#(next stop would be fixing carmilla. she's also a good concept ruined by misogyny. problem is she shouldn't even exist in the plot lmao)

[beevean]

i really liked lenore at first in castlevania when i watched it until i finished S4 with my boyfriend and he told me (not word for word) "i think you only like lenore because you've made up your own view of her in your head and she's not actually as well written as you think she is". he was right. i was fucking imagining she was an actually good character.

now that it's been a day since we finished the show, i looked through the castlevania tags and found your posts on hector and lenore and uh... yeah, i can see why he said that now. should we even watch nocturne? he told me "maybe it'll be better than the first one" but i'm on the fence here, i feel like i might get my hopes up too much about it...

Bro, your timing wouldn't be more right. I just finished writing a scene I had stuck in my head for ages, where I did exactly what many do without realizing and basically wrote the Lenore in my head which makes much more sense as a character than what we had on screen 😂

(also I'm very flattered that my posts managed to have an impact! I tend to screech in the void so I don't expect anyone except my mutuals to read them lol)

She is such a good concept, wasted away by the worst writer who could have written her. She has many intriguing elements to her name! Her design that speak of her personality, how hard she tries to look soft and harmless - I really like the detail of her cutting her own claws and putting on make up to simulate blushing cheeks. The implicit resentment of her own vampirism, implied by things like her random comment about eating food (which she equates to "living well") and her alleged insistence on using diplomacy in a culture that thrives on violence: missing her own humanity and trying to recreating it would be the only valid interpretation of the "princess in mourning" theme supposedly going on (have you noticed how she introduces herself to Hector with a black veil that she lifts, as if unmasking herself? And then she never wears black veils again? That's most surely a vestige of this idea that never came to fruition). The, at times, clever abuse that feels realistic in the way she dodges responsibility and makes others feel responsible. The giant savior complex, of someone who is power hungry and revels in feeling superior over others but expresses it by "taking care" of "inferior" creatures - like a twisted Rosaly, if you are familiar with the game lore.

Lenore is a vampire who doesn't want to be a vampire, who clearly thinks herself better than her own kind, but can't rise above her own nature. She is amoral, selfish (this post is my best one to date <3), only concerned with her own comfort, hedonistic, cruel, hypocritical, a professional liar, but she has principles. When she promised that she would keep Hector safe, she meant it - in the worst possible way, by ignoring his human dignity, but she really seems to think, like Carmilla, that love is keeping something with you for as long as you can. Her apparent fascination with humanity contrasts with Hector, who is alienated from his own humanity and seems fascinated with vampirekind and all things grotesque and unnatural. On top of this, you have the conflict between her and the rest of the council, who seem to think of her as a stupid little girl who can't do anything worthwile, which makes her snap if underestimated: this is, surprisingly enough, relatable, in a pathetic sort of way. It's fascinating! Look at all these good ingredients for a complex antagonist and foil for Hector!

But in practice, she is simply awful, an not just because she's an abusive rapist played for titillation. In S3, she is cartoonishly evil, basically Carmilla 2.0 + BDSM patch (and not even the hot vampire kind, girl doesn't do so much as bite her pet), the most stereotypical smug, obnoxious, condescending manipulator a porn writer could write, things that even Ace Attorney would say "hey man, maybe she's too much of a caricature" - and in order to make her look smart, Hector had to be lobotomized to a truly embarrassing degree, and his potential character arc was pissed away. Moral conflict over agreeing to culling his own kind? never heard of her. let's make him sound like a child who just needs a mommy. (also, it really doesn't speak well of Lenore's skills if she felt that she had to resort to using her pussy to win over the stupidest man on earth. Sexism, much?) In S4, she's downright pathetic, doing nothing but whining about how boohoo her besties are sidelining her :( and boohoo Carmilla's evil plan is soooooo inconvenient for her :( while the man she raped into slavery pats her little head and concedes that it's not rape if he enjoyed it, and the story tries so hard to make you forget about how disgustingly cruel Lenore was to him less than two months prior - so hard that even the writing itself degrades in front of your eyes. If you have found my old posts, you must have found the ones where I talked about how Lenore's ring is completely pointless, because if it worked, all the "cute" scenes between them would have a sour aftertaste, and we can't have that.

In short, the show promotes the idea that a gilded cage is a good thing, and if a cute woman traps you there, then it's nothing to complain about. Even if it's through sniper-accurate emotional abuse and sexual deceit. It's not like it's rape if you gave your consent under false pretenses :) you were stupid for falling for it anyway :) Lenore was right in saying that what Hector always needed was being made a "pet" and kept safe, because that's how you show love! By trapping people at your side, for their own good!

It makes me puke. Lenore should have stayed a villain. Giving her a backstory, showing her more vulnerable side and her fears, would have worked well, if only she and Hector were treated like characters, and not fucking ship fuel for fans who masturbated at her and wished they were him! That's the thing that pisses me off: Hector is not respected as a character and a victim of abuse, and Lenore is not taken seriously as a female abuser because she's too "cute"! There's no room for that contrast between a vampire drawn to humanity and a human drawn to vampirekind, when Hector is not afforded a shred of internal world (or dignity in general) and Lenore's angst is reduced to "besties don't like me" to not dwell into her monstrosity!

By contrast, Isaac from the games has an extremely compelling backstory that makes you sympathize all too well with his despair and anger: he's a victim of circumstances outside of his control. But the story doesn't get all 🥺 when he kills Hector's wife and dangles her head in front of him while taunting him. Cool motive, still murder and all that, being a hot tragic twink doesn't make him suddenly redeemable. The story allows me to decide how much I want to sympathize with the villain. The show instead always forces you to feel sorry for its murderers and rapists... except the Japanese not-twins, who are not considered real characters. Or Carmilla, who is too much of a Hysterical Woman and therefore needs to be put down and replaced by the Logical Man. Have I mentioned how sexist this show is? Usually the sexism is reserved for the non-masculine men, but Carmilla and even Lenore are victims of a more traditional misogyny.

Yes, Lenore is badly written! She's fetish fuel in S3 and then woobiefied for the fans in S4! She's Wildly Inconsistent™, incoherent, and wishy-washy! But if you pay attention to the dialogue and not just the "hot" scenes, then you notice all those details being left afloat in a sea of wasted potential. I'm still not over her mentioning that she eats human food, and that going absolutely nowhere. So it's easy for your brain, who can surely write better than Ellis can, to dream up a version of her that actually makes sense, and then getting confused and thinking it was what you watched all along.

No, trust me. Everytime I start to think "mhh, maybe her fans (the non-horny ones) may be seeing something that I missed, they might have a point", I only need to rewatch her scenes, and be reminded of the fact that no. she sucks. her voice sucks. her expressions suck. she is a caricature. i need to rescue her from the shitty writer and turn her into a proper semi-tragic villain. and turn hector into something closer to his game counterpart while i'm at it.

As proof, just see how many people missed that, in theory, she killed herself out of fear that she'd go insane and mad with power as Carmilla did, again fitting the idea that she hates being a vampire, and has come to see her as a metaphorical cage. Her fans assume she felt guilty for how she treated Hector (she did not, "I'm sorry things happened" is not an apology, especially if you were one of those things), and most instead think, because of her shitty voice direction and complete lack of characterization that isn't "woe is me", that she killed herself because she couldn't deal with being Isaac's prisoner for a few decades, making her look like a massive petty hypocrite. That is bad writing. Your character was not conveyed properly. Because Lenore never once expressed the view of feeling stuck in a cage, because she was too busy molesting Hector and crying over how useless her bestie made her feel.

Anyway, as for Nocturne. It really depends on what you liked about the OG show. Nocturne is bland, so far. It has nothing to do with Castlevania, both the games and the show: if you liked Alucard, that's pretty much the only connection with the OG show it has. You can tell the writer wanted to recreate so badly what made the OG show show appealing, but lacked fundamental elements like an interesting villain. It also deals with historical and political themes with all the finesse of a war hammer on your balls. However, it does not viscerally insult me like the OG show, it at least attempts to be slightly more hopeful and less cynically edgy, and some storylines even have me politely interested - Olrox and Mizrak have a more compelling "problematic" human/vampire relationship than Hector and Lenore, with Olrox being a more genuinely morally grey vampire. If you want to try, S1 is generally considered a huge bore, while S2 has been much better received - personally, though, I only felt it way too confusing and rushed, like a S4 of the OG show on steroids.

Most fans of the show seem to agree that the OG was better. Make of that what you will.