🕯olive

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The topic of Sb/Cl in the Black Butler fandom has been on my mind a lot lately as I’ve been trying to navigate this fandom safely as a young fan since the age of 7-8 years old.  I would say that, while the fandom climate definitely has changed over time and has become a safer place for young fans (what with online regulations, more criticism around fandom culture), there are some things that seem to have gotten worse or at least resurfaced from when the fandom was at its peak in the 2010s.

Now I’ve been in the fandom for just over half of my entire life.  I grew up with almost entirely unrestricted internet access, so I’ve experienced the online fandom space for a very long time now.  My first con was at 10 years old, to which I wore lolita fashion and met a variety of different anime fans, good and bad.  I have been in fandom spaces long enough to see what people let slide under the guise of “it’s all fiction,” or being “anti-censorship,” or “ship and let ship.” Fiction is fiction, yes, and how it affects us is limited because of this. But even still, media shapes culture, culture shapes behavior, and behavior affects people; and we see it happen within this fandom.

One thing that has really stuck out to me for a very long time is how people consistently preach about how fiction is entirely separate from reality and they do not affect each other in any way.  I agree that in many cases, there are healthy ways to engage with dark media, but to do so would require looking at the dynamics within said media from a realistic and critical stance. For example, Nabokov's Lolita — it is not a romance but an accurate depiction of an inappropriate child/adult relationship, or more accurately, assault and grooming. It allows you to see the romanticism, and the subsequent pain from the grooming that follows, and that is massively important — the book in itself is an accurate depiction of grooming, but you see it through the romanticized view of Humbert Humbert's eyes. Even this "romanticized" depiction, because it is balanced with realism, is what I personally consider to be an awesome novel.

But I feel as though the normalization of romanticization, proshipping, and proparaphilia has proven to be consistently harmful to younger fans, actors, and even the fans themselves.  Most often it’s these fans in particular who deny this point the most vehemently, which raises eyebrows.  Especially in the case of the Black Butler fandom, though I do feel that this was, again, a very big thing in early con culture (yaoi paddles, glomping, age inappropriate behavior and relationships, etc.).

Whenever someone posts about this it’s always met with hostility, and it got me thinking back to my early fandom days, when I was about 8-10 years old.  At the time, I was a huge fan of the YouTubers CDawgVA and CielStar, and this was about the time when they were still both actively posting Black Butler fancalls together.  Like any young fan, I wanted so badly to call them and interact with them, especially knowing CielStar was very interactive with his fans/other Black Butler fans through RPs.  At some point, it came out that they had started to become very hostile towards their fans, and all of their social media ended up disappearing.  About 2020 is when I found out that CielStar was convicted of child molestation and, I believe, is still in jail.  This person who frequently perpetuated the idea of “it’s all fiction” had used that narrative towards a minor to justify being their friend, then dating them, and eventually grooming them.  And quite honestly, I’ve never been so glad my parents refused to let me contact them.  CDawgVA has spoken about this publicly, expressing his own experience with him, and you can find that and other accounts on YouTube.

Back in the mid 2010s or so, as someone who was very active on apps like Amino and Discord, I cannot even list how many people my age I watched actively being asked by adults to engage in Sb/Cl ERPs because “well, it’s not real anyways, so it’s not that serious.” I shouldn't have to explain why that's completely inappropriate. And that’s only within the Black Butler fandom.  Especially when there’s kids involved (which, there always will be young people in fandoms, especially for a teen series like Black Butler), people must realize that that separation will not always be clear cut and there needs to be criticism and boundaries consistently being enforced to prevent these sorts of scenarios.  Not only this, but I remember hearing instances of the Kuroshitsuji musical actors (particularly Reo Uchikawa) receiving erotic fanmail, often Sb/Cl adjacent.  This greatly stifled Reo’s ability to have a healthy relationship with Yuta (Sebastian’s actor), as it made them both immensely uncomfortable, and they changed a dance scene (if I remember correctly) from the Campania musical and started screening fanmail for this reason.

Even now that many fandoms seem to be more aware of how these ships and mindsets can be harmful, people are very quick to dismiss the discourse surrounding it as “chronically online” or simply “not that serious.”  Though, these same people often go on about online fandom etiquette and “ship and let ship,” which I think is very hypocritical.  I don’t think it’s so absurd to call out fandom behavior that often tends to build up to sexualizing or harming young people or yourself.  Again, while I think dark media has potential to be engaged with safely, we need to very carefully moderate boundaries and be open to criticism and questioning.

Another sidebar I want to add is that the romantic and erotic content you consume does affect your dopamine and reward systems — yes, since it is erotic/romantic content, it functions more or less just like regular porn.  Pornography and erotic content trigger unusually high and prolonged spikes of dopamine, which, as we know, is what builds addiction.  This constant intense stimulation will desensitize the viewer, causing them to continuously look for something new or more intense so that their body and emotions continue to respond with excitement and arousal.  Over time, this builds tolerance and builds addiction and dependence. We see this quite often in Japanese adult content; we all know that loli and shota content is quite normalized in East Asia, with many manga stores offering that flavor of content on the topmost floors. As JAV became popular, it wasn't uncommon to see JAV actors and actresses pandering directly to this sort of content, for example with Yuka Miyoshi's controversial "Daddy Indoctrination" video. Then, the appearance of child idols being paid by grown men to play Twister or appear in swimsuit magazines, to child-sized sex dolls that made crying noises, AI generated content, etc.. There are verifiable patterns of fictional erotic content turning into real harm and paraphilic behaviors, and we have no qualms in condemning that, so that really makes me wonder where the line is.  Now, I bring this up because many of the people within the Black Butler fandom consume erotic Sb/Cl content or are self-proclaimed lolicons/paraphiles.  We have already seen with the fanmailers and CielStar what overconsumption and justification of this media can lead to.  Even in fiction, porn is still porn, and yes, it can build up to paraphilias that actively harm real people. I have seen pro-contact paraphiles on this godforsaken site. So, I do feel some genuine concern for many fans' mental health; this isn't a very safe rabbithole to go down.

Not to mention, the argument of whether or not Sb/Cl is canon is lowkey so ridiculous.  It has been debunked multiple times by Toboso herself that Black Butler was never intended to be a yaoi.  This is a very old myth spread in the fandom, that I assume is most likely made in reference to her yaoi works under the pseudonym Yanao Rock.  Let me clarify that none of the following that I say is in defense of Yana Toboso; I do not like her or her early work.  But I will say, over time, I have personally observed that she’s dialed back with the fanservice in Black Butler.  It’s very obvious to anyone who has read the manga or watched the anime that she certainly did place very much fanservice in the early arcs.  For example, the corset scene, Viscount Druitt’s actions, early depictions of Ciel’s trauma, and even original art.  Everybody can agree that it was certainly geared towards Sb/Cl fans and shock humor.  But as the story progressed past the Noah’s Ark Circus arc, we saw a massive decrease in these unusual depictions of their relationship.  In the newest chapter, 217, we even see a joke and depictions that read as paternal in nature — Irina mistaking Sebastian as Ciel’s father, Ciel hiding behind Sebastian as he often did with his own father.  And yet, it seems that all the Sb/Cl shippers that vehemently swear that their ship is canon refuse to see the new chapters in the same light.  By their logic, the Dadbastian headcanon would also be canon.  But even I, as a Dadbastian lover, think everybody should accept that these interpretations of their relationship are both headcanons, not canon.

^^ This sort of selectivity in analyzing character relationships is what really makes the whole "ship and let ship" or "anti-anti" thing feel like a fraudulent moral platitude. When the "no judgment" sacred cow is used to dodge criticism, accountability, and the canon itself, it stops serving its purpose.

Anyways, throughout being in this fandom, from Amino to Discord to Tumblr, I’ve had many Millennial-aged fans become quite hostile with me for writing out some of these points before.  At a certain point, it stops being about internet etiquette and speaks to character.  If you feel as though you need to defend yourself against a kid expressing discomfort with pedophilic content and your own headcanons, that is odd.  If you feel you need to defend yourself in a conversation about other people’s characters, that is a self-report.  I implore Sb/Cl fans who engage in this sort of behavior to reflect on why they feel so extremely uncomfortable with these criticisms.  If you cannot separate headcanon from canon, you are not engaging critically or literately.