C.C. Yap Sessions

I love everything C.C. Fan of all C.C. ships, main one is 💚 C.C./Suzaku💚

[ccsuza]

Hello everyone, welcome to my blog about C.C. 💚

I love to think a LOT, sometimes they turn into long write-ups. I hope that you find what I write interesting and I would love to hear your thoughts as well. New ways to think about things are always appreciated :)

I love Code Geass as a whole and am a fan of almost everything concerning the show. I'm a fan of all sorts of Code Geass characters and ships, but ones surrounding C.C./Lelouch/Suzaku are my favorite 💚💜💚

My other favorite works are Tsukihime, Gintama, Clannad and One Piece

[ccsuza]

[ccsuza]

Contrary to most people's beliefs, C.C.'s involvement in the Mao arc is not just to paint her as a bad and cruel person, nor is it a story that should be justified by C.C.'s trauma. Rather, Mao shows the best and worst parts of C.C.. Mao shows Lelouch/the viewer the very core of C.C.'s dilemma: her morality, her relationships with people, and the way she wants to live life. Their relationship is tragic because it serves as both an incredibly superficial relationship but also one that is immensely profound to her.

Even if she manipulated him and stayed with him for her wish, she grew attached to him. Her maternal role, while a facade, shows her nurturing and caring instinct. It shows her desire to form meaningful bonds with people even if she wants to deceive them. It shows just how distant she is from people with all the boundaries she sets between them. Her eternal struggle is also first laid out here. In order to die, she must force her pain onto others. In order to die, she must pass on the cycle of immortality. Because she is a witch, it should be easy to forsake her morality and use her contractors right?

However that is not the case. Her abundant humanity shines through her bleak and grimy heart. Even when she's committing evil, she is reminded of her humanity. She is restrained by her humanity. C.C. cannot truly kill her human side and embrace the image of the Immortal Witch she so wants to be painted as. So in an act of love born out of cold cruelty she leaves Mao, unable to force him to become immortal or to kill him.

It's only when she sees just how pitiful of a man he has become that she resolved herself to put him out of his misery, culminating in her bloodied hands. C.C. is torn between wanting to be human or a witch, unable to embrace but neither reject the warm and cold parts of herself.

[ccsuza]

This scene is really interesting to me because if you take the ideas presented here further, it lays out a lot of parallels between Lelouch and C.C..

Lelouch wants to be like C.C.; to sever his past and cast away his humanity, donning the inhuman name Zero. To turn his heart to stone and make himself a place in hell if he has to.

What makes him different from her however is how entrenched he is in his humanity. The inherently paradoxical nature of Lelouch: a person entrenched in countless relationships and love for the world, yet wishes to cast them all away for his dream. His goals requires a demon out of a man that has a heart big enough to fit everyone.

It's there at the extremes of his humanity that he can truly connect with C.C., when the strings get snapped one by one. With each loss and each step closer to becoming a demon, his humanity shines brighter. Losing those close to you, having the world turn against you, resolving yourself to play the role of evil... they're all things that C.C. lived through herself.

Lelouch's condition is one that C.C. can sympathize with, and while Lelouch does not truly comprehend her pain, he's able to see C.C.'s warmth and humanity. Despite being witch and warlock respectively, they both learn to accept and embrace their humanity, no matter how much they want to reject it.

[ccsuza]

C.C.'s unique life gives her a deep understanding of Suzaku's condition after Zero Requiem: having your past and identity erased, being reduced to a name and a symbol, and becoming estranged from all the people you had ties with. C.C. spent her whole life living through the pain that Suzaku would endure as Zero, having their pasts erased.

To that end, C.C. and Suzaku might be some of the only people that can affirm and remind each other of their lingering humanity 💚💚💚

[ccsuza]

Post-ZR yearning for Suzaku while C.C. is on her own adventures 😔😭

[ccsuza]

Mao and Charles confined C.C. to the role of mother and tool respectively, being unable to accept her own autonomy and assuming that she'd always remain as a provider to them (in a very motherly sense). Throughout the show she's allowed to live on her own terms as accomplices, having her autonomy respected into becoming what she wants to be, free from traditional feminine roles imposed by the other men in her past and their society as a whole 🥹💚

I always hold the last scene of S1E15 to high regard because Lelouch decides to respect her boundaries and makes his own contract with her, acting as her equal and allowing their relationship to progress on her own terms.

[ccsuza]

When Suzaku becomes Zero he loses his humanity and becomes just an entity based around a name like C.C. 😭😭😭 forsaking their pasts and living on as symbols...

Which is why it's so important that Suzaku and C.C. are able to affirm each other's humanity and maintain that past within each other post-ZR; C.C. already has experience with the path that Suzaku will walk as Zero and how lonely that life can be

[ccsuza]

I just realized that I never posted anything ccsuza despite making it my blog name oops

[ccsuza]

Lelouch and C.C.'s journey to self-individuation through each other

Lelouch and C.C. struggle with their identity a lot throughout the show, as they both start out feeling like a husk of themselves. However throughout the show they're both able to develop a proper sense of identity and start to lead fulfilling lives. Naturally C.C. is not the only person who helped Lelouch in this endeavor, however I want to focus on both of them because they have very interesting parallels in this respect. I'll start first by exploring C.C.’s issues with her identity, then go into Lelouch's issues with his identity, finally discussing how they manage to help each other out in their journeys of self discovery. 

C.C.’s sense of identity is initially very flimsy and borderline non-existent. C.C., as a being, is basically a nobody. She rejects her past and memories, meaning that it's impossible to discern an identity for her out of them. Since she keeps no ties to her past, her identity does not have much of a presence. Collectively as a society there is no image or name attributed to her. Usually when immortals live for a long time they amass a large past that people recognize. For example, Frieren is known as the elf Mage of the party that defeated the demon king. This is an identity and an image created by people that everyone has about her, whether they've personally met other or not.

Compared to other characters with long lives, C.C. is not recognized as anything. While people had branded her as a witch or inhuman, those are judgements that people make on a personal basis and not a societal one. To people, C.C. is nothing. She's just a name attached to a person, but this person has no intrinsic identity. She resigned herself to be a wanderer, a ghost floating through time until she can find someone that can end her existence. 

Why does this matter? It matters because this lack of identity dictates the way that she handles relationships and it's also the reason why Lelouch evokes change in her. Because she is not tied down to any particular identity, she's able to change her identity very easily and very frequently. She changes her identity to one that will complement the people she's with, a superficial facade that she uses to interact with people. For Mao she takes on the identity of a mother and for Charles she becomes the head of the Geass order. She molds her identity to fit into whatever position her contractors need, which in turn makes her own self-image weaker. She only sees herself as C.C. the Immortal Witch, nothing more and nothing less. 

On the other side, Lelouch feels as if his identity has been denied. Charles told Lelouch as a kid that his life is insignificant and does not matter, painful words that Lelouch carries with him all the time. His life before getting Geass was described as feeling like he was dying a slow death, not truly living. Lelouch has had his whole life and sense of self denied by his father and the world, which is why he chooses to fight Britannia and the rest of the world with it. Because Lelouch believes that he was a nobody he becomes Zero, rallying people under this new identity he built for himself. All of Code Geass has been a fight for Lelouch to become somebody; to prove to his father that he exists, to make an impact on the world, to remind everyone that they can't just discard him and Nunnally.

They help each other find an identity in several ways.

Lelouch accepts C.C. for the person she is, as well as her boundaries and the type of relationship she wants to have between them. In the past she had to take up roles that were superficial and never expressed her true nature; for example, she could never be Mao’s mother so she was pretending to be someone she's not. On the other hand with Lelouch he never required her to mold her identity into another facade; he allowed her to assume a free shape, one that she would start to define on her own terms. 

When he compares himself to her as a warlock, he is essentially equating himself to her. Affirming that not only is C.C. still human, but they are the same. Their sense of self reflects each other’s, cementing themselves as partners. Not just as partners in crime who have a mutual interest, but as two authentic human beings.

This exploration of individuality that comes from Lelouch’s unconditional acceptance allows C.C. to reflect on her identity and leads to self-love. She’s able to accept her place in the world as someone that is immortal, while having to face important questions such as what she feels about Lelouch or what she wants to do with her life now. 

The very very obvious way C.C. helps Lelouch is by giving him Geass. Since Geass gave Lelouch the Power to change the world, it allowed self-fulfillment. You all know this, I don't have to really elaborate. However C.C. herself also gives him the power to keep on going. She’s a core pillar of support for him who unconditionally accepted him. Lelouch is a very self-sacrificing person who keeps digging himself into a deeper hole as the show progresses, while pushing people away. Throughout his journey C.C. never told him to stop or change himself for the “better”. She accepted him for who he was from the start and followed him through thick and thin. Her unconditional support allowed him to achieve his life’s purpose, allowing him to discover himself in the world and change it. Lelouch is someone that is defined by his ties with the people he cares for, without anyone on his side he would have succumbed early in the show. 

C.C. also plays a nurturing role with Lelouch. She's a source of wisdom, criticism, advice and care. Calling him out to challenge his ideas when she sees fit, or sharing some of her knowledge. Lelouch starts off as someone that is immature to a degree, needing to learn several lessons the hard way before becoming the man he is at the end of the show. C.C. is someone that makes sure he knows when he acts out of line, being a hard but necessary thorn in his backside. However she's also there for him when he's at his lowest. When he's vulnerable and suffering, she comforts him and props him up. This dynamic is what makes C.C. such an important contribution to Lelouch’s growth; she kicks him down when he's up on his high horse, but she also extends a hand to pull him up when he's down. 

[saucybex]

A Moment of Relief

[resnawhy]

C.C. laptop selfie

[kallencc]

[rinshafana-deactivated20260405]

something about the very last thing we ever see in code geass being c.c. and her all-encompassing solitude… but it has a bit of a different feeling than when it first appeared in ED2, she carries a new hope with her that a better world is still possible despite it all

[ccsuza]

Despite still not finding a concrete meaning to her life, C.C. decides that simply living and the possibility of finding meaning is enough to keep her going 💚💚😌

[ccsuza]

Is C.C. a nihilist?

When it comes to the exploration of morality and the human condition, C.C. often offers a very unique perspective from the rest of the cast. Her knowledgeable, pining and pragmatic wisdom comes in many forms, from monologuing to confrontation of characters’ ideologies. Due to her common cynical quips and cold truths, the nature of her worldview and values is often questioned. Paired with her desire to end her life, and the human suffering she was forced to endure for centuries, it is thought that her outlook on life is a bleak nothingness. By consequence nihilism is often attributed to her worldview, which had perplexed me for quite some time. I decided to do my own reading on the philosophy, primarily from the works of Nietzsche, and have concluded that C.C. is not in fact a nihilist.

 In fact not only is she not a nihilist, she is actively against nihilism. Which, if we are to take this idea further, extends to Code Geass as a whole. This show is so anti-nihilist that what once started out as a desire to refute the notion that C.C. is a nihilist grew into an understanding that Code Geass goes against everything nihilism stands for. 

And so what is this nihilism within C.C. that I refute? There are several types of nihilism, however the two I will be focusing on are moral nihilism and existential nihilism. These are the two that are usually discussed when it comes to C.C., although the latter much more than the former. I’ll take turns to explain how these ideas do not apply to the show, starting with existential nihilism and then moral nihilism.

Existential Nihilism

Existential nihilism is an increasingly popular philosophy, as Nietzsche predicted, which tackles the meaning of life. This philosophy is characterized by the belief that there is no meaning or purpose in life. Like all forms of nihilism, it claims that there is simply just the world; nothing more and nothing less. Because nihilism rejects the idea that there is an inherent Greater Purpose in the world, religion and subsequently other forms of beliefs are rejected because it's claimed that there's no such afterlife. There is nothing after death and no reason for it either, so a vague life is all we have. In order to provide further context for the emergence of such thoughts, we must go back over two thousand years. 

In his work The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche details a dichotomy present in all of us, which was especially expressed in Greek tragedy: the Apollonian and the Dyonisian. The Apollonian is the rational and logical side of people, which is contrasted by the irrational, chaotic Dyonisian. He described these two sides respectively as the dreamland to the drunkenness, the rational visual art to the raw feelings of music. The most important Apollonian figure was Socrates, one who valued rationality and dialectics as the proper way of living life. Through empirical reasoning he believed that people could be able to rationalize their feelings, their thinking, and more importantly their reason for being alive. This scientific view on morality has shaped the way that people view metaphysics and philosophy, while Nietzsche believed that rationalism and dialecticism were the downfall of Greek tragedy since they overwhelmed the Dyonisian. Modern society has heavily favoured the Apollonian’s science and logic, which Nietzsche believes is the product of people deceiving themselves. The next question is how does this tie to nihilism? Nihilism rejects the Socratic method, fundamentally going against the ideals that we all value so much. In nihilism it is impossible to rationalize such a purpose for living. The ignorance of the Dyonisian for these allegedly faulty dialectics means that people’s perception of the world and the meaning of life is simply an illusion, which once crumbled will lead to a cold and dark nihilism. 

The next idea that goes along with Socratism is religion. The idea that there is an objective and logical purpose to life laid out by God. By acting rationally in accordance with religion, it’s possible to go to the afterlife and achieve a fulfilling life. This belief provides an external meaning to life, one that can be rationalized and is adopted by many. When Nietzsche claimed that God is dead, which is surely blasphemous to all that are religious, he also claims that once those external meanings and values are gone, people will be left with nothing. Naturally this extends to all forms of external meaning for life; any form of greater purpose is rejected by Nietzsche. 

Are these ideas present in C.C.?  Not really. 

To present the argument for her being a nihilist fairly, I will start by showing the key argument for it. When C.C. reveals her death wish she engages in metaphysical dialogue with Lelouch, namely about the nature of life. He asks what is the reason and meaning people are born into the world, to which C.C. answers that those notions are simply an illusion. In a vacuum this answer is certainly nihilistic; the idea that a higher purpose of life is a human-made illusion fits nihilism. Her solution to this problem is to end her life, which has some interesting ties to Birth of Tragedy. There is an ancient Greek story where Midas asks the intelligent Selinus what was best for humanity, and this is what he answered:

 "Oh, wretched race of a day, children of chance and misery, why do ye compel me to say to you what it were most expedient for you not to hear? What is best of all is forever beyond your reach: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. The second best for you, however, is soon to die."

This passage highlights the horrors of life that the Greeks perceived, which is adopted by C.C. here. If C.C. is unable to not be born, as we all are, then her only solution to life is to end it. Since she is unable to die through conventional means, her salvation lies in passing on her immortality. 

Thus far I have painted a picture of a woman who has lost all meaning in living, choosing to end her existence in the face of a bleak nothingness. By rejecting all greater purposes in life, there is no difference between her choosing to live on pointlessly and dying. However this is where I flip the script and introduce a new philosophy: mono no aware, or often translated - despite being hard to translate - as the “pathos of things”. It is a bittersweet acknowledgement that life is impermanent and transient. To give an example for this Japanese idiom, cherry blossoms arrive in the spring, but can only have their intense beauty be appreciated for a short while before the flowers die. The pink leaves carpeting the ground are a reminder that there is beauty even in death. Human life is fickle, fleeting and fragile. On a personal level, people enter our lives just as often as they leave, such an uncontrollable fragility making life valuable and precious.

As a Japanese philosophy, naturally, it is present in many many Japanese works. A very popular one would be Demon Slayer, a story that has a heavy emphasis on the transience of human life and the transgression of immortality. Demons are portrayed as having overwhelming individual power, however their sense of reason is withered and their desires perverted. Their long lifespans and regeneration is written as inferior to the fragility of human life, in which humanity is able to find their strength in how they handle their fleeting existence. 

Following the trail of thought presented by Demon Slayer, immortality goes against mono no aware. There is no beauty in C.C.’s immortality, an existence that is completely severed from the cycle of life. A life with no end is a run-on sentence. By her own words C.C. states that her lack of conclusion makes her not truly alive. 

“Endless accumulation of it without death can't be called a life. That's just experience.”

In order to be considered human, one must complete the full cycle of being. Birth and death, no matter how sudden or delayed. C.C., someone who has been frozen in the human life cycle, is unable to truly feel human. She is fundamentally detached from humanity and the ideals of mono no aware. 

This is the key part of C.C. that is most misunderstood. Her death wish does not stem from her belief that life is meaningless, rather, it is the opposite! C.C. believes in a very profound meaning of life, which is why she wants to become part of it. She wants to give her life meaning by dying.

“That is where the providence of this world lies. Life is defined by its limits.”

Truly, it is in completing the circle that life has meaning. She has observed this countless times while being immortal, a spectator to it. And by attributing meaning to life, a greater purpose, she has effectively rejected nihilism. Her character arc results in deciding to live on and finding her own meaning in life without abiding to mono no aware, while observing and appreciating it in the world. Her existence is fundamentally different from mortals, yet that shouldn't stop her from being human or enjoying the world. 

Now to return to Greek tragedy, C.C. has a very Apollonian view of life. Throughout the show she very often engages with rationalism, which I will elaborate on further when it comes to moral skepticism. What matters right now is that despite her cynical remarks, she puts a lot of value on finding a reason to be alive. In season 1 episode 7, she agrees with Lelouch that he should be allowed to fight Britannia if it makes him feel alive. They converse frequently throughout the show about philosophy, the nature of morals and the purpose of living. Such conversations could be considered dialectical in nature, and Code Geass certainly puts a large emphasis on rationalizing thinking and feeling. 

Before I move on to moral nihilism, I will tie up some loose ends and address some possible questions which may arise from my analysis. 

There seems to be a contradiction in C.C.’s words. How can I claim that she believes that death gives life meaning, while she also claims that the meaning of life is an illusion? The idea that life has no inherent meaning does not necessarily mean that she is nihilist, but the idea that death gives life meaning is completely against nihilism. There is another branch of philosophy that is closely related to nihilism which has a different outlook on the meaning of life. 

Existentialism is a philosophy in which individuals must form their own meaning in life, and that the pursuit of meaning is important even if life may not be inherently meaningful. This philosophy aligns with C.C.’s worldview much more, as well as the characters and central themes of Code Geass. C.C. believes in the possibility of people finding their own meaning and happiness, she just feels completely detached from humanity. With no inherent meaning in life, she cannot find meaning as an immortal as she could if she was a mortal. As such we return to the counter-argument I presented: even though she claims that life’s inherent meaning is not real, she still believes in a form of fulfillment and a meaning she constructed. Nihilism is still refuted. 

Moral Nihilism 

Moral nihilism is a form of moral skepticism, which is the belief that nobody truly has knowledge of morals, and that morality is a man-made fabrication that has no bearing in reality. This means that it is impossible to do anything that is objectively good or bad, as there is no value in such judgements. There are two main ideas to consider here: that objective morals do not exist, and that objective morals cannot be known. These two points are important when we consider the mode of thought that people employ when it comes to morality. 

The foundation of moral nihilism is the devaluation of the highest values. These highest values are the absolute truth; an objective construct of what is good and bad. The most common example would be religion, in which religious beliefs are decreed as the highest values that believers must abide by. It’s important to note that in nihilism, religious ideals, as well as all other sources of highest values are external and have no basis in the world. As I have explained previously with existential nihilism, since it’s believed that there’s nothing beyond our material world there is no place or reason for external values. If there is no Afterlife or greater truth of purpose to the world then there is no objective basis for people to hold morals and values. This results in the moral nihilist rejecting morals on the basis that they are simply man-made and as meaningless as they are subjective. 

Here is where Socrates becomes a much more important figure in respects to nihilism. Due to the prevalence of Socratism and the dominance of the Apollonian, a large emphasis is placed on trying to decipher morality and trying to understand and uncover them through reason. This was previously established, in which the socratic method is the opposite of nihilism. Does C.C. follow the socratic method? Is she a person of reason and logic, or has she forsaken it all as her morals have jaded over time? 

The book Beyond Good and Evil, also written by Nietzsche, tackles such ideas about morality. As the title implies, it tries to view human behaviour beyond the scope of a binary good/bad. While C.C. and Code Geass explore shades of morality in a thorough manner, it still does not shy away from presenting good and evil as a dichotomy. In C.C.’s own words, I quote: 

“In this world, there is evil born from good. There is also good born from evil. In the end, how will the people treat the actions that Lelouch has taken? Is judgment inevitable in this world?”

Not only do these lines outline said dichotomy of good and evil, they also state that such actions will result in judgement. Lelouch, Suzaku and C.C. spend the whole show seeking atonement for their wrongdoings, an admission of higher values that they all follow. C.C. believes that her actions are sinful and deserving of punishment, which is the farthest thing from being a moral skeptic. These characters are entrenched in their upholding of moral values, wrestling with their conflicting morality among all the good and bad they commit. It is very difficult for me to come up with a line from the show that isn’t about highest values or where morals are upheld to the utmost importance. The closest thing that could be seen as nihilism in C.C.’s morality would be her cynicism. Conflating these two belief systems would be a massive blunder and the comparison should be discarded immediately. C.C. has a dash of cynicism to her worldview where she believes that people are often motivated by self-interest and other less honorable reasons, which extends to her criticism of Lelouch and humanity as a whole. It must be noted, however, that for how much she comments on the evil humanity is capable of, she always juxtaposes it with the possibility of good. This is to say, she is not necessarily a cynicist, nor is she a pessimist. 

Her worldview is shaped by Socratism, which serves an important purpose in the anime as a source of wisdom. She often is the bulk of the philosophical exploration in Code Geass, in which her vast knowledge and experience allows her to communicate ideals such as the nature of good and evil as well as sin and punishment. This is done using an incredibly rational approach, a blend of abundant empirical knowledge and dialectics between the characters. The work of Code Geass as a whole is Apollonian, as its narrative value heavily relies on this socratic method that I have detailed so much. 

To summarize my points, C.C. has within herself a very strong sense of pathos and morality, which she always makes sure to lecture the characters and the viewer about. She categorically rejects nihilism by believing in a greater objective truth, namely about morality and the purpose of life. Her death wish comes from her seeing her existence as something undesirable and incompatible with what makes human life valuable. Her morality comes from a rigorous rationalism that fundamentally opposes nihilism as she possesses a pathos similar to Lelouch.

[ccsuza]

The evolution of C.C.'s name

C.C.'s name is actually really interesting because of how it evolves as the story progresses. Everyone knows that she uses the name C.C. because it emphasizes that she's not human, but what I find more interesting is that I believe the meaning of the name actually changes. She used her name as some sort of facade, to tell people that she's a witch.

Whenever people call her out on anything she just dismisses it by saying "that's what makes me C.C." and ends the conversation there. But at the end of the show her view of herself changes drastically, as she comes to accept both her human side and her witch side as one.

Before she forced herself to be C.C. the witch while suppressing the human in her, however later on C.C. becomes the name of both the witch and the human. She accepts herself for who she has become, her humanity being something that she never lost

[ccsuza]

C.C. - Human or Witch?

This is my first actual post on Tumblr so excuse me if my formatting is not good 😭😭😭 I have a lot of essays written about C.C. (and I keep writing more), this one is fairly short I think and doesn't go really in-depth.

Inside C.C. resides two images of herself. The human and the witch. These two ideas constantly clash against one another, as C.C. is constantly attracting and repelling herself from these two sides. The witch side of her is the side that she shows to the world most of the time. The cold, selfish woman who brings misfortune upon others for her own goals. This side of her is the one that others feared and hated the most, ostracizing and inflicting endless suffering upon her because of her powers. C.C.  internalized these feelings and began to hate herself, feeling as if she deserved the suffering. This is where her split comes from: she hates the witch side of her because she was rejected for it, as well as being the cause of her suffering. However she wants to stay as the witch, and she wants people to hate her because she feels as if she deserves it. For her, being the witch is both a punishment that she deserves and a curse that torments her.

She forces herself to act as a villain because she thinks that she should act that way and that she deserves her punishment. We see several times in the show where she says that she deserves punishment for what she does (Mao arc, Geass order attack, when she asks Lelouch if he hates her). As someone who is sinful, she feels as if she does not deserve to be human. She distances herself from others because she doesn't believe that she should connect with people, lest she harms them. Additionally it is important to note that her contracts are also a defense mechanism that protects her. The barrier that she forms between her and others is not only there to protect them from her, but to protect herself and her vulnerable feelings.

We see how tormented C.C. is over her vulnerable side whenever she opens up about then forcefully. She is afraid of her insecurities and her feelings, which is another reason why she closed herself off from others. Conversely she also battles with her human side, the caring part of her that wants affection. Deep down inside even if she believes that she has forsaken humanity long ago, she still has a human heart, capable of caring for others and feeling happiness. Even though she deceives people via contracts to trick them, her human side comes out whenever she gets closer to others. No matter how much she wants to repress them, her soft vulnerable side is shown to the very people that she wants to repel.

She doesn't feel like she deserves to be human, which is why she purposefully cuts herself off from others, even trying to make others hate her for deceiving them. This is where her vicious cycle comes from: she believes that she is selfish and inhuman, yet she is human to the point that she cares for the people that she uses. It makes no sense for C.C. to make contracts with people that she intends to deceive, only for her to get soft as time passes.

A very important part of C.C.'s character is how she deals with the negative, "inhuman" aspects of herself. While I said earlier that C.C. acts like a bad person because she feels as if she needs to as punishment and to distance herself, that is not the full picture. C.C. is a bad person because her apathy and lack of morality is the product of her centuries of suffering. Her selfish and morally devoid side is not simply a facade, but also simply who she is. C.C. is no longer a good person, and she struggles with her understanding and acceptance of why that is. Ultimately the reason why she makes contracts with people and acts the way she does towards people is because she truly is not a good person, and this selfishness is one of her defining qualities. She believes that she is that way because she lost her humanity, when in reality that is simply who she has been shaped into as her feelings and morality eroded. In reality there is no split between the "bad witch" and the "kind human". These are simply just characteristics of who she now is, and she comes to accept them at the end of the show.

This battle between the two parts of her tears her conviction, as she constantly questions what she really wants. The very name C.C. is meant to remove her human side. Calling her by C.C., in her head, is addressing the witch, not the human. This is why when Lelouch calls out her real name, she exposes her vulnerability. He reminded her that her humanity still resides inside her, even if she casted it away. Regardless of the way that she acts and thinks, she still wants to be understood and loved deep down. C.C. is confused and does not understand what she wants. Does she want to pass off her immortality, or does she want someone to make her human again? Does she really want someone to suffer as she has for her own means? She questions herself as time passes and loses sight of what she wants. This cycle is what traps C.C. mentally in a prison. 

C.C. is trapped in many prisons, physically and literally. She chooses to wear a straightjacket because it symbolizes how she feels about her place in the world; a prisoner. The most obvious prison would be her immortality, something that traps her on earth for eternity. It's the most literal use for the straightjacket, and it shackles her. However what is less obvious are the figurative prisons. The first one is the prison that is a product of humanity demonizing her over and over again. She has been rejected from society, destined to live a life in which people always cast stones at her for as long as she lives. This led her to distance herself from others and even internalize those feelings. The final prison is one of her own making, the cycling of the "human" and the "witch", forcing her to repeat the same charade. I say that this one is of her own making because even though the world has been largely unkind to her and thrust its malice onto her, as we see at the end of the show, she realizes that it was her worldview that was ultimately flawed in the end, even if she had a good reason to think of the world in such a way. 

It’s interesting to note that at the end of the show, C.C. goes back to her straightjacket instead of the Black Knight uniform that she uses for most of R2. That is because in the end she remains a prisoner on earth, although she found freedom and peace in her mind. In the show's conclusion, C.C. learns to tear down the prison that she constructed and while she stays immortal, and while the world is still against her, she chooses to find meaning and enjoyment in life by herself. 

She has a very unique sense of morality, stemming from her long time on earth. She is pretty detached from most worldly affairs at this point in her life, showing no real interest for Lelouch's cause or taking down Britannia. While all the characters in the show fight for their vision of a better future for humanity, C.C. is largely removed from that conflict. She's completely alienated from the world and while she does still criticize Lelouch and challenge his ideas, she doesn't actively denounce Britannia's actions. She doesn’t have a sense of moral righteousness, usually doing whatever she wants without really caring about how it might inconvenience others. Her lack of consideration for others is shown with how she treated Mao and left him when things didn’t work out, as well as her general unwillingness to cooperate with people.

This isn’t to say that she doesn’t have a sense of morality though; although she is generally more apathetic than most, she still does have a sense of right or wrong. When Lelouch called her out for what she did with Mao, she did show a sense of shame, which you don’t see often from her. Despite acting as an observer for most of the show, she often messes with people for her own amusement, which supports the idea that she mainly does things only if they directly benefit her in some way. She is not bound to any rules or moral code nor does she feel like she has any moral obligation to partake in the fight against Britannia, sort of like a third-party to humanity, if you will. When she does decide to help the Black Knights, it is only because of Lelouch, which a.) benefits her (contract) and b.) she wanted to stay with Lelouch out of her own will out of loyalty. 

Ironically, despite being hated by humanity, C.C. still believes in the innate good of humans. She believes that every human is capable of good and bad, while firmly believing that hope is what drives us to the future while overcoming our difficulties. "In this world, evil can arise from the best of intentions. And there is good which can come from evil intentions." Ironically she doesn't believe in those things in herself, believing that she herself isn't human (although at the end of the show we see how these ideas even apply to her). Her ideals matched with the idea behind the Zero Requiem and aligned with Lelouch and Suzaku' values, which is why C’s world spared her and she ultimately cooperates with them

That's about it for today's essay, thank you very very much if you read all of it. I'd love to hear any ideas or thoughts you have about it :D in the future I wish to go into deeper topics when it comes to C.C.. Have a good one