles right along to the final, climactic expression of formal commitment. In a classic courtship novel, that would be the offer of marriage and acceptance of that offer; here it's Ciel's death and the offer of his soul, but it's doing the same thing structurally. (And while the series has certainly established all it needed to for us to read Sebastian's acceptance of that soul as an acceptance of dinner, I think it can also be read as a marriage metaphor.)
. . . and I did have a point I was going to make when I started, I swear I did.2 Only now I've lost the train of thought, and will have to try to find it again after some sleep. But I'm posting this much anyway, in the hope and expectation that when I read it over tomorrow I'll know what I intended to say.
Terrifyingly, this was only one point I meant to make, too. There's going to be more. I can only hope you're not sorry yet.
1"Those who are enjoying something, or suffering something together, are companions. Those who enjoy or suffer one another, are not. Do you not know how bashful friendship is? Friends - comrades - do not look at each other. Friendship would be ashamed . . ."
2I mean, a point besides saying that in my own internal canon, it's Ciel's final order to Sebastian that tips the balance in Sebastian's mind between eating Ciel as soon as he possibly can and keeping him as some sort of familiar or companion instead. I think he probably had been toying with the latter idea for some time, but couldn't decide whether he wanted to eat his cake or have it. Until that "Carve it into me," which was so magnificent a gesture that losing Ciel to mere hunger became unthinkable.
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Date: 30 Aug 2011 07:04 am (UTC)One of the striking things to me about the first anime series (which is what I found first, and therefore imprinted on) -- and the reason I found myself chasing down a quote from what turned out to be That Hideous Strength about how comrades don't look at each other1 -- is that its overall emotional structure is that of a courtship novel. When we first meet our protagonists they're clearly both interested in each other and more than a little wary of each other; their reactions to each other can easily be read as analogous to the simultaneous peacocking and defensive display of not caring at all that we see from any two people who find each other too attractive to ignore without being sure what they're going to do about it yet. As the series progresses the denial and careful emotional distancing vanishes (and damned quickly, too): by the time we're a few episodes in Ciel is clearly issuing orders for the sheer pleasure of seeing what Sebastian will do with a situation, and Sebastian is just as clearly designing his performances for Ciel's private benefit. (The joke about the chocolate in the curry arc. The whole business with Noah's Ark in the ice fair episode, where Lizzie and Sebastian each try to give Ciel something from his pre-catastrophe world, only Lizzie's Ark is something Ciel has already dismissed as a bad forgery, while Sebastian carves an Ark from ice and then sends Ciel for a ride on it. The private war over Talbot's camera, for that matter. And on, and on.) They may try to avoid letting each other see how fixed their gazes are, but unless they're actually fighting enemies, when they're together anybody who isn't them might as well be furniture that happens to have somehow been given the gift of speech.
Until Aberline, and his death. Which still tracks courtship-story structure by being the occasion for the climactic fight, the big blow-up or misunderstanding or revelation that threatens to part a courtship-novel couple. And sure enough, our couple here decide they have been dreadfully deceived in one another, don't talk about it (and for good reasons for once, it's not as if these two would ever talk about this kind of thing), have no obvious avenue by which to defuse the tension, and go storming off in counterproductive fits of rage. Over which they are miserable until they are able to demonstrate to each other that they're worthy and everything the other thought them, and can reconcile.
Which Ciel and Sebastian do, strikingly, by actions that reaffirm their essential darkness. As you say, on Ciel's part it's that order for Pluto's death; on Sebastian's, that he comes back and what brings him back. Which twists the courtship trope into all sorts of interesting shapes, emotionally, but doesn't change its formal structure, which hurtles right along to the final, climactic expression of formal commitment. In a classic courtship novel, that would be the offer of marriage and acceptance of that offer; here it's Ciel's death and the offer of his soul, but it's doing the same thing structurally. (And while the series has certainly established all it needed to for us to read Sebastian's acceptance of that soul as an acceptance of dinner, I think it can also be read as a marriage metaphor.)
. . . and I did have a point I was going to make when I started, I swear I did.2 Only now I've lost the train of thought, and will have to try to find it again after some sleep. But I'm posting this much anyway, in the hope and expectation that when I read it over tomorrow I'll know what I intended to say.
Terrifyingly, this was only one point I meant to make, too. There's going to be more. I can only hope you're not sorry yet.
1"Those who are enjoying something, or suffering something together, are companions. Those who enjoy or suffer one another, are not. Do you not know how bashful friendship is? Friends - comrades - do not look at each other. Friendship would be ashamed . . ."
2I mean, a point besides saying that in my own internal canon, it's Ciel's final order to Sebastian that tips the balance in Sebastian's mind between eating Ciel as soon as he possibly can and keeping him as some sort of familiar or companion instead. I think he probably had been toying with the latter idea for some time, but couldn't decide whether he wanted to eat his cake or have it. Until that "Carve it into me," which was so magnificent a gesture that losing Ciel to mere hunger became unthinkable.