#Smart Inbox

[techsavvy-agcy]

How Can AI Simplify the Email Workflow?

How Can AI Simplify the Email Workflow?

You know how email workflows can often slow down marketing and communication efforts? Well, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is shaking things up and making them much smoother. AI isn't just a passing trend; it's a collection of powerful tools that can automate, personalize, and improve every single step involved in creating and sending emails. This means it can free up valuable time and effort for individuals, allowing them to focus on more important and strategic work.

AI in Email Marketing is More Than Just Writing

Many people associate AI in email with content generation, such as creating subject lines or body copy. While this is a key use, AI's potential for email marketing extends far beyond. It includes data analysis, predictive modelling, design optimization, and even ensuring that compliance and approval processes are efficient. The goal is to transform a manual, often tedious workflow into an intelligent, data-driven, and highly efficient system.

Where Email Workflows Get Stuck (and How AI Can Help)

Email marketing efforts frequently encounter barriers that hinder their effectiveness and efficiency. AI presents answers to these typical issues:

The Challenge: Crafting a successful email strategy necessitates a thorough understanding of customer behavior, market dynamics, and the effectiveness of campaigns. This typically requires manual data analysis, which can be labor-intensive and susceptible to human mistakes. Marketers may find it difficult to determine the best times to send emails, segment their audience effectively, and pinpoint the most captivating content themes.

How AI Assists: AI is capable of processing large volumes of customer data, including purchase history, browsing habits, and engagement trends, to uncover patterns and forecast future outcomes.

Example: An e-commerce company like Myntra could use AI to segment its customer base far more granularity than traditional methods. AI can identify micro-segments of fashion enthusiasts who prefer sustainable brands and shop primarily during festive sales. Based on this, it can recommend optimal send times for specific promotions, leading to higher open and conversion rates during events like the "Big Fashion Festival."

Content Creation

The Challenge: Creating captivating and tailored email content on a large scale presents a significant obstacle. Manually producing engaging subject lines, body text, and calls to action for different audience segments is resource-heavy and may result in generic messaging.

How AI Assists: AI-driven content generation tools can help in composing different components of an email, guaranteeing relevance and engagement.

Example: A financial services firm like HDFC Bank could leverage AI tools to generate personalized email content for different customer segments, such as young professionals, small business owners, or retirees. For instance, an AI could draft an email promoting a new credit card to a young professional, highlighting cashback offers on online food delivery and travel, while for a retiree, it might emphasize fixed deposit schemes and wealth management services. Tools like Mailmodo's AI email writer or Jasper AI are gaining traction in India for this purpose.

Design

The Challenge: Designing visually attractive and responsive email layouts that display well on a range of devices and email clients can be intricate and labor-intensive, necessitating skilled design and multiple revisions.

How AI Assists: AI can aid in producing design components and refining layouts for various devices, guaranteeing a uniform and captivating user experience.

Example: An online travel agency like MakeMyTrip could use AI-powered design tools. Instead of manually designing variations for different holiday packages (e.g., a beach vacation vs. a mountain retreat), AI could suggest layouts, image placements, and even color palettes that are statistically proven to resonate with audiences interested in those specific destinations, ensuring responsiveness across mobile and desktop. Some platforms are starting to offer AI-powered template generation, where you can describe your campaign, and it will generate design options.

Coding

The Challenge: Hand-coding emails is susceptible to mistakes and demands expertise in HTML and CSS to ensure that they work well across various email clients. Even slight coding errors can cause layout issues and diminish user experience.

How AI Contributes: While it doesn't engage in coding conventionally, AI-enhanced platforms can swiftly produce effective, responsive HTML email templates from design inputs, thereby decreasing the chances of manual coding mistakes.

Example: While dedicated "AI for email coding" tools are still nascent, marketing automation platforms used in India, such as CleverTap or MoEngage, increasingly incorporate AI to ensure that the emails created within their builders are automatically rendered correctly across various email clients (Gmail, Outlook, etc.) and devices. This hidden AI functionality streamlines the technical implementation, preventing the need for extensive manual coding and debugging for marketers at companies like Swiggy or Zomato who send high volumes of transactional and promotional emails.

Feedback and Approvals

The Challenge: Obtaining feedback, implementing changes, and securing sign-offs from all involved parties can significantly slow down the process, often pushing back the launch of campaigns.

How AI Can Help: AI makes the feedback process smoother by spotting potential problems or ways to improve in email drafts and suggesting fixes. This means fewer rounds of manual review are needed.

Example: A large enterprise like Reliance Industries could implement AI-driven tools that analyse email drafts for brand voice consistency, regulatory compliance (e.g., SEBI guidelines for financial communications), and even potential misinterpretations before they reach human approves. Tools are emerging, like some offered by Hiver, that can suggest improvements to tone, grammar, and clarity based on predefined guidelines, significantly reducing the back-and-forth in the approval process for marketing and legal teams.

What’s Next for Email Marketers?

The outlook for email marketing with AI is exceptionally bright, progressing towards hyper-personalization, predictive intelligence, and self-sufficient campaign management.

Hyper-Personalization at Scale: AI will empower marketers to craft distinct email experiences for each subscriber, tailoring content, offers, and even the emotional tone based on real-time behaviors and preferences. Picture an email from a fashion retailer like Ajio that not only recommends items you've browsed but also proposes complete outfits customized to your style preferences, body shape, and even the local weather conditions in your area, all driven by AI.

Predictive Marketing: AI will become increasingly skilled at foreseeing customer needs and preferences. This entails delivering the appropriate email, with the right message, at the precise moment a customer is most inclined to convert, sometimes even before they consciously recognize their need. For example, an AI could foresee that a customer is at risk of churning and automatically initiate a re-engagement email with a personalized offer.

Augmented Creativity: AI will not supplant human creativity but will enhance it. Marketers will leverage AI tools to produce a wide array of creative concepts, design variations, and copy alternatives, enabling them to concentrate on strategic thinking and refining the human element.

AI-Driven Autonomous Campaigns: In the future, we may witness AI overseeing entire email campaigns from strategy to execution, requiring minimal human involvement. Marketers will establish the primary objectives, and AI will dynamically modify segmentation, content, timing, and A/B testing to meet those goals. This will allow marketers to dedicate their efforts to higher-level brand strategy and nurturing customer relationships.

The incorporation of AI into email workflows transcends mere efficiency; it is about unlocking new dimensions of engagement, relevance, and ROI, transforming email into an even more potent channel for businesses in India and globally.

[shepscapades]

to the anon that sent me an ask a couple of hours ago about mumbo: what a wonderful question ily. taps my forehead and points at you. very cool. very good Eye

[vvenuspng]

just wanna say thanks for making so much Stolas with him serving Cloaca SEVERELY

need this ask plastered all over my damn walls.. this ask has become my new daily affirmation im not even kidding.. i fuck up on something & i tell myself. at least someone out there thinks i can draw stolas serving cloaca severely…. need this ask tattooed on me tbh thank u

anyways. a stolas for u <3 thank u

[charmwasjess]

Do you think Christopher Lee had an easier time acting in Ep2 with all those blue and green screens since he had all that experience trodding the boards and in the theater you learn to react to stuff that isn’t there? Like a ping pong ball taped to the wall is no big thing if you’ve done black box?

Heya Geode, what’s cooking? :D 

There’s a whole GREAT part in his autobiography, Lord of Misrule, where Christopher Lee talks about exactly this: filming that AotC scene where Dooku “escapes” Geonosis prior to his duel with Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Yoda. (Dooku driving real slow, looking back obviously to make sure they’re following, wants SO bad to show off–) 

Anyway, Lee talks about “[having] to mount a thing like a motorbike” and to pretend to fly, expressionless, while everything is happening on green screen, but there’s a wind fan blowing in his face because his Dooku cloak needs to flap and he’s trying to just stop from blinking cause it’s right in his eyes. The director Francis Ford Coppola happened to be on set that day, and afterward, he heaped all these compliments on Lee for so perfectly acting in the scene:

‘Amazing!’ I asked him what he thought was amazing. Was it perhaps the process? ‘No, no,’ he said in sepulchral tones. ‘It was all there. It was all there. Everything.’ I objected that I’d had absolutely no expression on my face whatsoever and did nothing. ‘It was all there,’ said Coppola. ‘Every marvelous bit of it. Great stuff!’

His impressions from the singular Star Wars chapter (I don’t think RotS had come out yet when my edition of Lord of Misrule was written) doesn’t seem… particularly glowing? I think he was really happy to be a part of Star Wars, which he calls “a spectacle,” not a story. He talks a lot about how Attack of the Clones was his first time filming with all the CGI and blue/green screen stuff and how baffling it was for him. He’s very gracious about it all and his usual low key funny, but I get the feeling he took the role, to use his own words “because you do not turn down Star Wars, unless you’re Harrison Ford,” not because he particularly enjoyed the story.

....A very hilarious-to-me complaint he had was that at that point with the prequels, “there was no book to read," which was a real difficulty for his process of getting into the character.  

[katg12liko]

can you do an analysis of Simon but through an autism centered perspective . if that makes sense

I’m no expert in neurodivergent behaviors but his little knack of imparting rlly sound advice or comfort and being misunderstood/read wrong is something that I think of immediately

people disregard him throughout the entire book, and while he’s no Peter in knowledge, he has a sense of emotional intelligence and self reflection

he’s probably the only one on the island able to step back and take control of seemingly uncontrollable circumstances- discovering the beast was just a dead body, finding the glade of beauty in the forest, and sitting down and just listening to Ralph as a leader.

He knows how to take care of his needs while being aware enough to buckle down and help make huts when most evb was either telling Ralph what to do or playing around with Jack

He’s a symbol of purity and innocence through the canon eye, but read with this interpretation in mind, you could view his authenticity and simple notions as the straight forward thinking and unquestioned acceptance of his needs often associated with autism

His being called queer and loony is also supportive since autistic people are clocked by neurotypical nine times outve nine- Peter thinks he’s stupid, which makes sense bc he’s representative of education and intellectual society. Jack thinks he’s soft and preyish, which makes sense bc he’s representative of war and the status quo of ‘man’ and ‘power’. Ralph thinks he’s queer, which makes sense bc he represents democracy- ‘majority rules’- and Simon’s outlier personality clashes with it more than Jacks. (like a two party systems- Simon would be a useless non-voter or unpopular third party, EVEN THO HE HELPS RALPH)

All in all, I’d say he’s a pretty solid example of what it’s like living in a world not meant for you, and the struggles of trying to be a contributing member anyways- even if you seem to be doing it wrong no matter how hard you try.

His being killed by everybody, including Ralph, is also very significant because that’s just it. He’s an outlier and no one is willing to accommodate him, even when he’s done nothing wrong. (His being apart of but not being apart of the choir rlly punctuates it)

We could make the argument that his being mistaken as the beast in his last minutes shows the stigma autistic people get, with allistic often getting ‘the creeps’ from them, but I feel I’ve yapped past your interest enough for one tweet lmfao

[polo-drone-001]

If I still feel smart after a transformation do I get double processed?

huhuhu brooo you still feel smart? 😂 nah we can’t have that, dude!

Slide into the DMs, Ezan’s gotchu with a double or even a triple dose 💥 gonna make sure you’re all dumbed down and jocked up real good, bro. No brain, just gains!

Join us, contact me @polo-drone-001, or @brodygold @goldenherc9

[brionysea]

possessiongate is so perfect. it explains so much. mike being grabbed by that vine right after the mind flayer leaves will and as el is closing the gate... how do people not see it? it's such an in your face sequence. there is no reason for them to have included mike being grabbed by the leg, and especially in that order, if he was fine and okay right after. s2 did not get the happy ending. something had to happened

when has a sudden and dramatic shift in one's behavior and personality ever meant something not related to the supernatural? it is every single time in this show!! mike shouldn't be an exception. like.. there's a reason why his pov is gone for TWO whole seasons!! it isn't just to suddenly reveal he's gay and that's it - that's why he was weird. it's a supernatural horror coming of age at the end of day, as you said perfectly in your summary of the theory. it has to be tied into the actual horror. it has to be. that's just how an allegory works.

i wish more people talked about this theory still! :(

thank you!!! yeah honestly that whole sequence in the tunnels is so suspicious, especially because it followed dustin thinking something happened to HIM in the tunnels and then it was just... nothing. there's another one after as well where mike and lucas think the demodogs are about to jump on steve and dustin, but nothing happened, they just ran past to get to el and hopper

so they keep pushing the idea that it's dangerous to go into the tunnels, and JOYCE said that it was dangerous for the boys (mike and will) to go into the tunnels so it obviously IS dangerous because joyce byers is literally NEVER WRONG, and yet... nothing happens when mike ignores joyce's warning and eventually goes down there? no consequences? hopper almost died, will was in a lot of pain from the hive mind connection when the hawkins lab people burned the tunnels, but the rest of the kids get off scot free and nothing of importance happened and it wasn't a trap? one dustin fakeout, one mike fakeout, another dustin and steve fakeout? and NONE OF THEM had lasting consequences??????? no external or internal change occurred????

the rule of 3s is pretty important in writing. once is incident, twice is coincidence, thrice is a pattern. stranger things likes its 3s, there are so many trios, and there was the whole 'it's a three-man job, not two' thing in written dialogue. so we know the pattern of 3s is important, it's too deliberate and repetitive not to be; SOMETHING happened, SOME sort of internal change must have occurred after that suspicious sequence (since no one died so it can't be an external change) - and who's the character who changed during the s2 epilogue (pushing will to dance with a girl, pouting about it, then dancing with/kissing el while a stalker song masquerading as romance played) and was acting different as soon as s3 started? who was the character who clearly underwent some sort of internal change in between the two seasons about people being flayed/possessed, even if we don't get to intimately SEE the cause of that change, as if the problem wasn't actually solved when they got will back?

there's also the fact that even if someone, FOR SOME REASON, wanted to reduce mike to his sexuality, queerness is often depicted as not a simple thing in horror. a lot of things aren't, but with the history of queer censorship... stranger things wouldn't be the first to use their imagination to make a seemingly mundane topic like 'thinking you need to act straight until it makes your queerness go away and you can finally be normal' fit better into the genre. and that's ON TOP OF the show-specific patterns that you pointed out!

[ruvigapo]

Hey this is so niche but i did a pentagon based design of the xhorhaus and i low key would pay cr to use a design like this for the animated show bc it is just So Neat i Love shapes ♡♡♡♡♡

(Btw please do immagine that veth and yeza have a ladder down into the laboratory)

[tyunzonlystar]

HERE

OH. MY. GOD.

HES SO FUCKING SEXY! GRAH BARK BARK BARK BROOOOO I NEED TO SUCK HIS DICK AND KISS HIS HAPPY TRAIL SO FUCKING BAD.

[thewalrusespublicist]

overthinking paul mccartney BUT it is my opinion that his no cuddles testimony is about how he feels about that time rather than what he thinks literally happened. like he feels like he held something back with john and george, like he was a little protective of his space and his ego and especially as things got bad didn't really want to put himself out there all the way and face yet more rejection, and it comes out like "we weren't cuddly" because it's a translation of how he feels being projected back across the whole relationship. and he's very old and has done a lot of drugs. but he's in his eighties so it's probably relatively easy to be like "god they were just babies we were all so young and dumb i should have just held them and told them i love them literally who cares if the dumb baby is mad at you and makes a face and says you're a loser you've gotta offer affection anyway." which yes repression but also is something that's really only possible in retrospect.

Hi anon!

Yeah you know what I agree with this. I think the whole 'non-affection' thing partially started from a lie, not-lie that kind of warped into a 'truth' over time. One reason for it was the aftermath of John's death where Paul's comments were all over the place because he was all over the place. There's some in the mid 80s where he was going 'yeah we weren't that close and didn't open up to each other because men but also we were the best of friends' (this was like in the same sentence btw). I know he told Julia later it was because he wanted to play down the relationship, which is a very Paul thing to inexplicably do. I think then that 'oh we weren't affectionate' thing stuck as part of his narrative.

The second was I believe as you said, some retroactive projecting on an emotional regret onto the landscape of the past. The thing about John's change and transition from the 60s to the 70s was it was clearly a bit baffling to Paul. He never understood John and Yoko in his own words and he never quite got why John turned on him. When you're as self-loathing as Paul and faced with that, if one of the criticisms you constantly face is that you're too aloof and closed off to let people in (we know George critiqued him for his 'pleasant insincerity'), you might cling to that as a reason for the whole shit-show. We know Paul regrets not putting his arms around John and saying listen when it comes to the break-up, suggesting that he sees physical affection as part of being open and openness as a potential solution that he didn't do. It's also weirdly self-soothing. If he blames the break-up on not being more emotionally available, he can also rationalise it and take some of the 'blame' off himself. He was a 'northern man', how else was he meant to behave? It's not on him if he couldn't open up.

God actually it just hit me, if Paul associates physical affection with being truly open and honest it does shed a whole new light on the fact that Paul keeps going back to physical affection when asked what he would do if John was alive. Ow.

[timefall-if]

I already have brainrot about M and S. On one hand, M is such a 'safe choice' for my MC, and they’re a pit fighter, which makes them the perfect match since my MC will probably be a medic. On the other hand, S is absolutely fascinating, especially for this curious little cat, which my MC will also be. Ah ah, I have so many scenarios with both of them, can’t wait for more chapters 😖😖😖😖

tough M who's been purposefully taking punches in fights just for doctor!MC to patch them up for years now + sunshiney S who gets doctor!MC fawning over them just because they're clumsy UGHHH YOUR MIND

[skibasyndrome]

I hope everybody who's ever sent me a prompt and not heard back yet knows that I am just a chaos gremlin with poor time management skills and a silly amount of google docs but i WILL get back to you and I WILL finish that fic for you!!! you WILL see it!!!

[beevean]

omg you read my ask! Thank you. You answer was so long, through, and kind! I absolutely love the way you write / post your thoughts (and translating japanese sounds otherworldly to me). I'll definitely check out the manga, and try to get some time to watch a playthrough! Even with their own flaws, as any media, I'm sure they'll be funnnnn. [AAAAAAAAGHH i hope you don't mind another ask, I rarely send them to people, especially a long one because partially, I'm afraid to bother.]

I don't have issues with toxic ships on themselves (NBCs Hannibal and William Graham, i love them), but as you said, the writing is absolutely all over the place in regards to them. It could have been good. It could have been one of the toxic ships that are good — but it just wasn't: mostly because the writing deprives Hector from any sort of agency, learning or development. I never saw him as “a prize Lenore fans feel like she deserved”, but that actually makes so much sense. And despite me not liking her one damn bit (I audibly sighed when I found amazing fanart, but it turned to be her), I can't help but think the lost potential suck.

Many people say she's a layered, complicated character with themes to her: not liking the way her kind does things, the violence. “Just like Hector”. I couldn't really see that constantly, because it was so outshined by all the bad treated of her. Her design is likely the one thing I won't complain about — it's deceiving. The striking red hair complimenting a blue dress, the red cheeks and not-so-sharp nails? She could pass for a human if she hid the ears and got more careful with fangs, and that's not actually a bad idea! What I do think it's bad is the rest of her character.

Even when she's vulnerable (in that “i like you because you actually listen to me” scene that I despise with a passion), we learn nothing valuable about her. There is some information that feels shallow, but just enough to humanize her. I could extent the complaint to Striga and Morana, but I'll keep it focused. Lenore says “My parents died when English soldiers climbed up the toilet chutes with knives in their teeth.”, but we never get to see how this fact affects her. She follows up with “I'd seen enough war before I was five years old,”. Okay, she lost her parents at a young age, but that means she was a noblewoman, perhaps a princess. With some research, I could find out that Lenore is a French variation of Eleonora. She says she's two hundred years (200) old, so— her parents probably passed away during the Anglo-French Wars circa 1200.

It seems that her parents died when she was a child, but it is impossible to know how she grew up from there (which would have so many impacts on her psyche as a human). Did she refugee in a new court? Did she fled the country (supposedly, France)? How did she became a vampire? She likely kept herself in courts, vacating while developing her ability of diplomacy before finding her way to Styria.

She's also supposedly the youngest one of all the Sisters. Morana is likely thousands of years old. Striga must be along the same path, since her name derives from strigoi (“vampires” of Romanian folklore). Carmilla is centuries old, which would make Lenore be the youngest of the group with her 200s, another reason why they might not take her as seriously. She's young for a vampire.

What gets me is the next sentence of hers is “But I will never be comfortable with the idea that the best way to end war is to kill most of the people and cage the rest.” It sounds like gaslighting the viewer — even more when the follow up scene is Hector and her flirting! She was the first to suggest the names pen for livestock when Carmilla described the corridor. That is the single scene where she somehow shows dislike for this plan, but it doesn't feel because she's humanitarian or dislikes suffering; to me, it just felt like she disliked it because she is now, “a thing of the past”, like Hector said. She's being sidelined. Her abilities are being wasted, and she's feeling abandoned, underestimated. But, boo-hoo. Poor Lenore, she's feeling all alone by her sisters in this mighty castle. Who cares if she shushes Hector down immediately when he demonstrates despise for the condition she put him in?

To be honest, a part of me felt like she just spilled out her past like that to make Hector feel sorry for her, somewhat. I believed to an extent it was even fake information, but it doesn't seem to be the case. Through the season, she has a hell lot of scenes, showing her reactions very shallowly to Carmilla's fall to madness. They don't really felt as if they have a connection to me, despite that one scene where Carmilla says — “Im warning you, alright? I'm just warning you”, which is the only scene where they [Carmilla and Lenore] show deep concern for the other. It is immediately shadowed by a conversation over Dracula's castle, to show Carmilla's greed to seek for another nice castle when she already has one. Because she takes things away from stupid, evil old men! Bad bitch, slayyy! Who minds if Carmilla is nearly a caricature of hatred to men? Ughhh.

Lenore was a great deceiver, in my opinion. So many actions and phrases of hers could be interpreted as care for humanity and mankind in disguise, but I actually see it as how she paints it to be. When she got bored, she immediately went to disturb Hector, then opened up to him — thanking him for listening to her, when she won't do the same if he's not thanking her for the cage he got thrown into. It's just vile, honestly. The writing tries to paint her as this seductress, but, oh, she was protecting him from Carmilla! She was standing out for him (she even says that during their conversation earlier in the second episode of S4).

She's so self-centered, starting to whine immediately when things don't exactly go a specific way she designed them. I find it absolutely weird that she can't even fight for herself. When Isaac stepped into the cage with her, her reaction was to step back nervously — the only show of violence in a fight she ever expresses is when Hector “tries” to kill her, and she beats him to a pulp (she then grabs him and kisses his bleeding lip, I think, which is... uncomfortable.) Which doesn't surprise me, honestly, that her only show of violence was to Hector. When Isaac invaded the castle, she just turned into bats and got away from the commotion to “get Hector to safety”. But I see it much more as assuring a resource than actual care for his life — if something goes very, very wrong, she'll still have a forgemaster tied to her whims. And that's useful in any situation that a vampire like herself could be in. She knows how having the castle taken away by an assassin is like; she can be prepared for it now.

And, yes. Her reaction to the finger thing felt genuine because it was her disarray, the lost of control she so sweetly assured over him. All lost. Then, Carmilla dies, perpetually leaving her alone. When Morana and Striga arrive, they have to make a decision, and it's leaving because they don't know what they'll face exactly. They mutter about how if Carmilla is dead, Lenore is long gone. It's just oddly written, as if I'm supposed to feel sorry for the vampire aristocratic who made her bed and layed out on it.

Her final monologue made me lose it. I feel awful for saying it, but her death made me cheer. Not for the writing, though, definitely. Once things got out of her control, Lenore immediately discourses about how she won't be kept in a cage — to Hector. The man she put in that exact same cage and wouldn't have been troubled to keep caged through whatever means necessary. He holds her hand in a silent “I'd like you to stay, but if you want to go, go”, which is heartbreaking. Not because of their “love story” or anything of the sort, but because he's clinging to the one who never showed him anything but abuse and control! Even in that situation, he doesn't hold her back. So many people say “Lenore could have turned into a bat and fled, Hector never would be able to hold her back”, but the point is he never even tries to. He clings to his abuser, but doesn't entrap her the same way she did to him.

I'm not saying he shouldn't be held accountable for all he did, either. Hector has played a part in Dracula's war before this, but this was not the way to punish him for such sins. I'm also not saying Lenore was entirely cunning or manipulative, but all the actions that people say she did for other's good always inherently benefit her, as well. She's not the vampire counterpart to Hector, as I've seen some people pointing her to be — she's just another manipulative vampire woman who got through difficulties, but found in them the excuse to be completely inhuman and whine about it. She might feel bad for one or two things, but hell! Why should I baby this 200 hundred old year grown woman, who understands very well what she's doing? Just because she convinced others to do so, it doesn't mean she'll convince the audience.

Everything about her “character arc” feels— odd. I can't like her. I can't relate to her at all! And even if I could, all the rest of the writing just makes her and Hector's relationship completely unbaleced. They're not equally toxic, and she holds all the power and tolls to mindkeep him (praising him when he does things right, shutting him up when he shows an emotion she doesn't like). I seriously don't get what they were doing here, all the writers: Hector and Lenore aren't even one of those toxic pairings you can enjoy for toxicity; but they're not the deep, sweet loving story that was resumed with “right person wrong time” they tried to make it out to be.

The character was clearly designed to be somewhat antagonistic, to be deceiving. To be the temptress, the seductress that promises a bite of the apple while hiding away the price for it. But, no, she's just this sensitive, misunderstood soul— and the cage she was fleeing from is vampirism, because she doesn't want to become like Carmilla! (while I do think there's truth in that, I couldn't care less. Burn, woman. Burn.)

Another long ask uggg, thank you so much for reading it all, again. And for your thoughts. I love your blog, and thank you for all the effort put in each and all post! As always, if you have a different vision of mine or if I got anything wrong, please feel free to correct me (I haven't watched Netflixvania in a while, I got the transcripts from a site). Have a nice day/night!

ahhhhh so much meat to chew on lol! And thank you so much for your kind words! I hope you don't mind if I break this down, I genuinely appreciate long asks like these! Feel free to vent your thoughts anytime <3

I agree with pretty much everything you said, and it's honestly heartening to find someone other than my mutuals expressing these in-depth opinions. I fear that I can't add much because I have said everything I could say in the past, but I'll try my best.

I don't have issues with toxic ships on themselves (NBCs Hannibal and William Graham, i love them), but as you said, the writing is absolutely all over the place in regards to them. It could have been good. It could have been one of the toxic ships that are good — but it just wasn't: mostly because the writing deprives Hector from any sort of agency, learning or development. I never saw him as “a prize Lenore fans feel like she deserved”, but that actually makes so much sense. And despite me not liking her one damn bit (I audibly sighed when I found amazing fanart, but it turned to be her), I can't help but think the lost potential suck.

It makes sense, doesn't it? I have never found a Lenector shipper who just liked Hector and wanted him to be happy (those who do tend to ship him with Isaac lol, rarely with Alucard). They all love Lenore. They think she's a good person who really loved him. They lament that she died, because their preferred ending would have been the two getting married (I'm not joking. I have found fix-it fics like this). They believe that Lenore's death was a sign of the writer's sexism, which favored male villains like Dracula and Isaac, which... well, they're right for the wrong reasons lol.

There is definitely this underlying feeling of "Lenore deserved to be happy. She deserved to stay with Hector. She didn't deserve such a tragic end, or to be villainized". Add to this another implicit sentiment that yes, Hector would have been angry at her for a while, but eventually he would have understood that she Meant Well, reducing his broken heart to an obstacle to True Love, and it really feels like Lenector shippers (not everyone, but a good chunk) see Hector as the rightful reward Lenore deserved for being Best Girl.

(because, and let's be real here, many fans have a crush on her and wish they could be her pet. This is why they don't feel like Hector suffered. Problem is, it's fine if you want to be a dommy mommy's pet, but Hector never wanted to before she tricked him into sex.)

And I feel you about fanart lol. I do a double take every time I see anime art of cute women with long red hair lmao. imagine how hard I laughed when I learned about Makima from Chainsaw Man

Many people say she's a layered, complicated character with themes to her: not liking the way her kind does things, the violence. “Just like Hector”. I couldn't really see that constantly, because it was so outshined by all the bad treated of her. Her design is likely the one thing I won't complain about — it's deceiving. The striking red hair complimenting a blue dress, the red cheeks and not-so-sharp nails? She could pass for a human if she hid the ears and got more careful with fangs, and that's not actually a bad idea! What I do think it's bad is the rest of her character.

This is another thing that drives me up a wall: her design is great. She is by far the best designed character in the show (not the hottest though lmao. I'm weak for Striga myself :P), and there was a lot of care in her details and how she'd mirror Carmilla and Hector. Carmilla is all sharp lines and points, with a pointy chin and icy eyes, even her hair is carefully combed to fall into straight locks; Lenore is soft, baby faced and doe eyed, her hair is fluffy, in S3 she has a pointless but cute fur coat. Carmilla has exceedingly long claws, painted red, to scream "I am dangerous"; Lenore has human nails which I personally imagine she keeps filing, to say "I'm harmless". And it's interesting visual storytelling that in S4, Lenore dons a very cute blue dress, contrasting with Carmilla's red and approaching her to Hector's own blue.

But a good design is not enough to prop up a character, and if most of the appeal comes from whether you find her sexually appealing, that is a huge failure for me.

(Lenore isn't the only case. I resent N!Alucard for similar reasons. No, I'm not going to love him just because he shows off his boobs.)

(also look up Dahlia Hawthorne from Ace Attorney for an even better case of a redhead taking advantage of her cute looks to manipulate naive men. She has a much more solid butterfly motif, while Lenore was supposed to have either a "snow princess" or "princess in mourning" motif which ended up going nowhere.)

Even when she's vulnerable (in that “i like you because you actually listen to me” scene that I despise with a passion), we learn nothing valuable about her. There is some information that feels shallow, but just enough to humanize her. I could extent the complaint to Striga and Morana, but I'll keep it focused. Lenore says “My parents died when English soldiers climbed up the toilet chutes with knives in their teeth.”, but we never get to see how this fact affects her. She follows up with “I'd seen enough war before I was five years old,”. Okay, she lost her parents at a young age, but that means she was a noblewoman, perhaps a princess. With some research, I could find out that Lenore is a French variation of Eleonora. She says she's two hundred years (200) old, so— her parents probably passed away during the Anglo-French Wars circa 1200. It seems that her parents died when she was a child, but it is impossible to know how she grew up from there (which would have so many impacts on her psyche as a human). Did she refugee in a new court? Did she fled the country (supposedly, France)? How did she became a vampire? She likely kept herself in courts, vacating while developing her ability of diplomacy before finding her way to Styria.

godddddd I hate that backstory lmao. In fact I saved a rant in my drafts because I found it so utterly laughable, which I'm going to post :P

I don't care about your sob story after the last time I saw you, when you gloated to the man you raped that he's your pet now. I'm really not in the mood to feel any pity, especially not for such a lackluster story.

So you suffered when you were 5. You are now 200. How do you even remember your childhood, let alone having it influence your current worldview? Why do you still care about your parents, when you had two whole centuries to process grief and you have a (in theory) solid support system? In fact, is the show really telling me that Lenore was the only victim of war that was turned into a vampire, and that's why she's the only one who hates war and aggression? Please.

You childhood is not important! What about those two centuries or so of your life as a vampire? Who turned you, and why? How did you end up from Normandy to Styria? Were you hired in the council as a newborn vampire, or did you live on your own for some time? How did you feel when you became a parasite with the instinct to dismember humans? Did you indulge in your bloodlust or did you decide from the get go you were going to repress yourself?

"Life didn't get better after that" you absolute buffoon, you are a QUEEN! You are living in a nice castle where you don't even have to lift your skinny ass to hunt, you are wearing cute dresses, have all the books you want, you are talking to your sex slave, you keep saying that the stability of the quartet allowed you to live in peace, what in the shit are you talking about???? And even then, you may have lived during war, but you were apparently a NOBLE GIRL! Whatever war you might have endured, I can assure you it was nothing compared to what peasants below you were going through!

"end war"? Carmilla started a war. And you helped her. You literally turned Hector into a slave, through rape and deception, instead of allowing Morana to hire mercenaries. Bitch! This whole thing is your DAMN FAULT!!!!

Lenore has a lot of hints that she hates being a vampire. I would rather want to know about her life as a vampire rather than the most ridiculous sob story of "my parents died when I was little :(". Personally, I decided to headcanon with my friends that she was kept as a prisoner of war until Carmilla found and turned her against her will (I don't know at what age, anything from 15 to 20), leaving Lenore torn between being grateful and resenting her new condition. (I have this mental image that won't leave me that Lenore tried to smash her own teeth in with a hammer so that she wouldn't bite anyone, but they regrew. Related, I also headcanon that she had the idea of keeping bottles of blood in the council room, so that she wouldn't bite anyone and stain her pretty fangs.)

The funniest part about her story, however, is that she said that English soldiers climbed up toilet chutes. If she is referring to the seige of Château Gaillard, which would fit with the timeline, it belonged to the English at the time, and it was the French who climbed inside it. fun trivia!

She's also supposedly the youngest one of all the Sisters. Morana is likely thousands of years old. Striga must be along the same path, since her name derives from strigoi (“vampires” of Romanian folklore). Carmilla is centuries old, which would make Lenore be the youngest of the group with her 200s, another reason why they might not take her as seriously. She's young for a vampire.

Another bout of wasted potential. Morana, according to Katie Silva, wears a kaunakes, which would make her from the Mesopotamian times! Do you realize how ancient she is? You would think that a vampire born at the dawn of civilization would offer unique insights! Perhaps even have some beef with a mere 200 yo, like she's just a baby! Imagine the clash between an old haughty woman and a young insecure girl who wants to be taken seriously!

nah morana is just striga's armcandy. okay. nice of the writing to pick the only lesbian of color and turning her into a prop :)

(speaking of her, "Morana" is the name of the Slavic goddess of harvest, which is just as dumb as Striga being literally named "witch" in Romanian.)

There is just. So little we know about them. Even something small but important like Carmilla being Lenore's dame, which would explain why she's there despite all the jeering and mockery. Can you imagine, Carmilla being Lenore's idol and mentor, and therefore being heartbroken when she loses her mind?

But no. The show doesn't know what real relationships are. The council is made of catty bullies who just stick together for convenience. #feminism.

What gets me is the next sentence of hers is “But I will never be comfortable with the idea that the best way to end war is to kill most of the people and cage the rest.” It sounds like gaslighting the viewer — even more when the follow up scene is Hector and her flirting! She was the first to suggest the names pen for livestock when Carmilla described the corridor. That is the single scene where she somehow shows dislike for this plan, but it doesn't feel because she's humanitarian or dislikes suffering; to me, it just felt like she disliked it because she is now, “a thing of the past”, like Hector said. She's being sidelined. Her abilities are being wasted, and she's feeling abandoned, underestimated. But, boo-hoo. Poor Lenore, she's feeling all alone by her sisters in this mighty castle. Who cares if she shushes Hector down immediately when he demonstrates despise for the condition she put him in?

:))))))))

It says a lot about the show's priorities when Lenore gets two scenes where she does nothing but say "this war that I am complicit in will put me out of a job and I'm Sadge about it" and we're meant to feel so bad because she's so Complex and Humanized, while her sex slave, the man who was beaten and raped and imprisoned and gaslighted, is standing there and pat patting her little head and offering her words of comfort to keep the focus on her. The only time he tries to say something in protest, well. Shut up, pet. You got your dick hard, and that's the only thing a man should care about :) the real people are talking, now.

I'm just. I'll be honest: in a vacuum, I think Lenore is relatable. She is the weak link of her council. She is seen as a useful idiot. She believes that she's only worth something if she's of use. She cannot be honest, she always has to put on a mask of politeness and diplomacy. The only person who listens to her literally doesn't have a choice in the matter. No one truly loves her: at most, Hector owes her. She kills herself as she realizes that she is doomed to a worthless life devoid of true happiness. I do believe that a better Lenore could still be pitiable even after raping Hector, if you frame her as a pathetic little girl who wanted to play adult and is now paying the consequences of her two-faced behavior.

But I can't stand how the narrative framing revolves around her, forgets all about her past cruel actions, and asks us to pretend the person she has hurt is all gucci now. On top of how she's just... not a good person even in S4, as I have amply elaborated on. She does effectively nothing, let alone anything that could be considered a "good" action. As you said: it feels like the writing is boldly lying to our faces.

To be honest, a part of me felt like she just spilled out her past like that to make Hector feel sorry for her, somewhat. I believed to an extent it was even fake information, but it doesn't seem to be the case. Through the season, she has a hell lot of scenes, showing her reactions very shallowly to Carmilla's fall to madness. They don't really felt as if they have a connection to me, despite that one scene where Carmilla says — “Im warning you, alright? I'm just warning you”, which is the only scene where they [Carmilla and Lenore] show deep concern for the other. It is immediately shadowed by a conversation over Dracula's castle, to show Carmilla's greed to seek for another nice castle when she already has one. Because she takes things away from stupid, evil old men! Bad bitch, slayyy! Who minds if Carmilla is nearly a caricature of hatred to men? Ughhh.

lmao, I could believe it. Lenore is very good at pretending to be an innocent victim, when she wants to.

Don't get me started on how S4 treated Carmilla. Don't get me wrong: I don't like her. I think she was a detrimental addition to the plot, because she singlehandedly derailed my beloved CoD plot into "everyone acts like a dumbass to make her look Girlboss". She is the reason Hector didn't develop his own agency in S2. She's also just a walking cliché in her #girlbossness. However, she genuinely feels like a misogynistic slur in her writing.

You have a woman who was, apparently, a victim of sexism, being an old man's pet (with all that it entailed), being left to fend for herself by other male lords who didn't give a shit about a female ruler, who was apparently so traumatized by her powerlessness that she pivoted too much in the other direction and became obsessed with power. And what do you do with her? You turn her into a hysterical bitch so horrifying, that not only Hector begged Isaac to kill him while he wanted to revive Dracula (what in the genuine fuck is wrong with you), but her own friends all ditched her and were almost happy that she killed herself! They saw her as nothing but a danger to their own stability, not a friend in need of support! It's almost insulting how Lenore chose to save her own pet of two months over the woman who supported her and gave her a castle, a nice life, power, and something close to friendship.

And all for what? You guessed it: to make Lenore look like "the good one". Aww, she's so scawed of mean cawmilla 🥺 mean cawmilla lied to her, just like dracula lied to hector, they're such soulmates 🥺 fuck you.

(writing wise, I'll never be over the absolute sloppery of going from "do you honestly think Dracula would have kept Hector in his castle were he dangerous?" to ranting about the castle itself. girl. girl you have bigger issues on your hands. was the first draft written on the toilet)

Lenore was a great deceiver, in my opinion. So many actions and phrases of hers could be interpreted as care for humanity and mankind in disguise, but I actually see it as how she paints it to be. When she got bored, she immediately went to disturb Hector, then opened up to him — thanking him for listening to her, when she won't do the same if he's not thanking her for the cage he got thrown into. It's just vile, honestly. The writing tries to paint her as this seductress, but, oh, she was protecting him from Carmilla! She was standing out for him (she even says that during their conversation earlier in the second episode of S4).

Lenore lies so much, I genuinely struggle to tell which are the intended lies and which is just bad writing. Personally, however, I cannot look at S3 Lenore and think that anyone could be fooled by her "mask". She is so obviously sadistic. And yet, apparently, some viewers genuinely thought she meant well.

The "standing up for him" part is another thing that really exemplifies how creatively bankrupt the writing is. I get the idea that Lenore, with all of her cruelty, was honest when she said that Hector would get to feel safe. That's actually neat, I like villains with their own moral code. I can excuse rape but I draw the line at my bestie bothering my pet! lol. However, it kind of... falls flaccid when you see that Lenore "protects" Hector by more or less calling him too stupid and weak to be plotting anything. Not only it puts Carmilla in the OOC position of saying he's actually devious (???), but. really? that's how she shows her love? by calling him an idiot to her bestie? where's her putting herself in harm's way to shield him?! Where is the effort!

Then again, Lenore is said to be a "kind animal lover" yet wouldn't even heal Hector's wounds, like the ones she caused, and that trait was expressed through sexual humiliation. can you see the wasted potential of her own concept.

She's so self-centered, starting to whine immediately when things don't exactly go a specific way she designed them. I find it absolutely weird that she can't even fight for herself. When Isaac stepped into the cage with her, her reaction was to step back nervously — the only show of violence in a fight she ever expresses is when Hector “tries” to kill her, and she beats him to a pulp (she then grabs him and kisses his bleeding lip, I think, which is... uncomfortable.) Which doesn't surprise me, honestly, that her only show of violence was to Hector. When Isaac invaded the castle, she just turned into bats and got away from the commotion to “get Hector to safety”. But I see it much more as assuring a resource than actual care for his life — if something goes very, very wrong, she'll still have a forgemaster tied to her whims. And that's useful in any situation that a vampire like herself could be in. She knows how having the castle taken away by an assassin is like; she can be prepared for it now.

Yeah, it sure is easy to be all "people think I'm soft, people think I'm weak" after brutally beating to a pulp and molesting (thank you for pointing out the kiss. she started sexually molesting him from the get go) a weak, starved, naked man, huh, Lenore? But a man with a knife getting all close to you makes you piss yourself in your dress, huh? :) She didn't even bother to turn into mist to try and flee the cage. Add this to how she didn't even try to discuss things with Carmilla and opted to whine to her powerless pet, after flaunting her "diplomatic" skills when it came to gaslighting Hector, and she really comes off as a massive cowardly bully.

You make an excellent point, actually. I always point out how Lenore apparently had the asinine idea of putting Hector "somewhere safe" without even mentioning to remove the ring that keeps him trapped. The idea that she planned to still use him to rebuild a kingdom somewhere is... actually clever. I never considered it, it makes sense, and she looks even worse now. The only thing is that Lenore gives me the impression of having no goals in her life beyond feeling good and comfortable, which is why she chose death over Hector instead of waiting until he and Isaac were dead to rebuild her life. But I'll be incorporating this in my belief system :)

And, yes. Her reaction to the finger thing felt genuine because it was her disarray, the lost of control she so sweetly assured over him. All lost. Then, Carmilla dies, perpetually leaving her alone. When Morana and Striga arrive, they have to make a decision, and it's leaving because they don't know what they'll face exactly. They mutter about how if Carmilla is dead, Lenore is long gone. It's just oddly written, as if I'm supposed to feel sorry for the vampire aristocratic who made her bed and layed out on it.

Sometimes I feel I need to rewrite this post where I talked about that scene and Lenore's horrified expressions. I was making a more general point but I mixed together too many things. I do believe that those expressions are a very good way of conveying her feelings without telling us exactly how she's feeling - and I read nothing but horror at the realization that she has lost all power over Hector and her own life there.

I pointed it out earlier, but I almost find it misogynist writing how Carmilla's friends are almost happy that she died and is no longer a problem for them. Of course female friendship would be depicted in such a selfish way. The only thing that doesn't make it outright misogyny is that everyone sucks in this show (Trevor and Sypha abandoning Alucard while he was grieving, Dracula and Lisa letting Alucard believe they're still dead while they go on their honeymoon, Dracula and Isaac calling Hector variations of the r-slur for no reason.)

It's also weirdly funny how they just assume Lenore died and won't shed a tear for her. Again, it shows how little they care. But like. at this point what is their beef with her. what did lenore do to them. why do they hate her so much lmao

Her final monologue made me lose it. I feel awful for saying it, but her death made me cheer. Not for the writing, though, definitely. Once things got out of her control, Lenore immediately discourses about how she won't be kept in a cage — to Hector. The man she put in that exact same cage and wouldn't have been troubled to keep caged through whatever means necessary. He holds her hand in a silent “I'd like you to stay, but if you want to go, go”, which is heartbreaking. Not because of their “love story” or anything of the sort, but because he's clinging to the one who never showed him anything but abuse and control! Even in that situation, he doesn't hold her back. So many people say “Lenore could have turned into a bat and fled, Hector never would be able to hold her back”, but the point is he never even tries to. He clings to his abuser, but doesn't entrap her the same way she did to him.

I've seen people explain that Hector keeping Lenore like that is supposed to be a continuation of his old habit of resurrecting dead pets to force them to him.

Think about it. Lenore is miserable and all but dead inside. But Hector wants her to stay with him. Sure, he didn't put a slave ring on her, but he still expressed the desire to be with her, and King Isaac gave him what he wanted. She doesn't love him, but Hector doesn't care. She has to stay, because well, what else she has left?

Problem is that this is the goddamn ending of his arc, and he's apparently still the same boy who forces dead creatures to him?? And I'm supposed to be touched that he lets his former owner commit suicide in front of him, because "ohhhh he let het gooooo"? Fuck that! I don't care about that woman! I care about him! Why isn't he allowed to grow for himself??!?!

(the shot of him taking her hand with his own mutilated onet, though. it's sickening. where was this focus on his finger when he had the ring that forced him to soothe Lenore, huh?)

And while I'm at it, I need to rant about the worst part of that scene:

I fucking hate how this is the best track of the show and one of the most beautiful compositions I've heard. It carries the whole emotional weight of the scene. It gives me goosebumps. It makes me misty eyed. It perfectly conveys the sorrow of a choosen death for the sake of freedom. For this bitch? How dare you give such a sweet, heartwrenching leitmotif to a brat ragequitting from life!! You can't let Trevor Morris or the VAs carry all the emotions, the writing needs to make an effort too!

It's the same as the idea of a vampire choosing to not look at the sun during their last moments, because they would rather look at their lover. Poignant. Unearned in Lenore's case. Remember that her last apology to the man she abused, humiliated and enslaved was "I'm sorry for everything you went through." All the emotional beats are superficially feelsy, but hollow once you peer through them.

I'm not saying he shouldn't be held accountable for all he did, either. Hector has played a part in Dracula's war before this, but this was not the way to punish him for such sins. I'm also not saying Lenore was entirely cunning or manipulative, but all the actions that people say she did for other's good always inherently benefit her, as well. She's not the vampire counterpart to Hector, as I've seen some people pointing her to be — she's just another manipulative vampire woman who got through difficulties, but found in them the excuse to be completely inhuman and whine about it. She might feel bad for one or two things, but hell! Why should I baby this 200 hundred old year grown woman, who understands very well what she's doing? Just because she convinced others to do so, it doesn't mean she'll convince the audience.

That's the other thing. I've seen Lenore stans defend her by pointing out that he's no saint, that he was okay with culling, that Lenore gave to him what he envisioned for other humans.

And yeah. Show Hector is an amoral, spineless, unempathetic servant of Dracula. He's no cinnamon roll. I actually don't mind the idea that he's soft in manners, but callous in his view of the world, I think as a villain he was much more fascinating than show Isaac who was just "weh humans were mean to me so i'll purify the world in the name of mohammed".

However. One, I don't believe anyone deserves to be raped and enslaved. Shocking, I know. Just because Hector apparently didn't think much about what culling would have entailed, doesn't mean I should cheer for Lenore for treating him like a dog. Two, he wasn't even punished for his beliefs. It's very easy to see: he trusted that Carmilla would save his life, and he gets beaten to a pulp. He trusted that Lenore would run away with him, and he gets raped into slavery. The story punished him for being naive. And, case in point, what is his "development" in S4? Learning the worth of humans? No, becoming "smarter", outwitting his captors. That was his flaw according to the story. Not his lack of morals, but being stupid. The show is extremely cynical and amoral.

I disagree about the part about Lenore, though. I do see plenty of parallels about the two of them, the whole being underestimated for their softness, their selfish kindness towards pets, the alienation from their species. Of course, it's all written like dogshit and Lenore comes off as a spoiled little girl, but the concept is there. Lenore is basically a less naive Hector, and they could have bonded about being alone in the world, still unable to properly get close due to her callous actions. Keyword: could have. But that would require Hector to be a real character.

Everything about her “character arc” feels— odd. I can't like her. I can't relate to her at all! And even if I could, all the rest of the writing just makes her and Hector's relationship completely unbaleced. They're not equally toxic, and she holds all the power and tolls to mindkeep him (praising him when he does things right, shutting him up when he shows an emotion she doesn't like). I seriously don't get what they were doing here, all the writers: Hector and Lenore aren't even one of those toxic pairings you can enjoy for toxicity; but they're not the deep, sweet loving story that was resumed with “right person wrong time” they tried to make it out to be. The character was clearly designed to be somewhat antagonistic, to be deceiving. To be the temptress, the seductress that promises a bite of the apple while hiding away the price for it. But, no, she's just this sensitive, misunderstood soul— and the cage she was fleeing from is vampirism, because she doesn't want to become like Carmilla! (while I do think there's truth in that, I couldn't care less. Burn, woman. Burn.)

Putting this together, because my personal belief is that Lenore got mangled in the process of writing.

This is her concept art:

Lenore is described in sweet, tragic terms. Her very name evokes Edgar Allan Poe's famous poem, as if to foreshadow her death (I like this, it reminds me of Isaac whose name foreshadows that he's fated to be sacrificed in the name of his god). The snow princess, evoking concepts of cold and isolation. The princess in mourning, grieving something unknown to us, donning a black veil (which she has in her introduction to Hector, too, and then never put on again), keeping roses inside books. Her design that conflicts with Carmilla so much. What they all tell us about her being excessively kind, Striga painting her as overly romantic, Morana accusing her of being "off with the fairies". Her very theme that I linked, which sounds playful yet melancholic. I seriously believe Katie Silva had another character in mind, when she designed Lenore, one that was still villainous, but tragic: a melancholic princess wracked with loneliness and sadness, perhaps. And I bet this character would have been a beautiful case of a sympathetic antagonist, hurting our protagonist out of a misguided sense of mercy, making us think about the morality of vampires.

And then Ellis took her and turned her into another dommy mommy. And Lenore in S3 is just Carmilla 2.0. She speaks in the same obnoxiously smug voice, with the same obnoxiously smug smirks. She beats Hector like Carmilla did. She questions Dracula's sanity (and Hector's intelligence) like Carmilla did. She acts overtly sexual in a way that clashes with everything her design and alleged characterization suggest. She is nothing but sadistic, and her mask of kindness is pretty much made of glass.

Can you imagine S3 Lenore saying something sappy, or keeping petals in her book? I can't, because S3 Lenore is always shown as a callous, sarcastic dominatrix. The others tell us about her allegedly childish personality, but the show only shows us how she behaves with her prisoner. But imagine if she acted like a sweet demure woman to Hector, love bombing him to lower his guard. Suddenly everything about her design and how the others talk about her make sense, right? But she was written how Ellis knows how to write "cool" women: by fetishizing them.

And then she was sort of re-railed in S4, returning to the soft tragic princess she was meant to be. Well, still very poorly, she lacks the elegance of her concept and her angst is petty (there's a difference between "I feel useless" and "my life is perpetual loneliness and I grieve something I can't get back"). But it's as if the two Lenores were written by two different people, and the second one didn't even know about the first one. There was no attempt to show any growth, any added context, just "oh yeah btw she was good all along"

Hector's behavior in S4 makes more sense from this perspective. He plans revenge, he traps Lenore in a cage, he sassies back to her, he aides in Carmilla's death, he has his moment of glory... but at the same time, he still cares about Lenore, he loves her, he supports her, he doesn't leave her alone, the two are soft together. It doesn't make any sense, unless you believe in a rewritten script, like I do.

So their relationship starts as "sexy dommy mommy leashes the subby puppy", which clearly has its appeal judging by how much hornyposting I still see in the tag. And sure, kinks are kinks, but I can't get behind it because Hector is written with so much spite, I don't even find the sight of him naked and bruising hot. He feels so pathetic and laughable and humiliated to a cruel degree, because he doesn't oppose a inkling of resistance, or shows any conflict, he just goes along with every humiliation Lenore puts him through. But then it makes a 180° and it's all about these star-crossed lovers who Get each other and respect each other and would protect each other with their lives and aren't they so tragic, aren't they so misunderstood, please like Lenore please think she's cute!!!!! yeah cool uhhhh what about the petplay. what about the ring that binds hector to the woman who treated him like a dog and rejoiced in his suffering.

It's the lying that I can't stand. Either you have a toxic abusive relationship based on manipulation, deceit and mutual betrayal, or you have a sweet wholesome "you're the first person who was kind to me" deal! But you can't stitch both together like a lazy Frankenstein! Because as I said in the previous post, otherwise you get a narrative that tells me that you owe your abusers your life if they're cute enough and give you the bare minimum!

I... can't promise much, but I do have in store a fic I'm writing where I'm trying my best to make Lenore a more cohesive character, not an innocent babygirl but hopefully more sympathetic in her patheticness. I really see some potential in her and how Hector would be torn about her. But that's the thing: I am aware that I am the one expressing her potential. The story itself did jack and shit. The show is not written well and I'm tired of pretending it is!! It wastes all of its ideas in the name of shallow edginess! I wish its fans acknowledged that they're basically writing fanfiction in their head!!!

Well, this was. a lot. Thank you again for your asks, they really have made my day :D I am very normal about the two Hectors, and sadly I'm also very normal about my barfo. I always hope I can be as exhaustive as I can to make my brain stop screaming lmao. Thank you for giving me an outlet!

[rowanisawriter]

do u want to get in ur feelings about hans during the divorce era with me cuz hans saying WE in that part at the poachers camp makes me feel many things

im insane

[neoasari]

for no particular reason other than i like imas and yugioh, i wanted miki and zwijo to meet...

i like that miki has a normal blonde hair, but it's not her real hair color (it's dyed) and zwijo has a totally abnormal blonde hair but it's actually his real hair color

miki getting fashion ideas from aliens

[driftwoodpony]

you think twilight would rant to cadence about her feelings towards her crush except she doesn't realize she's in love and in denial

yeah. shes the type of person to deny things, especially when its embarrassing to admit