I couldn’t resist snapping this quick screen shot from the end credits of Black Butler (Kuroshitsuji) episode 14: His Butler, Supremely Talented. Sebastian and Ciel on a funeral gondola! Very dying-Venice, don’t you think?
(But no, Black Butler isn’t about Venice at all; the image is set on the Thames for some odd reason.)
Fore more on various anime versions of Venice, see my posts about Hetalia and Aria….
I wrote in September that I’d decided to take my own “Imagining Venice” challenge by writing a story about an imaginary Venice. Here’s a bit from the very beginning of that story, “Code of Blood,” which will be published in Corsets & Clockwork in May 2011 — exactly when our class will be leaving for Venice! And yes, we’ll be standing exactly where Chiara’s standing, although I sincerely hope we won’t hear any gunfire while we’re there.
Pushing through the shoulder-to-shoulder mob was impossible. Everybody in the city seemed to have collected along the fondamenta, from fishmongers to foreigners to fashionably dressed nobles, all pressed together without concern for rank or gender. Nobody seemed inclined to make room for anybody else.
Chiara squirmed and twisted to the water’s edge. Ornate, gilded boats bobbed around the massive bulk of the Bucintoro like cygnets around a mother swan. The Bucintoro itself, its great, two-decked body adorned with a riot of gilded clockwork sirens, hydras, putti, and zephyrs, loomed over the Molo. A removable walkway draped with flags and ribbons and wreaths swung from its top deck to the piazzetta.
And there, in the piazzetta, she spotted a crowd of ceremonially robed councilors surrounding her grandfather, the doge of Venezia, Carlo Dandolo.
Somebody jostled her and she nearly lost her footing. Grabbing the nearest arm, Chiara pulled herself away from the water with a quick apology and then darted the bystander’s merry attempt to catch her around the waist. His laughter followed her as she hid behind a group of heavyset grandmothers who were barreling their way through the crowd with the implacable dignity of age and righteousness. Chiara meekly followed in their wake.
Crossing the Ponte di Paglia was another struggle, but her advance guard of nonne battled through, spitting dire imprecations in fierce Veneziano. Chiara stayed close behind.
She had just set foot on the other side of the bridge when she heard a series of sharp reports. For a moment she thought somebody had set off fireworks, but then an explosion ripped through the air and people began screaming….
Thank you, Trisha, for giving me permission to excerpt it here! (If you’re interested in the anthology, you can pre-order it from Amazon here.)
On Campus Poster
You may not register for ART/COMM 285: Imagining Venice without an instructor’s approval. If you haven’t picked up an application form from Study Abroad already, be certain to do it now: fill it in and get a faculty member’s recommendation sent back to the office by Nov. 29.
Terry and I will be choosing about 14 to 16 students from the applicant pool.
If you’d like more information about the trip before you make a decision, please come see us at the Imagining Venice information session in the Nelson Room (behind the Study Abroad office, on the parking-lot side of the building). We’ll be there tomorrow — Tuesday — 11/9 at 4:30 p.m. to answer questions. Much of the information we expect to go over is already here on the website, but this will be a chance to ask anything we haven’t covered already. 
If your parents are local and want to drop by to ask questions, that’s fine with us, as well!