#I found it literally by just wondering what would come up if I searched Lenore on Spotify

[coconut530]

Hello Nevermore Nation to celebrate my favorite Nevermore song returning to all streaming platforms after disappearing for many many weeks I am posting it here so I don’t lose it again

Lenore by Meeghan Darling my beloved ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

[macgyvertape]

Castlevania kinda had a pacing problem

spoilers for all of Netflix’s Castlevania. I haven’t seen much analysis for the show on tumblr, im honestly curious if discussions I had with irl friends mirror what fandom talks about

tldr: Castlevania seems inconsistently paced from season to season, and within season as well, leads to a lot of characters motivations feeling unclear so characters repeatedly explain why they are doing something while they’re doing it

overview of the seasons:

S1 I know somewhat of a test for Netflix but it has good main trio character establishment and sets the scale of the conflict

s2: pretty complete emotional arc for most characters and resolves the plot of killing Dracula while setting up additional characters to continue the story. Isaac, Hector, Carmilla all established with the audience as characters whose story would continue

honestly I would bet this is the most popular season

S3: s2 did a bit of worldbuilding, but this season really fleshed out the world with both a wide range of locations and exploring the question of “what now, Dracula is dead but vampires and night creatures remain”.

There were basically 4 plot threads: 1) Sypha/Trevor investigating the cult & Saint Germain; 2) Hector & Carmilla (also introducing Lenore, Striga, Morana); 3) Isaac’s journey of revenge & self discovery; 4) Alucard sits around the castle and is betrayed.

overall characters roughly feel like they are in the same place if not worse. A big criticism I saw at the time, which hold up after rewatching this before s4 is nothing felt resolved for the main characters

I would say this season is where the pacing issues start to become apparent, juggling 4 plot threads that lack a central theme or even mutual character connection. If there was a central theme it would be “humans are awful to each other”. The Judge doing Hot Fuzz style murders, The Wizard in the tower, Sumi & Taka

S4: it starts with the same 4 plot threads, though upfront it is made clear that the plot theme is “people are trying to resurrect Dracula”, and the progression of the plot works to resolve unrelated plot threads until the main trio reunites for the boss fights. To me and my friends watching it was obvious that the show would reunite the main trio, the question was how and how far into the run time.

Season 4 is why I’m writing this essay, for the past 2 days I’ve been like, yeah that character sure explained their motives repeatedly maybe with some philosophical discussion, but it’s just such a weird place considering where they were in s3

Alucard’s arc:

Where he was left in season 3, it was after killing people he had trusted in self defense and impaling their corpses. It was clearly meant to parallel Dracula’s dislike of humanity. However overall his character lacked a proactive motivating force.

Honestly the most interesting thing I found in s3 was Alucard clearly misses Sypha and Trevor, however they don’t miss him or refer to him

One reason Sumi & Taka betray Alucard is for the secrets and power of Castlevania. After inviting the village including St Germain who Alucard was warned of into the Castle, Alucard makes 0 effort to secure anything, not even his personal childhood room. Guess he really learned nothing

Discussing St Germain, I think it’s funny that they had a several minute flashback sequence for his lost girlfriend (who doesn’t have a name or a voice actor), to remind the viewer of who he is, and to justify how he’s suddenly back and down for murder.

In s4 there is the call to help the village, and the walk back to the castle is a montage of Alucard opening up to Greta and becoming friendly literally overnight. He laughs off the impaling, and basically all of the darker things he went through in season 3, which has me asking what was the point of his season 3 arc then? 

Honestly writing this I realize the biggest parallel he has with Dracula is the call to action from a bold woman with a dramatic entrance speech which then leads to a romance

Isaac’s arc:

in s3, with all the other themes of “humanity sucks” I was always unsure if the townspeople were meant to appear irrational while attacking a larger force instead of letting him pass through an leave, or him not caring about how he’s provoking them is meant to show his insanity

ive seen the discussion elsewhere, curious about the Discourse here

is s4 Isaac has the whole monologue about how he now has agency but him gaining that agency was his s3 arc. In s4 he’s already at the point of accepting it. By the end of s4 he’s one of those who comes the furthest from his first character appearance to his last.

s4e5 where of Isaac attacking Carmilla in Isaac’s 2nd appearance had him resolving like 4 plot threads at once (Carmilla, Striga& Morana, Hector, and Isaac himself).

but i do wonder if Trevor, Sypha, or Alucard even know any of these people exist. I think not

I was honestly confused if I missed a scene from his dialogue about building something and what is inherent nature, to “My plan has evolved, my plan is now conquest” because he only conquests the one castle and the rest is left unclear

Upon rewatch the connection there is “killing [the wizard] felt just ... I liked that feeling”, so the show says that Isaac in the end attacked Carmilla for the sake of justice and not revenge.

Isaac in his last conversation expresses the theme of s4 “build something new on these old bones, where people can live for the future”

however, his arc honestly feel scenes were cut, and then dialogue was written around it. He’s the only living character who doesn’t show up in the epilogue and the sentient night creature “what if I could empty hell” dialogue was some of the most interesting worldbuilding. Night creatures with sentience and possibility of regaining memories!!!!

The Council of Sisters & Hector’s arc:

oh I’ve already seen s4 discourse about Lenore/Hector while searching for character analysis, a chunk of it seems to be rationalizing the absolute difference between how s3 ended with these characters and s4. It was extremely confusing for me and my friends; wondering if 1) was Hector showing more emotional intelligence than before and putting on a facade to cover up hatred? Nope 2) did more time pass than 6 weeks for there to be some kind stockholm syndrome? No, Hector seems fine to let Lenore kill herself

The slave control ring: played up in the climax of s3 and easily solved s4. s3 Lenore says if he tries to harm them, flee, or take it off it would cause crippling pain, in s4 Hector just easily cuts off his own finger.

for a control ring that they take time to show a version being on the Rebus, it doesn’t do much controlling of Hector

also guess the definition of “do harm” just refers to direct action

Lenore in s4: has no purpose in conquest, has that useless remarked on by multiple characters, is imprisoned, then kills herself after a genre aware philosophical discussion. This essay is long enough, but what the fuck happened to this character who ended s3 clearly physically and sexually abusive? Seriously this was one of the biggest writing changes to the point where she was treating Hector as an equal. Compare her last words in s3 “shh the real people [vampires] are talking”. The change in the relationship is actually something I would have taken being shown, or atleast told of what exactly caused this change other than the vague “you adopted him”

Striga&Morana get the best arc of the Council. 3 scenes: the tent argument, Daybreak armor fight & argument resolution, declaration of feelings and turning away. You could argue Castlevania is plot to be connective tissue between fight scenes, but for all the dialogue about human resistance in different seasons it was nice to see it. Overall the scenes were short but had a lot of showing what their relationship is not just telling,

unlike Carmilla. For as much hyping up as they did with her, and as much power as she had, she only appeared in 2 episodes and no other group except Isaac knew about her military conquest.

the map scene where she states her motive for conquest of wanting to take things from old men is the key example of how characterization became tell not show. How interesting was that monologue compared to the past seasons flashback to her murmuring the old vampire lord, or all her repeated insults of men/man-children that shows how she judges people??

That monologue had to carry the weight of justifying the Sisterhood bonds falling apart as well as why her motivation changed from building a human pen from Styria to Braila to world conquest. I think it did so poorly

Sypha & Trevor

really Sypha & Trevor have the main plot in the show. I checked and post season 1 the only episode they don’t appear in is s4e6, which is entirely devoted to the Isaac, Hector, and Council of Sisterhood arc. Their partnership and adventures are the main plot of the show.

Its easy to see what Trevor’s arc was over the show: coming to peace with the deaths of his family, taking up the mantle of being a Belmont, and starting a new family with Sypha.

With Sypha I actually had to scroll through tv tropes for what is her character arc, and I guess hers is disillusionment from adventure and life outside the speakers? My friends joke that Sypha’s magic is what the plot demands to look cool in a fight, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Tangent: the ending of their arc was easy to guess: as soon as Trevor went to fight the final boss alone I literally said “oh i bet Sypha’s pregnant, Trevor’s doing a heroic sacrifice, theyll use the unexplained magical dagger mcguffin, and 60/40 odds that he goes through an infinite corridor to outright come back vs just the implication he might come back”

I guess my final thought of the show, was overall the SUPER Final Boss got my by surprise. It was a good twist I enjoyed. Not that Death appeared, I had guessed that from the heavy foreshadowing, but I was surprised by who it was, because I had thought I thought the characters involved feeling shoehorned into the plot was just more bad writing. The Alchemist who put St Germain on the path or murder for no discernible motive for helping? Sure gotta move the plot along. New Dracula court member Varney who has a whole introduction with almost every character he meets and banter about his smell? Sure thats basically how all characters talk with a snarky and acerbic voice.

[bloodshedfalls]

ACCEPTED!

Hey, is that JAKE GYLLENHAAL? Oh no, it’s GRAHAM HARPER. I hear he is THIRTY and he can be DECISIVE and DEPENDABLE but can also be BITTER and ISOLATED. Not to mention they are a WITCH. (mandaaaaaa)

Accepted! Welcome to Bloodshed Falls! Be sure to send in your account in the next 24 hours, track these tags, be sure to read through our plotdrops, post a starter and follow everyone on the blogroll! 

(tw: death, violence)

CHARACTER DESCRIPTION:

Before the fire.

After the fire.

This is how Graham Harper has come to think of his life. Two chapters. Two parts. The old him and the new, irrevocably changed him.

Born to members of the Mercier coven, Graham grew up being taught their ways and the ancient, dark magic they practiced. His father and Joel Mercier were as close as brothers and the coven was his extended family. A determined and curious boy, Graham was as confident and decisive as he was loyal. He knew what he wanted just like he knew what company he would keep and it’s why himself, Marie Leblanc and Lenore Mercier became inseparable early on.

Maybe it was because they were born on the same day, years apart, or maybe it was simply a choice the three had made. Whatever it was drew them together and forged a connection between the three that everyone could see. That was the thing about family in the Mercier cove: you could choose your own along with the one you’d been given and that’s exactly what Graham did.

He spent mornings with his father, being mentored by the one person he looked up to most, afternoons being taught by his mother and every other moment with the other two. When his sister, Evelyn, came along, it was like he’d gained another part of himself he didn’t know he was missing. Evelyn was his shadow, a small, bird like girl, seemingly delicate but as powerful as any of the young witches in their coven and Graham saw her as another extension of who he was, someone to pour into and teach alongside their parents.

Life was good and his skills grew year to year, his decisive nature making him more determined than most, willing to go further than some, just like Marie and Lenny. The three of them continuously pushed the boundaries of their skills and, eventually, linked their magic together in a bond meant to strengthen them and avail their magic to each other. It didn’t feel like being weighed down or drained, far from it. It felt right. To have the most important part of themselves connected by the very thing that made them what they were.

This was the very bond that prompted them to perform magic together, doing complex, dark spells of every kind. This was the bond that prompted them to perform magic in the cemetery that fateful night that both spared their lives and simultaneously ripped everything from them. It was that bond that caused the three to try and put out a fire that was never meant to go out, to watched the bodies of dead family members, dead coven members before homes collapsed and they were consumed entirely, rendered to ash and memory. And it was this bond that seemed to break– to snap in the face of such loss.

Were they survivors? Or victims?

Whatever they were– one thing was true. The three remaining members of the Mercier coven were lost. They were broken. And that’s ultimately what pulled them away from each other. Marie was falling apart and Graham was doing his best to keep her from breaking, same with Lenore but it seemed as though Lenny had other ideas. When the three split ways, Graham and Marie together and Lenny on her own, Graham knew it was a bad decision, knew they should’ve stayed together but two days later when he went back to where they’d split, to where he thought Lenny would be but she was gone. It felt like betrayal but not one he could dwell on.

He and Marie had a mission in mind– they needed to find those who’d taken everything from them, with or without Lenny, before the trail went cold and so they did the first thing angry, hurting, lost individuals often did; went headfirst into a fight they couldn’t hope to win. It took only three weeks before Graham was on his own. He and Marie weren’t a match for the members of the other coven and it cost her her life.

The moment she died, Graham felt as something snap inside of him– literally, something tear away from him and sever in the most painful way, leaving him gasping as their bond was cut, ripped from him. And days after, he felt the same exact pain when, wherever she was, Lenny severed the last link between them as well with a cloaking spell. It didn’t stop Graham from trying to find her, though, carrying Marie’s ashes with him in hopes they could honor her together before realizing it wasn’t going to happen. She was gone and so he had to do this on his own. Spreading his best friend’s ashes before starting on a journey that would take him years. He was determined to face the witches who’d taken everything from him and would do whatever he could to take them down.

His leads led him all over– mostly the states but parts of Canada as well and one particular lead around two years ago led him to a small pack of wolves outside Montreal. He was able to kill most of them but was viciously bitten by another, leaving the warlock to suffer the bite’s side effects– the sickness, the hallucinations, the pain of the change without the actual change, his magic protecting him. It was in this state that he was found by a one Shelby Fontaine, a witch who, as fate would have it, happened to be studying medicine. And she was the one who was with Graham in the worst of the sickness, through the agonizing pain of his body and magic rejecting the curse trying to overwhelm him, the hallucinations of his family, of Marie and Lenny and his sister. She used medicine and what magic she could to nurse him back to health.

Perhaps Graham might’ve felt differently about her help had he known her family name but for what it was worth, she was the person who helped him and when they parted ways after he was back to full health, he knew he was in her debt. From there, he kept searching, finding anyone with answers or who knew anyone with answers, prying it out of them by whatever means. He managed to tick off a small number of the coven members who’d strayed too far from the pack but it was never enough; they’d taken it all from him, every single person and even those who’d survived were gone as he’d long since been prepared to find Lenny’s body whenever he caught wind of a deceased or killed lone witch.

For the past year he’d returned to the states, growing increasingly aimless in the way only a man who’d been lost for years could be. Who’d never admit to being lost and isolated and on a path that would only lead to death. It was this that prompted him to reignite his search for Lenore, even just to get closure that she was dead– that he wasn’t thinking of a ghost that wasn’t there anymore. Still, there was nothing, like all the other hundreds of times he’d tried. He spent the latter part of 2016 finally returning to a home that had become a graveyard of unconsecrated witches and lost souls never to be found again.

He was tired. His determination and resolve increasingly wavered and he wondered what it was all for? Marie was dead, Lenore probably was, his parents were, his sister, everyone he cared about was. Graham was isolated. He was a wanderer. His home was gone. He was in a place darker than he’d been and for someone born into blackness, it was a foreign feeling. It might have ended there, he might have given up but decided to try the spell once more. The locator spell that availed nothing for years, a last ditch attempt to find someone who was probably long gone by now.  But then it was like someone had finally flipped a switch that had been off for half a decade and he could sense the last remaining member of his coven. Whether her being alive was false hope, a twisted trick or the truth, it didn’t matter because Graham left Louisiana that day and headed for Red Creek.

HEADCANONS:

Graham couldn’t consecrate Marie when she died since they were so far from home. Instead he carried her ashes with him for weeks, hoping that he’d find Lenore in that time and they could honor their best friend together. But he never found Lenny. After too many weeks he finally scattered Marie’s ashes in an area he knew lone witches traversed through, knowing that’s what she’d have wanted– to avail her magic and spirit to the disillusioned and disenfranchised, to the lost and the isolated– to the outcasts. To people like them.

He has little to nothing left of his family or coven but one of his most precious possessions is his father’s signet ring. The ring has magic imbued in it, passed down for generations with magic from his ancestors.

His second most important possession is the pendant Marie wore with the Leblanc family crest. Much like his father’s ring, it too is imbued with generational magic from her bloodline that he’s not dared to even think of using.

Both objects are spelled so only he can remove them.

A few years back Graham encountered an imp with a penchant for bargaining for rare objects. The witch needed a favor and he had enough to pay Callum Rook to get the job done. However, after their initial deal, he became aware of the ring and pendant Graham carried and attempted to take the powerful objects for himself. Needless to say it didn’t go over well and the two’s temporary deal was no more.

He has a black bird tattooed over his heart for his sister, Evelyn.

Fire makes him flinch for but a moment before he’ll get as close to the source as possible, almost as if twistedly daring it to touch him– to do what it did to his family and coven and consume him. But then it’s as though the bird on his chest flutters– his conscience forcing him away from self destruction and toward the one goal he’s had since his life burned to the ground: revenge.

At one point he was attempting a sacrificial spell about to kill a young werewolf when  Vaughn Wilde and his partner stopped him and while Graham got away, if he were to ever cross paths with that hunter again, it most likely wouldn’t be pleasant.

Graham has significant scarring on his left shoulder from the werewolf attack, from the socket to right before his neck.

CHARACTER OCCUPATION:  unemployed for now.