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Me everytime someone depicts Dante as stupid.

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This is so beautiful

Rosaly doodle❤️

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Alan Gabriel from the show The Big O could probably fit that description. He’s voiced by Crispin Freeman and is pretty damn flamboyant. While he isn’t the main antagonist he is one of them.

Time stamp 5:48 and 8:45 is probably the closest we get to seeing Hector acting like Isaac. Now I wanna rewatch the show.

Here we have a character voiced by Liam O'Brien acting all angry and vengeful and killing a fabulous and flamboyant character who’s laughing and taunting him about how he killed his wife

Reply: well, now we need to find in Crispin Freeman’s resume the role of a flamboyant gay villain having the time of his life homosexually tormenting his rival, so that the circle is complete

(this one is pretty good though I have to say)

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I imagine Dracula having Hector’s voice would be due to him being the intended vessel and having the transformation fully realized. That or Hector out dommed Dracula in the merger and that’s why. Pick your poison.

As for Trevor I love to think about the aftermath of this. Whether he’d feel some guilt because on some level because he’d understand that his last words to Hector about showing no mercy would’ve led to him being overtaken by the curse and that Dracula’s resurrection would be partially his fault. Also even IF Trevor would be able to beat this Dracula by himself, the world would still be screwed with the curse since no one other than Hector was capable/willing to undo it.

Really starting to enjoy the idea of Hector becoming the vessel or outright replacement for Dracula right about now.

I'm dying. I'm dead. I'm dead and in heaven. Crispin Freeman slays absolute cunt as Dracula and I'm kicking my legs in the air 🥰

At 1:56 he even quotes his best line in CoD: "The powerful always juge the weak. The humans made their judgment of me. Thus, I sentenced them... to extinction"

and this is peak this is so fucking peak the cinematic parallels the cod love this is a gift to me and me in particular 💖

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Headcanon that is an AU where Hector failed to break free from Dracula’s curse and became the vessel for Dracula’s resurrection. Lets go bad ending! It only took nearly 20 years.

I'm dying. I'm dead. I'm dead and in heaven. Crispin Freeman slays absolute cunt as Dracula and I'm kicking my legs in the air 🥰

At 1:56 he even quotes his best line in CoD: "The powerful always juge the weak. The humans made their judgment of me. Thus, I sentenced them... to extinction"

and this is peak this is so fucking peak the cinematic parallels the cod love this is a gift to me and me in particular 💖

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10/10 character arc. Even has his own seinen manga protagonist peaceful smile.

hector's beautiful character arc with rosaly

context

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Today, March 27th, is Uni's 4th birthday!

Please say "Happy Birthday" to Uni :3

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Number one girlfailure In history

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Castlevania: Curse of Darkness (2005)

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As much as I find the idea of Richter’s corruption being due to getting cucked to be incredibly hilarious, I just know it’ll be short term comedy with long term annoyance.

Can’t wait to see people in the Netflixivania fandom drag Richter’s character from the games through the mud and call the show version an improvement because at least he isn’t a one dimensional badass. Instead he is a flawed and more interesting character this way. But hey don’t worry guys all this is so he can develop into the badass he was in the games.

Trevor will be remembered as a cynical drunkard

Hector will be remembered as a "good boy"

Now it's time for Richter to be remembered (if the leaks are true) as a privileged white cuck (probably racist too).

Man I cannot WAIT for the plethora of Youtube videos about his character!!!

I hope you weren't getting too tired of critisizing IDW Sonic, because now the King is coming back to reclaim its throne!

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Oh hi Leon.

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I’ve always believed that Hector was likely sterile and I’ve imagined that if there was never a curse, and if Isaac didn’t come back to get REVENGE™️ then I feel like Hector and Rosaly would run their own orphanage.

Honestly the more I look at this, the more I wanna see an AU of Hector running an orphanage. Like think of the layers behind the cuteness of it all. From wanting to give children a loving childhood he never had, to it being a small way to atone for his actions under Dracula, and the juiciest one of all is him becoming the idealized version of Dracula that Hector always viewed him as.

A man who takes in the lost and abandoned and giving them a place where they can feel a sense of belonging and value.

No one:

Brain the moment I woke up: new juicy headcanon: Devil Forgemasters can't have children because the dark magic inside them cursed them to only create life, or a mockery of it, through blasphemous means (and depending on Dracula's power and their loyalty to him), because they strayed too far away from God. While Isaac never learns of this, Hector starts to suspect it: he already had doubts about having children because he didn't want to pass on his curse and possibly endanger Rosaly, but he's still frustrated that the choice was taken away from him, as he cares a lot about his own freedom. At the very least, he can become a honorary father figure to the young boys and girls Rosaly is raising on her own, but it's not quite enough because, at its core, he's forced to confront yet another consequence of pledging servitude to Lord Dracula when he was too young to properly understand the impact on his life. He's still human... but not fully, not anymore.

... yes this is my explanation as to why the topic of kids never comes up during three years of marriage when you would expect it from such a cute Disney-esque couple in the Middle Ages. Poor Hec.

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Soma Cruz: finds Excalibur in Dracula's castle

Soma Cruz: Drags Excalibur, stone and all, because eff 'not being the chosen one' it's a good bludgeon and he's gonna use it

I don't know why, but the way Soma has Excalibur amuses me.

what's with soma and having some of the most hilarious moves/weapons

(also damn he stronk for being a normal 18 yo)

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Why Rosaly matters

It's no secret that Rosaly was done very dirty in Curse of Darkness.

She has about the same importance of Elizabetha Cronqvist: "dead wife who spurns her husband's revenge quest and gets vaguely namedropped in-game". But while Elizabetha at least gets her own bio and artwork in LoI's complete guide (not that it says much, just that she fell ill during Mathias' campaign and that she had already died by the time he returned), Rosaly doesn't even get this dignity: her name is only offhandedly mentioned in Hector's and Julia's bio - and she's not even called "wife"! She's just Hector's generic "lover" ("恋人")!

And since she doesn't get her own artwork, we only know what she looks like because Julia just so happens to look identical to her (instead of sharing any similarities with her brother like you'd expect). The implied romance between Hector and Julia by the end of CoD ends up feeling disrespectful for all parties involved: Rosaly, because she gets replaced in a matter of a few days; Julia, because the implication is that Hector only got interested in her because she happened to look like another woman; and Hector, because he sure moved on quickly from the woman he swore revenge for!

This entire rant is to say that I am even more impressed by the amount of work Kou Sasakura and Ayami Kojima put in their prequels to both flesh out Rosaly as a character and convince me that the relationship between her and Hector was too pure to be cut so quickly, and I'm glad that, thanks to the prequels, she gets elevated far above the level of faceless disposable wife.

Rosaly doesn't have the most tridimensional personality in the series, but she's not meant to have one. She's humanity at its best. She's a simple woman, living a perfectly normal life, going by the teachings of Christianity (she's a postulant nun in the MF manga, and she studied at a monastery in the PtR manga) and being kind and altruistic, eager to help for the sake of helping and never asking anything in return.

Her representing the best of humanity matters for Hector. He comes from a life of shunning and hatred, and he was made to feel like he didn't belong among his own kind because of his dark powers. For an untold period of time, he worked under the incarnation of evil to slaughter humankind. And while he did rebel, his motivations at the time seemed to be mainly self-centered:

Hector at this point in time has no affection for humanity yet: he's simply pragmatic enough to disagree with Dracula's plans, and proud enough to break free of his command. He recognizes the inherent wrongness of a human participating in the genocide of his own kind (even in the PtR manga he says "please, please, I'm human too"), but not much beyond that.

So it's Rosaly who finally shows him the inherent value of humanity.

Rosaly's only flaw, if we want to call it that, is that she's too idealistic. She gets told that she's too nice, that she works too much for others, and that most importantly she's being very reckless in keeping with her a mysterious stranger she knows nothing about. Even so, Rosaly still insists on taking care of Hector, and she asks him to please stay beyond the time he needed to heal. Rosaly also refuses to ask questions, something that bugs Hector and his perpetual sense of guilt:

She doesn't care. Yes, realistically, it's naive at best and irresponsible at worst, but Rosaly refuses to pry into Hector's past because whatever sin he may have committed, that's between him and God, and anyone can repent if they want to. And Rosaly has had plenty of proof that, at the very least, Hector does want to be a good person. For him, this also means a chance to start over, without baggage: he's no longer Hector the cursed child, or Hector the Devil Forgemaster, but simply Hector, a normal human being living a normal human life.

Rosaly's lack of fear is so that she's not even deterred by Hector being an edgy boy in the PtR manga :P

(love that Hector calls himself a snake after betraying Dracula, but Rosaly "reclaims" that analogy by saying that she was "bitten right away" and that's why she's keeping him home <3 she's so cute)

And listen. I am weak. I see a character who has never known kindness in their life, suddenly being showered with it, and breaking down because they're overwhelmed, and I melt 💖

But of course, the two don't simply fall in love because she's Nice to him and he's Very Pretty lol. Both prequels show cute bonding scenes between them: Hector struggling to hang laundry, something he could be ashamed of but Rosaly never judges him for; Hector helping Rosaly carry apples and talking about life under the new lord; Hector chopping wood and keeping animals at bay, with Rosaly remarking that he'd be a good sheperd; Rosaly finding lilies of the valley with Hector and explaining how they can be either poison or medicine (which I interpret as them being symbolic for Hector, who has done both evil and good)... There is some real, warm chemistry between them, they help each other, they talk, they live a comfortable life. PtR confirmed that they got married, and it doesn't feel rushed :)

An interesting detail in the MF version is that Rosaly is an orphan, and while she doesn't explain her childhood in much detail, it's implied that she suffered because of it:

(she also lost her family in the PtR manga, but we don't know how old she was)

While nowhere near the same level of Hector and Isaac, Rosaly has known hardship and loneliness in life as well, but she chose to keep living a life of kindness and optimism: this might explain why she's shown taking care of other children, and it seems to be the reason she's so insistent that Hector, who is obviously just as alone and troubled as she used to be, should stay with her.

Speaking of that second page, there is also that whole scene of Hector's breakdown after a particularly nasty demon-induced nightmare. He's caught in the throes of his self-loathing, and he still can't accept that he has found his place in the world outside of Dracula's realm.

Rosaly probably didn't understand much of Hector's rant, and why he calls himself a demon, but she gets that he feels alone and unwanted and she's very quick to remedy that:

I always found sweet how she says "anybody can hear demons, perhaps your hearing is too good". She doesn't know that Hector literally has the power to hear and see demons, the same demons who killed his family and lead him to Castlevania where his life was turned upside down. She takes it more metaphorically: you're not alone in your bad thoughts, we all have them, but please don't succumb to them, you have no reason to, you're a good person. "Don't curse yourself," she says to the one who was made to be cursed since he was born. And then, of course, the obvious declaration of love to someone who couldn't believe he deserved to be loved.

And finally, I am in so much love with this page in particular:

Hector recognizes the value of humanity. In the face of adversities, of evil, of the monsters lurking in the dark and cruel humans, goodness can still prevail. After being subjected to the worst humanity has to offer, he has finally seen the proof of that.

And Rosaly, in all of her innocence, remarks what may be obvious to her, but not to him: "You're human too". Not only he's not a demon, a cursed creature to be detested as he put it... he's just as strong as the people he's come to admire :)

All of this is very, very important, when Isaac comes back and ruins everything:

We now know Rosaly. We have seen how much of a good person she is. We have seen with our eyes the pure happiness she and Hector brought to each other. This turns a generic anti-hero motivation into a true trauma (the way Isaac forces Hector to watch genuinely upsets me) and a real crossing of the Moral Event Horizon for our villain, insane or not. And it hurts so much.

But also, remember how I mentioned that it's important that Rosaly taught him the inherent value of humanity? Hector is a foil to Dracula. Both of them lost their beloved ones in the same way, by a mob accusing them of being witches. But while Dracula blamed the entirety of humankind for the actions of a small group, Hector knew exactly who to target for the death of his wife, and by the end, he even realized that the murderous impulse that made him obsessed with the thought of killing Isaac wasn't really his. Hector really is a good person at heart. And this is what makes him say to Dracula, when the two finally face each other, "It is not your place to judge the worth of humans." He, unlike his former master, has seen it firsthand.

When I played CoD for the first time, I sighed and rolled my eyes when Hector mentioned the death of Rosaly right in the first cutscene: why should I care about another Dead Wife, I said? Now, Rosaly has become one of my favorite female characters in the series, and one of the reasons I can't move on from this game's backstory. She's "just" a very kind woman, not dissimilar from other female character such as Lisa, Lydie or Mina, but she's adorable, idealistic, and might give us comfort that everyone is inherently deserving of love :)

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Been a long while since I’ve touched the Castlevania subreddit, but the last I remember of it was basically just a circle jerk about the show and the same low effort memes being posted again and again. I’m sorry but the castlevania fandom is painfully unfunny. I can only stomach so many “wHat iS a MaN?!” quotes or how hilarious and original Death’s dialogue is.

Oh and who can forget that one guy who’s on literally every fucking post whining about how “Lenore and the vampire sisters deserved a better ending”.

i just want to sincerely thank you for being the shining light of hope in the castlevania tag i cannot stand the netflix show and when i bring up castlevania people always think im talking about the show when i really just want to discuss my favorite games 😭 its so refreshing seeing someone who has insightful posts abojt the games for once

This is one of the nicest things anyone could say to me, I'm honored 🥺

I have become a fan of the game series very recently, but I have enjoyed it in almost its entirety and it is so, so annoying that 90% of the tag still assumes that Castlevania = Netflixvania, and the subreddit is barely any better. It doesn't help that watching NFCV was a painful experience beyond the simple disrespect of the games it allegedly wanted to adapt. I'm glad that I found the circle of game fans to follow so that we can share good material all together <3 the games are good guys, and the lore is just 💋

(I know that I'm obsessed with CoD and I'm rather monotonous lmao. Rest assured I like pretty much all the other games as well, and I'd be happy to talk about OoE and HoD! And in any case, if you know how much NFCV sucks, you can understand why I'm particularly sensitive about the Forgemasters boys, and why I decided to make it my mission to dispel the myth that they're shallow characters that were """improved""" by the show 🙃)

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Every time I see the concept art for corpsey I get reminded that we live in a cruel and unjust world. I still love you though my bootleg Skull knight from Berserk.