What Do You Think Sub!BTS Kinks Are (sexual/non Sexual)

bts as pokemon trainers

this was definitely inspired by detective pikachu but also i love bts and pokemon so we’re here! these aren’t sprites of the actual boys (as one would point out) but i chose some that were super similar to the boys! without further ado and a read more cut, here we go!

seokjin

normal type gym leader

his team: eevee, chansey, audino, bewear, swablu, munchlax

team aesthetic: cute but deadly

his eevee is his pokepartner, wants to evolve it into a sylveon even though it’s a fairy type

mukbangs with munchlax

gym looks like a cute bakery WITH A BLOODBATH IN THE BACK

grooms his own eevee… his eevee has bangs

yoongi

dragon type gym leader

his team: flygon, garchomp, mega ampharos, altaria, haxorus, dragonite

the dragonite was a gift from gym leader!joon (”this is mangnanyong!”)

his ampharos is his pokepartner, the mareep it once was had stumbled into his little town as a kid

he wore a key stone around his neck as a necklace and the mareep had a mega stone

raised his whole team from babies, high friendship level with all of them

gym is a maze

hoseok

grass type leader

his team: sunflora, tsareena, roserade, jumpluff, bellossom, abomasnow

the bellossom dances with him

his gym has a lot of tall grass that is not allowed to be cut down

he likes to think his abomasnow is a wild card

a super nice gym leader and always is down for rematches if the pokemon trainer calls his pokénav

he gets energy from his pokemon since he, figuratively, the sun to his pokemon

namjoon

water type leader

his team: magikarp, kingler, greninja, slowking, lapras, milotic

king of CRABS

once wanted to become a pokemon professor (interned for prof oak, hence the kanto badges)

the magikarp he caught (before he broke his fishing rod) and he just wants a really cool gyrados ok

likes to make you rethink your life choices when he pulls out specific moves

likes to strategize his next moves

jimin

ice type gym leader

his team: alolan ninetails, delibird, glalie, cubchoo, avalugg, vanilluxe

HIS ALOLAN NINETAILS IS HIS PROUDEST BABY

used to be super into pokemon contests

his cubchoo currently holds the master rank ribbon in cuteness

his gym is like that ice maze in the sootopolis (gen 3)/mahogany (gen 2) gyms

can charm you and melt your heart even though his gym is literally freezing cold

taehyung

dark type trainer

his team: absol, mawile, houndoom, shiftry, tyranitar, hydreigon

his pokemon are actually the sweetest little things

his absol is very cuddly and his mawile always looks out for the others before itself

but in battle its completely different, theyre very strong and very evil

his gym is completely dark and you have to use flash in order to get through

if not you fall down holes

jungkook

fighting type gym leader

his team: hitmonchan, lucario, pangoro, poliwrath, medicham, mienshao

his pokemon all specialize in agility and evasiveness

essentially, theyre speedy and strong

helps jungkook pull pranks sometimes

he trains with his pokemon so theyre all as fit as him

the poliwrath was a gift from namjoon (his idol) and when he met him he was so starstruck that he wanted to become a gym leader too

dogcoded characters where they're loyal because everything else has been taken from them and they're desperately clinging onto any sense of purpose or meaning they can grasp. dogcoded because they're willingly made into a pet doing tricks for the ones that own them and they're aware of it all and embrace it. dogcoded where they could be sent to the shelter at any time but feels like they never will, because they're a big strong dog who attacks just right, hurts the right people, and doesn't recoil when they're pet or punished. dogcoded where they obey because if they don't the world is dark and cold and empty. dogcoded where they're trained to move on command, to sniff out downfalls and cracks in strength and manipulate them with their nails, all for the ones they heel to. when will i stop talking

The Inherent Queerness of Monsterfucking: Fifty Shades of Subversive

Or; The research paper I begrudgingly watched 50 shades for, with edits for smooth tumblr reading. Yes, this is a paper about porn. ~2400 words.

Like porn, politics, and football, people tend to have very strong opinions on BDSM and kink. Inherent to the nature of kink is the subversion and revolution of social norms and our sense of taboo, a transgression against the rules we've set as a society. The subversion of traditional ideas about sex is what makes kink kinky; it turns concepts of right and wrong, pain and pleasure, completely upside down. Normative gender roles, too, can sometimes be reserved, such as the case of the female dominatrix, but in practice things tend to trend in a heteronormative direction. One study (1) shows that most men tend to self-identify as dominant, with most women tending to identify as submissive, especially in heterosexual contexts. Likewise, in homosexual male spaces, masculine men are much more likely to be perceived as tops whilst more feminine/gnc men and "twinks" are more likely to be pegged as bottoms (2) Despite the focus on transgression and subversion within BDSM and kink, masculinity and phallocentrism still dominate norms both in the public eye and within many kink communities themselves, especially online. For queer women and those outside the gender binary, often neglected and forgotten in kink representations, this brings up an important question: What does kink look like outside that model? In fan communities online, many writers seek to answer that question. Between the boundaries of traditional gender and anatomical essentialism, queer kink stories both acknowledge and defy phallocentric, patriarchial ideas about sex, gender, and power.

The realm of fantasy holds a magnifying glass to this discord between queerness and phallocentrism, having the ability to take certain ideas to their erotic extremes beyond what's realistic within the consensus reality. Many kink acts themselves are rooted in fantasy and roleplay elements, acting on desires not otherwise appropriate or even possible. These fantasies take place in the imagination and become the foundations for erotic fiction. The 2015 film Fifty Shades of Grey is one such piece, with its immense popularity solidifying a specific heteronormative perception of BDSM relationship dynamics. The movie follows a dominant, controlling male's pursual of a sexual relationship with a bland, naive young college senior: quite the "big Dommy McDommerson"(3) as one reviews from the community puts it, Christian Grey is practically a caricature of the standard hyper-masculine archetype, full of snappy innuendos and brooding bad-boy backstory, not to mention fully inept at romance and consent. At its core, Fifty Shades is essentially a reiteration of the standard many-times-rinsed-and-repeated stereotypes and heteronormative ideas about kink and sex. The gay male kink fantasy, too, unsurprisingly centers the phallus. The works of Tom of Finland, for a prominent example, deal extensively with this imagery of masculine dominance and phallocentrism, sketching out big strapping men with disproportionately massive cocks that center a specific model of cis maleness tangential to dominant norms of sexualized masculinity. By contrast, the obscure fantasy world of kinky erotic fiction written by and for queers contains vast diversity of gender and sexual dynamics; the only real commonality is an aversion to the heteronorm. Here, queer kink stories are told in relative anonymity and can explore a variety of kinky and subversive ideas about sex, gender, pleasure, pain, and identity. One example, "A Taste of Hell," an Overwatch fic that provides an excellent example of this phenomena, illustrates many of the transgressive ideas explored by these communities including rape, free use, violence, and the trope known as monsterfucking. (3) The plot is simple, following a young woman who dies and goes to hell only to discover it to be essentially an eternity of sexual slavery to lesbian demons, whose lover comes in from the living world to argue for her resurrection. 

"A Taste of Hell" was published to AO3 in 2017 by user 'zieg', and the broader community it's a part of exists as a safe space for exploration of sexuality and social taboo without judgement or moral condemnation. In these online communities, primarily women and genderqueer people (only 1% surveyed identified as male) construct fictional worlds of erotic potential where boundaries of right and wrong are blurred and anything can be sexy. Zieg describes their writing as "an experiment of sorts," and "an elaborate, fantastical roleplay of sorts between writer and reader." They acknowledge the disturbing and "fucked up" nature of their material, citing the BDSM and kink tradition of taboo roleplay, in a disclaimer linked at the beginning of the piece; this idea of sexual transgression is widely regarded with little further comment in much of the community, with 48,000 posts tagged "Dead Dove: Do Not Eat" on AO3, a reference to the idea that the label ought to be warning enough. "This is hot and I'm going to hell," says one respondent to Kukka's research in Fandom's Pornographic Subset, "God please forgive me." A key factor in these writings is the unapolagetically "fleshy, hyperbolic descriptions of sex;" euphemisms and formal sex language are absent from the text, which instead tends to lean towards the crass and the colloquial, with an entire miniature dialect of fandom-specific vocabulary. Far from the clean cinematography of Fifty Shades, “A Taste of Hell'' features graphic descriptive imagery of “hot pussy” and “gaping fuck holes.” This forwardness lends itself to the overall openness of online kink communities, where arousal and sexuality are topics for unrestricted, frank discussion. The comments are full of readers praising the erotic sensuality and writing style of the fiction, openly expressing their arousal and enjoyment of the piece.

The lack of repression in these spaces contributes to the allure of these communities, with many respondents expressing a feeling that “belonging to an accepting community helped them to alleviate their feelings of shame.” (Kukka 64) Audre Lorde, in Uses of the Erotic describes the manner in which female eroticism is “vilified, abused, and devalued within western society” to the detriment of one’s personal power and the necessity for connection and acceptance of one’s inner self and desires in recouping it. The presence of communities for “exploration of sexuality and desire” where “neither is feared or forbidden” nurtures this self-acceptance, and it can be a powerful tool in vital identity formation through the “imagining and reimagining” (Kukka 64) of oneself through shared fantasy. By telling and reading stories, participants can learn more about their own tastes and desires and experiment with new fantasies and ideas.

Many of these fantasies and stories feature a direct dismantling of the gender binary: men can get pregnant (colloquially dubbed 'mpreg'), canonically heterosexual and hetero-presenting characters can be 'shipped' in gay pairings, and sexual activity can be engaged with supernatural creatures like aliens, werewolves, ghosts, and monsters. (i.e. monsterfucking) At its core, monsterfucking is a type of fantasy that subverts not only heteronormative ideas about gender and sexuality, but the human ideal of the gendered body itself. More than just giving a woman a penis or a man a vagina (though it’s certainly done, with and without the context of transness), this trope involves an entirely nonhuman character with its own unique genitalia to match its purpose in the story. For “A Taste of Hell,” this involves a vast host of dominating demon women, with the majority having vaguely human-esque vulvas lubricated with a cinnamon-scented liquid and a sharp, pointed clitoris. The one exception is a character referred to as Mistress Cyx, who has a “long purple horse cock expanding from her groin, a solid metre long and 20 cm thick.” It’s certainly a grotesque description. Similar to the kinky gender-bending roleplay that takes place in real life, these fictions “[provide] a safe space for people to fuck with their gender” (Bauer 234) and to explore the different ways in which sex can be engaged between parties through a subversion of human contexts for gendered sexuality. Tentacles, eggs, probes, tongues, cloacas, and even 'sex pollen' can all contribute in their own strange ways independent of the genders of the involved parties. Even objectively phallic objects, such as the aforementioned horsecock or other supernatural phallus, tend to defy accepted heteronormative standards in the way they're used and described. Combined especially with tropes like male prenancy, where cisgender male characters are able to become pregnant through penetrative sex, these stories "create a new genderqueer place outside of the gender dichotomy" (Kukka 57) where sexual dynamics dely on anything but the gender of those involved.

These strange sex encounters, naturally, draw their fair share of criticism from disturbed onlookers. Perhaps the most pressing, ignoring the undertones of bestiality, is the issue of consent. Elements of non-consent, popularly shortened to non-con, feature heavily in many female fantasies, both straight and queer. In Fifty Shades of Grey, for example, consent is often dubious at best; Christian Grey repeatedly makes inappropriate comments to Anastasia before they become romantically involved, and even tracks her down while she’s drunk (he doesn’t like her getting drunk) and forces her to come back to his hotel room where he undresses her and puts her to sleep. He frequently tries to push BDSM activities on her that she, a vanilla virgin, is not prepared for, and despite insisting that he won’t touch her without a signed contract, he repeatedly initiates sexual activity throughout the entire movie, with varying levels of enthusiasm on Anna’s part, even demanding that she “say yes… to being [his]”(4) while he has her in a vulnerable, powerless sexual position. “It really did frame BDSM as being abusive,” says Blaque in her review. “It just did.” Despite all this, the movie heavily romanticizes Grey’s controlling nature and never addresses the violations of appropriate consent. Conversely, queer kink pieces like “A Taste of Hell” are expected to openly acknowledge their problematic elements before the reader even opens the text. Zieg tags the piece “Rape/Non-Con Elements” as well as “Free Use,” “Sex Slave,” and more; the reader is responsible for reading the tags prior to opening in order to consent to any kinks or uncomfortable content present. Characters meanwhile hold to near nonexistent moral standards, allowable within the suspension of disbelief and judgment that’s critical to the existence of these fanfiction communities. This allows for a more complete and authentic exploration of subversive and transgressive sexual content, with one respondent to Kukka’s study reporting comfort with the questionable material due to a “bigger distance” between themself and scenarios they consider “triple fictional,” a phrase they use to describe the fictional (non-canon) interactions of fictional characters from an existing fiction franchise, all in all: fanfiction.

Despite all this, Fifty Shades of Grey and kinky monsterfucker fanfiction still have common elements. Both feature unequal power dynamics, a core facet of many kink roleplay genres, and both focus on non-male fantasies. Like Fifty Shades of Grey, queer kink practices in real life have even been accused of succumbing to patriarchal sexual models and being anti-feminist for that reason. As France points out in “Sadomasochism and Feminism,” this kind of logic “defines sadomasochism with reference to dominant norms,” reducing female and queer sexual perspectives to a mere reflection of that which oppresses. That’s not to say the world one lives in doesn’t impact sexual experiences and preferences, but allowing oppressive narratives to define queer and female sexuality really only allows those oppressive narratives to dominate the conversation of sexuality altogether, feeding back into their power. Even Fifty Shades of Grey, with its problematic representations of BDSM and reiteration of heteronormative relationship tropes, deserves a level of nuance as a female erotic fantasy in its own right. Furthermore, examining “A Taste of Hell” in the context of male power, when it contains not a single male or masculine character, seems absurd. The absence of male figures rejects the phallocentric idea that sex and sexuality revolves around male power and presence. “The largest category” of responses to Kukka’s study “highlights the importance of kink meme communities in catering to the erotic needs of women and other non cis-male people.” Both works fit that description, subverting the “male-dominated mainstream porn” model. 

Another commonality lies in culture of origin; the Fifty Shades of Grey novel in fact originated as a fanfiction of the popular Twilight series, though it’s largely been scrubbed of lexical evidence of its humble origins. Fandom culture online, especially in fanfiction communities, has evolved its own unique set of customs and, more importantly, linguistic quirks. Monsterfucking itself is a term presumably originating in kinky fanfiction circles online, describing the specific type of kink dynamic discussed here. As mentioned earlier, these specific colloquialisms for sexual activity, free of awkwardly formal terminology,  are a key part of the community’s open conversation. The unique language of these communities experiences constant transformation, as writers are free to create new tags at their leisure and new slang terms spring up organically from online interactions and memes. Furthermore, within queer and kinky sects of these communities, there’s plenty of overlap with real life queer and kinky vernacular, as well as a host of transformative and individualized language. It can be helpful for those “exploring and expanding gender concepts” to use transformative language to “rename or recode body parts and sexual practices according to the meaning they have for the participants involved as opposed to heteronormative perspectives” in kink practices, and that benefit is amplified through the written language of fiction. This “material-semiotic renaming” that Bauer describes can involve the invention of new language or incorporation of subversive ideas and community slang for genderfuckery, and the explicit description of genitalia and the body present in monsterfucking smut lends itself quite well to exploration and experimentation thereof. With many characters existing as mere projections for interpretation of real life experiences and confusions, it makes sense that their descriptions would be so varied and unique in a veritable playground of self-exploration. 

Despite mainstream perceptions of kink as a male-dominated practice, these online pockets of queer community continue to thrive and subvert expectations about sex and gender.  Sexually explicit queer kinky fanfictions can provide essential safe spaces for exploration of sexuality and unusual fantasies, allowing readers to learn more about themselves and others and to form community connections. These works incorporate intentionally taboo and disturbing elements, such as monsterfucking, to explore uncomfortable subjects and enjoy the erotic allure of kinky fantasies in a nonjudgmental, communal online space. Such spaces nurture identity building, mutual understanding, and a sense of belonging, as well as providing space for creative expression and validation, specially for those who are geographically isolated from real world lgbtq+ kink spaces or experience social, financial, or accessibility barriers to meeting with like-minded individuals in person.

Boyd-Rogers et al.

Pun unintended, unfortunately

We don't talk about how long I spent trying to find an example fic for this paper that met my needs. Authors who provide commentary on their own porn can be surprisingly difficult to find.

I need you to imagine for a moment me, an ace and very queer individual, pirating fifty shades of grey at my desk with a pad of paper out taking fucking notes so I can cite it in my paper. It was my prof's idea. Apparently I needed to be able to cite a juxtaposing source.

This paper has been adapted from a research paper that I wrote for my freshman writing seminar, with the bulkier explanation of basic fandom concepts having been removed or edited.

Works Cited

“About Tom of Finland.” Tom of Finland Foundation, 2 Nov. 2022, https://www.tomoffinland.org/about-tom-of-finland/.

Bauer, Robin. “Transgressive and Transformative Gendered Sexual Practices and White Privileges: The Case of the Dyke/Trans BDSM Communities.” Women's Studies Quarterly, 2008, pp. 233–253.

Blaque, Kat, director. Actual BDSMer Watches Fifty Shades of Grey | Kat Blaque, 13 Aug. 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F93WHXewX5c. Accessed 24 Apr. 2023.

Boyd-Rogers, Caroline C., and Geoffrey B. Maddox. “LGBTQIA + and Heterosexual BDSM Practitioners: Discrimination, Stigma, Tabooness, Support, and Community Involvement.” Sexuality Research and Social Policy, vol. 19, no. 4, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1007/s13178-022-00759-y.

“Dead Dove: Do Not Eat.” Archive of Our Own, https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Dead%20Dove:%20Do%20Not%20Eat/works.

Fifty Shades of Grey. Universal, 2015.

Kukka, Silja. “‘Fandom's Pornographic Subset.’” Lambda Nordica, vol. 26, no. 1, 2021, pp. 53–79., https://doi.org/10.34041/ln.v26.721.

Lorde, Audre. “Uses of The Erotic: The Erotic as Power.” Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde, 1984, pp. 53–59.

Zieg. “A Taste of Hell.” Archive of Our Own, 3 Apr. 2017, https://archiveofourown.org/works/10536954? 

Hunter wearing cute wolf pajamas! 🐺

is this good omens

the joys of a keychain (wow! little object) vs the fears of a keychain (What If It Vanishes)

It’s currently 10:30 pm rn and I feel liminal. Like that space where you aren’t really bored but don’t have anything to do, and it just feels like night? That’s where I am rn. I wanna talk with someone, preferably a stranger.

What if we were best friends and drifted apart and came together again after you had a kid and together we contained the whole wealth of lived and loved experience and you survived what should kill you by letting it go

not that this is a particularly profound take but imo i think the dadbastian trope IS pretty applicable in canon if you just like. Look at it from a slightly skewed angle.

it's not that i'm coming at this in a "sebastian is gradually changing for the better and learning to empathize with and/or regard o!ciel as someone he genuinely cares for" way because, as much as that narrative is fun and angsty and Just So Happens to make sebastian a little easier to relate to, it clashes with how calculated he canonically is.

that being said! he absolutely is changing. his character arc revolves around a realization that the tactics he's comfortable using aren't good enough, and this goes wayyy beyond undertaker being two steps ahead of his "punch first, ask questions later" instinct. everything sebastian does is catalyzed by a belief that, no matter how treacherous the situation becomes, he'll be able to figure it out with little to no effort given his superiority as a supernatural entity.

ciel and sebastian's dynamic prior to emerald witch relies on this ethos. ciel has a goal and views sebastian as the sole avenue through which he can accomplish it because he's a demon. ciel feels unsafe and views sebastian as his only source of protection because he's a demon. all sebastian has to do to maintain this dynamic is be scary and generally infallible which, surprise! are natural dispositions for him.

enter BOC, in which this dynamic is challenged during ciel's initial asthma attack. this is the first time sebastian is relatively helpless to keep ciel alive - he has to defer to a human doctor because there's literally. Nothing he can do. which is then paralleled by ciel's second flair up.

there's a reason ciel's asthma is referenced again in this scene. there's a reason sebastian looks so skip-happy while carrying out ciel's order of burning that bitch to the ground. he doesn't have to question his abilities! he doesn't have to alter the dynamic! he can keep flexing his demon powers anytime shit hits the fan and ciel will always come crawling back to him.

sebastian's fatal flaw isn't just that he's muscle-brained - he's also stubbornly, willfully ignorant of his own weaknesses. sure, he was completely useless in preventing ciel's asthma back at the circus, but that's fine, who cares! he gets to fall back on his strengths and ignore how powerless he actually was.

welcome to BOA! for context, prior to this arc, sebastian rarely, if ever let ciel see him expending any kind of effort, i.e. he's in a constant battle with the servants to keep the manor from descending into chaos and purposefully tries to hide it. this isn't just a butler aesthetics thing, it's also an "I'm a demon and everything is easy for me" thing, to the extent that sebastian continues attempting to uphold his unflappable demeanor when he's quite literally on the verge of collapsing.

sebastian's tactics aren't all that's challenged in BOA - his entire persona gets irreparably damaged. ciel sees him be outsmarted. ciel sees him injured and genuinely struggling to keep the former safe. this should be very bad news for their dynamic;

except, it isn't.

ciel responds so positively that it makes sebastian Yapper Of The Century michaelis momentarily speechless! he then immediately tells ciel to cut that shit out, thus deferring once again to a dynamic that's rapidly crumbling before his eyes and ignoring how effective his accidental appeal to pathos was in retaining and even strengthening ciel's attachment to him.

which leads me to emerald witch, aka the cataclysm for sebastian's change. on top of undertaker being a constant, underlying threat to his food, sebastian ONCE AGAIN has to deal with said food's delicate mortality.

obviously, sebastian is all out of sorts, but his expressions / the way he's framed when he's alone (or not being perceived) absolutely floor me. he looks genuinely distressed after speaking to the other servants. he's drawn in these bird's-eye and wide-shot views while in the forest, creating an isolated, pensive atmosphere and illustrating him (a big, bad demon) as nothing short of small.

he's conflicted. which is weird, right? this isn't the first time his food has gotten sick. moreover, ciel isn't in any active danger - he's having a PTSD response. sebastian is not stupid, he knows this, and should be either confidently reminding ciel of the power he wields or threatening to eat him right then and there; and yet! he waits multiple days before reverting to these (historically effective!!) responses.

it's not just that he's a picky eater - this is sebastian, for the first time in the series, recognizing how fragile ciel's attachment to him is. he's doubting himself. his food no longer views him as its only source of safety, has rejected him, and it's entirely due to sebastian's own negligence.

he's been ignoring his weaknesses. he's been reliant on ciel looking past multiple instances of helplessness in light of how terrified the kid is and how powerful sebastian makes him feel. it's not a coincidence that ciel's near-death experience was exacerbated by sebastian disregarding the former's symptoms to go beat up a werewolf (leaving him ALONE in a foreign, SUPPOSEDLY CURSED castle) until those symptoms, literally, hit him in the face.

it doesn't matter how incapacitated ciel is - sebastian's presence should be enough to calm him, and it isn't, and it's his fault.

this is where sebastian really starts to change. (mind you, the chapter following ciel's initial rejection is titled "That Butler, Change", so do with that what you will.) though we aren't told this explicitly, i think he looks to instances wherein something other than fear drove ciel's attachment (BOA), as well as to the only person ciel would let near him while panicked (finnian, who ciel appears to be closest with amongst the servants and was projecting onto out of grief for his twin). he dials back on the demon vibes. he slowly begins altering his rhetoric.

enter blue cult!

remember what i said about sebastian not wanting ciel to see him struggle? to be cognizant of his weaknesses? as much as the situation was largely out of his control, it's interesting that sebastian allowed his expression to convey upset given that he views emotion of any kind as a weakness.

this isn't to say his sulking isn't genuine - i like to think his clinical narcissist brain was about to pop at the mere thought of not being praised; but! when put in context with his nature, his façade, how every single thing he does is calculated, especially around ciel, this Wildly out-of-character expression gains a new meaning.

another example after ciel returns from getting his blood thieved:

two things: one, sebastian is learning! he almost verbatim references his mistake in emerald witch, meaning he had to have acknowledged it between then and now. two, he does this verbally, explicitly, thereby allowing ciel to witness his panic AND be made aware that sebastian is capable of failure. he could have marched back into the music hall and wrangled the s4. he could have said "ah shit, that's not good, let's go find a doctor". instead, he rambles on about how this is all his fault to a degree that's so excessive it's kind of comical.

and you know what! i don't believe a goddamn word of it. it is so significant that he immediately switches gears after his instinctual big-scary-demon reaction. the sebastian we knew at the beginning of the manga would NEVER let ciel think he was genuinely upset or flawed to the extent of endangering his charge, as that would directly contradict ciel's perception of him as perfect, strong, and safe.

sebastian is thus playing on the dynamic shift that occurred in BOA: he is encouraging ciel to view him as a (rarely!) imperfect being who is struggling to maintain a façade. as someone willing to go to the ends of the earth for him, to care for him, to defy his nature for him, because there are now far too many factors beyond his control to rely on fear alone.

honestly? it's a masterful execution. sebastian's tweaks to his persona are subtle: he gets a little sillier, he offers more praise (under the guise of banter), he tries to make ciel feel bad for "leashing" him.

(i wasn't going to include these panels but. dude. the way he backtracks after the initial comparison between himself and elizabeth only to start pontificating about what the "heart" wants. that is such a purposefully dual-ended rhetoric and insane to hear from mr. evil personified.)

he even displays an artfully-skewed version of grief upon finding angi's body (again, that emotion might have been somewhat genuine, but it feels intentional that he chose to express it with ciel in the room) to foster belief that he is capable of like. Caring for people?

circling back to forces beyond sebastian's control, here are two examples of sebastian's reaction to r!ciel's return:

oh BABY. "neither you nor my love are real"?

on-the-nose dialogue aside, sebastian's expression between these panels had me stumped for years. it would make sense for him to convey sympathy to convince ciel of said "love", HOWEVER it's odd that he would continue to do this despite not actively being perceived while in the carriage. something about this feels a little too genuine - especially considering how he's visibly tweaking throughout all of r!ciel's reveal chapters. as much as looking distressed/concerned is likely a conscious decision, i don't think he's fabricating the emotion entirely.

which leads me to: why does sebastian feel the need to alter the dynamic? sure, it was precarious at best and ran the risk of ciel not liking his pet demon all that much, but there's no imminent danger in that. ciel needs sebastian to achieve his revenge and sebastian has made himself out to be the only dependable, constant person amidst ciel's friends/family inevitably leaving him, AND has a trump card of total autonomy over ciel's soul.

... unless, of course, one of the family members he'd lost miraculously came back from the dead, the exact family member sebastian had eaten right in front of him, and was attached at the hip to a creature familiar with sebastian's flaws far before the demon was ever aware of them, that has proved itself more than capable of killing him.

oh he's concerned alright; there is a very real chance that ciel might back out of the contract. he's forgone his revenge before while in a similar trauma-induced headspace; only, this time, sebastian would be powerless to stop him. in truth, at any point since BOA, his meal could have run off to undertaker and there would have been shit all he could do about it. sebastian was slow to acknowledge this, granted, but up until EW there had been virtually no reason for ciel to do something like that.

now there are reasons. and girl, not only is sebastian concerned, i think he's a little scared.

he's functionally lost all ground in keeping ciel dependent on him. it's no longer enough for ciel to regard sebastian as a maliciously convenient product of circumstance - he has to form some other connection.

so, sebastian blurs the line between servant and guardian. he plays on associations he'd established in the past: nagging over ciel's health, taking over his studies, complimenting him, disciplining him, crafting his own form to look remarkably similar to vincent (and no, i don't consider this an instance of same-face-syndrome, look at their bangs. tell me that's not intentional). choices once made out of cruelty, out of a desire to worsen ciel's emotional turmoil, now repurposed to convince him of a devoted, endearingly-demonic parental figure and hoping this will be enough should there come a time wherein ciel is given a choice between two blasphemous falsifications of his family.

sebastian pivots hard. he avoids relying on his supernatural abilities unless absolutely necessary, despite countless opportunities to do so, to the extent where you almost forget he's not human. he does not leave ciel's side. he lets himself appear dirty and exhausted. he allows ciel to see how uncertain he feels, how helpless he is, knowing the true reason will be lost in translation because ciel is a child, and no matter how conscious that child is of sebastian's nature, he will instinctively revert to seeking out a parent.

the whole "butler aesthetics" shtick flies right out the window at the end of 147. i cannot physically articulate how improper it would be for a servant to grab his master's face and scold him. in front of company. you know who does that? a parent. this is straight up panic on sebastian's part. he is willing to run the risk of acting uncouth in order to brand those fatherly associations right onto ciel's underdeveloped frontal lobe.

and. and this might just be speculation. but.

it's working.

i cannot think of a single goddamn reason for ciel to do this. you wanna know something? his excuse is complete horseshit. sebastian is dressed as a butler, something passengers in a first class train compartment would recognize instantly. even his undercover persona of a valet wouldn't warrant tea with an aristocrat. as much as i'd like to believe ciel is in on the charade, i can't find any evidence nor does it seem realistic that he, a child, would fully grasp that level of manipulation, regardless of how mature he acts.

oh, hey, sebastian's being a little cryptic with that snowfall line. i bet it's completely random and he's never made weather-themed references in any of the prior arcs!

this is. One page. after ciel tells him to take a day off in BOA. he is directly referencing the first time he was made aware of how effective a disingenuous father-son relationship could be.

in BOA, he appears slightly ruffled by the dynamic shift, as this endangered the status quo. in the train car, he's absolutely ecstatic. look at him! that's his "I Just Manipulated This Preteen Sooo Good" face. he looks like an animal. he looks like he's about to turn into a werewolf and jump for joy.

tl;dr: dadbastian is actually so insanely viable, but not in the way you'd think. sebastian in undoubtedly changing, but this isn't an accident or a product of him learning to love or care in any capacity. he is perpetrating the illusion of change, of personal growth in a creature that cannot posses a real identity, thereby humanizing himself in ciel's eyes to keep his food from slipping out of his grasp and it's working so unbelievably well that he's managed to fool a good number of kuro's readers too.

why do people keep relating nico di angelo with the color red? his sword literally has a purple glow to it. he's clearly black and purple coded