Yes, exactly! There's a reason you're one of the tiny handful of writers whose work in the fandom I really love. I'm just saying. They're terrible people, but they're not one-dimensionally terrible; they live in a complex universe and their own complexity matches it. The mercy, when it shows up, isn't pastede on yay! to keep the characters from being too hateful for the assumed audience. It's organic, and the proof that it works is that it never feels contradictory.

I wonder whether Lizzie isn't -- well, not a stand-in for the audience, exactly, because Lizzie is Lizzie. But there's a way in which since the Campania arc, I think she may function to give readers permission to love Sebastian and Ciel. She doesn't know the worst about them, but she clearly knows a hell of a lot, and her own fundamental goodness shines through everything she does and says. If she loves them anyway (and she plainly does), why shouldn't we?