#castlevania meta

[asha-mage]

There is something so delicious about the fact that Drolta chose vampirism- claimed it with her own two hands. Skewered the vampire that attacked her and drank his blood instead.

Drolta flips so many scripts- she's Erzsebet's lieutenant but Drolta is the one with all the power in their relationship and the mastermind of their scheme. She is Sekhmet's high priestess but it's Drolta that cares more for the faithful and struggles to bring salvation to the flock while Sekhmet seems unwilling or unable to intercede. She becomes a Nightcreature and in her first breath rejects the idea that her creator can control her.

Is it any surprise that the moment she realizes Erzsebet isn't invincible, isn't powerful enough to withstand the heroes, she flips the script again and claims Erzsebet's divinity for herself?

Deep down Drolta is still that woman who when being kind, being gentle, being a healer, being human, wasn't enough to save herself or her people, killed those parts of herself and never looked back.

[alpaca-clouds]

If I had a penny for every time a Belmont got startled by a fox...

So, @aquilaofarkham pointed this out on BlueSky, and is totally right about it (they made the screenshots to, thanks for allowing me to use them!). Why I clocked this scene in Nocturne as well - I actually did not draw the comparison to the Trevor season 3 scene. But yes, that is indeed...

If I got a penny for every time a Belmont got startled by a fox, I would have two pennies, which is not a lot, but it is weird it happened twice.

And you know what that means, right?

THEORY TIME!!!

As some people might know: Since season 1 of Nocturne was out, I am very very certain of one thing. And that thing is, that the Belmont bloodline also goes back to a god.

In S1 of Nocturne when Annette talks about her own divine bloodline, she says a lot of people do have a divine ancestor, but the knowledge got lost. And to me this instantly read as: "Actually, by the way, the Belmonts totally have a divine ancestor as well!"

And I have been riddling since then, who it could be.

So, what if the fox is a representation of that ancestor?

Yes. This does mean I get to talk mythology again.

So, foxes. In early European folklore the fox is basically equivalent to coyote in North American folklore. Especially in Germany and France Reynard or Reinecken shows up a lot as a trickster spirit in the form of a fox. While there are some theories on Reynard somewhat going back to an actual deity, we kinda don't know about that for sure, because we have absolutely no textual evidence for it, and it mostly goes back to the fact that throughout the area in early medieval times the depiction of Reynard as a trickster is very very consistent - and also lines up with more eastern depictions of fox adjacant deities. Since we know that those are connected through Indo-European culture group it is not so weird to assume that there might have been a fox trickster deity, though if there was, we do not know their name.

But the good news is: The Belmonts are French in origin, and we do know from Trevor that they had contact to indigenous European people (aka the Celts). So, the highest likelihood for a divine ancestor is definitely a Celtic god or goddess.

Now, if we talk about Celtic deities we obviously run into the problem: Outside the Gaelic culture we know Jack Shit. Because fuck the fucking Romans and fuck the Christians even more, who very thoroughly erased most stuff about those religions. My anthropology heart does not spend three hours a day crying about this fact at all!!!!

Of course, we know the Celtic cultures were related, so there is a high likelihood that at least some of the deities from the Gaelic culture will also show up in the Gaulic culture, but we do not know for certain.

Which on the bright side also means, that my guess is about as good as whatever the writers might come up with. Hooray!

So, my first guess is Adsagsona. A goddess about whom we know exactly nothing. We know she was a goddess of magic, who was invoked in spells. And we have the suspicion she was maybe linked to foxes. Maybe. Because the thing is, we do have one written evidence of her being invoked, and some artifacts from the same area she was invoked in that might be related to her and the practice of magic. Which is not a lot. Cool bit about that, of course: It would totally give a writer freedom to make up whatever about this.

Next guess would be Arduinna. She was a forest goddess who got merged with Diana when the Romans colonized what is France today. She definitely got depicted a lot with forest animals, and definitely also was connected to the hunt (which works well with the Belmonts), though the preferred animal for her to be paired with was either the deer or the boar. Which, I would guess, makes sense, because people hunted those more for food than they would hunt foxes.

A bit more vague would be the god Cunomaglus. Because he is British, not Gallic, though definitely he is a hunting god, and while his main animal was the dog, he definitely got also depicted with foxes. No doubt about that bit. xD

Next up would be a probably related god to Cunomaglus: Nodens. Again, British. Again, hunting. Again, the main animal are gods. I would not know about him being depicted with foxes, but given he has a lot of overlap with Cunomaglus I would also not be surprised. Bonus points, because I know there is fandom-overlap between GDT's Hellboy movies and Castlevania: Nuada is based on the Irish equivalent to Nodens, and draws a lot of influence from the Brittanic god.

If we go a bit more wild, we could also make a guess for Ceres, though that one would be a bit weird. Ceres is of course a Roman Goddess, but Romans were also in France forever, so it is not impossible. Ceres is heavily associated with foxes, though mainly in the sense that foxes are sacrificed for her. But there is a fox association.

There is also with the Roman gods a very loose association with both Dionysus and Diana. But Diana usually gets depicted with dogs and stags, and for Dionysus there is exactly one myth linking him to foxes. So... Eh.

Lastly... I will just leave here that Diana's Slavic equivalent, Devana, actually gets depicted as a fox more than once. But Slavic culture is kinda on the other end of Europe. So it is possible, but also... Eh. It is a far bit away. But then again, the Belmonts lived in today's Romania for a long while, so it is not impossible, I guess.

And that's it. For today at least.

But I wanted to get this off my chest.

[jilted-love]

Since Alucard is the one who told Olrox to keep Mizrak, I think he is the reason why Olrox turns his lovers to be immortal with him. Alucard cannot turn the Belmonts and make them vampires because he's a damphir and probably doesn't have a potent blood to turn them. That's why he likes to watch a vampire doing it to his lovers instead so he could see another person getting to live longer with their lovers and possibly leading happier lives than Alucard could have. Alucard lost a lot of Belmonts until he got tired of them dying. He also fell in love countless of times. It's not impossible for him to have thought about turning one Belmont at least once and failing to do so because he's just not a full-blooded vampire. That must have been the last straw before he left the Belmonts.

[can-of-pringles]

To be honest I want some sort of actual deep dive thing into the scene where Alucard said he grew up very fast literally. Like is it a Twilight creepy Renesme thing? Did he grow fast physically and then mentally he got caught up at some point? Or both physically and mentally he had extremely fast growing? How long did he actually look like a child? It seems like once he reached 19/20 he was done growing (from a physical standpoint)

I just want to know the answers!

[herrdoktorat]

What was your final verdict on Castlevania Nocturne season 2?

I liked it! I do think the first season had better pacing and a better sense of location though. I feel like the setting being Machecoul and not Paris ultimately contributed nothing to the plot, and we didn't walk away with a particularly clear picture of Machecoul either, which is strange because all the towns in the first series felt unique and developed in their own ways. Everyone was making the trip to and fro as though they were next door instead of a four hour drive via highway, and we never really saw anyone in Machecoul reacting to the horror unfolding before them. We don't know what they thought about most of the nobles straight up dying, nor about their church suddenly having no monks and later on no Abbot. Did we even see them react to either eclipse apart from closing their windows...? I can't remember. I can't remember the people of Machecoul doing anything except stand silently while Erzsebet gave her speeches. Maria and Tera lived there all their lives, and Maria had ostensibly been promoting the Revolution for quite some time, but after that one guy was turned into a night creature early in season 1, it's like their presence in town was tied exclusively to the Abbot. I feel like we actually know more about the little neighbouring village Juste lived in than about Machecoul.

Though I appreciated her return and fantastic backstory, I never got the sense Drolta was actually meant to be in this season either. I don't know for sure whether they brought her back because she was immensely popular or not, but it certainly felt like it. This was most notable in how everything the season 1 finale set up (Tera's vampiric subservience, the night creatures actually being indispensable to Erzsebet's plan, etc) was thrown out the window to bring Drolta back, and then after that none of their plans particularly mattered anymore as the writers seemingly embraced Erzsebet being sort of a disappointment and just had Drolta's new superpowered self handle any problems. This could have been meant to show that Erzsebet was always a puppet, but I actually had the opposite impression in the previous season. I thought she would be all talk and then in the season finale she proved she wasn't. Instead of raising the stakes though, she just kinda flounced back into one of her ugly dresses and complained about being bored. I didn't even get a sense of betrayal from her when Drolta took the Sekhmet powers back; it's like they intentionally simplified her character. This was especially jarring after Erzsebet proved to actually be loyal to Drolta earlier in the season, not accepting Tera as her replacement and bringing her back from the dead. Don't you think she should have had more to say than "you're my servant, obey me"?

Other than that, though, I think Maria and Annette both had good character development. Annette's culture and religion felt respected and integrated in a way I have never seen done before, and although I am not a fan of the awkward young love angle she and Richter were giving all season, it wasn't done badly. Maria, bless her angsty little heart, had every reason to be angry and resentful, her character arc proved she and the Abbot are similar in ways she would hate to see pointed out, and obviously she's not doing alright by the end of the season—but Richter didn't notice, which I thought was very interesting.

In my mind, Richter thought he was respecting Maria as an adult when he asked her what she wanted to do, and instead of protesting simply announced he was doing something different, but we viewers could see that it gutted her. The whole reason she managed to restore balance to her magic was by finally admitting that she and Richter were a family, which is an idea she had been resisting throughout both seasons due to her complicated paternal circumstances and general teenagerhood. Finally she comes to terms with it, and then Richter just up and leaves. Richter did not intend it, but he basically abandoned her, which makes her three for three on family leaving her behind. Richter seemed to think she'd be alright with Juste, whom he'd accepted as family earlier, but Maria never actually did that, she only just warmed up to him! In a way, she's in the exact position Richter was at the beginning of season 1, stuck with a distant relative after losing her parents and her magic in traumatic circumstances. No wonder she's angry. No wonder there's a darkness in her.

I feel like maybe Alucard noticed, because Trevor and Sypha (also unintentionally, though they were little more than acquaintances at the time) did the same thing to him in the first series? Who knows though. That's why I'm hoping desperately that they greenlight a third season set a couple years in the future, with green, adult Maria in all her glory.

Let's see, what else... I think we can all agree that Edouard's quiet revolution ended on a whimper instead of a bang, yeah? I never thought it would be about night creatures fighting amongst themselves. I thought all of them would team up to take on Erzsebet and maybe even carve a niche afterwards. Edouard's singing was a great first step towards reawakening the night creatures's souls. I expected the next step to be them talking amongst themselves, figuring out what they actually wanted out of this new life. We got... some... of that, via his talks with the Frozen Shade? I feel like she awakened entirely too fast and then it was mainly about motivating her, which felt strange. How come none of the other night creatures got the ability to talk? Not even the revolutionary guy who died early in season 1? Why did half the night creatures fight for Erzsebet anyway? Especially with the Abbot dead. Wouldn't it have been much more interesting if half of them actually, consciously decided to side with Erzsebet? Maybe that's what happened but we certainly didn't hear it. The whole point of him staying in captivity became kind of muddled because of this.

Incidentally, this ties a little bit with my issue with Tera's vampirism. I really wish we categorically knew what being turned into a vampire does to a person, because it's done to Mizrak and we are supposed to feel some triumph about it. Obviously vampires have souls and the capacity for love and good. The former was more or less proven when the machine was capable of bringing Drolta back to life, although it also raised questions about how it works. Isaac and Hector used dead bodies to host damned souls directly from hell, who would then serve them because it was better than being in hell, more or less. Emmanuel's machine seemed, instead, to bring back the souls of the deceased back to their own bodies and subsequently transform them into demons? Perhaps damning their souls in the process?

Anyway. I thought it was strange that everyone seemed entirely eager to give night creatures a chance, but did not extend the same courtesy towards vampires. Why is that, I wonder? What's so bad about vampirism that Juste, who unlike Richter actually learned the lore of his family, seemed completely unable to believe Tera was still good after being turned? Unfortunately that question went unanswered, and not even intentionally so. Someone in the comments of my Tera post pointed out she'd been messing with that book in season 1 and even started being influenced by it, so her vampirism may not have mattered much at all to the situation, apart from, you know, Tera being turned into the thing she hated the most by the same vampire who ruined her family and her life. I still feel like they should have made it more clear though.

Despite all this, I really did like the season. Alucard was gorgeous, Maria was amazing, the action was fantastic, the animation was beautiful, and it gave me lots to think about, which the first season also did. Probably the only reason I feel a bit more critical of it is that some of the missteps were pacing and writing issues, whereas the first season was just a tighter package overall. Especially knowing that season 3 wasn't guaranteed, that made me go through the whole show with a terrible dread that they'd leave too many things unfinished and unanswered.

Fortunately, they didn't.

[melancholia00]

Sis do you think we will going to get a more complex point of view about colonialism in later seasons?

I do hope so because on how the writers of the show has interwoven colonialism within the universe by having vampires from old houses develop a symbiotic relationship with the human dukes, kings, and nobles. And seeing in Annette's past of vampire nobles enslaving humans in plantations. I have a rather dark theory that vampires and human colonizers worked together in the Atlantic slave trade that benefited the two factions. The human colonizers get an economic boom and free labor out of it while vampires get more abundance of blood to drink from enslaved humans. I hope the show touches upon it more and explaining it to us how white settler colonialism and vampirism works just how they handle Annette's past. I did talk before how I praised how the writers shown Annette's childhood growing up in the plantations without it resulting into slavery torture porn.

I want to see of black resistance of the maroons because we don't see much of black resistance fighting against white settlers. From the many reviews on Youtube it wasn't well recieved with subjects of racism and colonialism and complaints of the show suddenly becoming "woke" because it delivered topics of slavery, racism, and colonialization. I do hope the show doesn't placate to the criticism and just sugar coat anything but keep pushing the narrative of colonialism. I am not voodoo, I don't know a lick about voodoo religion or practice but I heard from voodoo priests and practioners giving out negative criticism the portrayal is wrong. I do hope the writers fix that and hire voodoo practioners and how to portray the practice and religion accurately.

Hopefully the show will touch upon New World Vampires vs Old World vampires. We got a glimpse of it in the show where Drolta was gassing up Bathory to Olrox and he wasn't having it. It shows the difference that between the two. Just because they are vampires and rule over humans there is a fundlemental differences between the two. When Drolta was giving her story about her hey day being a temple priestess and creating a another world. Olrox cheekily says he heard all about it before because during Olrox's long life how many times have he'd heard about white settlers with inflated egos boosting about creating a new world and empire? Cortes? Pizaro? Columbus? Aguirre? George Washington? King George II? The countless of conquistadors and presidents? He has heard it all before of creating a new world that is build on the backs of the already indigenous population. *cough*Palestine *cough* My man is fatigued and which explains why he was so blase about it prior to meeting Bathory.

For his many centuries he lived he can smell white settler fuckery a mile away. With Drolta gassing up Bathory to Olrox, her mistake is that Olrox had already seen his entire culture eradicated in order to create a "new world," And he's obviously not so hyped about seeing another new world being created in the backs of oppressed groups. When Olrox arrives to the chateux he's visibly uncomfortable, it shows just because they are all vampires it doesn't change the fact that he is an indigenous man entering a white space.

Get Out 2017

From the show its been said that vampires originated from the Old World and were brought to the New World by exploration and colonization.

Olrox being a vampire he is a very young and not even 300 yet! So there is a difference in of longevity and experence between Olrox and the Old World vampires along with stagnation in their thinking. The Old World vampires wanting to return back into their glory days and for Olrox, their glory days were his dark ages. And the vampires want to return to a world were vampires are able to rule over humans and govern themselves by blocking the sun. And Olrox who's entire culture is worshiping the sun is horrified and this shows not only the difference between the Old and New World vampires but also culturally. Old World vampires see themselves above the humans the way they use and discard them and talk to them in the most condescending and dehumanizing way.

With Olrox's interactons with humans he doesn't speak to them with the same condescension or talked down to Mizrak as if he's a stupid animal. He's incredibly candid with Mizrak and speaking to him as equals. With Julia when he speaks about her he's never vile towards her even though she took the love of his life and he never mocks Richter for having an anxiety attack and running away from the crypt. Unlike Drolta who mocks Richter and calling him the "boy who ran away."

I pointed out that the difference and this scene blantanly shown when Olrox is forced to bow before Erzsebet and her cultist and guiding her to America. Which is wrong in so many levels. Take out the vampirism, you are forcing an indigenous man to take a white colonizer into his home and enslave everybody to bow down to a white settler colonizer and parade her as a God? And if they don't? She'll starve them and they'd be so hungry they'll have to eat their own vomit. By the look Olrox gave her, she sealed her death warrent.

This immediately brought to toughts of La Malinche.

La Malinche story needs to be taken with a grain of salt. She was sold to Cortez as a child and later became his interpreter and lover and betrayed her people. Its said with her help Cortex was able to conquer the Aztec empire. And this is exactly what Bathory needs Olrox. To guide her to America, to betray his people, and be her interpreter and advisor just how La Malinche was to Cortez.

This will be extremely touchy especially what happened to the Americas during colonialism and how it had effects people to this day. The show has already touched upon it just slightly on the Casta System.

Annette was literally running away from slave catchers and she met Edouard in the concert hall. She was dressed in rags while he was dressed in finary. They are both black but Edouard is mixed white european and many of the mulattos were part of the bourgeoisies. The Haitian mulattos were looked down upon by both the white upper class and the black enslaved class and they would be use to which faction suited them to push out whatever cause.

Historically Edouard and Annette wouldn't be friends because most of the mulattos idenitfied with the ruling French and their culture and also took part of the slave holding. That being said they took a part of the oppression of other black people and as a result they were slaughtered along with the white bourgeosies during the Haitian Revolution.

I am bringing the Casta System because it effected heavily on the Americas as well. Many Latinos have white european colonizers, Native American, and african ancestry. I don't know if the writers are going to focus on the Casta System and latinos and how the erasure of culture has effected them. Olrox talks about how his land had been stolen but it will dive deeper to that on how the next generation has suffered with the slow erosion of their languages, and culture and slowly converting over time to Christianity and Catholicism. Forgetting their tribes, their names, their ancestors. And to be put into these boxes like pedigree.

The violence wil be explored on what colonialism has caused and the result. As of right now with the current events of groups of people being displaced from their own land, erasure of culture, languages, and customs, not being able to practice their own religion. Ethnically cleansing a people and being forced to convert or die. Bringing up subjects of colonialzation has never been more prevelant until now.

[wrath-ruin-reddawn]

Glad Castlevania Avoided this Cliche...

I'm sure everyone's aware of the tired "expectant father becomes overbearing and overprotective" trope, and I'm really happy that Castlevania didn't use it. Not only did it not use it, it also showed Trevor being a fucking stellar partner to Sypha. Follow me down the rabbit hole, if you will.....

So, I think that Sypha first notices that her period is late about 2 weeks before they arrive in Targoviste. During her (admittedly very funny) outburst, she tells Trevor:

Which is ostensibly about her swearing, but if we read in between the lines a little it could easily be about a pregnancy as well.

Now, Trevor knows that Sypha's pregnant by the time they rejoin Alucard, which is only a few days at most after they reach Targoviste. So, when he encourages Sypha to sit and chat with him in the abandoned house, he already knows. While he's being honest about wanting to plan a strategy, he's also giving her a quiet, secluded place to confide in him, if she feels like it. (Which she doesn't, because she's actually less sure of her own pregnancy than Trevor is.)

The next day, while walking around town, Sypha mentions that she's been "caught up in the adventure"

This is a clear reference to her suspicions. There's really nothing else that Sypha's forgotten. And Trevor's response is loaded! He asks, "Such as?" with a tone of voice that manages to be soft, but somewhat pointed-- it's pretty clear that he's trying to encourage Sypha to tell him what's going on. He's desperate to talk to her about it, but wants to give her the space to tell him in her own time.

Unfortunately, Sypha never gets the chance. Which is why, with what he thinks may be his last words, Trevor subtly addresses the elephant in the room-- with a joke, of course, because he's Trevor Belmont. It's his way of telling her that he knows, and that he supports her. It also carries an additional meaning: Trevor's asking her to not name the child after him, to not feel beholden to him or his memory, but to live for herself. God I love this man so much.

And, in addition to all of this, Trevor never treats Sypha differently after he finds out. He doesn't get jealous, or possessive. During the entire fight in the Underground Court and in Dracula's Castle, he never once insinuates that she stay behind or not participate, because he trusts her and respects her as a warrior. And it's such a pleasant surprise, because many, many series seem to think that it's sweet when a man becomes so "concerned" for a pregnant spouse that he starts acting like a domineering asshole. But Castlevania smartly avoids that tired cliche, because Trevor's not Sypha's guardian, he's her partner.

[the-velvet-worm]

You know what’s getting me the most about the finale? Those two weeks in between then and the last episode, Alucard was the one keeping his shit together. Alucard, who’s been competing with Trevor for who’s the least mentally and emotionally stable for the entire show. Alucard, who lost his mother and his father within the span of a year and never really worked through his feelings surrounding that. Alucard, who completely lost his shit within a month of Trevor and Sypha leaving. Alucard, who went on a six-week depressive bender between this season and the last. 

Alucard kept it together... and Sypha was the one who was a mess. 

That has literally never happened over the span of all four seasons. Sypha was always the one keeping the team in check, calling out Trevor on his rudeness, calling out Alucard on his immaturity, keeping things together when everyone else is well, being themselves. 

And after months of nonstop fighting, Sypha finally stopped. All she wanted for weeks on end was a moment’s rest. And she finally had it, but she was alone, which was the one thing she never wanted - it’s something that comes up a lot in her story, when she said goodbye to her caravan in the beginning of season two, later in that same season when she told Trevor she was lonely in the Belmont hold. She was alone, and she was without Trevor. For the first time since they’d met, she didn’t have him. I can’t even begin to imagine what was going through her head. 

And to top it all off, at some point over the course of the last several weeks, Sypha realized she was pregnant. I have a sneaking suspicion that they conceived the baby in Lindenfeld, meaning that Sypha is somewhere around six weeks pregnant. (You can have a positive pregnancy test as soon as two weeks after doing the deed). So not only does Sypha have to take this time to come to terms with Trevor being gone, she also has to grapple with the fact that she has to raise their baby alone. Of course, she’d been planning on rejoining her caravan (wherever the hell they are) but I don’t think when she realized she was pregnant that the thought of doing everything more or less on her own ever occurred to her. The thing is, Sypha has never been alone, that’s something that, like I said, comes up a lot with her - feeling lonely in the library, prompting Trevor to share his blanket with her and offer her a safe space where she wouldn’t have to be alone, even if he himself wasn’t entirely present. Trevor was on his own for several years before meeting Sypha and Alucard, and yet he still wouldn’t let her be alone, even though he didn’t think he needed anyone. And Greta has that effect on Alucard in season four as well (although that’s kind of a different topic).

The point being that Sypha cannot be alone. She needs a community around her, and she can only thrive and do what she does best when she has the support and love of her community around her, and when she can pour that same support and love back into the community. That’s what makes that moment where Alucard reaches out and takes her hand and offers her a place in his community - their community - so beautiful, and truthfully, it made me tear up a little. Alucard is the one who brings her back down from this weird trance she’s been in for weeks, and I think he’s the only one who even could have gotten through to her after that - because he knew what she was feeling. Maybe not exactly, but he has dealt a lot throughout the series with grief and loss and loneliness. 

So... while I love that Trevor came back in the end (surprise!) I also love that Alucard was able to get through to Sypha, that he refused to let her push him away, and he refused to let her leave this time. It’s a direct contrast to the last time they parted ways - he didn’t want to let Sypha (and Trevor) go, but he let them because he didn’t feel like he deserved to have them around, he felt that he deserved to be alone after what he went through, after what he did. Going back to the conversation Trevor and Sypha had in the hold, Sypha described Alucard’s sadness as “an icy well,” explaining how she felt lonely even just standing next to him because of it. But throughout the last season, he learned how to process that sadness, to let others in, through the help of Greta and her people and allowing himself to join their community and start to figure out how not to be alone. And I just think that’s really beautiful and not talked about enough.