Yes! And to make it even better, the way it's set up makes Abberline's story line work on two simultaneous levels: he's both the Other Guy and, in terms of the classic contract-with-the-devil plot, Ciel's chance at repentance if he wants to take it. (So much so that I've found myself thinking that just as your climactic misunderstanding in a courtship novel typically comes because one party is missing information about the reasons for the other's actions, the misunderstanding here is based on Ciel's lack of information about a mandatory implied term of contracts with demons: to wit, that the demon may not interfere with what he or she can perceive to be a serious shot at repentance and redemption. It's like the grace period to cure a default on a mortgage, more or less; once it's triggered there's really nothing Sebastian can do but wait to see what Ciel decides. In fact, while it's pure dicta, there's something in that unwritten decision about how the question is not properly before the court in this case, but given that the redemption rule has not resulted in any demon losing a soul in the past millennium, and adherence to it can and does cause all sorts of trouble, the Court would perhaps look favorably on an opportunity to rule on whether the need to include that clause in all contracts is still good law.)
But the bad boy Sebastian still wins, in the end!
And once again, we get the lovely spin to the trope, too. Because in your classic romance, the good boy isn't really good. Not for the heroine, and often not for anyone. He's Godfrey Abelwhite from The Moonstone, all public piety and private rottenness, or else (and at best) he's some stuffy, controlling bore. The heroine is right to chose the bad boy instead, because the bad boy is actually the better man (or will be under her civilizing influence, ick), and we're meant to understand that by the end. For the heroine to chose the supposed good boy would be a mark against her discernment, or else show her to be less than virtuous herself.
But Abberline really is a good man, by far the best we see in the series: kind, honorable, ambitious in the service of his ideals, and courageous as hell. Ciel chooses Sebastian because Sebastian is the right choice for him, but that it is the right choice is a kind of proof of how dark Ciel himself has become. And it's a mark of how well the whole overarching story has been handled that viewers who've made it to this point in the series, who aren't even me with my predictable tropism toward witty villains, are ready to see that choice as a happy and proper ending.
AHAHAHA you are so right.
God, I am so relieved that you said that. Because I know what I saw, and I see it on re-watching, too; but one of the peculiar things about looking around at what seems to remain of the imploded lj/dw/et cetera fandom is that so few others seem to see it. I do understand about being put off by the whole shota thing (I would be myself, after all, if it weren't for the fact that Ciel reads as so much older than his supposed age to me, in that first anime, that it only took a few minutes for me to start seeing the shota-ness as nothing more than a visual convention, to be taken no more seriously than things like chibi forms or giant sweatdrops); but the vehement denial in so many quarters that there was even any subtext has left me with that sense of, Wait, what was I watching? Did I get a special version that nobody else saw, or what? If it had turned out that I was projecting my own favored plotlines and issues onto the text with little or no actual support for it there, I'd be willing to live with that -- I'm grateful for inspiration anywhere I can find it, after all -- but it's still a lot better to know that it's really there, and you can see it too and everything.
-- Ffft, I need to go run errands. More to come. Why, I haven't even gotten to your second paragraph yet! you surely can't think I was done.
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Date: 31 Aug 2011 04:01 pm (UTC)But
the bad boySebastian still wins, in the end!And once again, we get the lovely spin to the trope, too. Because in your classic romance, the good boy isn't really good. Not for the heroine, and often not for anyone. He's Godfrey Abelwhite from The Moonstone, all public piety and private rottenness, or else (and at best) he's some stuffy, controlling bore. The heroine is right to chose the bad boy instead, because the bad boy is actually the better man (or will be under her civilizing influence, ick), and we're meant to understand that by the end. For the heroine to chose the supposed good boy would be a mark against her discernment, or else show her to be less than virtuous herself.
But Abberline really is a good man, by far the best we see in the series: kind, honorable, ambitious in the service of his ideals, and courageous as hell. Ciel chooses Sebastian because Sebastian is the right choice for him, but that it is the right choice is a kind of proof of how dark Ciel himself has become. And it's a mark of how well the whole overarching story has been handled that viewers who've made it to this point in the series, who aren't even me with my predictable tropism toward witty villains, are ready to see that choice as a happy and proper ending.
AHAHAHA you are so right.
God, I am so relieved that you said that. Because I know what I saw, and I see it on re-watching, too; but one of the peculiar things about looking around at what seems to remain of the imploded lj/dw/et cetera fandom is that so few others seem to see it. I do understand about being put off by the whole shota thing (I would be myself, after all, if it weren't for the fact that Ciel reads as so much older than his supposed age to me, in that first anime, that it only took a few minutes for me to start seeing the shota-ness as nothing more than a visual convention, to be taken no more seriously than things like chibi forms or giant sweatdrops); but the vehement denial in so many quarters that there was even any subtext has left me with that sense of, Wait, what was I watching? Did I get a special version that nobody else saw, or what? If it had turned out that I was projecting my own favored plotlines and issues onto the text with little or no actual support for it there, I'd be willing to live with that -- I'm grateful for inspiration anywhere I can find it, after all -- but it's still a lot better to know that it's really there, and you can see it too and everything.
-- Ffft, I need to go run errands. More to come. Why, I haven't even gotten to your second paragraph yet! you surely can't think I was done.