Like Honey (Schuldig, Weiss Kreuz)
Title: Like Honey
Character/Fandom: Schuldig (Weiss Kreuz)
Author: mistressrenet
Spoilers: NO SPOILERS, though there are some in the fics and essays I linked to. I honestly have no idea how I accomplished this.
Notes: Special thanks, of course, to everyone who answered my questions, especially those I quoted, and to those whose fics and speculations informed this essay in more subtle ways. And thanks to tiggymalvern for loaning me her WK DVDs and getting me into this mess in the first place. There is a little Weiss-bashing in this but I swear I kid because I love.
Hey, you get to write about a guy who sets fire to schoolgirls!
--tiggymalvern
The Man Himself
By any rational measure, Schuldig should be one of the most hated characters in anime. Arrogant, sadistic, and cruel, he delights in other's discomfort and pain, kills without any sign of remorse, and has a fashion sense that recalls all the most forgettable excesses of the 1980's.
But this is Weiss Kreuz, an anime known for its distinct lack of quality, with plot threads that go nowhere, plot twists that make no sense, monocle-wearing bad guys with fluffy cats, and a guy who fights with paper airplanes. Weiss Kreuz does not follow your crazy Earth logic, and the good and bad guys are no different.
The men of Weiss-- our nominal heroes-- are irresolute, conflicted, and angsty. Their sense of loyalty to one another is questionable at best, and only rarely do they reflect on the essential contradiction of their existence: they're 'good guys' who assassinate people, hired killers in service of a shadowy man named "Persia" who may or may not be completely honest with them-- and that a few of them haven't even met.
The men of Schwarz are something else altogether. They're well aware that they're the bad guys, working for an organization called Eszett that's trying to resurrect a dark god and apparently set about some kind of apocalypse (they're the ones with the fluffy cat). Schwarz is its working their own, less obvious game, but that's less clear at the outset, and at any rate, it doesn't change who and what they are: unapologetic and efficient killers. They're rather fun to watch, and Schuldig is one of the first of the team to grab our attention.
The red hair, wardrobe, and personality are fairly attention-grabbing, but so are his powers; he's a telepath, and a reasonably powerful one. He appears to move at supernatural speed and grace, though this may be an effect his own mental powers have generated, and appeared to throw a ki blast at the end of the first Weiss Kreuz series, Kapital, though that again may have been a mental trick. He's undoubtedly capable of mind reading and 'pushing' people telepathically. He certainly doesn't find it too difficult to 'push' people in directions they're already inclined to go. Though there are clearly limits to Schuldig's power, it's unclear if there are many-- if any-- telepaths stronger than he is; he comments to Farfarello that he sometimes has trouble separating other's thoughts from his own and it's possible to speculate that anyone with more power might go mad.
Schuldig seems to enjoy his work; in fact, he delights in it, smiling blithely while making people squirm with discomfort, revealing that people's thoughts taste like honey, and generally just seeming so damn happy about his life choice of killing people for a living you can't help but be a little...charmed.
Well, I can't anyway. (It doesn't hurt that he's voiced, in the anime, by Midorikawa Hikaru, one of the Sexy Voices of Anime.)
I like that he needs no excuses and no angsty past, like most anime villains seem to require, in order to be a complete jackass.
--penelope_z
How He Works
For the most part, Schuldig seems to find his powers a delight, bragging that people's thoughts taste like honey and taking great pleasure in using people's worst anxieties and deepest secrets against them. Controlled Crawford, tortured Farfarello, and angry Nagi have their undoubted appeal, but Schuldig's having fun. He's long since accepted the 'guilty' status signified by his name; he doesn't appear to waste any of his valuable time feeling bad about it. Not for Schuldig the angst of a tortured anime character; he's far too busy indulging in his favorite hobbies-- revealing important plot points, throwing other peoples' thoughts back in their face, choosing another terrible component of his nightmare-inducing wardrobe. (Okay, I'm not so sure on that last one, but it must take him some time and effort to dress that terribly!)
How Schuldig got this way is another question altogether; penelope_z speculates that the flamboyant aspects of his personality stem from a desire to be an individual in the crowded environment of his own thoughts, and that seems very plausible. And of course, unfiltered access to other people's thoughts is hardly a gift without a price. "Disillusionment must have come at a very early age, I'd say that the gift must have completely robbed Schuldig of his childhood, even if it could have been an entirely happy one." Every mother who's had a child throwing a temper tantrum in a crowded store can figure this one out in an instant: Schuldig must have felt a lot of pain, frustration and anger in his early years, with a big side helping of hypocrisy on top of it. daegaer has pointed out that he seems especially cruel to teenage girls; whether this is because they're more vulnerable targets (he's not particularly nice to teenage boys either) or whether it's related to something more significant in his past is-- like most of Schuldig's past-- unclear.
As Part of The Team
He is willing and capable of subjugating his own pride to the team's needs-- [at one point] Schuldig is held back very easily by Crawford, despite being absolutely furious.
--daegaer
For all his joy in the misery of others, Schuldig seems to get along well with his other teammates and displays some genuine loyalty to them (much more than Weiss' resident redhead does). He teases Nagi about his infatuation with Tot, but Nagi seems to regard it as the idiotic prattling of an older brother rather than an true insult. Schuldig and Crawford are extremely comfortable with one another, working well within each other's personal space (as they are both Westerners, this is more significant than in most anime) and with that unspoken agreement that usually comes only with comfortable partnership. They tease each other like comrades or old lovers, and they continue working together after the rest of Schwarz has apparently dissolved. There's some speculation that Crawford keeps Schuldig 'grounded,' but no canon proof of it.
Schwartz works very well together, and Schuldig appears to be an integral part of the team: supplying communication, helping direct Schwarz's pawns, following orders when necessary and questioning them when he thinks they're wrong. This last can be overlooked, but it's vital; in the face of Nagi's extreme youth and Farfarello's extreme mental illness, the only person who can really hold Crawford in check if he's wrong is Schuldig. Although you can't argue that this makes their schemes flawless, it does put them one up on Weiss, whose brilliant plans often only seem to work by pure dumb luck (and I do mean dumb).
Fanfiction
This character is the little black dress of Weiss fandom; you can pair him with just about anyone, and he is an excellent character to use for crossovers and AU's.
--ann89103
Here are the known facts about Schuldig's background: He was trained at Eszett's school for assassins (though probably not the same time as Crawford, and possibly not the same time as Farfarello), he slept with a woman named Silvia while he was there, and he's probably German. Yeah. Not a ton to go on, there. No one even knows his real name: Schuldig is just a German word (as katakana-to-German translations are unreliable, it's even speculation as to what, exactly, his name translates to, though general consensus is 'guilty' or some variation thereof).
As you might expect from a character with so little canon backstory, there is a ton of speculation in fandom about Schuldig's past. Was he a drug addict? A prostitute? Did Crawford find him on the streets? With so little fact there's a lot of theories, and some have gotten pretty entrenched-- the drug addict/street kid/prostitute image is the most enduring, but not the only one.
Because Schwarz is not the focus of Weiss Kreuz, the team's appearance is fleeting, and there's still lots of room to speculate about exactly what Schuldig's like: is he a trickster? A stone-cold sociopath? Is he obsessed with getting Crawford into bed, or has he already accomplished that? Is he (gasp, horror)...straight? (Hey, it could happen. Maybe. Though my guess is that his absorption of others' thoughts and, by extension, desires would make him bisexual by default.) There's a lot of room to play around without taking Schuldig's character too far afield, and fanfiction writers like myself love that kind of thing.
And, as Ann pointed out, he's remarkably easy to pair up, cross over, and move around. His very unknowable nature makes him a natural for fanfiction, where some kind of dynamic quality to shake things up is a big plus. He's a ficcer's dream; maybe that's why fans love him so much.
There is, of course, some dreadful crap out there (and bad fangirl German, sort of a novelty from the bad fangirl Japanese we're used to!); but there are also some smart, sexy, razor-sharp fics. Most fanwork is centered on the teams, but there are a few fics that stand out, either as Schuldig-focused or as taking an interesting angle on the character (I also tried to stick to short fics and good authors, so you can look at everything they do!):
The Ultimate Self-Made Man by Rokeon, an extremely clever speculation on Shuldig's origins.
Complex by One Person, another Shuldig-background fic, this one proposing a complicated relationship with Crawford.
was sie benötigen by toscas_kiss, a take on Crawford and Schuldig's first meeting. Her site has more Schwarz fics and recs.
Nerve, found at Viridian5's site. Control, jealousy, and...interesting relationships. Also, well-written porn. Good stuff. Her site also has good recs and lots more fics.
White, by Torch. Which may not have Shuldig in it at all. ;-)
In the Company of Wolves, by daegaer. Spoilers for the first anime series, Kapitel. Schuldig manipulates; maybe it's what he does best. Follow-up ficlets are here. Also interesting is daegaer's drabble on Schuldig in bed.
Schuldig shrines and info sites
Schuldiger als Sünde (Guilty as Sin)
Lots of nifty stuff, including the opportunity to download "Spiritualized," Shuldig's absolute trainwreck of a theme song, and some aggressive and informative takes on fanon.
Presumed Guilty
Features character analysis, images, wallpaper, and more.
Teufel
Another download of "Spiritualized" (woes!) and more on Schuldig, Weiss and Schwarz.
Other Good Stuff
You should really check all this out. There's a ton of stuff I didn't get into, for fear of boring you to death or tangenting myself into incoherence:
The Schuldig/Yohji Ship Manifesto
The Crawford/Schuldig Ship Manifesto
The Schuldig Fan Soundtrack, a lighthearted and fun look at all the fanon cliches about Shuldig.
My 'hey, tell me what you think about Schuldig' questions and people's excellent and informative answers from my livejournal can be found here.
Character/Fandom: Schuldig (Weiss Kreuz)
Author: mistressrenet
Spoilers: NO SPOILERS, though there are some in the fics and essays I linked to. I honestly have no idea how I accomplished this.
Notes: Special thanks, of course, to everyone who answered my questions, especially those I quoted, and to those whose fics and speculations informed this essay in more subtle ways. And thanks to tiggymalvern for loaning me her WK DVDs and getting me into this mess in the first place. There is a little Weiss-bashing in this but I swear I kid because I love.
Hey, you get to write about a guy who sets fire to schoolgirls!
--tiggymalvern
The Man Himself
By any rational measure, Schuldig should be one of the most hated characters in anime. Arrogant, sadistic, and cruel, he delights in other's discomfort and pain, kills without any sign of remorse, and has a fashion sense that recalls all the most forgettable excesses of the 1980's.
But this is Weiss Kreuz, an anime known for its distinct lack of quality, with plot threads that go nowhere, plot twists that make no sense, monocle-wearing bad guys with fluffy cats, and a guy who fights with paper airplanes. Weiss Kreuz does not follow your crazy Earth logic, and the good and bad guys are no different.
The men of Weiss-- our nominal heroes-- are irresolute, conflicted, and angsty. Their sense of loyalty to one another is questionable at best, and only rarely do they reflect on the essential contradiction of their existence: they're 'good guys' who assassinate people, hired killers in service of a shadowy man named "Persia" who may or may not be completely honest with them-- and that a few of them haven't even met.
The men of Schwarz are something else altogether. They're well aware that they're the bad guys, working for an organization called Eszett that's trying to resurrect a dark god and apparently set about some kind of apocalypse (they're the ones with the fluffy cat). Schwarz is its working their own, less obvious game, but that's less clear at the outset, and at any rate, it doesn't change who and what they are: unapologetic and efficient killers. They're rather fun to watch, and Schuldig is one of the first of the team to grab our attention.
The red hair, wardrobe, and personality are fairly attention-grabbing, but so are his powers; he's a telepath, and a reasonably powerful one. He appears to move at supernatural speed and grace, though this may be an effect his own mental powers have generated, and appeared to throw a ki blast at the end of the first Weiss Kreuz series, Kapital, though that again may have been a mental trick. He's undoubtedly capable of mind reading and 'pushing' people telepathically. He certainly doesn't find it too difficult to 'push' people in directions they're already inclined to go. Though there are clearly limits to Schuldig's power, it's unclear if there are many-- if any-- telepaths stronger than he is; he comments to Farfarello that he sometimes has trouble separating other's thoughts from his own and it's possible to speculate that anyone with more power might go mad.
Schuldig seems to enjoy his work; in fact, he delights in it, smiling blithely while making people squirm with discomfort, revealing that people's thoughts taste like honey, and generally just seeming so damn happy about his life choice of killing people for a living you can't help but be a little...charmed.
Well, I can't anyway. (It doesn't hurt that he's voiced, in the anime, by Midorikawa Hikaru, one of the Sexy Voices of Anime.)
I like that he needs no excuses and no angsty past, like most anime villains seem to require, in order to be a complete jackass.
--penelope_z
How He Works
For the most part, Schuldig seems to find his powers a delight, bragging that people's thoughts taste like honey and taking great pleasure in using people's worst anxieties and deepest secrets against them. Controlled Crawford, tortured Farfarello, and angry Nagi have their undoubted appeal, but Schuldig's having fun. He's long since accepted the 'guilty' status signified by his name; he doesn't appear to waste any of his valuable time feeling bad about it. Not for Schuldig the angst of a tortured anime character; he's far too busy indulging in his favorite hobbies-- revealing important plot points, throwing other peoples' thoughts back in their face, choosing another terrible component of his nightmare-inducing wardrobe. (Okay, I'm not so sure on that last one, but it must take him some time and effort to dress that terribly!)
How Schuldig got this way is another question altogether; penelope_z speculates that the flamboyant aspects of his personality stem from a desire to be an individual in the crowded environment of his own thoughts, and that seems very plausible. And of course, unfiltered access to other people's thoughts is hardly a gift without a price. "Disillusionment must have come at a very early age, I'd say that the gift must have completely robbed Schuldig of his childhood, even if it could have been an entirely happy one." Every mother who's had a child throwing a temper tantrum in a crowded store can figure this one out in an instant: Schuldig must have felt a lot of pain, frustration and anger in his early years, with a big side helping of hypocrisy on top of it. daegaer has pointed out that he seems especially cruel to teenage girls; whether this is because they're more vulnerable targets (he's not particularly nice to teenage boys either) or whether it's related to something more significant in his past is-- like most of Schuldig's past-- unclear.
As Part of The Team
He is willing and capable of subjugating his own pride to the team's needs-- [at one point] Schuldig is held back very easily by Crawford, despite being absolutely furious.
--daegaer
For all his joy in the misery of others, Schuldig seems to get along well with his other teammates and displays some genuine loyalty to them (much more than Weiss' resident redhead does). He teases Nagi about his infatuation with Tot, but Nagi seems to regard it as the idiotic prattling of an older brother rather than an true insult. Schuldig and Crawford are extremely comfortable with one another, working well within each other's personal space (as they are both Westerners, this is more significant than in most anime) and with that unspoken agreement that usually comes only with comfortable partnership. They tease each other like comrades or old lovers, and they continue working together after the rest of Schwarz has apparently dissolved. There's some speculation that Crawford keeps Schuldig 'grounded,' but no canon proof of it.
Schwartz works very well together, and Schuldig appears to be an integral part of the team: supplying communication, helping direct Schwarz's pawns, following orders when necessary and questioning them when he thinks they're wrong. This last can be overlooked, but it's vital; in the face of Nagi's extreme youth and Farfarello's extreme mental illness, the only person who can really hold Crawford in check if he's wrong is Schuldig. Although you can't argue that this makes their schemes flawless, it does put them one up on Weiss, whose brilliant plans often only seem to work by pure dumb luck (and I do mean dumb).
Fanfiction
This character is the little black dress of Weiss fandom; you can pair him with just about anyone, and he is an excellent character to use for crossovers and AU's.
--ann89103
Here are the known facts about Schuldig's background: He was trained at Eszett's school for assassins (though probably not the same time as Crawford, and possibly not the same time as Farfarello), he slept with a woman named Silvia while he was there, and he's probably German. Yeah. Not a ton to go on, there. No one even knows his real name: Schuldig is just a German word (as katakana-to-German translations are unreliable, it's even speculation as to what, exactly, his name translates to, though general consensus is 'guilty' or some variation thereof).
As you might expect from a character with so little canon backstory, there is a ton of speculation in fandom about Schuldig's past. Was he a drug addict? A prostitute? Did Crawford find him on the streets? With so little fact there's a lot of theories, and some have gotten pretty entrenched-- the drug addict/street kid/prostitute image is the most enduring, but not the only one.
Because Schwarz is not the focus of Weiss Kreuz, the team's appearance is fleeting, and there's still lots of room to speculate about exactly what Schuldig's like: is he a trickster? A stone-cold sociopath? Is he obsessed with getting Crawford into bed, or has he already accomplished that? Is he (gasp, horror)...straight? (Hey, it could happen. Maybe. Though my guess is that his absorption of others' thoughts and, by extension, desires would make him bisexual by default.) There's a lot of room to play around without taking Schuldig's character too far afield, and fanfiction writers like myself love that kind of thing.
And, as Ann pointed out, he's remarkably easy to pair up, cross over, and move around. His very unknowable nature makes him a natural for fanfiction, where some kind of dynamic quality to shake things up is a big plus. He's a ficcer's dream; maybe that's why fans love him so much.
There is, of course, some dreadful crap out there (and bad fangirl German, sort of a novelty from the bad fangirl Japanese we're used to!); but there are also some smart, sexy, razor-sharp fics. Most fanwork is centered on the teams, but there are a few fics that stand out, either as Schuldig-focused or as taking an interesting angle on the character (I also tried to stick to short fics and good authors, so you can look at everything they do!):
The Ultimate Self-Made Man by Rokeon, an extremely clever speculation on Shuldig's origins.
Complex by One Person, another Shuldig-background fic, this one proposing a complicated relationship with Crawford.
was sie benötigen by toscas_kiss, a take on Crawford and Schuldig's first meeting. Her site has more Schwarz fics and recs.
Nerve, found at Viridian5's site. Control, jealousy, and...interesting relationships. Also, well-written porn. Good stuff. Her site also has good recs and lots more fics.
White, by Torch. Which may not have Shuldig in it at all. ;-)
In the Company of Wolves, by daegaer. Spoilers for the first anime series, Kapitel. Schuldig manipulates; maybe it's what he does best. Follow-up ficlets are here. Also interesting is daegaer's drabble on Schuldig in bed.
Schuldig shrines and info sites
Schuldiger als Sünde (Guilty as Sin)
Lots of nifty stuff, including the opportunity to download "Spiritualized," Shuldig's absolute trainwreck of a theme song, and some aggressive and informative takes on fanon.
Presumed Guilty
Features character analysis, images, wallpaper, and more.
Teufel
Another download of "Spiritualized" (woes!) and more on Schuldig, Weiss and Schwarz.
Other Good Stuff
You should really check all this out. There's a ton of stuff I didn't get into, for fear of boring you to death or tangenting myself into incoherence:
The Schuldig/Yohji Ship Manifesto
The Crawford/Schuldig Ship Manifesto
The Schuldig Fan Soundtrack, a lighthearted and fun look at all the fanon cliches about Shuldig.
My 'hey, tell me what you think about Schuldig' questions and people's excellent and informative answers from my livejournal can be found here.