Young Writers Society

To start, I don't know where to put this. I was thinking about "Writing Tips," but it didn't seem right to put a thread like this in there. But seeing that this is a discussion thread for stories, I'm pretty sure that I've come to the right place. However, I'm also using this as a general discussion thread to motivate myself and to start cracking down on what will hopefully be one of the first full stories I create.

Table of Contents:

• What is Black Butler?
• Plot Arc One Part One

What is Black Butler?

A'ight. Black Butler.

If you've never seen Black Butler or read it before, you really should. It is listed as one of the best animes of all time and honestly it's also one of the best mangas as well. The fact that there is a stereotypical but yet not stereotypical gay/trans character and, well, the fact that there's a trans character is just a great idea! (in manga/anime, there's actually not a lot of trans characters that I've seen. Grell (pronounced gu-re-ru) Sutcliff (pronounced soot-a-cliff) is one of the two that I've seen in anime, and the second one isn't sure to be canon.

Voltron, I'm talking to you.

Black Butler is set in Londonial 1800's and is about a boy named Ciel and his butler Sebastian, of whom seems too good to be true. It is eventually revealed that Sebastian is, in fact (don't click on the spoiler if you will read/watch Black Butler):



Now, Grell Sutcliff is introduced early as Ciel's Aunt's--Madam Red's--butler. However, it is soon revealed that (like note above):



Before I continue, I would recommend that you watch Black Butler/read Black Butler first (watch it here [it's better english dubbed since it's set in England. Besides, I like Grell's voice better] and you can get it from Amazon easily ¯\_(ツ)_/¯) or click on the spoilers if you don't have the time/the money/the patience to watch it before you help with this.

Alright.

So there's a lot of mystery surrounding Grell (how did she die? what is her real gender [even though she's a transgender male-to-female; Toboso, the creator of the manga, said so canonically]?) and how her species works (what is education like? how many people become them each year? are there just british ones? what if someone did it for the true greater good, or used the suicide for the greater good?). A lot of people have theories but all of them are in poorly written Sebastian x Grell slash fanfictions.

So I've decided to make my own.

Plot Arc One Part One (Issues and Plot Idea):

So this first Arc is set in both modern times and the 17th century.

Basically, I first start with Ciel Phantomhive falling asleep and waking up on the sidewalk of an average 17th century city. He knows it's a vision of some kind--after disappearing for God knows how long (end of anime), he had started to develop some powers from being around Sebastian for so long--and decides to look around. However, a certain person catches his eye. He's not sure who he or she is, but the person reminded him of someone.

((alright so in this first paragraph i have a few issues.))

Issues List One:

• Which city should it be in? I'm thinking London, but that's basically where everything else is going to go down so I don't know if I should go for the same, familiar place or a different place for some variety.
• How long would it be? Ciel disappears in the late 1800's (1892-1895) but I don't know exactly how long. The rest of the story is in modern times, maybe in the near future, but exactly how long? I'm not sure what year... I just need a bit of an overview on the pros and cons because right now I can't think of them haha
• How intense should I make the visions? I don't want to make them the cliched super intense ones but it still needs to be intense enough that Ciel can tell what's going on.
• What color hair should the person have? (other than red)

NEXT PARAGRAPH

So basically Ciel knows that he should follow the person, who looks strangely male but dressed in female clothes. Then, it kind of transitions to the person coming to what Ciel assumes to be the home. Another person who looks like the one Ciel's following is standing at a doorway leading to a (kitchen?). He smiles and says, "Welcome home," and then a name that is seemingly blurred out, which annoys Ciel.

Issues List 2:

• tHIS IS THE BIG ISSUE! I'm having issues coming up with descriptions for the clothing. I'm not sure what a rich person in the 1600's would wear walking around the streets, but i was thinking something like...
  
  
  Spoiler! :

  [image]https://i.pinimg.com/736x/81/32/a1/8132a13d179f136a16931a5acc49be3d--historical-art-embroidered-silk.jpg[/image]
  
  
  that?
  
• I'm not sure what the insides of rich places in the 17th century look like. Only the outside???

Next 'graph:

So now the two are talking and a woman's voice calls someone named Lawrence upstairs. This turns out to be the older one so he walks upstairs, leaving the other alone. The kid left alone flops on some furniture and takes off the dress they have on, putting on something more boy-like. Lawrence and the woman come downstairs and the kid hides the woman's clothes behind the chair. The kid says, "Hi, mother," to the woman and the woman says hello back.

Issues:

There's only one, but it's one of the same problems as before.



So basically they have a conversation which reveals that the mother might not be the nicest person in the world. Then, the kid retrieves the female clothes and hides them in a hidey-hole inside of their closet.

Then, for a few weeks, Ciel just follows the kid around. Sometimes they have on female clothes and hide them, and other times--rarer times, as Ciel noted--the kid was just in male clothes the whole day. He doesn't mention anything to Sebastian, but is completely intrigued. Ciel attempts to find out more about the kid but he can't find anything in the resources that he could access.

Ciel continues to dream about the kid, but then sees that the kid is bullied. They are called many names and things and is told to not go to school so they won't look at the "ugly face" that they have. They also say the kid's name, but it's still blurred out.

Then things start to get interesting.

The kid makes a few friends named Adrian, Robert, and William. They are never apart from each other, except at night, but even then Adrian and the kid (who are neighbors), speak to each other through a secret code through lanterns (paul revere type thing). Ciel learns that Adrian is also a male-to-female transgender and, because he looks female, he isn't allowed to go to school. He also learns that Robert likes both males and females and that William is gay.

He watches them grow up. Robert becomes more and more interested in the medicine practice, which his family gladly helps him with (they don't know that he's bisexual). William is leaning towards a politician, but, because he's gay, his family doesn't support him nearly as much as Robert's. Adrian isn't sure what he wants to be yet, though he's leaning towards being a coroner (how do you spell that?).

the kid is starting to get more and more bullied for an unknown reason, but Ciel knows that it has to do with wearing girl's and boy's clothings out in public. Ciel actually asks Sebastian, who replies with "genderfluid".

{end of arc 1 part 1}

It's been a long time since I've seen Black Butler, but I love how you want to flesh out Grell's backstory. I'll try my best to help you out.

I think having London as the setting is a great choice because then Ciel can be forced to deal with the changes being in a different times brings with it - 15th century London is a lot different than 19th century London. (I don't even know if London was around in the 15th century, but I'm going to tentatively say that something similar to it was.)

Planning and I have never been good friends, so I apologize in advance if my advice for the second bullet point doesn't help. I'd say to make Ciel's time in the 15th century last for as long as you need to; just write the story and see where it takes you. You can always go back and edit if the need arises! And if you're looking for a specific year for him to appear in, I'm going to say to go with 2018 for the modern times - after all, it's the year that's most relevant to you right now!

For the visions, maybe you can have some details become kind of blurry? Like the things on the edge of it, or things that aren't relevant to the plot - like the background characters or inanimate objects - are there but are difficult for Ciel to really make out.

I'm going to say dark brown, since that's always a safe bet for a natural hair color.

I hope this helps!

Thanks! I'm actually still working on that part (the first arc is the longest ) so i would appreciate help there too, @saen! That advice was really helpful