I actually haven't finished the first series, but the second series has encouraged me to continue watching it and not just stop at where I left off. The episodes with Jack the Ripper and the rip-off of The Hound of the Baskervilles episode turned me off from it, but the second series looked good, so I went ahead and watched it.

The ending to the second one certainly is infuriating a bit. Poor Sebastian. (Makes me want to write a fan fiction where someone summons Ciel - and in turn summons Sebastian - and helps Sebastian get his freedom. XD)

Cool! I've read the first three books of Cirque du Freak. I had a lot of the future deaths spoiled for me, but my sister accidentally told me about one I didn't know about, and that was the last straw for me. Didn't finish the series.

Hannah actually became my favorite character from Black Butler II.

You say "Alois was gay" like that's a bad thing.

Then why didn't you say "Alois acts like a stereotype of gay people that annoys me greatly" instead of "Alois is gay"? If anything, I'm more offended that you assumed I would understand what you meant by simply saying he was gay. (And that's not even getting into the fact that Alois can be sexually attracted to and romantically attached to Claude and be bisexual, pansexual, omnisexual, or even heterosexual with Claude as an exception.) Personally, I'd rather you say that you hated gay people and that's why you couldn't stand Alois than you give excuses for your anti-homosexual phrasing and backing it up with saying you have gay friends. You can still have friends of opposing races, genders, and sexual orientations and still be prejudiced against them, whether you realize it or not. And even when you're not prejudiced, phrasing and context can reinforce the prejudice that exists in others.

If it sounds like I'm being confrontational, I don't mean to be. I am giving you the benefit of the doubt, but I'm also pointing out some things that can make some in the queer community feel threatened, even if that is not what you intended.

Moving onto to Alois, I never considered him to be a gay stereotype in any sense - except for perhaps the manbest friend stereotype. Male characters with feminine physical traits and mannerisms never bothered me because there are so many of them - with a wide range of sexualities - in such a wide variety of anime and because I know how the artwork for said characters was introduced to manga. If anything, it's more of a cultural thing within Japanese artwork, animation, and theatre.

If anything, Grell fits into gay stereotypes a lot more than Alois - though Grell actually seems to be transgender. Grell is flamboyant, has stalker-ish tendencies for Sebastian, and is more or less a psychopath. While that's what makes him fun, those traits associated with a marginalized minority is not something that should be encouraged, but I'm also not one to believe that it should be avoided simply because it's insulting. Grell is just being who he (I'm sticking with male pronouns because it's not specifically stated that Grell is trans) is, as is Alois, and I don't think it's right to brush off even fictional characters simply because they have ways of expressing and identifying themselves that you or I don't like.

It's another matter entirely for disliking a character for their actions, however. I really didn't like Alois at first because he was being so cruel, and I liked Claude in the beginning simply because he was awesome in the first episode. By the end of it, I still didn't like how cruel Alois was, but I understood where it was coming from and cut him some slack. (It also helped to learn that Hannah had some pretty good reasons for putting up with it.) Claude on the other hand - sorry, Claude, but some tap-dancing and cool dining-hall-decorating doesn't make me ignore how brutal he was when Alois confessed his love for him. That was just inhumane, and I don't care if he's a demon.

Hm. Why can't my academic papers be on anime? Why? College would be so much more fun, and my papers would be fifty pages long.