#castlevania criticism

[autumnmobile12]

Richter’s character…I feel like they tried to do another version of Trevor.  And that’s the problem.  If I wanted to see Trevor, I’d go back and I'd watch the original, so I wish Nocturne had given us more differentiation between the two characters.

However, the big reason why Trevor’s snarky personality doesn’t work on Richter is the circumstances of their upbringings: Richter lost his mother at nine but seems to have lived an otherwise peaceful life barring the frequent monster hunts.  He lived in a stable home and was looked after by Tera for years and seems to have a good relationship with Maria.  In contrast, Trevor lost his entire family at twelve and lived as a drifter for years afterward without that kind of security.

So Trevor earned his cynicism.  On Richter, that same cynicism just comes off as mean-spirited and unnecessary bravado.  He’s an annoying teenager. “And you just happened to stumble upon it one day while you were out picking flowers?” - That line isn’t funny.  Like, really dude?  You’re going to talk like that to the woman who raised you?  That was an asshole thing to say.

So it was a little vindicating when Olrox appeared at the end of Episode 4 and Richter freaked out and showed that he's a shit-talker. (Remember Trevor's 'killing you was the point, living was a luxury' line?)  I'm hoping this is the starting point of his character growth, but so far, Richter is the sort of protagonist I really dislike. I don't hate him, but I'm also not going to continue Nocturne for him. I'll be sticking around to see where Alucard, Annette, Olrox, and Mizrak go.

[demigoddessqueens]

touch

Thinking of touch-starved men…, their eyes follow your hands and fingers so carefully, anxiously, getting easily jealous at how casual your touches are with others who are not them; always lingering where you are, seeking out your presence and just wanting a sliver of your attention away from everyone else; touch-starved ones who have a quiet gasp whenever you place your hands over theirs or just a casual friendly touch; chills along their spine and entire body as you play with their hair; hugs make them freeze in their tracks before arms tentatively wrap around you like your made of glass or a stardust that will vanish the second it’s over

EDIT: they can’t help but swallow down their moan(s) when your fingers brush through their hair, lightly touching the exposed back of their neck

Just….touch starved characters…

[claudiaeparvier]

Castlevania: Nocturne + text posts

[metamaudmedia]

...This...

...is just some...

... OF MANY.

[tournamentpollsinc]

Actually Healthy Couple Clash!

And so the games begin! Let the Healthiest couple win!

Updated Brackets under the cut!

Round One Winners :)

Round Two Winners :)

Round Three Winners :)

Semifinals Winners!

[almacambiondaughterofsaleos]

Helluva Boss Is On The Cartoon Base Awards (Including Velma And Harley Quinn)

Man, this is an abysmal choice of finalists. I don't care what people say Harley was only good in season one but after that just got worse. Velma was just shit and Mindy Kahling totally bribed someone. The only one I see worthy is Blue Samurai because Castlevania: Nocturne was crap as well. And we all know what Helluva Boss has become.

[bibibbon]

Do you think bnha treats the male victims of abuse narritavely worse than the female victims? (sorry if this sounds like I'm pitting them against each other or invalidating the female abuse victims in the story)

I've been reading your metas on how Horikoshi mistreats Deku in the narrative by sweeping Bakugo's bullying under the rug and meta posts by other fans dissatisfied with the way Dabi and the Todofam abuse as a whole was handled and I started recalling discussions on twitter how Denji from Chainsaw Man is a male victim of abuse, whose abuse is taken seriously by the manga and the mangaka, but not by most fans.

No absolutely not. I think MHA treats both of it's male and female abuse victims horribly. I have never viewed it to be something about gender it's just that horikoshi doesn't know how to handle abuse victims character whether thd abuser be a character he likes or hates.

Now I guess I can kind of see where this idea is coming from because the series itself shows us more abused male victims than female ones so there's definitely something there but even the female victims like toga, Rei himura or Eri aren't treated any better.

I remember getting ask that literally made me have a morbid realisation and it stated that Dabi ended up just like how Rei was in the beginning of the series. Also Rei never actually gets to escape her abuser either. She is still stuck as enjis caretaker and that's honestly tragic.

Toga's abuse is actually given the attention it deserves so she is probably the only character whose done a bit of justice in that area.

Eri still ends up getting hurt and used whether she is with the heroes or overhaul. The girl literally mutilated herself to make herself useful for her quirk to be used and you get the jist of it. This isn't a good look at all especially if you look at her history.

Now there are a lot male victims who have been abused like izuku, Dabi, shoto, hawks etc. Now these characters have much more screentime than the female characters but never actually get that part of their character focus on or they don't even bring it up so this just ends up making their characters feel so one dimensional and makes them badly written.

I honestly recommend you read @sapphic-agent post on bakugo and izukus relationship or her other posts about bakugo in general which are great in my opinion.

When it comes to chainsaw man fujimoto consistently recognises the abuse that denji goes through and (even though I haven't read csm) makes it clear that this isn't normal. It's usually the male audience that end up brushing denjis abuse or trauma to the side for example I have seen multiple posts talking about how what himeno did to denji wasnt a big deal or how makima never groomed denji.

Denji's character somewhat reminds me of hector from castlevania and how some fans would say that Lenore and Camilla did nothing wrong or that they never exploited/abused him.

[ennawrite]

watching Castlevania and Belmont & Sypha are exactly how I imagined Cassian & Nesta in my head

bonus:

give Alucard red hair and he’s basically Eris Vanserra.

Now imagine THAT love triangle 😏

[woodchipp]

the quartet of "wow your story hates your guts for no reason can I adopt you" rise up

[iamafanofcartoons]

I always hate it when people compare RWBY to other series. They never do it to see which series does certain things better, they instead just endlessly praise the other series and talk badly about RWBY. There are some things RWBY does better than certain series but of course these people are against RWBY being praised.

While your question WAS RWBY-Focused? I feel this covers things like Castlevania Nocturne, Legend of Korra, and a few others. So if you don't mind, I'm going to make this meme open-ended so that others can make use of it for their related fandoms.

[autumnmobile12]

I've seen more than a few posts by now asking why Horikoshi doesn't just kill Dabi off by now, and frankly I agree with that question. Let's be honest, killing him would be a mercy at this point and in spite of everything he's done, I don't thinking another prolonged coma with sporadic moments of consciousness is a punishment that fits the crime. He killed 30+ people, caused mass destruction, and tried to overturn an entire society.

Giving some crossover insight, Light Yagami probably killed millions with the Death Note, and I don't think even he would deserve the fate Dabi got. His poetic justice was he was an arrogant psychopath who died a pathetic death in a warehouse. The vampires of Castlevania Netflix have killed and tortured millions of people over the centuries they've been alive and out of all of them, I think only Erzsébet Báthory might deserve that fate, and that's only because she's ascended to goddess status and may be unkillable at this point and eternal imprisonment might be the only option.

So why doesn't Horikoshi kill Dabi off already?

Well....Horikoshi does have a problem with killing off characters unless its for shock value. There's no reason Nighteye, Magne, or Midnight had to die other than shock value. Most other characters that are killed off are barely in the series long enough to consider them a noteworthy death.

You could argue that Magne's death was to show that Overhaul was a new villain that meant business, but given the fact Overhaul doesn't kill or maim any other character the same way unless it's one of his nameless henchmen, his power doesn't prove to be that much of a threat to the main cast.

When Midnight reacted to Majestic's death, I legitimately asked, "Who?"

Endeavor confronts Dabi about killing Snatch and even Dabi asks, "Who?" (Also, why? Did Endeavor even know Snatch? Why bring that up?)

Why did Star have to die? To showcase how strong an opponent AFO/Shigaraki was? Uh, we already knew that...? To show why no other nations were getting involved in the fighting in Japan? A simple doomsday message from multiple nations that says, 'You're on your own,' would have sufficed. AFO could have been blackmailing world leaders into staying out of it. There could have been an international conspiracy of corrupt leaders who were in on it. They could have been having the same issue with mass prison breaks and couldn't help out. There was no need to invent a whole new character for any of that, so her death was a waste.

Arguably, Twice is the only character I can think of at the moment whose death was plot relevant. Realistically, how else was that fight going to go down? He and Hawks spend the entire battle in a weird standoff?

So either Dabi's current state is the result of creator cruelty or:

In the last couple chapters we have left, we're going to find out Eri's Quirk is not as damaged as everyone thought it was and she comes in clutch to save everyone. It's a cop-out ending, but I tentatively think this one might actually happen yet, mostly because it would neatly fix Bakugou's destroyed hand and some of the other characters who were maimed in Final War to the point their Quirks are barely usable.

Dr. Garaki cuts a deal where he biologically engineers a solution that saves everyone in exchange for a reduced sentence. Also a legit possibility. Would not be shocked if President Hawks visits the guy in prison and says, "Listen, a lot of people got really messed up in that last fight, so we've got a proposition for you." Saving both heroes and ensuring the villains actually live out a life sentence.

That unknown figure wandering around the wasteland does prove to be Shigaraki and he's got some unknown Quirk from AFO that could potentially save his comrades and we're headed for a Harry Potter Musical 'It's Not Over Yet' twist ending.

If the rumors about My Hero getting a sequel series are true, Horikoshi may be keeping Dabi around in case he has a use for him there. I don't know how that would even be possible, but I do admit the possibility of this conversation does make me laugh a little:

Pro Shouto: The plan couldn't have gone more wrong. Deku was in the wrong place. Bakugou was being Bakugou. Yaoyorozu had a relapse in nervousness and just created those weird dolls of hers instead of the materials we actually needed. The whole thing made the civilians laugh though. Not mean laughter, they were entertained and that's important, but if we were still in school, Aizawa would have expelled us all for sure.

Dabi: ...as much I just love our bi-weekly challenge of how long we can keep a conversation going before that heart monitor goes off and they put me back to sleep, do I have to listen to you bitch about work?

Pro Shouto: You said you wanted to hear about the outside world.

Dabi: Yeah, the fucking weather and shit.

Pro Shouto: You want a full forecast or--

Dabi: Don't make me come down there.

...

Realistically, none of those four scenarios are gonna happen, but the sequel rumors are preventing me from discounting them outright.

I would say there's no point in having that last minute 'everyone is saved' because that's it, that's the end, but then I remember Zuko's last line in Avatar is, "Where is my mother?" and opened up that whole subplot for the graphic novels.

So I don't know anymore.

[demigoddessqueens]

hugs

thinking of the tightest hugs possible, ones that start so slow and hesitant with arms slowly circling around before they get tight, burying their head in the crook of the neck to hide the betraying emotions behind eyes screwed shut, perhaps flirting with the idea of a kiss on the cheek, fingers digging into the shoulders and where they meet the back to hold on as if it feels like the last time, a forlorn grimace when one pulls away because it wasn’t enough time to savor the feel/touch of another, interlocking fingers when you pull away as if it’s still enough (it’s not)

[ultimateinferno]

Yknow. I do forsee a potential plot point for Netflix-levania to somehow have Dracula as a villain back, even with the end of the previous series. Obligation. He's no longer the weary widower, and with Lisa's return there's closure. He's lived as a man. He understands man. He may not even hate man. Maybe.

And yet he's back because the other Vampires are fucking it up and now daddy's home to bring back order. He's no longer gunning for genocide, but honestly, the politicking of the vampires who are so far up their own asses, they need to be reminded who's really in charge. His death left a power vacuum, a particularly annoying vacuum. Maybe the little things of humanity irk him, but vampires are everything they have but turned up to 11.

So at the end it's a formality. He'll come back, clean things up among vampire society, make enough of a mess to get a Belmont to kill him, then turn in for another 100 years.

Does this make him too noble? Probably. If you want the grandiose "What is a man" Dracula, you can extrapolate from "It's an obligation" and have him actively resent people pulling him out of the afterlife from Lisa so fucking much, that he leans too hard into the role. The part of him who's evil out of obligation and the part who's evil out of resentment begin to blur the lines. Is he the lord of darkness because that's the role he's been cast and is simply going through the motions or his he just so simply done with the whole process that he refuses to give up an inch of power to any other Vampire (or human) because they're all just children in his eyes?

It could still ultimately culminate in a Soma Cruz plot line where after 1999 he quits so hard that he refuses to even return to the role properly but it doesn't matter because his mere presence fills the vacuum, even when he does nothing (not for the lack of trying from others).

Maybe that's a bit petulant in its own right. YMMV, but I think that's the point. For being such an archetypal lord of all evil villains, how he fills it is shockingly dynamic. He's evil for evils sake, a beacon of arrogance, or a truly tragic villain. Depends on what's needed. If he does come back, I do want to really see a "Castlevania does Bram Stoker's Dracula. Genuinely. It's just an adaptation for the original novel because that's Canon to the original Castlevania timeline, and it'd be funny to properly reveal that Quincy Morris is a Belmont (And his son fights WW1 vampires and grandson WW2)."

[aurexaldori]

This is an old picture I did when season 2 of Castlevania came out. :P It's been a while since I was on Tumblr, but now that Twitter is biting the dust, I figured it was time to come crawling back to where I belong. If you want to check out my twitter though, it still exists. I posted a lot of Critical Role Fanart there. :) @aurex.aldori I have a Bluesky too, but it's brand new. :) More to come. @aurexaldori.bsky.social

Also my ♦Commissions♦ are open for the winter! More info on my main page!

[oxymoronnonsense]

people who fight vampires with guns are simply on another level

[jedi-enthusiast]

Castlevania and Non-Attachment, Part Four: Carmilla and Her Obsession

Now whereas Isaac's character arc showcased him letting go, Carmilla's storyline shows the complete opposite---that she's unable to let go, which is what ultimately destroys her.

It's implied that Carmilla has a lot of trauma- (but tbh what character in Castlevania doesn't?) -at the hands of "cruel, mad, old men," as she puts it, and because of that trauma she becomes obsessed with taking care of and protecting her sisters. Which is an admirable trait...until that obsession went too far.

Her obsession with their safety became paranoia and an incessant need to rule the world, to kill whoever might pose a threat to them, and to turn all of humanity essentially into self-replicating food. Her obsession quickly becomes harmful, not only to herself, but to her sisters as well---two of them sent out into danger, where they frequently get attacked, while the other one is essentially neglected and ignored after she does her part.

And her obsession, her inability to let go, is eventually what leads to her death---with Hector finding out her plans and helping Isaac kill her via his night creatures, and without her other sisters there to help her, Carmilla is left vulnerable. Isaac, by this point, has let go of his anger and---by his own admission---he's killing Carmilla because she cannot be left alive, because if she's left alive then humanity is essentially gonna get completely fucked over again.

Carmilla is incapable of letting go.

Of her trauma, of her obsession, of her anger, of her paranoia.

And eventually it drives her to madness, and it leads to her death.

Which leads us to the Jedi.

The Jedi teach non-attachment which, essentially, means non-obsession. It means letting go of your pain and anger and not letting it control you, not letting it drive you to hurting others and/or yourself---because, if you don't let go, you'll eventually end up doing exactly that.

So, much like Anakin Skywalker, Carmilla works as a perfect example of what happens when someone is unable to let go, when they let their anger fester and control them.

They hurt others and, eventually, they destroy themselves as well.