As promised, the next part of my review of
Ciel (2020).
Link to previous part
So, chapter 2 ended on the cliffhanger of Ciel and Stephie sitting down for lunch on their first day of high school and talking to two old acquaintances from grade school. Rather than making these into fleshed out characters, that conversation is skipped and chapter 3 opens up with Ciel and Stephie talking
about them as they leave the cafeteria.
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This time, Ciel is worried that those girls might be planning to "expose" them while Stephie shrugs off the concerns with a laugh – a reversal of their roles of the previous chapter, when
Stephie was the one worried about being exposed.
The kids discuss the hypothetical possibility of going to an all-trans school where they wouldn't have to hide who they are, which prompts Ciel to mention he's been holding in his pee all morning.
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Not wanting to disappoint Stephie, Ciel goes into the girls' bathroom when no one else is around, with Stephie keeping watch.
The feeling of letting go, after spending hours holding it in, is really worth it.
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Ciel is late for class and corrects the teacher on his name while taking attendance. The teacher doesn't know Ciel's trans yet, but mentions offhandedly that his voice makes him sound like a boy. And with that, his day is ruined.
Again, Ciel worries that they'll
both get outed as trans if they continue to be seen together.
After school, Ciel starts vlogging in the park for his Youtube channel, with his little brother filming handheld instead of just setting up a tripod in his bedroom
like a human fucking being.
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He takes his pastime seriously because it means other people will take it seriously too (and seemingly to flex on his brother). This, we're told, is advice that they give out on the Internet?
Kiwis, let me know if there is a place on the Internet that actually says this. Because most of the advice given here to aspiring Youtubers is the exact opposite.
Ciel begins
and ends the video by saying
“This is Ciel, from Ciel Is Bored.”
The rest of the video is just a recounting of the day's events and is nowhere near long enough to hit the 10-minute mark. It takes less than 60 seconds to read the
transcript aloud, and this is supposedly
before he edited stuff out.
When chapter 4 begins, over a week has passed and Ciel has told roughly half of his teachers to call him by the feminine version of his given name.
He is out delivering papers one morning and then –
I shit you not – it turns into a Lia Thomas fanfiction.
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When I saw the trans swimmer had a name similar to Lia Thomas, I vaguely recalled a few headlines about him from a couple years back, but I must have been thinking of someone else. Because limiting the search to 2020 and earlier shows articles about trans athletes which
don't mention Thomas, and articles about a cisfemale golfer of the same name.
It's also worth noting too that the character in question is FTM, not MTF, although that wouldn't necessarily have ruled it out. But it does also seem that the French edition of
Ciel was published way before 2020 (either 2017 or 2018 according to Goodreads, which might somewhat explain the dated references), and written before Thomas was in any way famous.
So I'm afraid this is all a big coincidence, but it is nonetheless a funny one.
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Ciel starts sperging about the mention of genitals and his desire to cleanse the heretical publication with fire. (The article doesn't mention genitals, although it does say the swimmer has a "girl's body", which transactivists would claim is a euphemism for genitals.)
The description of
Lia Liam in the next paragraph implies that Ciel might have a tiny crush.
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He then meets back up with
Sophie Stephie in front of their locker that morning, where he Ciel a joke about a toilet and Stephie shows him a slab of floppy meat.
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And then Stephie starts fawning over a boy he who he swears he doesn't want to date, but still exchanged phone numbers.
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Ciel's narration afterwards makes it clear that Stephie and Frank are still very much a thing (despite Stephie's attempts to cuck him), but honestly, I'm not buying it. Those characters' relationship in the comics is established to be like 80% Stephie lecturing Frank about transphobia, and 20% Frank being a good Ally™ to Stephie. None of this is even shown at all in the book.
Oh, and speaking of relationships, guess who decides to show up at school?
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Ciel doesn't talk to Liam yet because he doesn't think he's cool enough, but with over two thirds of the book left to go, I'm assuming they end up in some kind of romance.
In the next chapter, Ciel will be reading all the
HATEFUL COMMENTS on his Youtube channel. Stay tuned!
