#I hope my inability to choose reflects my love for books lmao

[cregan-starks]

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hardcover or paperback // bookstore or library // bookmark or receipt // stand alone or series // nonfiction or fiction // thriller or fantasy // under 300 pages or over 300 pages // children's or ya // friends to lovers or enemies to lovers // read in bed or read on the couch // read at night or read in the morning // keep pristine or markup // cracked spine or dog ear

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[nightslain]

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT MEME repost. do not reblog.

FULL NAME: Leon Belmont

GENDER & SEXUALITY: Cis Male & Demisexual/Panromantic

ETHNICITY & SPECIES: French, Human

BIRTHPLACE & BIRTHDATE: Carnac, Brittany; July 22nd 1072

GUILTY PLEASURES: Poetry. He’s a romantic at heart, even with the kind of life and upbringing he’s had and that much is reflected in this particular thing he reads for leisure.

PHOBIAS: The loss of his loved ones and the powerlessness to prevent it happening; he can be almighty in battle, but he cannot stop death. Watching it eat away at Mathias for an entire year during his sickness as well as his inability to save Sara only worsened that fear in him. After the events of Lament of Innocence, the fear of his children (and later ancestors) growing to resent him for the burden he has placed upon their shoulders is a very prevalent one even if such a legacy is one he knows the world needs. A part of him sometimes fears as well that Sara’s sacrifice will have wound up being in vain.

WHAT THEY WOULD BE INFAMOUS FOR: Obviously, Leon is a very prominent figure of his time, hailed as the greatest warrior of his country and earning the title the Lion of France; his reputation only becomes more notorious after his sudden dismissal of the church and his legendary rivalry with Dracula, as well as being the Belmont to begin the family tradition of vampire hunting, which upon entering Wallachia reaches a height of acclaim all its own.

Though rumours about Leon’s strange gifts, namely the amateur use of alchemy and magic, certainly cause a stir all their own upon making landfall in Romania. Quite sure that France has some varying opinions of him now after his abandonment of the church and the knighthood--a hearty loss for the people, if nothing else.

WHAT HAVE THEY/WOULD THEY HAVE GOTTEN ARRESTED FOR: Leon has always been law abiding and honourable, though we already know the price the Belmonts pay for him beginning the family’s tradition of using magic.

CHARACTER YOU SHIP THEM WITH: Nobody is surprised by my first answer being Mathias lmao. I was admittedly magnetised to the potential between these two almost immediately, which has only deepened with the opportunity to plot and RP with my lovely Mathias @notte-la-lagna. These two are a rich, tangled web of a story to say the least with some of the most soul-crushing elements of tragedy I’ve ever played out in a ship before. They are a joy as much as they are the death of me.

And of course, his love for Sara is undeniable as well as being equally as heartbreaking, even if the games didn’t give us a whole lot of story to work with there and I have not explored their relationship much outside my own headcanons. There is a very sad poetry to her becoming Leon’s guardian angel in the form of the Vampire Killer, and Leon’s selflessness in the pursuit of her rescue is nothing short of touching.

CHARACTER MOST LIKELY TO MURDER THEM: I’m pretty sure there’s only really Joachim or Walter that would have taken immense pleasure in killing him, even if they failed in that endeavour. Given that Mathias went into hiding after his betrayal of Leon, I can’t say with much confidence even from a canon perspective that he would have been in a hurry to kill his old friend.

FAVOURITE BOOK GENRE: Poetry, Historical Documents, Mythology and General Fiction

LEAST FAVOURITE BOOK CLICHÉ: Heroes that have everything fall into their lap, or artificially slanted in their favour from the start, despite the author’s attempt to make it seem they are challenged by the plot.

TALENTS OR POWERS: As a soldier, he is obviously possessed of some pretty impressive swordsmanship and knowledge of most actual weapons and their uses; his physical prowess by itself in general is unmatched among his peers. And though he is quite novice to the practice, he has grasped the ability to use magic since his gauntlet was enchanted by Rinaldo and has begun practising the applications of alchemy which also grant him additional advantages in battle. 

WHY SOMEONE MIGHT LOVE THEM: He is a genuine, kind, compassionate man. There are no lengths he won’t go to for the people in his life, evidenced in how quickly he was willing to throw away his wealth, fame and his life as he knew it to save his fiance--plus how quickly he musters sympathy and attachment for Rinaldo throughout the course of the game. Leon is a man with a heart of gold to say the least, and I feel like his Netflix cameo (brief as it was) has aided in giving his position as the Patriarch of the Belmont clan a certain sense of gravity and real weight that it otherwise lacked in the game. He has a certain noble and, as I’ve heard some people say, an almost angelic quality, despite being merely a flawed and hard done-by human. If not a tenacious and acclaimed one. The drama of his backstory with Mathias also makes for a fantastically interesting concept for the origins of his family and their war against Dracula. He’s really just quite an attractive concept in some ways!

I do think those of us that care about Leon in this fandom sympathise deeply with just how much he’s suffered, too. But there’s also some inspiration to be taken in the fact that Leon does not let his losses make his heart cold. For all that he has lost and all the hurt that he has felt, he didn’t let it consume him in the way Mathias did, choosing to uphold his humanity and his belief in the inherent goodness of it. In my circle, at least, we love him as a symbol of light, hope, and rising above our sufferings. 

WHY SOMEONE MIGHT HATE THEM: Because the game is a fucking joke and makes Leon look like a complete and utter moron for its entirety, save a few sparse glimpses of promise. Leon seems to be a contentious character in the fandom for multiple reasons, though I’m willing to bet the game’s God-awful presentation of his person is what put the nail in the coffin for a lot of people at least at first. Drab voice acting, awkward dialogue, laughably foolish characters, this game really is a piece of work. And that’s sad, since it has such amazing potential if only given a bit more polish. But alas, the game is not greater than the sum of its parts. I really don’t think the game did any of its characters justice in any regard, nor its story. Leon was not the kind of character I had built him up to be in my head upon being introduced to him and reading about him, to say the least.

But I suppose even in a perfect world where Leon had an updated personality and well fleshed out story in the Netflix show (pls), then people I believe would take issue with his naivety? I do think there is always going to be a certain element of it to his character after all--his innocent nature being the entire namesake of his game--and that leads him to some very misguided doings, beliefs and consequences. He is not stupid, but he is guileless in many ways.

HOW THEY CHANGE: His change is perhaps not as dramatic as some, but is quite gargantuan no less. He changes from an esteemed, naive puppet of the church to a scorned but resolute saviour of mankind; a protector of a different stamp, for sure, but a protector nonetheless. One that is wiser but not less kind. He sheds much of his old naivety after Mathias’ betrayal, and he shapes himself into the kind of father he knows his children need in order to perpetuate his teachings and see that it lasts well after he is dead and gone. Though there is always a certain tenderness Leon holds to his heart, he is quite a different man come the time to raise his own children--living up much more to a sort of sagely, wiseman figure than the guileless youth he was at the beginning of his journey where he was the one in need of guidance. 

WHY YOU LOVE THEM: Because he represents so much in the grand scheme of things in Castlevania’s story, for one thing. And because his character is, when divorced from the laughable absurdity of the game, so very charming. He is a fount of potential that was never lived up to as well as it could have been, which is always an irresistible challenge for me as one that loves to explore and fill in the blanks with characters that aren’t well loved by their own source material! At face value, Leon is a very interesting figure in the story, and of course, you can’t have him without Mathias--those two together with their heartbreaking backstory makes for a positively tantalising concoction that has me weak.

Tagged by: @putrefactie lmao ilu ⭐💖 Tagging: @lus-a-chalmain @dominatie @cruciavit-pias @empyream @blanchette