#although they aren't for me

[ruporas]

i killed. i murdered. i'm nothing like these sleepy people here… nevertheless, you can actually be grateful? bastard… i’m saying… thank you. because you spilled blood, you saved all of these people’s lives. i couldn’t have done it without you. (ID in alt)

[lazzarella]

Apparently, in the novel Style is already very much in love with Fadel when Kant tells him the truth (I haven't read it, though, so I could be misinformed, and apologies if I am), and I 100% get why that is appealing to a lot of people, I do!

But, damn, I LOVE that Style is on the cusp of feelings, finds out the truth, and then continues to fall headfirst in love with Fadel, despite (because???) of it. That is so my thing. That he knows this terrible truth, that he feels both scared and safe by turns with him, and he wants to know him anyway. He wants Fadel to lay himself bare for him. He wants to be his 100%. He wants to fall in love with him

And that is so beautiful to me

(I know the script isn't based on the novel btw, but reading about it spurred this post)

[whitestnoise]

[sysig]

Growing closer than expected (Patreon)

[beevean]

It's really noticeable how vampires in NFCV are... so boring.

For getting all the main focus of the narrative at the expense of the heroes, the worldbuilding is incredibly lazy, to the point that they almost suffer from Twilight syndrome and don't even feel like real vampires. They're more like blood drinking elves.

Under a read more because this got long and picture-heavy. What can I say, I love my references.

1) Vampires don't bite. The only vampire shown biting is Dracula in one flashback.

(in S2E4, Godbrand leads the other generals on a drinking spree, but they are mostly shown dismembering humans with swords and claws, the closest thing to drinking being Raman pouring blood down her throat from a decapitated person.)

The need to drink blood to survive is an important plot point both in S2 and in the Styria subplot, and it is repeated that vampires see humans as nothing more than livestock, but we rarely, if ever, see vampires feasting on humans.

Hell, not only the Styrian council keeps blood in convenient chalices, which could still be justified by them living a decadent lifestyle (something something symbolism of how detached nobility is), but a starved Godbrand dreams of decapitating humans, not eating them. As I explained here, it is especially noticeable with Lenore, the "kind" vampire who owns a human slave. like. the topic of feeding on him or marking him as her property should have come up at one point, right? Or making her look "weird" for not wanting to bite anyone?

It would have been so cool if it became a plot point in the last episode. Isaac, naturally, refuses to deliver humans for Lenore to drink from, so her only choices once the reserves are run out are to either feed like a "real" vampire from Hector, who would gladly give his life for her because he wants to keep her with him no matter what, or starve. Hence, the decision to just commit suicide, as she would rather die than hurt the man she loves with her monstrosity. Instead, whatever she's drinking is portrayed as wine, and herself like she's getting drunk. Not a bad idea, as she said that she enjoys human food, but that tidbit went nowhere fast. Aside from this one scene, we never see one vampire eating food, not even her.

(I forgot, until now, that she says "we eat", and not "I" like I thought. With how she looks at the side, I'm almost tempted to think this is one of her uncountable lies, but for the sake of this argument, let's assume that she's being sincere)

In fact, nothing is done with the details of a vampire's general diet and their alternatives: the most we know is that Godbrand hates pig blood because "it gives him the shits". This is the only mention of the classic trope of a vampire drinking animal blood, a staple in works that aim to give moral depth to vampires. Lenore introduces the concept of eating human food not for nourishment, but for hedonistic pleasure, implying that vampires don't suffer any consequence from doing this and it's the equivalent of eating treats (which is a shame: it would have been much more interesting to see a vampire insisting on eating human food even if it causes nothing but pain. conflict? never heard of her). This contradicts what we see in the rest of the series, which is that vampires' idea of hedonistic pleasure is to simply, as I mentioned before, dismember humans. It could have, however, furthered Lenore's character as the "odd" vampire who prefers to indulge in human habits like that silly "diplomacy", perhaps even hinting at a resentment against her own vampirism which is another staple of the genre (indulging in shallow pleasures seems to be, for her, the only reason to live forever - an empty lifestyle for an empty person who might be easily pushed to suicide...), but once again, nothing comes of it until it becomes time for her to ragequit out of life in a way that feels less "I am disgusted at the monster than I am" that would have fit the previous exchange and more "weh i don't want to face the consequences of my actions :<".

Speaking of Lenore, a detail I realized recently is that she looks disgusted when Hector cuts his finger in front of her. A human would naturally be repulsed by the sight of blood and gore... but she is a vampire. She should salivate at the sight of him bleeding all over the floor, even in the general horror of the situation. Carmilla and Lenore deliberately lick Hector's blood when they wound him as an act of humiliation, but there is a distinct lack of bloodlust from these vampires. Pass Dracula who is supposed to be ancient, but does everyone have iron-strong self control? Couple this with how vampires dismember humans without feeding on them, and you have to wonder if blood really is a precious resource to them.

The lack of biting was thankfully fixed in Nocturne, where vampires, here depicted as more bestial, are frequently shown eating in all of its messy glory, including a poor girl frequently victim of Erzsébet's hunger.

2) Turning is barely given lip service. In S2, Carmilla mocks Dracula for never turning his "pet", and since her backstory involves being turned by a "cruel old man", one can assume that this is expected of vampires, that they turn humans they fall in love with - if they don't, it means they just see them as toys. Which makes sense from a vampire's perspective: humans are inferior, and being turned is bestowing them a high honor. As she says,

But after that, the topic gets dropped. We don't know anything about any other vampire's past and how they have joined the ranks of the undead. There are no (living) sires and broods. The question "why didn't Dracula turn Lisa?", which could have spurned an interesting discussion about damning one's soul to selfishly cheat death, never gets answered, as Carmilla asked it only to make the Lord look stupid, and stupid he looks. And let's not even talk about that out-of-nowhere shot of vampire children skulls that rise all sorts of questions that the show does not bother to answer. This, too, was finally fixed in Nocturne, where Erzsébet turns Tera by forcing her own blood in her mouth, and we see the process in all of its uncomfortableness.

3) Vampires invoke God's name despite being outside of God's graces, which shows the lack of care in these details.

And I wouldn't think much of it, if S4 didn't also include that idiotic, lore-breaking scene of crosses being harmful to vampires not as a symbol of God, but because "it confuses the shit out of their brains". When you think about it, for a series infamous for its CHURCH BAD philosophy, you'd think they'd want to explore vampires' relationship with God and the Church, even in a "we're better than the stupid Christians" way. Even in the games you have oddities like Dracula declaring war against God, yet often including a chapel in his castle, that raises interesting questions about his own relationship with religion which were half-answered in Lament of Innocence. Again, this was at least mentioned in Nocturne, when Drolta can walk around in Emmanuel's church because his actions desecrated it.

And do I need to even mention that water-blessing zombie bishop that is the bane of my existence? Sure, God would absolutely lend His blessing powers to an evil vampire and her necromancer lackey! Sure, crosses upset vampires for """scientific""" reasons but holy water burns them because of divine intervention! Love how it makes all the time wasted on that asinine scene of vampires discoursing about running water hurt just a little more!

4) I simply don't get the feeling that vampires are dead bodies animated by some sort of demonic energy. The most we get is a general pallor - and even then, the vampires of color like Sharma, Raman or Morana have a perfectly healthy skin tone. Or, I don't know, Dracula and Carmilla getting blood in their sclera when particularly feral. If they can, apparently, eat human food without any consequence, it suggests that they have a functional digestive system and all (make of this what you will). Carmilla is shown being unaffected by the cold, implying that she has a naturally low temperature, but humans don't even flinch when touched by what are, by all means, walking corpses.

Hector being, apparently, able to smell Lenore before even hearing her (which logically should mean that everytime she invades his personal space it would give him the mother of all headaches, but I could chalk it up to clunky writing) could have been a hint that vampires reek of death and need to mask it by covering themselves in perfume; but of course, like many possibly intriguing details, it goes nowhere, because having our Ms. Fanservice stinking of rot and strong perfume would be unappealing.

and yes i am saying hector should have frozen his dick off while fucking lenore why do you ask. she didn't even drink his blood to warm herself up, i swear the basics of vampire sex 😭

5) A smaller nitpick before the main course: vampires sleep. They sleep exactly like humans, just during the day: Carmilla, Striga and Morana are implied to sleep in their own beds, and at one point Godbrand falls asleep on a chair. They even have dreams and nightmares. Again, I must stress: even Twilight scoffed at the legend of vampires sleeping in coffins, but not only that story took place in a modern setting, the catch was that they didn't sleep at all, which makes sense for a race of undead predators!

6) This one drives me up a wall: "vampire culture" is a farce. In S3, Lenore makes a whole show of gifting Hector a book about their culture, which he finds utterly fascinating because he didn't even know vampires had a culture in the first place.

Well, neither do I! What is this vampire culture? Social norms? Biting etiquette? Rituals of bonding and turning? What is this "philosophy" that he mentions, "conquer all the things" as implied in the "strength and power" conversation in the very last episode? Is part of vampire culture turning human children, as accidentally implied by the shot of kids' skulls? And what does the aforementioned scene about running water tell us, if not that not even vampires are all sure of what hurts them and what doesn't? Which would imply that vampires are left to fend for themselves by their sires and they have to learn about their own weaknesses the hard way, which is not a bad concept, but this contradicts the idea that vampires are an united society and some of them write down their knowledge! "It's not like we're given a manual for being a vampire" i dunno chief, you yourself seem pretty knowledgeable about ancient vampire history!

(incidentally, we see Hector reading a book in S4E2, which could have implied he's still interested in vampire culture but this time for the sake of playing their own mindgames, but we don't know what it's about and I'm not going to do the writers' job for them, afawk he was just chilling in his gilded cage)

The only "vampire culture" we see is that they essentially preserve human technology that would otherwise be lost to time.

What Lenore is flaunting here is a hypocaust. Which, while they were mostly used at the time of the Roman Empire, actually survived for longer in Eastern Europe than it did in the West, meaning that the Greek Hector should not be this surprised. Turns out, not all humans forget.

It was also kept lit by slaves, which raises all sorts of interesting implications about how the Styrian castle works. But naturally, we never see humans slaves being forced to keep the castle warm: that would make Lenore and her attempts to sell the castle as a great place to live in look bad, and Hector's gilded cage less dreamy for the people who believe he got a great deal.

And to briefly go back to the issue of confusing biology... why in the fuck would a castle of vampires, established to be impervious to cold, need a heating system? Are humans part of the castle? Who benefits from the heat, the same slaves that keep the hypocaust lit? They torture Hector in all sorts of ways, including dousing him in icy water, because they see him as little more than a stinking dog only kept alive because Carmilla needs him, but they bother to keep prisoners warm, wasting precious resources? At least I can see why Dracula would build a heating system for Lisa! This is just stupid! This was mentioned ad hoc to stroke the vampires' dick! "I keep telling you, we're not monsters" only because the writing is bending itself backwards just for you, Lenore!

But back to the main point. This could have been a very interesting topic of discussion, because this means that vampires are soulless parasites who can only vicariously benefit from humanity's ingenuity, unable to produce and only able to steal for themselves (much like they steal human's blood), arrogantly believing themselves to be superior but not acknowledging that they need those creatures they see as livestock! Even the comment that vampires "don't forget" could have a negative side, as it means that vampirekind is stagnant, stuck in the past, unable to move on! But no, they are simply framed as superior for their long memory, because they are so technologically advanced, unlike those stupid humans held back by the CHURCH BAD, that they can wear modern clothes and have electric lamps, ohhh, ahhh!

Vampires wear more modern fashion than humans in Castlevania (Alucard invented the V-neck), so there's more room to play with clothing periods.

Yeah, vampire culture is Alucard's cheap, tiddy-exposing V-neck shirt! And dazzling the backwards brown people humans in the spare time. Sign me in!

Incidentally, do you remember when Dracula was framed as being unique for being a man of science in a largely ignorant, religion-riddled world, to the point that it's the main reason Lisa approached him to teach her "real" medicine? And the main reason Alucard feels sorry for his father's madness, because he will use his massive knowledge for evil? And the main reason Isaac wanted to lay down his own life to save that of his Lord?

Yeah, neither do the writers. Dracula is only valued for his ancient "knowledge" by the people who care about him, and by S3 that same knowledge isn't even special anymore. I swear, Dracula is the third most hated character in the show after Hector and Trevor.

Speaking of Hector, he's by far the worst victim of this vampire idealization. He could have had an arc of him learning to love humanity over vampirekind, the same kind that did nothing but use him and hurt him even worse than humans did. He could have accepted that, despite its flaws, humanity can also be good, and the world overall isn't as black and white as he thought. Not at all. His lack of empathy towards his own species is never addressed if not to make him look stupid. Most infuriatingly, his character arc ends with him declaring that he has learned to appreciate "the value and the beauty of things (i.e. Lenore, the only thing he gives one singular shit about) that live longer than he does", keeping him stagnant and shooting in the foot S4's half-hearted attempt to dismantle this idolized image of vampires as a species. Appreciation for humanity's virtues? Not in my adaptation of Castlevania, which is all about the strength of mankind prevailing over evil!

6) Their powers! What a lack of imagination. What an embarrassment. Vampires are super fast and super strong, with sharp claws, and they are shown turning into bats and mist. Dracula, the most powerful vampire, can shoot one Hellfire. That's. That's it.

Really? This is the adaptation of a videogame series where the most wet cat of a vampire uses telekinesis to throw swords at people! There is a whole ass vampire who stole Dracula's castle through the power of reality-warping paintings! Ohh look how cool Carmilla is dashing around in her final stand, yeah well my Carmilla can turn into a giant naked lady riding a skull that cries corrosive bloody tears!

Where is the damn creativity?! Where is my True Dracula in all of his monstruous Dark Lord glory???

(as a miniscule kernel of positivity, I need to quickly praise Cho for outright weaponizing turning into mist, a power mostly used for evasion. And Sypha for weaponizing it right back, by freezing and shattering her. See, this is a creative display of power! And it's for one of the most wasted cardboard cut-outs of the show. riveting :V)

You know the worst thing? The vampire with the most vampiric traits... is Alucard. Alucard sleeps in a coffin, and even implies that it's more comfortable for him than a bed.

Alucard flashes his fangs and hisses the most to enemies.

Alucard reminds the Japanese not-twins in a spar fight that he's tempted to bite them and drink their blood. Alucard has a sword that he can swing around with telekinesis, more similar to Joachim's power than his own in SoTN. Alucard also shows an extra transformation in the form of a wolf.

Why is the dhampir more of a vampire than the vampires in this setting??? If we didn't see him casually standing in the sun, no one would be able to tell he's half-human! Why, is it hotter if he hisses and talks about his non-existant bloodlust?? It only makes the scene with the kids' skulls, where it's all but said that he keeps cruelly insulting Trevor and his entire bloodline because they kill "his people", all the more demeaning to his character! The whole point of Alucard is that he chooses his own humanity over his vampire side!!

I know that at this point I should give up all pretenses that this show has anything in common with the videogame series it stole its name from, but I am still utterly baffled that they took three protagonists - Trevor the vampire hunter who chose to help the same people that shunned him, Alucard the dhampir who chose to honor his human mother's wish to stand against his vampire lineage, and Hector the Devil Forgemaster who chose to forgive humanity and turn over a new leaf from his Devil-serving days - that in different ways represent the virtue of humanity, and pissed all over them in different ways to prop up their shitty elves! Because this is what vampires are in this universe: arrogant, smug, flaccid, incompetent dark elves that can't even make a proper threat but we are still meant to see as hot!

And that's really the thing. Vampires in NFCV aren't just as dull as dishwater and with a less defined biology than that of Meyerpires (the comparisons with Twilight aren't casual), but they don't stand for anything. Vampires are a prime concept for metaphors such as feudalism, illness that consumes you, the taboo of homosexuality, carnal desire, abusive relationships, feeling like "others" and "unwanted" by society, etc. Even Nocturne, NOCTURNE, one of the emptiest stories about vampires I had the displeasure of watching, uses vampirism as a metaphor for nobility and colonialism and the way they greedily suck away all the resources of the people they oppress! It's as subtle as a kick in the balls and it shatters what little original lore there was left, but the idea is there! It's trying to send a message!

What is NFCV's message conveyed through its decision to focus on vampires as a species, that humans suck? It certainly would fit the nigh-relentless cynicism of the show. Who cares about worldbuilding or consistent characterization? Just add some "deep", pretentious speeches about the evils of CHURCH BAD and how shitty humans are, and look how the praises for being Peak Fiction fall from the sky.

[black-and-yellow]

With every new Mic scene in the manga I become more convinced that the Loudspeaker AU is something that could plausibly happen in the show.

[sapphorror]

Two unavoidable facts about the Invader Zim fandom that transcend space, time, and all evolution of the canon:

1. No one, absolutely no one here knows how tall twelve year olds are supposed to be

2. You can immediately clock someone's height range by the exact height they assign Zim

[secriden]

So, query about Fadel and Bison breaking into Ruerat's office: were they checking to confirm that he's actually a bad guy as claimed by Lilly? And if so, have they been doing that this whole time? Is this part of their process, like they actually do check that the people they're killing "deserve" to die and aren't just taking Lilly's word for it?

Because the only thing Lilly asked for was to make the killing a "spectacle" to "send a message to the other big shots". They already got all of Ruerat's "schedule, keys, passwords" from the secretary they drugged. So what reason do they have to break into Ruerat's office?

Could this be why Fadel and Bison end up 'redeemed' at the end? Because they actually were only ever killing bad guys for real? And weren't just mindlessly following Lilly's orders?

[cozmic-ash]

[seriousbrat]

btw why is wilkes always left out of slytherin skittles/death eater gang stuff. he's one of the people mentioned by sirius as being friends with snape and we know nothing about him other than he died, meaning he's fully projectable and unlike the lestranges he could actually have been at school with Sev and the others.

[hephaestuscrew]

I think one of the things that I find so compelling about Minkowski & Eiffel is that I believe that who they each are as people means they have the inherent potential to have immensely positive impacts on each other, but I do not believe they would have even been friends in most possible scenarios in which they could have met. I believe they are uniquely attuned to help each other grow and develop and become better versions of themselves, but for the first year and a half of them living and working together, the prevailing emotion between them was irritation. I believe that they are able to support each other through hardship in a way no one else could, but without the specific kind of hardship they went through, they might never have known this.

And even as I acknowledge that they might never have bonded without the trauma, it's important to me that it's not that they are bonded purely by trauma, in a way that might imply Minkowski or Eiffel could have built the same bond with anyone who'd been up there with them.

They are bonded by the ways in which they care for each other, by the ways in which their contrasting personalities make them uniquely well suited to support each other, by the way Eiffel makes Minkowski laugh when she really needs to, by the way Minkowski would do anything to keep Eiffel safe, by the way Eiffel reminds Minkowski of her moral compass in her darkest moments, by the way Minkowski helps Eiffel understand that some things are worth taking seriously.

But without what they went through together, they might never have seen beyond their surface-level understandings of each other in order to form this incredibly valuable friendship. It's not that their traumatic experiences are all that bond them. It's that the traumatic experiences forced them to break past the initial barriers that prevented them from connecting with each other properly and from trying to understand each other, in order to realise the potential for connection that had always been there.

[justalittlebluetiefling]

Something I've seen a couple people saying is that they want to make sure that Laudna understands that she's not the only one who has been through trauma. But like. Laudna is not the only one who needs to learn that lesson. Actually, it's not even that Laudna needs to learn that she's not the only one that's been through trauma at all, because they're all very aware of what they've all been through. This became an inevitable confrontation when Laudna decided to let Delilah back in, though, and after rewatching the scene, I actually think the only people who managed this situation correctly were Imogen* and Ashton.

Orym and Laudna are both more focused on their own pasts with the sword and not thinking about each other. Orym should have talked to the group and come to a decision with them about using the sword and Laudna should have talked to him about it instead of trying to steal it.

*my feelings about this are still up in the air don't read into this too much

[kaiserkisser]

can someone nice (!!) please please please adopt me im begging you im requesting you (huge word vomit and vent in tags, pls dont read if u dont want to!! and if you don't want this stuff on this blog PLS lmk!! i dont wanna make anyone uncomfy! )

[artsyongallifrey]

Drinking game for shopping for witchcraft supplies on Etsy

Take a drink for:

anything for Lilith as a "dark goddess"

love potions

love spells

questionably sourced white sage

smudging

"love and light" Aphrodite

candles embedded with fire hazards

"magick"

essential oils as medical care

"we are the granddaughters of the witches you couldn't burn" t-shirts, keychains, etc.

crystal healing

chakras

Finish a drink for:

Sw*fty charm bracelets for some reason???

H*rry fucking P*tter

spirit animal summoning???

misuse/appropriation of Kabbalah or use of Hebrew as a "spooky, mystical" language

[sysig]

Maybe requestober prompt of soft?

Day 5 - Pile o' plushies

[svtskneecaps]

you know what i'll say it MIKE AND ROIER ARE THE ONLY ONES I RESPECT these fuckers will rock up and say FUCK english all my homies HATE english they are the only ones i trust and respect these fuckers are like you will hear me speak my language and you will LEARN IT OR DIE and i respect the HELL OUT OF IT dude THANK YOU FOR BEING ENGLISH HATERS brothers THANK YOU FOR NOT SPEAKING ONLY ENGLISH WHEN AMONG ANYONE NOT OF YOUR LANGUAGE GROUP!!!!!!!!