What do you think about sebacielizzy? I see you like sebaciel and also sebalizzy (I think) so im curious.
i like sebalizzy in the "i wanna dissect them" sort of way and i honestly more so ship cielizzy than sebalizzy. i really like sebacielizzy but not really in the ship way idk i just find the dynamic between these three characters so fun - i think it's really fun to think about how sebs views cielizzy. he genuinely thinks ciel's in love with her. he might be in love with her. it is lowk implied by the blue memory arc's chapter 144 cover that he liked her.
analysis below
but he never felt jealous to his brother. he never did anything in his childhood that implied he liked her more than a cousin. he knew his place. he never even wanted to be watchdog. he even internalised the way his father and aunt discussed him being a spare (vincent even joked about his uselessness). honestly go read chapter 132, after he overhears his father/aunt talking about him, vincent takes the boys out (presumably the next day) to see around the earldom. this is where we get one of the big examples of r!ciel having a typical noble perspective while o!ciel has his softer kinder perspective (o!ciel wonders how many people there are in the earldom and says it'd be difficult to grant all their wishes while r!ciel says they have to take care of the people on the land so they'll "work hard" for them, even comparing them to sheep). it is in this chapter where o!ciel reveals he wants to leave the earldom and go live in london and sell toys. you might think "oh obviously, he was stuck inside and he didn't want other kids to be stuck inside with nothing to play with!" correct but also WRONG why did he say this in the same chapter 1) elizabeth cut him off to go see if his brother is okay, 2) his family discuss him being useless? he wanted to LEAVE !! this boy wanted to get out of this place. maybe he did have unrequited feelings for elizabeth, how the hell was he supposed to tolerate that if they lived together/nearby? and more importantly, he didn't wanna hear people saying, "oh if earl phantomhive dies, his useless spare brother won't be able to succeed him!" he was removing himself from that family environment. it was a smart thing to do. why would he go be the vicar or doctor in the lands that his brother ruled when he could just do his own thing elsewhere?
sadly o!ciel ended up playing his brother. but he still made his dream come true. when r!ciel comes back, he mocks his brother's 'middle class' idea of selling toys when he was younger (o!ciel also reads punch so idk how r!ciel would respond to that). o!ciel has said many times that nobles are frivolous, he hated the way they yapped on the campania, the way sebs didn't fight back to charles grey in that easter chapter, he even mocked how the grass of weston was sacred. that's why his relationship with elizabeth is so interesting. she would never be with a second son with no title (asthmatic at that) who had a little toyshop in london. she's a marquess' daughter, of course, she'd never be with him. but she couldn't tell them apart. and o!ciel treated her like a fiancé, no HER fiancé, would...
so who could blame her?
sebastian on the other hand has such an interesting attitude to her, he starts off the story being kind and respectful to her but as it goes on, you can sort of feel a little tension building. in the bca fight, he asks her why she's behaving like this if all she wants is the young master to be happy. and that is really potent. he seems to understand her as being his master's happiness and this was mentioned early on in chapter 14 and 37. it's also why the staircase scene works so well. sebastian is stood next to "mister phantomhive" at the bottom of the stairs while elizabeth is stood next to "earl ciel phantomhive" at the top. it's a delightful image of status and value. sebastian is a demon, hated/feared by humans (as seen in the fortune telling scene where blavat calls him a black hole) and presumably the only other supernaturals (grim reapers) hate demons too. o!ciel is no longer considered the title holder of the phantomhive estate and is a criminal. while r!ciel is the earl, the victim of his brother's fraud, with his fiancée elizabeth (a high-ranking nobleman's daughter) stood next to him, she too a victim of his brother's lies. there is no sympathy or grace for o!ciel and sebastian, the ones who are cared about and are important for victorian society are r!ciel and elizabeth.
in conclusion: yeah sebacielizzy is great! she is a great foil for sebs and i like her a lot, especially with o!ciel. do i think the three of them could work together romantically in canon? hell no! neither of them would want to share ciel and sebaciel work narratively as the only people who truly know each other (and even then, they don't really). but i love these three dearly and could talk about them all day.
i have particular feelings on the subject of 'you should feel free to block over the smallest things' because of much Personal Baggage, but also because i had a very specific experience when i was younger
where someone following me used to send me asks quite frequently. there was nothing off, rude, or off-putting about the asks themselves, but i've since realized i have a Thing about someone responding very immediately and frequently to my posts. so this person neither did nor said anything wrong, but because i couldn't recognize my response to their persistent asks for what it was, i simply dubbed it a 'weird/bad vibe'
and when i told a friend-at-the-time about this, their immediate advice was "just block them", and they explained i should feel free to block whoever i want for whatever reason bc i don't owe them anything
i took that advice and blocked the asker, and i do remember feeling relieved when i did it. however, the asker (and no, i don't think they should've done this, but i do understand why they did considering the particular circumstances) got around my block (can't remember how) to ask me why they'd been blocked and if it was possibly a mistake on my part. which again, i don't approve of block-evasion, but i understand why they wanted to ask because i'll say again: they truly didn't do anything that warranted an abrupt, hard block from me. i'd even been answering some of their asks and never had to take up a tone of voice that would suggest i didn't appreciate talking to them!
and when confronted with the task of having to explain to them why i suddenly blocked them, i felt immense guilt because i truly had no "good" reason and it just reminded me of times when i'd been dropped with no notice by people i thought were my friends. this wasn't the same - i was abandoned by people i thought i was close to, and this person was more or less a stranger - but i still knew how my hurt felt and i hated the idea of making someone else feel that way for no real reason. at the very least, i felt it was cowardly of me to do such a thing without even making an effort to try explaining my discomfort and giving them a chance to adjust their behavior
which is what i ended up doing. i explained why i did it, apologized, but also made an explicit boundary clear. iirc i didn't even say they had to stop sending me asks, just not as frequently. im happy that person took it well and the situation was basically totally resolved after talking it out. i never had an issue with the person since then. which like, if you remember this incident and are that person and are still following me, hi! thanks for being cool
anyways. would it surprise you to believe that this very close friend of mine who advised me to insta-block the asker then dropped me the second our relationship hit its first roadblock. as in didn't give me a chance to talk to them or apologize if i'd done something wrong, never explained to me what upset them or whether they wanted to keep being friends, and then got mad at me for interacting with their posts as if they'd set a new no-contact boundary WHICH THEY VERY MUCH DID NOT... only yelling at me about it until i was the one who offered to unfollow THEM... and they proceeded to never once reach out or talk to me again.
so yeah. my feeling on this topic are... nuanced. i don't think you owe true strangers anything, and yes you should curate your space and do what makes you feel the most safe, but when it comes to people you've interacted with, who have done nothing to harm or threaten or even truly discomfort you, if there is an issue and communication is possible and feels appropriate, then i think it's always worth trying... it's not an approach that works for every occasion or every person obvs but i just think caring about how others can be affected long-term by something innocuous should at least be considered, sometimes. again, when it's actually relevant. blocking a stranger youve never talked to is whatever. but if you play in a space with someone only to feel you need to disengage or set a boundary, an abrupt cut off with no explanation is... or CAN be cruel. but that's really just my opinion
Knowing that out of the actors playing the Carvajal siblings, Maca is the one that Barb hasn’t met before Amar a Muerte is just so... beautifully ironic. Barb’s dating Gonzalo, and she and Claudia were in another show together (where they had cute pictures), but it’s Maca’s Valentina that her Juliana falls in love with. And they have so much chemistry. It’s just so... I don’t know... I find it really cute that Barb ended up getting paired with Maca.
It makes me think of an AU where Juliana meets Eva and Guille before Valentina....
What if Leon and Lupe had been better parents to their respective children?
What if Lupe left Chino and went back to Mexico, where she meets Panchito again and they raise Juls together.
What if Leon let Eva pursue her art, and this kinder version of her -- the one that got to follow her heart -- decides to share what she’d learned to those who can’t afford to go to prestigious art schools. What if she sets up this free art class for anyone to come as they pleased.
What if Juls goes to her art class and Eva ends up taking her under her wing because she’s so shy yet so talented. And maybe there is something about Juliana that makes Eva think of Valentina, who at this point has been sent to Canada because while Leon is a better father he’s still not the best.
Perhaps one day Eva invites Juls to her house, where she meets Guille who (it seems to me) is soft and introverted just like her. I think a teenaged and awkward Guille would like this young girl who has this un-intrusive presence, probably so unlike the other kids he knew.
And perhaps Eva and Guille would tell Juls about Val, show Juls pictures of her, tell Juls she was sent to Canada to cope with their mother’s death. And Juls would so candidly and innocently ask, “she’s sent to a faraway place by herself to cope with loss?” Not in those exact words, but it would make Eva and Guille realise their family’s mistake in sending Val to Canada.
So Eva would appeal to their dad to bring Val back home, which he agrees to, just in time before Val gets together with that first boyfriend of hers.
Val would be so happy to come back home, but for weeks she won’t even meet the girl who unwittingly prompted Eva and Guille to ask their dad to bring her home. But she’ll know about this Juliana, because she would have thanked her dad for making her come home, and her dad would have told her to thank her siblings, who would have told her about this girl in Eva’s art class who asked an innocent question.
Until one day -- maybe at a party that Eva decides to have for her art class in celebration of something -- they finally meet and like in canon, it’s an instant connection. They’ll be so drawn to each other, even if they have very little in common initially. But Val loves books and Juls loves art and little by little they share their interests with each other because that’s how friendship works -- especially this friendship, which would so inevitably blossom into a deep love.
So Juls would start visiting the Carvajal house more often, this time at Val’s invitation. But here’s the funny thing: she’d also be friends with Eva and Guille so she’ll take the time to say hi and talk to them, and Val -- the youngest child, who was given every material thing she’d ever wanted, whose whims were probably given precedence over her elder siblings’ -- would absolutely hate it at first.
Val would hate sharing Juls with her siblings, and when she starts to realise that she likes Juls as more than a friend, she’d think her siblings want the same thing just because they’re friendly with Juls. Her crush-addled mind would have no problem believing that everyone wants Juls. She’d angst over it for a couple of weeks and be uncharacteristically temperamental with Eva and Guille, who would both be bewildered because Val was never like that. They would decide to confront her together -- because what if her change in temperament is still related to their mom’s death -- and Val would not say anything at first but their questions would annoy her enough that she’ll end up exploding and confessing -- in that upset voice of hers that makes you want to fix everything for her -- to a silently bemused Eva and Guille that she’s jealous of them because she thinks they also like her Juliana the way she does and they knew her first.
Eva would recover first, naturally, and say she prefers older women (let’s assume she’s out as bisexual). Guille would say, very very politely and not in so many words, that he likes hotter women (he’s a teenage boy, and Juliana dresses in a way that doesn’t cater to teenage boys’ fantasies). Then Eva would say to Val, “it’s just as well, because I’m pretty sure she likes you back,” and tell Val about this portrait of her that Juls is painting, to be given to her as a surprise.
Val would light up like the sunrise and, to Eva and Guille’s relief, be the same old loving Val to them again. After that, she’d rope them in on a plan to win Juls’ heart, to their shared amusement because really, she doesn’t need a plan and never did. Eva was right...
