#astronaut rambles

[applestorms]

genuinely. going along with the idea that kyouji believes satomi will simply outgrow his attachment to him at some point, i Do think a key part of his half of the dynamic is the fact that he has simply accepted that truly, genuinely, long-lasting requited feelings are just Impossible. like he’s got some level of “this shouldn’t happen, therefore it’s never going to,” so deeply embedded in his brain it’s just a fact of reality to him at this point. but even so, on top of that, i have a hard time believing that he’d ever actually let satomi go his own separate way completely, ties fully cut.

mostly this is coming from an observation of a key shift in their dynamic from karaoke -> famiresu: in the 3914 era, kyouji is much more overt about the ways in which he is protective about satomi (e.g. the briefcase blood catching, wrapping him in his coat, physically curling around him + verbally standing up for him in front of the other yakuza, etc.), whereas in the ~4318 era, he hides his protectiveness/affection a lot more (e.g. the whole reporter arc). even if he believes satomi will eventually outgrow his crush, he is aware that his own attachment will likely never fade and has simply accepted that he must shift how he approaches him when the time inevitably instead.

all of kyouji’s interactions with satomi are thus filtered under the expectation that satomi and satomi alone ought to be the one to define exactly how far or not they go, which lines are acceptable to cross and which are not, particularly by the time of famiresu. if satomi wants kyouji around, he’s easily available for as long as he needs him. if satomi decides that kyouji is the scum of the earth and should kill himself and disappear forever for real this time (perhaps what kyouji actually believes about himself, on some level, for getting so attached to a fucking kid he picked up in fucking middle school of all places), he can also do that. satomi’s word is simply god.

but also. like. come on. you’re gonna tell me that guy isn’t capable of a little friendly stalking? a bit of a silent, unseen guardian angel schtick on the side?? there’s no fucking way he’s ever letting that kid go, not now, not for real. satomi could never see him again for the rest of his fucking life and kyouji could be living two blocks down the street, watching him sleep through the window at night and sneaking extra food into the back of his cabinets when he forgets to go grocery shopping for too long. he is watching that kid like he’s a plant that he has to water twice daily or it’ll die of dehydration. the imprinting goes both ways. the only reason he doesn’t burst into tears and crawl on the floor and beg satomi to let him stay when he says they shouldn’t see each other anymore is bc 1. he already thought it was inevitable that satomi would eventually come to that conclusion, and 2. he’s been preparing to become his invisible guardian protector and to die on the swords of satomi’s enemies for years. frankly he’s probably more worried about satomi actually catching him in the act than he is about satomi rejecting him.

satomi, come get your pet yakuza. he’s been scratching at the door all fucking night.

[applestorms]

i cannot imagine what it would’ve felt like to be yotsuba-era light making all these connections between himself and the previous KIRA killings. to see the evidence of such horrible violence and know how evil it is, know what a twisted, pathetic imitation of justice this immature idiot was enacting— but to have it all still resonate with something deep within you. you trust your memories because of course, how could you not, it’s all you’ve ever known to do— but you still allow yourself to be subject to all these breaches of human rights because on some level, you don’t trust yourself either.

i can even see the exact same coping mechanism that led to KIRA leading to amnesia! light’s repression of these connections, actually— a desire to see oneself as someone good, someone pure and virtuous, originally manipulated into a justification for serial murder, now desperately clung to as an explanation for why it couldn’t be you. it can’t be you. it can’t. you were perfect, you are perfect, you were a good boy, the best, you did everything they told you to do— how could you ever have fallen so far?

yotsuba arc light really is on a whole ‘nother level when it comes to seeing the evil inside of you, looking into the alternate timeline and watching what you could’ve become. only, in this story, you’re not the main character anymore— you’re the tragedy, the bittersweet taste of what could’ve been. you look at your jailer and you resent him for all that he’s taken from you, your freedom, your family, your life, but you allow your wrists to be chained to him anyway because you know that if it’s true, if you really are the horror he insists you are, he’s the only thing that could ever possibly stop you. you hate him and you need him and you don’t know what will happen if he ever lets you go— you fear your own potential even as it draws him ever closer, fear your capability to be the monster under your own bed. so you let him cling and grasp at you, bite back the fears, lock away the nightmares, and go back to sleep to escape the looming threat of your own lost humanity.

and then you wake up. and you kill him.

and this is the only way it ever could’ve been.

[applestorms]

(tw for extensive discussions of dubiously consensual sexual situations, typical to canon. also spoilers for the decay route update)

honestly, one of the most interesting aspects of andrew's psyche that we get to see in the most recent decay route update to me is his nearly unending hesitancy about having sex with ashley, despite both his overwhelming desire to AND her incredibly blasé, Yeah Sure Let's Do It attitude in response to the question.

while the end of the burial route provides some key insight into ashley's point of view regarding this topic (e.g. if you go with the less enthusiastic/more teasing answer to andrew's question of "we're not like that, right? right??"), and the shots & such ending provides even more intrigue into her motivations, i think that decay presents two key reasons as to why andrew has continued to hold back for so long: his two core conflicting desires, and an inability to see ashley as her own full person. notably, both of these parts can easily be connected to his mother's childhood abuse and parentification of him as well.

with regards to the first point: andrew has two main overwhelming desires at the heart of his character that motivate most of his actions, which unfortunately for him are completely incompatible. andrew wants:

to be a normal, average person-- someone who can hold a steady, respectable job, fit in at the block party BBQs, and not attract any negative attention from the neighbors.

to fuck his sister.

to some degree, you could even read the distinction between the two main routes themselves (burial and decay) to be motivated by whether or not andrew can diffuse the tension between these two wants-- in burial, he gives up on his need to fit in with the rest of respectable society, presumably pushing him more towards the fucking-his-sister route; in decay, he struggles significantly to let go of this desire for normalcy, and the stress almost always breaks him. notably, in neither of these routes can he fully give up on the second desire-- really, his relationship with julia and the rest of his life up til the point that ep1 begins has been about him trying and failing to do so, so this makes sense.

(sidenote: i would also like to clarify that i think the Most key distinction between these two routes comes down to the decision you actually have to make to get one or the other-- namely, whether or not the siblings are able to trust one another. but anyways)

this focus on the first desire for normalcy is also interesting in that it seems to be one of the core desires that renee holds as well, as we see her so happily boast about during their interactions in ep2. honestly i could probably write a whole post about how much andrew (consciously or, more often, not) mimics his mother's behavior and takes on her standards and ideals, but the key point to pay attention to here is the fact that andrew has subsumed his mother's viewpoint in such a way that he is either not fully aware of or simply hasn't questioned in all that much depth yet.

we can also see this with the aforementioned parentifiication, which has really interesting consequences on how much andrew does (not) see ashley as her own autonomous person. pretty much every single childhood flashback we get in 3a shows the same terrible cycle:

andrew is told by renee that ashley is His responsibility -> ashley causes problems on purpose -> andrew takes the fall for her

frankly, we don't even really need that first step for andrew to fully internalize the idea that ashley's actions are His to take responsibility for. the horrible consequences of this are also quite obvious: not only is this pressure to take responsibility for someone else's actions an incredibly unfair burden to put on anyone, much less a kid, but it also continually pushes andrew to see ashley as something less than human, or as little more than an extension of himself rather than her own person.

the main conflict in decay really comes down to this conflicting desire between the two of them, where what both andrew and ashley want above all else is Complete and Utter control over the other-- andrew wanting control because he has again been groomed to see ashley as his full responsibility, and ashley wanting control to assuage her own insecurities and fears about being isolated and hated forever. the more sympathetic throughline underlying a lot of this is that what both of them seem to want is safety, to protect both themselves and each other from any and all situations outside of their control-- though, unfortunately, a lot of times those exact external situations are simply the other acting on this mirrored desire for control lol.

anyways, going back to the sex thing-- since andrew doesn't see ashley as her own person, since he sees her as incapable of taking responsibility for her own actions and therefore as someone who cannot make decisions for herself, due in large part to him automatically transferring this burden to himself, andrew also sees ashley's consent as essentially meaningless.

the more sympathetic reading here is that andrew does genuinely want ashley to be at least kinda into it as more than a manipulation tactic/transactional thing-- but i think it's also equally likely that andrew simply doesn't want to have to once again shoulder the full burden of Committing Incest on his own, and he doesn't trust ashley to ever be even capable of taking the fall for her own actions. the fact that andrew still ultimately sees ashley as Leyley and NEVER as Ashley Proper (as he himself recognizes at one point) really just reinforces this to me. he says it himself-- he practically raised this woman. and in this case, even above all others, ashley's actions are quite literally also his own. it all goes back to that initial mistrust, and he carries that resentment with him even after they get around to actually doing it. mutually dubious consent, truly in-fucking-deed.

[applestorms]

One of the most fascinating aspects of the Dollanganger saga that I haven't really seen anyone talk about (at least in these particular terms) is the ways in which the women of this series, and Cathy in particular, represent and embody the idea of meaningless consent, specifically in a sexual context. This is especially relevant to the second book, Petals on the Wind, though we see hints of it in Flowers also with the twisting and transformation of Cathy & Chris's relationship.

(obvious spoiler warning for Flowers & Petals + extensive discussions of canon-typical rape/incest in the following analysis)

There are a few potential avenues that I think are worthy of taking when it comes to the topic of trying to understand sex more generally in the Dollanganger saga: in terms of consent, gender, and family (which also, naturally, includes incest & generational cycles). Of course, all of these ideas are also deeply intertwined with one another, but for the sake of the clarity of this essay post, I'm gonna try to split them up into categories. Skip around if you'd like.

Cathy, Consent, and Control

When I say "meaningless consent" here, my intention is to pinpoint a very particular idea: that any kind of agreement, or lack of, to a particular (sex) act simply ceases to matter due to the inherently or intentionally manipulative/forced circumstances surrounding the decision. Often this means that the individual's ability and capacity to agree/disagree in and of itself has little bearing on any of the actions that end up taking place, or that their consent has been coerced in some explicit or implicit way, either by the environment, other characters, or the individual's own internal understanding of the world and what is or is not acceptable/necessary/natural.

To put this more clearly: in the majority of her sexual relationships with men, Cathy's consent or desire to engage in any of these acts simply Does Not Matter. Sex is something that will happen whether she wants it to or not, whether it be Right Now or after years of pushing someone away, and her own feelings mean jack shit insofar as they have the ability to influence what is happening.

There are a couple reasons why I find it useful to distinguish this meaningless consent from the more obvious non-consent. To be clear-- Cathy is absolutely being sexually assaulted in many if not all of these relationships, at the very least from a legal standpoint even if she is not forthright about it. What I find more interesting here is the way in which Cathy's ability to consent in and of itself has been hindered. There are a number of factors that induce this:

Cathy & the rest of the kids are taught by their grandmother that any and all sex is Shameful and that they are guilty and sinful in the eyes of God if they engage in it, no matter the circumstances.

Cathy is a girl, later a woman, and has very particular ideas about the roles of women and men, especially as it pertains to child-rearing and parenthood (more on this later).

Cathy doesn't seem to fully understand what rape even is, or at the very least has a very old-fashioned and specific view of it that may not stand up to our current definitions/understanding.

All of this combines to create a situation where Cathy is both told by others and believes internally all on her own that her own input doesn't especially matter when it comes to sex. As a woman, Cathy often takes the stance that sex is something done to her, not by or with her, barring a couple rare situations. This, combined with the inherently questionable nature of a lot of her relationships with men (age gaps, incest, coercion, revenge plots, etc.), leads to Cathy's consent being rendered meaningless by the story. It isn't that Cathy never enjoys or desires sex, or even that she's never assaulted-- its that her ability to meaningfully agree in the first place has been stifled so significantly that it really doesn't matter what she says.

We see hints of this in Flowers during the conversation the siblings have after Chris assaults her. Specifically, while Chris is overwhelmed with guilt, believing that he raped her, Cathy is quick to argue:

"The odds are against a baby," he said fervently. "Just one time--there won't be a conception. I swear there won't be another time--no matter what! I'll castrate myself before I'll let it happen again!" Then he pulled me tightly against him so I was crushed so hard it hurt my ribs. "Don't hate me, Cathy, please don't hate me. I didn't mean to rape you, I swear to God. There's been many a time when I've been tempted, and I was able to turn it off. I'd leave the room, go into the bathroom, or into the attic. I'd bury my nose into a book until I felt normal again." Tight as I could, I wrapped my arms around him. "I don't hate you, Chris," I whispered, pressing my head tightly against his chest. "You didn't rape me. I could have stopped you if I'd really wanted to. All I had to do was bring my knee up hard, where you told me to. It was my fault, too." (pgs. 338-339)

Objectively, and as 21st century readers, it's pretty easy to see that Chris is probably correct here. The way Cathy describes the act itself is that it is forced upon her out of nowhere and unwanted, regardless of what she may say to justify it or Chris later on. But actually, it's those exact claims to the contrary that she makes later on that interest me, as they reveal some crucial insight into a very important aspect of Cathy's mindset: the way in which she attempts to take back control after the fact.

In the aftermath of a lot of these moments, Cathy often defaults to taking very direct responsibility for everything that happened, never ever putting the blame on the actual male perpetrators even in the situations where she is clearly uncomfortable with everything that happened. In a way, Chris is actually a bit of an exception to the rule here, as Cathy will sometimes admit that he is complicit in the incest and the continuation of the sins of their parents, though she still tends to shoulder that guilt primarily on her own. In comparison, in the case of Paul, Julian, and even Bart, when given enough time Cathy eventually always comes to the conclusion that it was Her fault for not solving the problem quicker, taking the abuse better, with this tendency even leading to her unfortunate habit of naming all of her sons after her most violent rapists.

Connecting to this, and going back to my third point from earlier: Cathy doesn't seem to have a very deep understanding of rape, or at least not an idea that aligns very cleanly with our current ideas of "enthusiastic consent" or anything along the lines of that tea video they show in middle school. We get a pretty graphic depiction of their "sex education," actually-- it's the intense verbal abuse of their horrible grandmother, telling them that they're the devil's spawn and guilty for even existing.

That being said, Cathy is not totally ignorant and certainly not stupid, and she does have Some understanding of rape even if she is never willing to directly put that word to her own experiences. It's notable to me that one of the only times she actually uses the word comes after a particularly violence encounter with Bart in Petals:

"Get out of here." I screamed. "I'm calling the police! I'll have you thrown in jail, charged with assault and rape!" (pg. 369)

Note that Cathy never quite calls this encounter "assault" or "rape" in her narration or description of it-- it is only in her dialogue, as a theoretical threat about the claims she Could make to law enforcement, that she actually says the words. It is incredibly clear that Bart's actions here were violent and unwanted, and that Cathy is aware of this fact. But, even here, Cathy is unwilling to call what happens to her sexual assault, and never, at any point, is she willing to consider herself anything like a "victim." Again, you could read this in a way as an attempt for Cathy to take back control and power over the situation, though there is also the obvious side effect of the fact that she almost always ends up shouldering the blame for her own assaults. Which gets a bit more into my next point...

Cathy and Gender

On top of the reasons given above, another part of why I view Cathy's consent throughout this series as essentially meaningless comes back to Cathy's understanding of gender roles and her own duties and expectations as a Girl, Woman, and Mother. Specifically, I suspect that at least part of the reason why Cathy is so unwilling to ever explicitly call even her most violent sexual encounters assault comes down to her pride as a Woman(tm).

Cathy seems inclined to view sex as simply another one of the duties that a woman is expected to take care of in their relationships to men. There are two sides to this: the motherly angle, and the evil womanly seductress angle.

This aspect of Cathy's thinking becomes really clear when examining her interactions and conversations with Bart Winslow in the latter half of Petals, though there are bits and pieces of it all over the place. In fact, I actually find it even more interesting to examine this detail of Cathy when it comes to her relationships with the various other women in her family.

For example, this is also a key factor in defining Cathy's understanding of her relationship with her mother: Cathy views Corrine as essentially an evil seductress, one with insane powers over men that she takes on at the cost of her role as Mother, which is in turn forced onto Cathy in Flowers. Cathy also views herself as inheriting this same power from Corrine, later using it to her advantage in her revenge plot by seducing Bart to her side, while at the same time adamantly pushing that one of the ways in which she will be different from Corrine is by being the loving, attentive mother that Corrine ultimately failed to be.

Of course, even here, the lines are not as clear as Cathy seems to want them to be. She admits outright in Petals that part of the reason why she resents her mother so much is due to the fact that Corrine was a good, loving mom at one point-- she just willingly gave up that role the second she came into contact with her Foxworth money again.

This is made additionally interesting when considering Cathy's relationship with her younger sister. Specifically, Carrie also seems to see this same mix of Seductress and Maternal in Cathy, being both jealous of Cathy for her ability to attract and have relationships with men and also viewing Cathy as a stand-in mother figure, perhaps even a mother figure that feels even more real than her biological one after their time in the attic. It's just another way that Cathy ends up embodying the same space as Corrine even in all of her desperate attempts to get revenge and (unsuccessfully) break the cycles of trauma that were inflicted upon them, the big tragedy of the series.

From another side though, it's also notable that this particular view of sex and what assault is or is not ends up kind of infecting Carrie more directly as well, especially in the case of Julian. In her midnight conversation with Cathy in the section leading up to her death, Carrie discusses feelings that are quite reminiscent of the experiences that Cathy has often talked about throughout the book:

"...and I'm bad, Cathy. Once I did something very wicked." I stared at her, taken by surprise. With whom? It was as if she read my mind, for she shook her head while tears streamed down her cheeks. "No...I've never had...intercourse, not with anybody. But I did other things that were wicked, Alex would think so, and I should have known it was evil." "What did you do, darling, that was so terrible?" She gulped and bowed her head in shame. "It was Julian. One day when I was visiting and you weren't home he wanted to do...do something with me. He said it would be fun and wasn't real sex, the kind that made babies--so I did what he wanted, and he kissed me and said next to you he loved me best. I didn't know it was wicked just to do what I did." ... She began to sob, wild, hysterical sobs. "That's not the worst thing, Cathy," she screamed, "I liked doing what I did! I liked him wanting me to do it--I tried not to let my face show I was feeling any pleasure for God might have been watching. So you see why Alex won't understand? He'd hate me, he would, I know he would! And even if he never knows, I'll still hate myself for doing it and liking it!" (pgs. 318-319)

Just like Cathy, Carrie has an incredible amount of guilt surrounding her experiences with both Julian and Alex, believing herself on some level to be "ruined" and barred from ever being a good, pure minister's wife due to her previous experiences. She internalizes the teachings of their grandmother even stronger than Cathy, not even bothering to fight to believe in her own goodness and purity like Cathy does and instead simply accepting that there is something fundamentally evil about her, a belief that is only exacerbated by both Julian's actions and her own reaction to it. It's a slightly different approach, but ultimately Carrie is attaching herself to the same Roles Of Women that Cathy is, only instead of seeing herself get torn between the two sides of Evil Seductress and Pure Mother, Carrie sees herself as only ever embodying the worst of either role, incapable of ever properly living up to either due to her inability to deal with men the "right" way. In Carrie's brand of meaningless consent, then, sex is something that is Always guilty, whether you like it or not, and it is never the fault of the men forcing it.

The logic of the Dollanganger series is thus one where men and women are almost cursed by sex and "love," (whatever the hell that might be), with women consistently being pushed into situations where their ability to Be A Woman and live up to that role is often largely reliant on their ability to stand there and take it when men abuse them.

It's notable to me also that hearing this entire spiel from Carrie absolutely fucks Cathy up, pushing her towards the most vicious she ever gets with her revenge plot and seemingly reigniting the hatred she felt towards Corrine upon Cory's death. This is likely one of the most terrifying things Cathy could possibly hear from Carrie, the recognition that this shit she's been shouldering seemingly all on her own is not actually the unique, individual experience she thought it was. It hits a lot harder to realize that someone Cathy loves so dearly has also been dealing with these kinds of beliefs and experiences of sexual abuse, in a way that it never would for Cathy's own experiences since it's a lot easier for her to simply accept that she just needs to toughen up and learn how to take it. Or actually, perhaps it's even more tightly connected than that-- it is because Cathy thinks that she can protect others by shouldering this abuse that Carrie's revelation hits so hard, because it not only reveals that Carrie was also hurt, in the exact same way, but also that her own attempts at protection and justifications were ultimately naught.

At the same time, it's also interesting that her instinct is to default to blaming Corrine for all this-- again, Cathy NEVER blames the men around her for the shit they are absolutely directly responsible for, instead assuming that her mother, the source of her deepest fears surrounding her own womanhood, the Thing she is terrified of becoming, is the source of the worst evils of her life.

But now we're getting back into the generational trauma of it all so...

Cathy and Family

All of this is additionally complicated by the incest. It's been said before, but I think it's valuable to look at the rest of this context, at the ways in which Cathy understands sex and consent and her role as a woman, when considering the ways in which these strict, patriarchal gender roles then get twisted by the addition of overlapping family roles and the incestuous relationships that practically define the series as a whole. Again, Motherhood is only one half of the Woman Role as Cathy understands it, and her ascension to the motherhood role is just as vicious and against her will as many of her sexual relationships with men.

What makes this kind of corruption of family roles work is the fact that these strictly patriarchal roles never really stop. Cathy and Chris, sister and brother, are forced into the adult roles of Mother and Wife and Husband, and they are held to the expectations of those jobs just as strongly. Cathy cannot just be some kind of mother, she can't easily become a mix of sister and mother-ish, she must be Mother(tm). She must give up her role as child and accept her new role as wife and, later, sex object to those that want her, all the while never really getting the chance to easily or cleanly transition into that role, or even fully figure out what it is on her own terms.

This is part of why she resents Corrine so strongly-- because Corrine is the one who gave up her role of mother at the start, forced Cathy to stand up as her replacement, and thus is the one that forced Cathy into the avalanche of her other womanly duties. Thus, Everything Is Corrine's Fault in Cathy's mind not only because Corrine abandoned and attempted (in one case, successfully) to murder them, but also because Corrine is the one that forced Cathy to be a Woman, Wife, and Mother before she was prepared, before she had gotten the chance to enjoy the rest of her childhood free from those roles. And at the same time, Corrine also has a very direct influence on Cathy, literally and figuratively shaping Cathy into what she would later become, passing her face and her talents and her sins down and forcing Cathy to shoulder the full burden.

Procreation is an interesting concept in this story, not only in terms of how it happens and between who, but also how the relationship between parent and child is so tightly linked to sin and guilt and who has to pay The Price. It's notable to me that one of Cathy's biggest fears, and one of her few fears that never actually (mostly, maybe-- the "abortion" is intentionally vague imo, and for good reason) comes to pass is her terror of creating a next-generation incest baby with Chris. Cathy often refers to this fear in terms of her being scared of creating a monster, some two-headed abomination that can barely live or breath or function, but I think it goes deeper than that-- again, Cathy is even more notably terrified of becoming her mother, and creating a child with her brother could very easily be the final step in turning Cathy into Corrine.

This is due in large part to her understanding of how sins are passed down: the sins of the Father (And the Mother.) must be dealt with by their children, never the parents themselves, so if Cathy and Chris have a kid, that kid would be paying the price of their own incestuous creation, thus completing Cathy's transformation into her mother. There are echoes of this fear in Cathy's conversation with Carrie as described in the previous section too, her horror upon hearing that Carrie was dealing with many of the exact same issues and guilt that Cathy was shouldering, her anguish over not being able to protect Carrie from the same problems she was dealing with. It's not a coincidence to me that so much of Cathy's hatred and desire for revenge is pushed by the deaths of the twins, in a way Cathy's "first" two children, before she births any herself.

Much of the Dollanganger saga (especially post-Flowers) is about this fight against fate, centered largely around Cathy's desire to finally break the cycle of abuse and be something different than her mother, to more and less success. Obviously, she can't fully break her connection or love for her brother, eventually living with him as his wife, just the same as Corrine and Chris a generation earlier. She can't change her face, nor her blood. But, at least in this regard, she never fully lets herself fall. Cathy does in fact protect her fuckin' kids, and she is desperate to keep from from having to pay the price of her own sins or deeper faults.

Maybe the Dollanganger children were doomed-- from the moment they stepped into that attic or earlier, from their conception, or the similarly violent and incestuous conception of their parents. But damn if Cathy isn't going to put up a fight, even if she herself sees her own enemy as unfightable, or her own reflection a mirror of that which she hates and resents the most.

She just wants them to be different. Sometimes, they succeed.

[applestorms]

There's something really fundamental to me about the fact that we never actually see Sebastian's True Form as any kind of full humanoid body. Instead, we're cut down to the basics: eyes, teeth, legs, maybe the occasional clawed hand, all floating around in some loose black mist. The animal heads that we see in the memory arc flashbacks are interesting too-- a dog and a raven (or crow?), naturally, but also an octopus, a snake, a fly. Clawing and watching and grinning at all times, predatory and hungry but also, crucially, amalgamate.

This really emphasizes two fundamental aspects of Sebastian and his role in the story to me, those being:

Sebastian is an unquestionably powerful being in the universe of KURO, a point further emphasized by the fact that we can never truly know him-- not his backstory, not his fully body, not the deeper extent of his motivations or feelings or desires.

Sebastian being so undeniably inhuman is core to his relationship with Ciel, and the ways in which he both does and does not reflect/parallel both Ciel's abusers and most beloved family members.

I think you can kind of read the more indistinct aspects of Sebastian's True Form as being a kind of side effect or representation of the ways in which Ciel views him, especially early on. Again, think about the details of Sebastian that we do see at this point: eyes, mouth, shoes, hands. During his time in the cult, Ciel is objectified and sexualized, used to being watched and surveyed at all times. He is, to Sebastian, a meal, something to be preyed upon and eaten-- but also spoken to, lured in, laughed at and ridiculed and complimented. He is a child locked in a cage, trapped near the ground and thus forced to see the world from below, only ever looking up at the people surrounding him, watching their shoes as they walk around him, over him. He is held and moved, puppetted, manipulated in a very literal, physical sense. The Little Red Riding Hood comparison is very apt here, actually-- eyes to see you, hands to hold you, mouth to eat you.

Yet it is also this fundamental inhumanity that kind of makes their dynamic work at all. As this post so wonderfully puts it, Sebastian's human form is an interface, an emulation, one more body to mix up in the amalgamation of Things He Can Be so that he may better serve his new master. He doesn't really have human desires, or at least not straightforwardly. We know that he likes LARPing as a butler full time, that he is prideful and gets off on being praised (see: the circus), but he clearly isn't really attached to the specifics of that in any human way. He isn't prideful of status, or his looks, or anything that could be connected to a typical human life, because this form is just another one of many, something that can and will change in the future, and has in the past.

We know that Sebastian wants one thing: Ciel. But it is the nuances within how exactly this desire manifests itself that forms the axis that a significant chunk of their dynamic revolves around.

A really interesting aspect of KURO to me that I struggle a bit to put into words is the ways in which both Ciel and Sebastian parallel the antagonists of the series and their friends/loved ones simultaneously. I don't think I've ever read or watched a series where the line between who is a "hero" and who is a "villain" is any less clear. This is not to say that the series has no ethical values, or that there aren't Some People clearly doing worse shit than others (Baron Kelvin when I get you), but most of the main characters that we see all have some kind of fucked up or complex dynamic happening between their personal values, their relationships with others, and larger social norms.

Take Grelle in the very first true arc of the series, for example. There's a fascinating parallel that I don't think I've ever really seen anyone talk about between Grelle's immediate murder of Anne the second she fails to live up to her expectations, and the eventual consumption of Ciel at the hands of Sebastian that has been teased since the very beginning. Not only is this moment a fantastic tone-establishing moment for the rest of the series, showing firsthand the brutality that it is willing to commit against even its central characters, it's also one of the first times we get this blurring-of-the-lines moment between protagonist and antagonist. It's an ongoing theme of the series, honestly, particularly with some of the more intense enemies that they go up against-- everybody's a hypocrite, but only one side is going to win. The Circus kids were powerless and pitiful and latched onto the first kind hand that was offered to them, regardless of how they were forced to corrupt their morals in response. Maurice Cole uses and manipulates others, using his prettiness to get what he wants, after being scammed out of a future by being the second to be born. We can only solve this murder if we let these people die.

This is one of the reasons why I view Sebastian and Ciel's relationship as being so fundamentally codependent. There's been a couple posts going around talking about this, but to say it again: Sebastian is everything to Ciel, in a very literal sense. He is the predator and monster lurking in the shadows, he is the doting butler lovingly brewing his tea and picking his clothes and tucking him into bed, he is the dog biting anyone who gets near him, the demon laughing at his pain, the wife picking the best furniture for the lounge. He saved him to kill him. He's got his father's face. They're no different from anybody else, but they can't be without each other either.

Maybe it's enough that they picked each other, and continue to pick one another, doubling down as they grow nearer and nearer to the decimation. Sebastian is grooming Ciel, growing and cultivating him, but in a dynamic under which he has little to no control. Ciel is a victim, a traumatized and abused child, using every scrap of power and knowledge he can get his hands on to order his pet monster who to kill. He never changes his goals, quite literally never grows up, but he gains strength and confidence and loyalty.

They are nothing, and everything. It makes sense, doesn't it?

[applestorms]

naomi certainly isn’t a moron, if anything she probably doubts her own intelligence/reasoning more than is really justified, but— well. that’s just it, isn’t it? she’s just so goddamn insecure. in almost every scene that we see her in she is Constantly deferring to the authority of whatever man happens to be pushing his ego around the most, coming to her own conclusions quickly but keeping her mouth shut until someone gives her permission.

she’s gruff, and harsh, and brutal; she wears leather jackets and hates skirts. she suffers from Death Note Woman Disease, but also seems to genuinely care about kids. she can’t bring herself to shoot at 13 year old. she quits her job to marry a man, and then takes it back up again the minute he mysteriously dies. really i think it’s the contrast between those two sides, the fact that she can get a nickname like massacre vs. her overwhelming, underlying anxiety, that really makes her compelling to me.

[applestorms]

L can be such a possessive character at times. he always strikes me as the type of person who is deeply aware of everything that he owns, both in a more literal sense and metaphorically-- like, he knows what money he has and how to use it, what resources are readily available to him and what he has to be sneakier to utilize, the habits and tendencies and emotional states of individuals and world governments both. the DN musical really puts an emphasis on the more computer-y aspects of how his brain functions, which isn't as obvious in the manga/anime but i think still works well as a way to follow his thinking. it's kinda what near does too: everything is a factor to them, every tiny detail a new opening to optimize for the best results, every person and location and object a part of a puzzle waiting to be solved. and as a part of that, L is deeply aware of every and any little thing he may or may not have control over, and exactly to what degree.

his habit of stealing titles as depicted in the LABB murders novel is such a good example of this. ryuzaki, eraldo coil, deneuve. he eats people alive and then takes their names for himself like some kind of fucked up fae or trickster god, creating new masks and personas to hide behind from the remains of the people he's devoured. i have to wonder if he would've used the title of KIRA for himself had he won-- i can hardly imagine what kind of power such a title could hold if held in his hands. of course, he could've just used the defeat of KIRA as a way to build up the L title even further, offering up the body of a dead god like perseus showing off the head of medusa. but L is so emotionally attached to the kira case, i struggle to see him allowing it to fade from existence so thoroughly as near does, even if it is only kept close on a private level...

this is part of why i think it genuinely makes a lot of sense that L's ultimate win state would include capturing light to some degree. even if the memory of KIRA somehow manages to fully disappear from the public consciousness, there is no fucking way L is letting light yagami out of his grasp. honestly, the moment that L truly loses this game is not when he starts investigating misa while still under rem's watch, not when light gets back his memories, not even when he dies, but the moment when he allows light to be freed from the handcuffs. the moment when he allows the other members of the task force to turn off the cameras and keep him from watching light and misa talk in the lobby. the moment when he gives up, lets light yagami go outside of L's personal sphere of control, is the moment when L starts the clock ticking down to the end of his own life.

this is one of the key ways in which i see light as a true equal and parallel to L, as after L's death he, intentionally or no, continues the same tradition and takes L's title for himself, twisting the two sides together into the L-KIRA amalgamation. only, the L title functions a little bit differently than every other persona or title that we see in the series-- because L's true name is L. that's all that he is. on a literal, legal, and emotional level, i don't think that L is anything more than L. he is the world's greatest detective, he's an incredible, weirdo super genius, but he does not afford himself much more than that, barely allows himself personhood or humanity outside of his work. light was the one to ultimately defeat L because he did not just put a stain on his character (as BB attempted), did not just kill him, but stole his very identity and took it for himself.

one of the biggest contradictions of L's character that i think you must accept should you attempt to portray him accurately is that he is both deeply detached from humanity while also having all of his work and effort and life be focused around saving it. it's one of the ways in which he is an exact opposite to light-- where light relies on humanity for external validation, to be Seen, while also looking down on it as dumb and immoral and spineless, L is so separated from it that he barely exists as a person, all the while dedicating almost every action he takes to helping it. remember: for all the emotional turmoil that wammy's house and the legacy of L may put on the kids living there, ultimately it's entire existence is nothing more than L's logical solution to his potential demise. if he dies, the world goes down with him, all of the cases that are yet to happen and he is yet to solve being left in the air. he has the foresight to set up a fail safe, but not to consider the emotional implications of what being that fail safe might feel like, how high the price of your own humanity is if you are not already alienated from it, the inability to have your own name on your gravestone-- though perhaps some of the blame also falls on watari's shoulders in this case, philanthropic old bastard that he is.

imo, playing his game really got it right in presenting L and light as one and the same, synonyms on either side of the mirror. in every action they take they are both so selfishly selfless, playing the game for themselves and their own pleasure but plastering the needs and will of humanity on top of it. L isn't invested in saving humanity for the sake of humanity-- he just likes the thrill of having the stakes raised so high. hard to shit on ryuk for wanting entertainment when the humans he finds are just the same as him.

[applestorms]

One of the reasons why I think Rei's euphoria ending haircut doesn't actually piss me off all that much is because it reads to me like Rei going through his maximizing-masculinity era of early transitioning.

What I think a lot of people miss about Rei's gender-questioning in his route of the story is the fact that Rei does clearly want to be a man and feels most comfortable in that identity, but also feels like he isn't allowed to present himself that way due to his shitty fucking dad telling him he could never be a Real Man so long as he's gay. This isn't to say that Rei is completely uninterested in ever exploring femininity either, clearly his current appearance shows that he's at least comfortable enough with it to be willing to experiment somewhat and stick with a more feminine look/personal pronouns, but where he gets caught is in feeling like he isn't able to do the same thing with masculinity, other than through pure violence and fighting.

We get a kind of symbolic representation of this through Rei and Towa's first attempt at Euphoria-- Rei is desperate to literally cut off his dick, to fully subsume himself into a New Identity that he feels like is the only one he's allowed to have, only to back out at the last minute. He can't fully part with this Symbol of His Masculinity because, on some level, it's still what he wants. What he lacks is the self confidence to redefine that masculinity for himself, to find his own meaning of what it means to be a man separate from the standards set and taught to him by his father.

Similar to how Rei enjoys doing body art on other people but never can quite do it to himself, Rei appreciates and is attracted to masculinity in other people but doesn't feel like he is allowed to embrace that identity in himself, struggling to come to terms with what feels like is a contradiction between his gender and sexuality. As his father taught him, women like men and men like women-- so if he's going to be attracted to men, he is no longer justified in wanting to be one himself. To anyone with even a slight acceptance of the Concept of Gayness this naturally seems absurd, but to someone deeply entrenched in the worst muck of heteronormativity, I think this idea is actually a shockingly easy to stumble onto.

To speculate a bit, while it is never super explicitly stated in-text, I do think it's also important that Rei's main friend group of Honami, Junko, and Arata are so transfem/nb-coded. I think it's easy to see how those four could've possibly grown closer through similar experiences of growing up with all the expectations of being a Boy, only to shift into something more feminine later in life. But, similar to how the rest of Rei's route is about him being unable to fully trust or confide in his friends despite their closeness and his love for them, in Rei's case his situation is more complicated, and that seemingly (perhaps, only to him) isolates him from the rest of them. Again, Rei doesn't actually want to be anything other than a man, he doesn't explore his attachment to femininity out of a genuine desire to present himself that way all the time-- rather, he is forcibly pushed away from masculinity and ends up where he does in reaction to that.

In a way, you could almost read Rei's route as essentially a cis guy going through a similar process as a trans guy, getting forced into a more feminine role by his father's homophobia and then eventually making his way back out to an identity he actually wants and is comfortable in. Really, I think his route works perfectly as a way of exploring how even someone who is, at the end of the day, basically cis can still go through a period of questioning and confusion and dysphoria, even if his end conclusion is that he wants to stick with his original label. It's the process of understanding and defining that label for oneself that really matters here.

(Personally, this is why it's so important to me that Rei is recognized as a man, because it is this exact kind of gender questioning that I resonate with. There was an extended period of time where I myself wondered if I might be a different gender identity largely because I hated how I was treated as a girl growing up (#misogyny), but it was only through hearing from and interacting with more trans people in general and women in particular that I began to figure my shit out. This is part of why I think a term like "detransitioning," does so much more harm than good, even when used in good faith-- you should not and will never truly be locked into one singular strict identity, and the process of figuring yourself out is a net positive in my eyes regardless of the conclusion. But, anyways...)

Furthermore, like the rest of Rei's route, there are also interesting parallels to Towa in this regard too, especially if we take into consideration Towa's extremely negative reaction to being forced to crossdress in Taku's route. Notably though, I think Rei and Towa's specific traumas result in very different relationships with gender and masculinity. Where Rei feels locked out of masculinity, like being a man is something he simply isn't allowed to be so long as he continues to be attracted to other men, I interpret Towa as instead getting turned off of femininity due to its deep associations with his own (forgotten) traumas.

Towa associates femininity with his mother, with the death of Mei, and thus attaches womanhood to his childhood of broken trust and parental abuse and grief. While Towa is also just gay, I think you could also read him as being on some level freaked out by women as they resonate too heavily with the Things He Wants to Forget, finding comfort in masculinity and its associated violence as a more subtler way of self harming without having to look Directly at the things that hurt him the worst. It's complex, of course, and there is still something to be said about the ways in which Towa recreates some of his past experiences with Mei with Lisa in the Taku route, but I think a lot of that can be mixed up in the kind of partial-healing that we see Towa undergo in the Taku and Rei routes in particular. Towa never really seems to question his masculinity in the same way that Rei does, more easily accepting that he can both like men and be one, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have his hangups either.

Anyways. To reiterate my first point, this is all to say that this is why Rei's super short haircut makes sense to me. It fits in my mind that this might be the period where Rei is first starting to experiment with masculinity and embrace it in a way that he wasn't able to before, immediately gravitating towards the things he understands as more Typically Masculine and trying to hold himself to that standard after feeling like he wasn't able to in the past. It seems perfectly natural to me that there's a Rei, further in the future, that may feel more comfortable embracing some of the femininity that he did previously, once he gets more settled and comfortable with himself. It's a process. Let him go through the give and take for a while.