![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
doomspiralTwo things to start that sum up the basis of my interest in Chrollo, be it reading or writing; 1) KrKr is less of a ship and more of a thought experiment (Not necessarily relevant to this essay, but worth saying), and 2) Chrollo is less of a person and more of a plot device.
So first it’s a good idea to think about where Chrollo came from, that being Meteor City (MC), a place where everything comes from the trash including the people. Most if not all of the inhabitants were thrown away to die or live according to fate, and I think it’s safe to say Chrollo was abandoned as a baby, long before he would even form memories of his parents. So we have a child who clearly survived this, but how? Well, we also know that the residents of MC will die for each other en mass just to get back at the murder of one of their own. Chrollo is probably raised like a stray dog but just slightly more intense when he’s too small to move on his own. He’s given milk until he can walk, and then he just wanders around and is looked out for in general by the other people living around him.
We do not know when the Phantom Troupe (PT) was formed, only that the original members were from MC and that it was before the Kurta massacre. Chrollo when we meet him is 26, he was about 21 when the Kurta were killed, so he was likely in his late teens when he created his gang as it is known. That said, he was likely already friends with a few of if not all of the original members. So, Chrollo was a kid who was raised by a group society that protects and is only loyal to its own, because it is a society that was literally thrown away by the surrounding societies. This is probably part of why the PT believe that only their members are of importance to the other members, and beyond that they are loyal to MC (defending it from the chimera ant invasion), and anyone outside of that can either survive under their own merit or perish.
Chrollo also seems to not understand why he does the things that he does outside the range of… well, he could, he had the momentum, and it was enjoyable or at least not unenjoyable to do. He is callus, sadistic, greedy, and possessive, with no real sense of self, and no real goals. He lives to lead the PT, understanding who he is along the way. It appears that, where Chrollo was given opportunities to create himself from the ground up, he based it solely off aesthetics and then decided “store bought is fine” for the rest, depending on his friends and his conquests to outline who he is. The PT functions as a bully hive-mind; they do what the do because they are strong enough not to be stopped. Hurting people and stealing benefits them, has always benefited them, and they have they have no reason to change because it will continue to benefit them until they all inevitably die and are replaced.
Into the realm of headcanon.
Chrollo gives off the vibe of someone who would mansplain Marxist theory to me while using a black sharpie he shoplifted from Walmart to color his nails, goes to house parties he’s not invited to and then drunkenly gives people stick ’n’ poke tattoos, and enjoys nasty dirt cheap beer over expensive drinks he flaunts for the sake of flaunting. He is a try-hard who may actually have a very extensive knowledge base, but draws all the wrong, surface-level conclusions from yet believes he is a philosopher regardless. He collects antique books (canon) and likely reads them too, but just as likely does not or has his spiders read them to him. Shalnark has a Hunter’s license, and Chrollo may as well but it’s unclear. He is number 0 in the PT (canon) and likely thinks this is very deep.
The spider is likely not his first attempt at self actualization. I like to think he not only picked his own name (basically, Christ Lucifer) but that, due to some of his aesthetics, it may have been crow related (He absolutely would like that a group of crows is called a murder, it’s just too on brand). When we flash back to his childhood its of him running and laughing, which granted is likely just to signify he was a child and more innocent whatever, but Chrollo himself seems like he could also just be emotionally underdeveloped. When the older Zoldycks refrain from finishing their death match, he flops back on the ground with his arms out and pouts because he didn’t get his way. He loves his friends deeply but believes they don’t care if he lives or dies, showing an obliviousness that’s too solidly based on the rules he set rather than observable data.
The way Chrollo treats other people as windows into his own psyche and likely humanity as a whole, paired with his sadistic murder of a man before the York New massacre, leaves plenty of room for him to manipulate, torment, torture, and simply mislead others for the sake of researching them and in turn himself. This mixed with not understanding that his friend’s would miss him if he died shows he has room to be written as emotionally and romantically underdeveloped and oblivious. He may not understand what he’s feeling when he likes someone, he may not know how to return genuine feelings of love, care, trust, etc in order to KEEP a serious relationship. To come up against this given genuinely to him, he may realize he enjoys it and try to play along in order to get more of it, but due to his insincerity he’d lose it anyway and not know where he went wrong, then shrug and mark it up as another reason he is outside of humanity, oh well.
One trope that I despise is what I like to call Gentleman Scholar Chrollo. This is a man who appears to be from high society, extremely well read and insightful, dashing, cleanly, romantic if unsettling, and of course deeply mysterious with a dark underbelly. I hate it, it’s so clearly imported from fantasy manga and it never gets written in a way that meshes well with canon, even in his actions. He may be a number of these things, but it mostly matches something he would try to put on as a facade, and at that, one that would show cracks if only you looked. It’s entirely possible for Chrollo to be painted as these things, but it would be best paired with a number of flaws, cracks, unintended (on his part) hypocrisies, and also as a personality he wears like a change of clothes. When he’s escorting Neon he clearly displays a more playful and charming personality, which I believe is what this trope stems from, and even while he does this he cries from her fortune and seems hurt/insulted when she calls him old and weird. Even while pretending to be a gentleman in order to use Neon he lets himself slip through, any mask he uses would be imperfect.
Chrollo is a strange and genuinely mysterious character, but in a way that leaves plenty of room to play with it rather than playing him straight as he tries to make himself seem. He does have feelings, he acts in a largely childish, if reserved, way, and while he doesn’t seem to care about anyone outside his spiders, he may still become possessive and even jealous of a lover or friend or other connection outside his gang. If he gets close or views them as a conquest, it’s possible for him to attempt to latch on, and oh so many things can go deliciously wrong when he does.
[EDIT] It has been brought to my attention that I’ve described a very real disorder, so here is the wiki article for Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) for further reading.
So first it’s a good idea to think about where Chrollo came from, that being Meteor City (MC), a place where everything comes from the trash including the people. Most if not all of the inhabitants were thrown away to die or live according to fate, and I think it’s safe to say Chrollo was abandoned as a baby, long before he would even form memories of his parents. So we have a child who clearly survived this, but how? Well, we also know that the residents of MC will die for each other en mass just to get back at the murder of one of their own. Chrollo is probably raised like a stray dog but just slightly more intense when he’s too small to move on his own. He’s given milk until he can walk, and then he just wanders around and is looked out for in general by the other people living around him.
We do not know when the Phantom Troupe (PT) was formed, only that the original members were from MC and that it was before the Kurta massacre. Chrollo when we meet him is 26, he was about 21 when the Kurta were killed, so he was likely in his late teens when he created his gang as it is known. That said, he was likely already friends with a few of if not all of the original members. So, Chrollo was a kid who was raised by a group society that protects and is only loyal to its own, because it is a society that was literally thrown away by the surrounding societies. This is probably part of why the PT believe that only their members are of importance to the other members, and beyond that they are loyal to MC (defending it from the chimera ant invasion), and anyone outside of that can either survive under their own merit or perish.
Chrollo also seems to not understand why he does the things that he does outside the range of… well, he could, he had the momentum, and it was enjoyable or at least not unenjoyable to do. He is callus, sadistic, greedy, and possessive, with no real sense of self, and no real goals. He lives to lead the PT, understanding who he is along the way. It appears that, where Chrollo was given opportunities to create himself from the ground up, he based it solely off aesthetics and then decided “store bought is fine” for the rest, depending on his friends and his conquests to outline who he is. The PT functions as a bully hive-mind; they do what the do because they are strong enough not to be stopped. Hurting people and stealing benefits them, has always benefited them, and they have they have no reason to change because it will continue to benefit them until they all inevitably die and are replaced.
Into the realm of headcanon.
Chrollo gives off the vibe of someone who would mansplain Marxist theory to me while using a black sharpie he shoplifted from Walmart to color his nails, goes to house parties he’s not invited to and then drunkenly gives people stick ’n’ poke tattoos, and enjoys nasty dirt cheap beer over expensive drinks he flaunts for the sake of flaunting. He is a try-hard who may actually have a very extensive knowledge base, but draws all the wrong, surface-level conclusions from yet believes he is a philosopher regardless. He collects antique books (canon) and likely reads them too, but just as likely does not or has his spiders read them to him. Shalnark has a Hunter’s license, and Chrollo may as well but it’s unclear. He is number 0 in the PT (canon) and likely thinks this is very deep.
The spider is likely not his first attempt at self actualization. I like to think he not only picked his own name (basically, Christ Lucifer) but that, due to some of his aesthetics, it may have been crow related (He absolutely would like that a group of crows is called a murder, it’s just too on brand). When we flash back to his childhood its of him running and laughing, which granted is likely just to signify he was a child and more innocent whatever, but Chrollo himself seems like he could also just be emotionally underdeveloped. When the older Zoldycks refrain from finishing their death match, he flops back on the ground with his arms out and pouts because he didn’t get his way. He loves his friends deeply but believes they don’t care if he lives or dies, showing an obliviousness that’s too solidly based on the rules he set rather than observable data.
The way Chrollo treats other people as windows into his own psyche and likely humanity as a whole, paired with his sadistic murder of a man before the York New massacre, leaves plenty of room for him to manipulate, torment, torture, and simply mislead others for the sake of researching them and in turn himself. This mixed with not understanding that his friend’s would miss him if he died shows he has room to be written as emotionally and romantically underdeveloped and oblivious. He may not understand what he’s feeling when he likes someone, he may not know how to return genuine feelings of love, care, trust, etc in order to KEEP a serious relationship. To come up against this given genuinely to him, he may realize he enjoys it and try to play along in order to get more of it, but due to his insincerity he’d lose it anyway and not know where he went wrong, then shrug and mark it up as another reason he is outside of humanity, oh well.
One trope that I despise is what I like to call Gentleman Scholar Chrollo. This is a man who appears to be from high society, extremely well read and insightful, dashing, cleanly, romantic if unsettling, and of course deeply mysterious with a dark underbelly. I hate it, it’s so clearly imported from fantasy manga and it never gets written in a way that meshes well with canon, even in his actions. He may be a number of these things, but it mostly matches something he would try to put on as a facade, and at that, one that would show cracks if only you looked. It’s entirely possible for Chrollo to be painted as these things, but it would be best paired with a number of flaws, cracks, unintended (on his part) hypocrisies, and also as a personality he wears like a change of clothes. When he’s escorting Neon he clearly displays a more playful and charming personality, which I believe is what this trope stems from, and even while he does this he cries from her fortune and seems hurt/insulted when she calls him old and weird. Even while pretending to be a gentleman in order to use Neon he lets himself slip through, any mask he uses would be imperfect.
Chrollo is a strange and genuinely mysterious character, but in a way that leaves plenty of room to play with it rather than playing him straight as he tries to make himself seem. He does have feelings, he acts in a largely childish, if reserved, way, and while he doesn’t seem to care about anyone outside his spiders, he may still become possessive and even jealous of a lover or friend or other connection outside his gang. If he gets close or views them as a conquest, it’s possible for him to attempt to latch on, and oh so many things can go deliciously wrong when he does.
[EDIT] It has been brought to my attention that I’ve described a very real disorder, so here is the wiki article for Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) for further reading.
