“Aegon the Conqueror brought fire and blood to Westeros, but afterward he gave them peace, prosperity, and justice. But all I have brought to Slaver’s Bay is death and ruin. I have been more khal than queen, smashing and plundering, then moving on.”
Alright fandom, I’m about to bring up a topic that has pissed me off for way too long. Way back to one of my favourite arcs, Book of Circus.
A topic that has not only been something personal to me, but another reason that Sebastian Michaelis is one of the most disgusting characters and if SebaCiel was real, it’d be indeed a heavily toxic relationship. Also, a counter argument to everyone that brings this up as a point to hate Our!Ciel.
Today, I’m going to discuss my heavy belief and theory, that during this scene, Ciel was forced into a PTSD attack.
Look at the following three pictures.
PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) –
a condition of persistent mental and emotional stress occurring as a result of injury or severe psychological shock, typically involving disturbance of sleep and constant vivid recall of the experience, with dulled responses to others and to the outside world.
With this in mind, PTSD has to be triggered by something, not just when Ciel walks in and sees the exact duplicate of a room he was trapped in for a month. These three photos are so important because it shows exactly how this connected to that day. The doctor representing the cultists, Ciel is now forced to remember all those terrible memories, his traumatic memories scratching the surface. How heavily these two scenes correlate is so important.
Do you understand what I am trying to tell you?
At this exact moment in time, we lost Ciel, he was gone and reliving everything. The outside world completely falling apart to him, having no idea what happened anymore after this moment.
Now, showing the actual attack.
‘Stop it’.
‘Stop it’.
‘Someone’.
What do you assume from the black text boxes? To me, this appears to be happening in Ciel’s mind, he is now reliving this all over again until the end of the arc. I will go more in depth in that later.
Right now, he is calling out to someone right now, he wants someone to get him out of this hell hole, just like he did that day.
My point is, and I can’t stress this enough, he believes he is back there in the cage, and he wants out. He is gonna do everything to get out.
To make more sense of this before moving on to my next point of the actual PTSD attack, here are the symptoms of an attack.
Behavioral: agitation, irritability, hostility, hypervigilance, self-destructive behavior, or social isolation.
Psychological: flashback, fear, severe anxiety, or mistrust.
Mood: loss of interest or pleasure in activities, guilt, or loneliness.
Sleep: insomnia or nightmares.
Also common: emotional detachment or unwanted thoughts.
Now, I have put in bold the ones Ciel is suffering from AND signs that he has shown previous to this. Guilt and nightmares are the biggest examples of that.
Right now, he is having extreme emotional detachment and unwanted thoughts, with flashbacks fueling fear and severe anxiety. He is suffering much more than what he appears to be.
Now, here is my second point to this that involves Sebastian:
For anyone that wants to argue that Sebastian isn’t as bad, or he sincerely cares for Ciel. I’m about to throw those words back in your face.
Sebastian Michaelis is a demon, he does not give a single fuck about our!Ciel, sorry if I have to be the one to tell you this, but he doesn’t and this is the first example I’d give anybody to show them.
‘Young master, is there something you’re afraid of?’
‘You’re outside of the cage right now, my Lord.’
‘Call my name.’
Those sentences, are the biggest forms of manipulation I’ve ever seen coming from this demon. He didn’t break Ciel out of the PTSD attack, I’ve seen other people saying that, but that is far from the truth. I will show that through the next set of pictures.
Right now, I want to explain what I believe to be Sebastian’s intentions. This goes if he understood what was happening or not. I start to believe more and more that he did, because focus on the look on Sebastian’s face. He is smirking, he seems more than pleased by the situation because he gains from it. He tells him to call his name, say it, because Ciel believes he is in the cage and has just called the demon to come and save him. Sebastian, being aware he wants to be saved, he wanted help, used him, his asthma and PTSD attack, and he did it to make not only their contract stronger but to make Ciel’s soul better.
Revenge, sorrow, pain, all these things that make Ciel’s soul the best that it is, the want to be stronger than his enemies, Sebastian knows this.
Sebastian used this for his own agenda, he didn’t do it because he wanted to help Ciel find himself, because he didn’t. All that demon wanted was to help himself with his meal, that’s it. Nothing more, nothing less.
When Ciel then acts out, screaming to ‘kill these guys’, you think he means the doctor and Joker right?
I’m afraid, far from it, saying Ciel is mixing his reality with the past, he believes he is telling Sebastian to kill the same people he already killed three years ago. He does not remember the reality before him. What he is seeing, is so much different than to what you and I were seeing.
The most important point in this post is:
Ciel had no idea who he was killing, he thought he was in the cage, he didn’t care who died, he wanted the cultists stopped.
CIEL WAS NOT AWARE HE WAS KILLING THOSE CHILDREN.
Another message (SebaCiel):
I don’t care what you ship, I really don’t.
However, if you look at this scene and sexualize it, I don’t mean ironically (joking is fine), I mean you truly look at this and think this is a great example of SebaCiel, I’m sorry, but you piss me off and quite frankly I feel you are not only spiting in Ciel’s face, but the people who suffer from PTSD.
Have you ever seen someone have a PTSD attack? It’s terrifying, it is one of the hardest things to deal with, pulling someone out of those memories and making them feel safe again-. It is difficult, and I’ll say it once more.
No, Ciel calling Sebastian’s name, did not break him out of his trance.
To romanticize and sexualize PTSD and his asthma attack is disgusting, and a pathetic way of filling your yaoi quota.
Off of that rant, I’m gonna move on to the last bit of this.
Burning the children.
As you can see, Ciel just denied the Queen’s orders.
Ciel just denied the Queen’s orders.
He’s never done that before in his entire career, isn’t that off to you?
Of course it is, because he in his mind doesn’t work for her yet, what Sebastian says to him is not processing to him. Sebastian isn’t aware of this more than likely, but I promise you nothing anybody is saying is entering Ciel’s ears and he is understanding it unless it relates to that day. When he says to burn down the place, he believes he is getting rid of the place that caused him aching pain and suffering for an entire month. Not just for him but his beloved brother.
Reliving these memories, Ciel wanted nothing more than it to go away.
Let me say again, Sebastian asking if he was ‘sure’ wouldn’t have helped at all. To open your mind a bit, here are the very few ways to help PTSD. Most of the time the person needs to take medication and probably go to sleep.
Therapies:
Cognitive behavioral therapy – A talk therapy focused on modifying negative thoughts, behaviors, and emotional responses associated with psychological distress.
Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing – Psychological treatment that reduces the stress of traumatic events through eye movements.
Exposure and response prevention – A talk therapy based on exposing feared or traumatic experiences within a safe setting in order to help reduce any associated psychological distress.
Medications:
Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI) – Eases symptoms of depressed mood and anxiety.
Now, these are modern treatments, which are very few to begin with.
You know what they had back then? Nothing. No, that is not a joke, PTSD was not recognized until 1980. So needless to say, Ciel was fucked, and the only and best way Sebastian could’ve helped would’ve been knocking him out after killing the threats. Not even quite sure if Ciel would’ve been okay after waking, or if he’d even remember what happened, which would’ve been best because now he has the guilt of killing all these children for the rest of his life.
To all the people that use this heavily as a point for disliking Ciel:
I’d just like to say, you don’t have to like Ciel, but don’t you EVER come at me with this shit and telling me how it’s his fault. He didn’t want to do that, if Ciel had been in his right mind and knew what he was doing, he would’ve never made the move he did.
He thought he was killing the cultists all over again.
After all the comments, discussion and controversy with this that I’ve seen, from fulfilling fangirl’s yaoi dreams to completely blaming Ciel for a serious mental disorder, I have to say-
The conversation around this entire situation in Book of Circus inside this fandom, is beyond disgusting to me.
Sorry for my amount of salt in this post, but this topic to me is personal, and I’m tired of it being treated not as seriously as it really is.
This is my theory, my opinions on Ciel’s PTSD, and I don’t believe he should be blamed for something he didn’t ask for.
I apologize for rambling, that’s it.
Just for the record followers, I don’t have a problem with SebaCiel, but I do have a problem with people attacking Our Ciel repeatedly for something that he was never in his right mind to do. I tell people this all the time. It’s clear that he regrets killing the children, but he rationalizes it later so that he can live with himself.
Furthermore, the doctor had tampered with the children’s brains (note the surgical scars on the sides of their heads, most people miss this completely). Those children were mentally gone, and nothing available during that time period could have brought them back to functioning in normal society. Trust me, they would have endured a fate worse than death. Nothing good could have possibly come out of that situation at the end of the circus arc. If Ciel had been in his right mind and thought through all of the options, he would have still had to choose between evils and people would judge him no matter what he chose.
And now that we know for sure that Our Ciel did indeed have a twin brother who he watched die that day, this adds a whole new dimension to that PTSD attack. He wasn’t watching himselfget stabbed on that altar. He was watching his twin brother, who he had spent his life with, who had protected him throughout that long tortuous month, get stabbed to death by their captors; and he was completely helpless and powerless to do anything about it. It is the moment that nearly brought Our Ciel to the breaking point, the one act that made him unintentionally summon a demon: the loss of the one person left in his life he loved most.
I hope this helps people understand that situation a little better because to this day, it is still one of the most misunderstood climaxes of any of the arcs…let’s show Our Ciel a bit more love.
🔥 There is beauty in destruction🔥 