The unreliability of memory
Hi okay I want to talk about this gorgeous freaking credit sequence
Okay, all done looking at the pretty gifs?
What I specifically want to talk about is what this sequence says about memory and how symbolic it is and how terrible we are at it, and also some things about unreliable narration and so on. Because I have seen so many people say things like WHY DIDN’T ALUCARD JUST SAVE HIS MOM and WHY DID TREVOR SAY HE WAS 12 IF HE LOOKS LIKE AN ADULT IN THE CREDITS and I just. yeah. memory vs factual reporting of events. we’re gonna talk about this.
Yeah, I gotcha. He doesn’t look remotely 12. He is also not, imo, reacting like I’d expect a 12yo to react, even a badass one raised by hunters. He was a KID. I would expect anger, sure, but also fear, and shock. Shocked horror, I guess. This, though? This is pure, unadulterated rage, and the bitterness of years of ruminating on the fact that there’s nothing at all you can do to stop something terrible. This is almost like he’s stuck in a nightmare replaying of that night, however many years later, because both nightmares and memories have this tendency to insert us into them as we currently perceive ourselves. Right now, in the show’s timeline, he is older and angrier and the shock has pretty much worn off, so that’s what we see in this memory–even though the moment could never have really looked like this. Do you think two random priests or townspeople could have held back a fully-grown Belmont with that much rage in his heart? Probably not without, say, breaking both his legs, and even then maybe not. The memory exists because the moment happened, but with a shocked, terrified boy hanging there between those two assholes, not a strangely helpless version of the powerhouse we know grown!Trevor to be.
He is remembering it as if he had been then as he is now. This is a really, really common memory distortion! Let’s call it Memory Error #1: I’ve always been like this.
Sorry, couldn’t find a good shot of what I actually want to talk about, which is the silhouette of a man stopping in the mouth of the alley, looking ominously down into it at the Speakers as the rest of the crowd moves on obliviously. Specifically the fact that he is just a shadow, he has no face, no defining characteristics. This isn’t one specific memory of a particular event where her family group was targeted for harassment in this way–it’s an amalgamation of dozens, if not hundreds of similar situations and events that have imprinted on her as ‘the way things have always been’. Someone stops and stares; she has to hide herself before the stare lingers too long. This exact alley probably didn’t exist. It was just a setting her memory invented to remember ALL of these incidents against, smashed together into one memory that feels formative and important.
She is remembering a large number of similar situations, none of which were that incredibly significant on their own, pressed together into one that, taken with that weight, IS significant. Also a super common memory distortion. Memory Error #2: Many become one.
So, up to this point, the idea that these are not in fact literal representations of the events they’re describing has been something I’ve just asked you to take my word on. But no longer. Look at this. LOOK AT THIS. HE ALREADY HAS HIS INJURY. That is just, plain and simple, not what freaking happened. He also was never alone in front of Lisa’s pyre in this way; there were never not hundreds of people gathered around. See, I can buy that he was there, hidden away somewhere, trying desperately (and failing) to come up with a way to save her that didn’t involve hurting anyone. But this dramatic moment, with the wound and the completely deserted town square? This is not a thing that happened. This is Alucard, in his head, compressing everything that happened in those few days down to a single moment that he can actually try to process–because at this moment, Lisa died, and from that point onward, everything else was inevitable. Dracula had to react the way he did, and Alucard had to challenge him on it, and Dracula had to injure him, and a year later, had to die at his son’s hand. All of that happened in this moment, basically, because there was no altering course from this point on. It’s no surprise he would remember it as if he already had that wound, because in temporally deterministic terms, he DID.
He’s compressing an entire sequence of horrible events into a single moment in which they all ‘occurred’, in order to simplify the memory and make it easier to bear. Also common! Memory Error #3: You died when my mother died.
So, yeah. Basically, these are not meant to be the showrunners telling you exactly what happened. They’re showing you the memories the characters have of these formative events, and like all memory, they’re fragmented, imperfect, and subject to revision, even unintentionally. It’s not that Trevor, Sypha, and Alucard are inherently unreliable narrators, or at least, no more so than anyone is. But brains in general ARE unreliable narrators, and that’s just something we have to accept and learn to deal with.
