#Castlevania Season 4 Spoilers | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bibibbon · 21 days

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Worse, is that this general is the one who cannonically suffers from abuse and being treated like a monster for his magic ability to raise the dead by his mother and folks in his hometown. AND HE'S THE KINDER ONE OF THE GENERALS WHO STILL CARE FOR HUMANITY DESPITE BEING ON DRACULA'S SIDE! Oh, and he ended up leaving Dracula and fought against him and his former general friend in the games! Yet, the show treats him so cruelly (mainly because the screenwriter was getting back at his coworker who was telling him he should stop disrespecting the franchise their doing the show on(that screenwriter was fired for allegations but the crew still used his scripts regardless). And that's just an icing on the cake with Netflix Castlevania. 4/5

Part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4

Hector is probably my favourite castlevania character in the series just because I find his character arc so intriguing. However, I was quite disappointed by how his character arc in season 4 was handled and how they tried to paint it so that hector x Lenore was somehow a healthy ship when it never was.

Iam guessing that you're comparing netflix hector to the OG hector which to be fair netflix castlevania has very much done a complete spin on many of the OG characters hector included (if I read the OG spoilers right hector ends up fighting Issac and being much more active in the plot to the point I have seen people describe him as alucard 2.0)

Hector's character starts with him being a general for dracula and working for him. The depicts Hector and Isaac to be on equal footing during season 1 especially during their shared scenes either them together or with dracula. Heck even their own individual scenes interacting with other characters like camilla or godbrand held weight and showed the importance and power they held.

During season 2 we see the differences between Hector and Isaacs ideologies and we see the different paths that the characters are narrativey built up to take with Hector getting manipulated by camilla and betraying dracula which is contrasted to Isaac who chose to stay by dracula's side and had to be manually teleported away by dracula to escape safely.

We learn that Hector's ideology and belief when making the truce with dracula is that the human population will live like livestock and be controlled as such. Hector wanted humanity to be controlled in a "merciful" way pigs raised to slaughter in a way where they can be used tools to feed the vampires and for them to be raised in a way where they cannot harm and kill other humans.

What's interesting is that Hector clearly states that he doesn't love the rest of humanity but still views their existence as valuable and and important to the world. Ideally, with this ideology Hector shouldn't mind if dracula did change his plan and resorted to killing all of the humans that plauge the earth but in as we see from his conversations with camilla he very much does mind that. The whole reason that Hector was able to be manipulated to betray dracula is because of that change within his character. What's even more interesting is that Hector was able to tell that dracula was grieving and a "a shell of his former self". Hector could tell that over the past year that the death of lissa truly took a toll on dracula and this could be linked to the reason as to why Hector is considered somewhat empathetic especially when it comes to his night creatires whom he treats like proper beings.

Hector believes that by forging night creatures they become their own beings that need a merciful master and he believes that the act of brining night creatures to life is an act of mercy. He believes that he "brings life from death", giving a new purpose or meaning to a soul and saving them from hell.

Hector holds the belief that humans should be controlled like livestock to limit them from their evil actions and an interesting thing that both dracula and isaac bring up is that Hector only knows how to treat others like livestock and he only knows how to also be treated as such. All of Hector's psst relationships whether that be with random individuals or his parents have all been negative. They have all been so bad that Hector decided that the perfect way to live his life was to be completely isolated away from civilisation. This twisted view that he has ends up ending into quite the tragic irony later on.

From birth Hector was unwanted by his mother and his father used him as a tool to get money and power from him because Hector could do alchemy. So yes from the beginning of Hector's life he was abused by both his parents (it got so bad that he literally burnt them alive in his old house to get away from them) so that's a major reason as to why he doesn't understand how a normal healthy relationship works because sadly he never had one. The only joy Hector could receive was his friendship with his night creatures and ultimately this led him to develop a dangerous belief that things should be controlled by a "merciful" ruler ultimately the term merciful is incredibly vague and may not even be what the standard belief of the word is as he fully described that having humans be pigs raised to slaughter as somehow merciful?!?!

We then move onto season 3 where we ultimately should see Hector at his worst state and we see the complete dehumanisation and manipulation that Hector goes through. In the beginning of season 3 Hector arrives chained up like a dog and walking barefoot. He is literally being treated like an animal, like livestock which is ironic considering his previous beliefs.

After he arrives he is physically stripped off any clothes and gets cold water poured all over him as a way to clean him and gets a mouldy piece of bread as food. Yep castlevania goes out of its way to show just how badly Hector is being treated and the utter dehumanisation of his character. This can also be interpreted as a form of karma for betraying dracula and showing him that his previous ideologies by having humans be controlled like livestock is a bad idea (he literally suffers the consequences of his ideology).

This dehumanisation isn't only done by camilla but also by lenore who in their first scene together literally compares Hector to a dog and treats him as such (actually you can argue that she treats him worse than a dog). We see lenore actively manipulating and stripping Hector of his own autonomy and agency as a being keeping him trapped and only allowing him for a walk if he had a collar on?!?! (Handcuffs exisit but i think the collar thing was intentional by her) and she goes further to basically ignore his experiences with vampires and say that "they aren't monsters" like she and camilla aren't committing vile acts towards Hector (this is just another way of lenore's manipulation on screen)

Hector and lenore's first meeting is clearly staged in a way where we can see that ultimately lenore has more power whether that be from the proxmeics where we see that lenore is clearly above Hector and she has to sit down to reach his level. Heck even when she is sitting down she is still above him (literally and metaphorically) she is also clothed elegantly and has a veil on her that she removes to make herself seem more friendly and make herself seem like she is getting down to Hector's level all while Hector is naked and barely has anything to cover himself. The two are separated by a jail cell quite literally showing us that they have two different lives and showing us just how separated the two are with lenore still leaving a huge gap between them (enough to show that she still cares but also enough to command respect and show authority)

Ultimately Hector is at his worst and lenore is at her best. Hector is practically bribed into making a pact or a deal with the devil. A deal where he is exploited day and night for simple human rights (the right to decent food, clothing, some autonomy etc etc). This from the very beginning is an unequal deal one that lenore cleverly frames as a business deal where Hector is somehow on equal footing when he is literally their prisoner and foremaster.

(Am I ignoring some aspects of season 4 when ir comes to lenore's characterisation? Yes! Yes iam because I liked her so much more as a character who manipulates, who wants to be seen as important and is kind for image purposes. I liked her evil more than her being whiny in season 4)

Throughout season 3 and 4 we see lenore get closer to Hector and ultimately do more manipulating. She uses sex as a means to overpower him and show him whose in contorl. She traps him both mentally and physically with the ring on his finger and she tries to depict herself and her sisters as the good guys. Her phrasing going around the whole "yes camilla is angry and has an attitude but she would never kill you" (because you're valuable and needed to be a forgemaster although she doesn't say it). Heck even in the very last episode she still clings to that belief that after everything vampires (specifically her and her sisters gave done) that they aren't monsters and that in a way her actions are justified.

Like I said I hated season 4's characterisation of Hector, lenore, the sisters and Isaac's (not so much isaac though)

It made sense for isaac to spare Hector and heck I think it may of been a bit foreshadowed if we take the conversation isaac had with the pirate into consideration.

Hector should (but never got to) of stood up and betrayed the sister's. He should of learnt that his ideology of having humans being controlled like livestock is wrong because it will never be and can never be done under "merciful" conditions since good must always exsit with evil and the other way is also true. Hector learning such a thing would also have his character betray lenore and go back to his previous beliefs that she was indeed exploiting him.

The sisters should of ended things together. Season 3 established the undying loyalty and trust that they had for each other and in my opinion it would of been imapctful to stay that way even if camilla's ambition was the thing to cause their downfall.

Lenore should of lived and died, lived and been taken down by Hector ultimately escaping and landing om top pr she should of died with the sisters. She had potential to be a cunning villain who in her words shouldn't be looked down upon or underestimated for wanting peace or little amounts of violence as possible.

In the end I agree. Hector was treated horribly by the narrative specifically when it comes to terms of abuse and how the narrative treats the topic or theme.

However, I am not fully aware of the controversy surrounding the nextflix castelvanina especially the things to do in the writing room but I have started to look into it and yikes it's not good (and that comment is an understatement)

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pile-of-secrets · 6 months

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HI! IM PUTTING MY CASTLEVANIA SEASON 3 EPISODE 9 (and a little of episode 10) THOUGHTS INTO THE WORLD! HERES YOUR SPOILER WARNING NOW!!

oh my god, ok, so. The absolute MADNESS of this episode starts LESS THAN 4 MINUTES IN TO A 28 MINUTE LONG EPISODE. That’s 24 whole minutes of death defining battles and really controlling s3x.

I mean like, the fights were really cool, they were interesting to watch, ISAAC? Bro that’s insane, I really liked the whole mind control concept that town had, I also don’t think the wizard spoke a word the whole time which was an interesting dynamic for a fight. Isaac breaking out of the mind control is like WOO GO ISAAC. But by far, (and yes im aware this was SUPPOSED to be serious) I found all the people slo-mo falling from the building quite funny for some reason?? I guess it was just unexpected.

Then there’s the whole alucard situation, SUMI AND TAKA? WHAT THE FUCK GUYS? YOU WERE GOOD CHARACTERS HOW DID THIS HAPPEN? WHEN DID THINGS CHANGE?? they were genuinely enjoyable, alucard seemed SAD he genuinely seemed like he wanted them to stay as long as possible! THEY COULD SEE HE WAS LONELY 😭 AND THEY USED IT AGAINST HIM! They basically seduced him, tied him up, TRIED TO KILL HIM. And died. They deserved to die hurting the poor dude like that. Alucard has scars everywhere now and I feel so bad for himmm

Trevor and sypha, good lord. POINT 1: SYPHA WAS RIGHT. SHE SAID, “do you think we can wait?” AND JUDGE BEING DUMBBB went “this is my town. You will do as I say >:(“ AND IT MAKES ME SO MAD! SHE CANT DO ANYTHING AND SHE KNOWSSS. “I just didn’t see it” GRAH POINT 2: that WHOLE fight, oh my god, the FIRE the MONSTERS PRIOR “DRUGLORD” SALA. The whole thing was constructed really well, AND SEEING DRACULA AND LISA. AFTER THE END OF EPISODE 9 IT ALMOST MADE ME THINK IT WAS ALUCARD THEY WERE SEEING. JEEZ IT WAS CONSTRUCTED WELL.

And lastly, my dear wife Lenore, I love her with all my heart BUT WHAT A TWISTED WOMAN?? OH MY GOD POOR HECTOR. IN THE BEGINNING I THOUGHT “oh this has to be more consensual than what’s going on with alucard, she’s probably just Seducing him 🤷‍♀️” WRONG. THE SLAVE RING? THAT LOOKS LIKE IT HURT. AND ALL THEIR SCENES I FEEL LIKE ARE WILDLY MORE REVEALING THAN ANYTHING WITH ALUCARD. BUT SERIOUSLY, That whole plan was really pulled off SO WELL she did a very good job of keeping her own face while KNOWING exactly what she was doing every step of the way. All in all this whole episode pulls together really well into a shamble of absolute terror. And I love it.

#castlevania #alucard #trevor belmont #sypha belnades #lenore castlevania

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pinchraccoon · 1 year

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Pinch Reviews: Castlevania: Nocturne

I watched the new 8 episode series from Netflix and Powerhouse Animation, Castlevania: Nocturne. Nocturne serves as a stand-alone sequel to 2017's 4 season "Castlevania" from the same production hands.

While this Tumblr blog is to keep my followers up to date on the games that I've played lately, I have been slacking on my reviews and I am hilariously behind. This is to say, since my initial playthroughs of Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night, I've engrossed myself in the Castlevania series wholly, having played a total of 8 games in the series this year, and watched the initial series as well.

This review will come from someone who holds the games in very high regard, and *particularly* the stories and characters of Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night.

I'll be starting with a largely "spoiler-less" review of the series for those who would like to watch it, and it'll consist of about 1 paragraph of text.

Castlevania Nocturne is absolutely unrelated to Castlevania at large, with only tangential thematic or plot themes that connect it to the series' larger identity. While some might point to the presence of Vampires, Belmonts, and magic and say "well what else do you need?" I find many aspects of the series' identity in campy fun, but interesting and thoughtful instances of character writing the likes of which are seen in games such as Lament of Innocence and Aria of Sorrow, as well as the immense colorful, high-contrast visual style present in Castlevania media since the *very* beginning as elements that I lament the lack of presence of. At numerous points in the show, I thought "Why is this Castlevania? None of this is related to anything Castlevania? Why not just make an original property?" Which I personally find to be a damning sentiment, but I cannot fault the show for that which it doesn't do. To longtime Castlevania fans, you may find the show somewhat underwhelming. However, on a more general term, the show features more instances than not of choppy, flat animation, flat character writing, an irritating dialogue style, and underwhelming gore elements. However, they do *some* good things! There are a few characters who I could see viewers latching onto, and there's occasionally something cool that happens.

With that out of the way, I'll now be entering my *Very Spoilery Review*

First and foremost, Castlevania Nocturne's premise, while not completely and inherently distasteful, nor impossible to do in a way that's interesting, is done incredibly distastefully and uninterestingly. I am referring specifically to Nocturne's insistence on hilariously, absolutely wildly evil Vampires who "run the planet" essentially, who are motivated to put down the French Revolution because the existence of Democracy threatens the ease of the Vampire elite to control the Royalty of the world. I expressly don't think that this is a dumb, uninteresting, or distasteful idea inherently, HOWEVER, due to the nature of Vampires existence in their original literature and folk lore implications, it's incredibly easy to see the anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant inherent themes of Bram Stoker's "Dracula" all over it.

Again, I'd LOVE to see an idea such as this executed properly, however that isn't present here. Here's why. Nocturne features a cast of characters whose motivations are all in some way or another related to incredibly flat vampire characters who do nothing but kill for their entertainment and pleasure. I'm not calling for a reason to not kill the bourgeoise in the French Revolution, I just want a reason to latch onto the motivations of the characters in a way that isn't just "they're a different species than me and are also doing like, slavery and taxation and stuff and they killed someone close to me." Genuinely, EVERY SINGLE main cast member has someone who was killed by one vampire or another in the past, and while that works somewhat to unite the heroes emotional issues such that they can support one another (theoretically) it serves to illustrate the entire, sentient, living, vampire "species" as comically evil, wildly uninteresting, and most damning, caricatures of marginalized people being blamed for controlling all of human civilization. Which, to spell it out more blatantly to avoid the lack of nuance present on the internet, becomes uncomfortably synonymous with long-running theories of jews, or "lizard people" controlling government institutions.

I want to compare to Castlevania's own interpretation of Dracula as a way of demonstrating a "controlling vampire" done Right. Dracula has *very specific* *very pointed* origins and motivations that make him a far more compelling, and more than that, HUMAN, character who has a degree of feeling, despite the evil that he performs. Dracula does what he does because he's hurting, and he feels as though the world has turned and left all it's goodness behind, which, in his eyes, is the truth! It's not that he wants to control all of humanity, it's not that he wants to be worshipped as a god, it's that he just has beef, like people do.

Few to none of the vampires hold that same quality of "beef" in Nocturne. Most of the vampires don't speak, save for a few main heads of their movement, however, even these heads hold hilariously overblown, stupid, uninteresting, unsympathetic motivations that JUST serve to make me hate them on the notion that they're Objectively evil. Like, OF COURSE, I hate the Caribbean slave-owner vampire, and OF COURSE I side with Annette on hating him. He was a slave owner? Duh? You don't need to provide a thousand other scenes of the man being just flat out cruel in the interest of making me hate this man More. Half of his lines are belittling Annette, the other half is justifying slavery, and I'm not exaggerating.

Or, perhaps, consider the "main villain" of the show, Bathory. She's built up as "The Vampire Messiah" for FOUR EPISODES before we actually see her, and then when we do, FINALLY, get to see who this OVERWHELMING threat is, she just laments about, get this, HATING THE SUN. Of course she hates the sun, she's a vampire! That's the actual lamest conceivable motivation. Not to mention, she's insufferably annoying and isn't remotely entertaining to watch, nor are we ever sold on her power to any degree whatsoever other than a bunch of side characters saying "ah, well, she drank the blood of the Egyptian Goddess Sekhmet, so she's pretty strong, we would die for her." When your allegory for the ruling class is this comically evil in the "killing and maiming people" way as opposed to the "capitalist allegory" way, it reads as really wildly uncomfortable.

To summarize the last point, because of the commitment to making each and every vampire character comically evil, and the premise combined, it easily reads far too similarly to monster literature of the past which would seek to conflate the evils of the monsters in question with a specific demographic of people, which is uncomfortable to watch, and rather distasteful to write.

But my distaste for this show doesn't end there!

I'd like to discuss Annette. A lot of people are getting mad regarding "race swapping" or "omission of character in the interest of wokeness" which I think is a load of shit that I couldn't begin to entertain. I am not perturbed by the same things that those people are. Instead, I feel that the explanation of Annette and Edouard's backstory is incredibly poorly paced, and above all, gratuitous in their depiction of black generational trauma.

Annette in this series is an escaped slave who comes to France in search of a Belmont in order to hopefully be able to kill the Vampire Messiah who was foretold to increase the scale of the institutions of slavery that Annette had been fighting against for her entire life. I actually really like her motivation and how it reflects very real attitudes of Caribbean revolutionaries regarding how they felt about the French Revolution. But my main issues with the communication of her motives comes in the gratuitous depiction of a slightly dramatized form of the *very very real* trauma of slavery. This isn't like Toni Morrison's Beloved, or even something like Django Unchained, both of which don't shy away from detailing slavery in as gruesome of detail as possible for the purpose of demonstrating character as well as history. Nocturne demonstrates slavery comically, as it attempts to roll it's own fantasy elements in the same breath as their real-world slavery depiction. For example, the reason that Annette's mother is killed isn't related to the injustices of the notion of slavery in general, it's instead because her mother was practicing magic. I find that these elements in conjunction with one another create a dissonance that puts a bad taste in my mouth, all for the only real payoff to be such that Annette is knowledgeable of, and holds hatred to, the institution of slavery as well as magic.

It isn't a BAD thing to discuss, depict, or have subject matter related to slavery, that's absolutely not what I'm trying to say. What I feel that the issue here is is that a significant amount of the information and cruelty shown could have been omitted and the viewer would have the same understanding of Annette's character. Because they committed far more to demonstrating than was necessary for what elements they were attempting to explore, the incredible commitment to demonstration of black generational trauma feels gratuitous and somewhat cruel. Sorta like the writer is holding it over your head like "hey! you! did you know that slavery is ALSO bad when vampires do it? let me show you some just TERRIBLE subject matter to let you know!" Like, yes, I knew this already, slavery IS evil and is perhaps THE MOST evil, so we were already on the same page here.

This concludes my largest issues with the show from a standpoint of legitimate mishandling of social issues and sensitive subject matter, the rest is more about the show in general.

I don't entirely dislike the way that Richter is written on the macro scale in Nocturne, I feel that his very real connection to the Belmont Clan and the depictions of his mother Julia Belmont, as well as his grandfather, Juste Belmont (who I felt happy to see), was very interesting and worked to the themes. BUT: On the individual, what the character says level, I find Richter SO annoying. This is related to a larger dialogue writing issue with the show in general, which is the inclination to curse like a third grader who has just learned of what swearing is. The number of times that a character uses the term "fuck" or "fucking" purely to provide unnecessary emphasis to their sentence that was perfectly good without swearing comes of as flat out cringey. Now, I swear a lot! I'm not *against* swearing! But the way that Richter and every other character is written makes them all feel unbelievably annoying. Heroes, villains, everyone says "fucking" like it's going out of style! So much so that I might propose a drinking game where you take a shot every time there's an unnecessary use of the word "fuck" in a scene. Granted, I can guarantee you'll be wildly hungover the next day, so I can't recommend doing that.

One particularly damning scene is Richter's moment of personal growth this season, realizing that he has to fight with the whole of him to protect those who he loves, and has a cool fight scene with a bunch of vampires, in which he then says This:

GENUINE COP OUT. I cannot stress enough how every single character's childish inclination toward being edgy by swearing undermines every single character.

I'm beginning to ramble somewhat though, so let's touch on a few things that I think were good and bad, but don't have a ton to say about before we wrap up.

-Drolta is a cool character, and genuinely should have been the only main villain of the show. I also adore her character design.

-The action scenes lack interesting gore, which I felt was a overwhelming positive of the 2017 Castlevania series.

-The monster designs (and show in general) lack color, and it feels like a deliberate attempt to push against the legacy of the source material.

-The animation is excellent when characters are using whips, but very jarring in scenes of standing and speaking, or even in the use of magic.

-Tera is an awful mother figure character and I felt nothing when she was turned in the finale. It doesn't help that they only drew her face twice and copypasted it between scenes it feels.

-The romance plot between Richter and Annette appearing at the end of the show is the Most Forced shit I have ever seen, almost like the writers forgot that they were love interests in the original and decided that of All of the things they had to include that that was INDISPENSABLE.

-Richter, Annette, and Maria's dynamic as a group barely exists beyond each of them calling eachother "Wankers" "bastards" and other terms of endearment. It's a hollow and ineffective means of emulating the good writing that Trevor, Sypha and Alucard had in the 2017 series, and was that show's highlight.

-I like Edouard's arc of being a monster with a soul, and it DOES help to begin to demonstrate the theme of "the lack of absolutes in good and evil", which I'll discuss later.

-Olrox is excellent. He's written well, his motivations are kept close to the chest, and he's genuinely intriguing as a character. I quite like his motivation, I like his design, I like his voice, no he's great. Best part of the show, honestly. (and the only evidence thus provided [save for alucard] of a "not completely evil" vampire)

-again, the commitment to every character exaggerating their sentences by cursing like a child is unbelievably grating.

My final point is one related to whether or not I think that in it's current state the show is worth watching. Generally, with shows, I prefer that the show have some sort of thematic relevance that reflects the progress of the story, and while I can somewhat see elements of that being shown in the "absolutes of good and evil" theme explored by the Abbot, Olrox, and Edouard, nothing is actually done with this theme, and it only comes into contact with our main cast in the finale. As such, these themes are only seen in the same way that dramatic irony is set up, but not executed on. Because of the half-execution of this theme, I feel that the show feels hollow thematically, and feels as though absolutely nothing happens or changes for a single character throughout it's runtime.

In some ways, this show being 8 episodes is really fitting, as it feels like in any other anime when you watch a show to episode 8 and then stop watching, but in this case they didn't release or make the rest of the season, which will likely be released later on in a "season 2" that does literally anything at all to provide the themes or story elements any merit.

Personally, I think I would confidently call this show "unfinished." There is no "win" to match the characters growth, the little that they did, and I felt that I was left on a lazy cliffhanger because of arbitrary fail-states.

As a fan of Castlevania, this could not be further from its source material, as a fan of shows that are good, Nocturne also manages to fail.

It pains me to say that I don't think it's worth your time, as I really want people to get into Castlevania, but I really cannot stress enough that this show is not even close to a good demonstration of what the series is about, or what the series' themes are. Genuinely, I don't care if you don't care about the games, they are better than this show, which is hard to measure, because they're different mediums, but I'm confident in this assessment.

#pinch raccoon #castlevania nocturne #castlevania #pinch reviews #richter belmont #vtuber #envtuber #indie vtuber #raccoon #twitch streamer #youtube #netflix

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alpaca-clouds · 1 year

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Castlevania Season 4

Currently seeing a lot of people watching Castlevania for the first time and being as confused as everyone else once was about season 4 and certain story developments.

Spoilers - Obviously.

The story decisions in question basically show up in all the storylines:

Why is Alucard just okay with everything about having talked to Greta for approximately two hours?

What the fuck is the deal with the entire Targoviste storyline, that kinda goes nowhere?

Why are Hector and Lenore just fine after everything that she did in the end of season 3?

Why was St. Germain so easily corrupted? (And why does his love interest not even get a name or voice lines?)

Why does Carmilla so suddenly go off the deep end?

Why don't the four storylines never meet up, ending the story without the main characters (that is the group of Hector and Isaac, vs the trio) ever meeting?

Why is Varney?

And I mean, we are never going to fully know. But chances are good, that Warren Ellis had thought he would get five seasons to tell his story - instead of only four. Now, we never got confirmation for that, but there are a lot of points speaking for it - most notably just that the last season feels rushed af.

Now, a big question is, why it got then cut down into four seasons. There is a lot of speculation. For once there is of course all the shit coming out about Warren Ellis at the time. So maybe Netflix wanted to cut him off, before all of that came out. There is also the fact, that season 4 went into production in 2020 and we all know what happened in 2020. So chances are, that the show might well have been impacted by the pandemic. There is also the fact, that Ellis was allegedly in general hard to work with for some people. Another fact. And, lastly, it might just have been a Netflix thing, even though we are getting Nocturne. (You know... *cries in Inside Job and DeadEnd*)

There is also the fact, that a lot of folks harrassed Netflix and the creators about everything season 3. Especially the Alucard scene and what happened to Hector. And if we look at Rise of Skywalker, we know it would not have been the first and only time that fans harassing a studio got them to backpaddle on story decisions.

But I think a lot of writing decisions for the most part can be explained with simple Story Economy under the idea that Ellis had if not calculated for five seasons, then at least for more episodes in that last season.

I have often heard people talk about "But why are Alucard, Trevor and Sypha even there?", because it is very clear that for the most parts season 3 and 4 are very much the story of Hector, Isaac and the Styria sisters. With everything else kinda feeling more like an obligation. (Even though, unpopular opinion: I do like both the Alucard and the Lindenfeld storylines in season 3.) And this is very noticable in season 4 of course. The entire Varney thing comes out of nowhere. St. Germain's Face-Heel-Turn comes out of nowhere. Death comes out of nowhere.

The simple answer is, of course, that the main trio is the main trio and it would probably not have been within the contract with Netflix or Konami or whoever to write them out. Not to mention that, yes, Alucard is probably half the reason some viewers are there. Hence, they needed a storyline.

Now, again, I am mostly just speculating. But I do assume that at some point the plan has been to pitch Carmilla against the main characters. It would not have been surprising to me, if the original plan was to have her slowly go off the deep end in season 4, have her make a deal with Death and maybe give her a redemption arc in season 5 (because she feels like a too well developed character for the development in season 4 being the original plan).

But given the "end it with season 4" and "main trio has to do stuff, because main trio" requirements that had probably have to be met, a lot of decisions make sense.

Why does Alucard get over his trauma within hours of meeting Greta? Well, because there was no time for him to have a proper recovery arc, before he had to be there for a finale to happen. Maybe, too, because of the harassment and some fans not wanting to see Alucard in a position of weakness.

What is the deal with Targoviste? Mostly just to give Trevor and Sypha something to do, before they could join for the finale. Also to introduce Varney.

Why is Varney? Because there was no character, who would believably get into "making a deal with Death" within just one season. Hence he was just a tool to bring Death into the plot. (Which kinda makes sense, given Death is a main antagonist in several of the games.)

Why are Hector and Lenore just fine? Because here, too, there was no time for a proper recovery arc. Also, maybe, because a lot of people got angry, too, about Hector being put into the position of weakness. So it was just swept aside.

Why does Carmilla go off the deep end so quickly? Because there was no time for a proper corruption arc either. But she needed to be the bad guy for that storyline, because otherwise there would not have been a proper finale for the entire Styria storyline, as it was unable to reconnect to the Wallachia storyline.

And why is St. Germain so easily corrupted? I would assume because some executive decision had been made that he had to be put into the season.

The thing is really, that if you just look at it logically, the plot points kinda make sense - but because they are so rushed, they do not feel right. And of course this does kinda ruin a lot of it, because the ending is what matters a lot in stories.

Now, personally, I am mostly fine with where all the arcs end. I personally am fine with the ending of building a village around the castle. I am fine with Isaac taking over Styria. I am fine with Dracula and Lisa coming back from the dead. And yes, I am fine with Lenore dying. But it does feel rushed and I do not like how the plot gets there.

Most of all, I wished that there was a bit more emotional fallout from season 3. I definitely do not like how Alucard is just suddenly fine - or how Hector and Lenore are suddenly fine. It does feel emotionally... unfullfilling. *sighs*

But nothing to do about it now.

What I am getting at with this ramble: I do not think that Ellis (who is a horrible human being, but also a pretty good writer) has suddenly forgotten how to write stuff. I mostly just think that there was a lot of Drama going on behind the scenes. Partly because Ellis is a bad human, but also because of pandemic being pandemic.

#castlevania #castlevania netflix #castlevania season 4 #story economy #story writing #st germain #castlevania carmilla #the ending #varney of london #death castlevania

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123moiaussi · 11 months

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SPOILERS FOR CASTLEVANIA NOCTURNE AHEAD!!!

So, I finished watching Castlevania Nocturne and oml it’s so GOOD.

Anyway, I was discussing with my partner what are the loose ends/ potential storylines for the next season.

Edouard

It’s left about open ended to where Edouard currently is. The ending of the season suggests one of two things.

1. Edouard has taken the forgemaster machine to Hell. This means that he can go to Hell but also manage to break out the abbey if the gang decides to open a portal to hell. They have the book and they have Annette.

2. Edouard is going to stay in the Abbey to get the night creatures to gain a conscious of who they were before they were turned. We know that Edouard knows who he is plus Jacques and one other night creature. I believe that Edouard could potentially repeat the actions of his previous life by creating solidarity between all the night creatures and potentially overthrow the Abbot. What this will also result in is a break in the creator- night creature loyalty bond and thus Erzsebet and the Abbot cannot control the night creatures, thus weakening their power. Also a nice little link between OG Castlevania and Nocturne is Edouard and the other night creatures gaining consciousness like the Philosopher night creature in season 3/4.

The Book

This is a bit of a crack theory but I do think the book connects to the OG series, so buckle up!

In the final episode of the OG Castlevania, Lenore and Hector have a very poignant and contextually important conversation about the direction of Hector’s life and his interest in not only forgemastering but also in vampire ethics and the sciences. Lenore suggests to Hector that he should explore the world and write a book which Hector agrees with.

Now, Drolta says in Nocturne that for night creatures to be made they need a human touch. The machine is implied to not have been built by the Abbot but to come from Hell itself. The Book also is old and includes instructions on how to open Hell as well as conduct forgemastering skills and seems to include lore around vampires and magic. It is implied that the Abbot himself doesn’t use direct tools to create the night creatures like Isaac and Hector. Therefore, the Abbot’s tool is the machine but he didn’t create it. Thus, the person that made the machine must’ve been a human that could forgemaster.

I doubt that Hector is undead/vampire but according to OG Castlevania and what happens in Season 4 there are two people that know how to open portals/get to hell: Saint Germain and Hector. Saint Germain knew because he was a time traveler and had a stone that allowed him to open portals/mirrors to hell and other dimensions. Hector probably knew how to get to hell due to his studies or his research with Dracula.

In conclusion, I think that Hector not only made the forgemaster machine, he also wrote the book that the Abbot now possesses. It’s the human touch that is required to make the night creatures. The Abbot potentially found this book in a church collection like Saint Germain did in the Season 3 or gained access to the book by making a deal with Dracula when he came back into the world with Lisa. Additionally, we know that the Belmont library could have also contained a book on dark magic as it implied in Nocturne that the Belmont family resided in France until about the mid 18th century.

These are some messy ideas but these are just a couple things off my head🫶

#castlevania #castlevania nocturne #nocturne #Castlevania theory #vampire theory #forgemaster theory

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boneswithbeans · 1 year

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youtube

Soooo made my first ever AMV outta hype for the new Castlevania [spoilers for season 4 ep 6]

#castlevania #netflix castlevania #castlevania carmilla #amv #odge poge edits #castlevania amv #Youtube

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bassia-bassensis · 1 year

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I can't I can't root for these two, it's impossible.

#they should have stayed in hell #Castlevania season 4 #castlevania spoilers

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dragongirlfangs · 1 year

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Okay so, since an actual trailer for Castlevania Nocturne is coming out tomorrow I need to get this out of my head, because I am so fucking excited for this show I can’t even explain how much.

So, my hypothesis for the story of this season/s, and specifically for the villains of this version of the story.

(Castlevania Netflix Season 4 spoilers under the cut.)

So, in Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night Dracula is the main villain. Very directly in Rondo as the main threat of the story, and more indirectly in Symphony as he’s not immediately involved with the plot, but he is still the reason why Shaft brainwashes Richter and the plot happens.

But if they’re following the end of Season 4 this cannot happen in Nocturne, because Dracula and Lisa got a happy ending at the end. At this point, even if Lisa dies of old age before he does, she died happy while they’re together, Dracula has no reason to still want humanity dead. Which means that there have to be new villains.

... except not really, because Shaft exists. He’s basically Dracula’s lieutenant in Rondo as the one who revives him there, and he causes the inciting incident in Symphony. Obviously, he wouldn’t be working towards reviving/serving Dracula in this continuity - unless in some twisted metaphorical way of serving him by “continuing his work to destroy humanity” - so he’s either working alone with that possible motivation, or working with someone else.

And we have a possible, even likely candidate: count Olrox

He’s a simply a mid-game boss in Symphony of the Night, but he’s notable for two reasons: because he’s cool as hell and his second form is a giant lizard that shoots lasers, and because he’s another vampire residing in Dracula’s castle, while the brainwashed Richter is there and Shaft is working to revive his master.

This is something that categorically doesn’t happen in the games, unless the particular vampire also serves Dracula directly. So we can count that Olrox is either that, or looking at how ostentatious his Quarters (as the area you find him in is called in the game) are, that he might be a direct ally or even a ‘friend’ of Dracula (or working together with Shaft, possibly).

So, my theory for Nocturne would go like:

Shaft and Olrox are working together, in a similar way to Shaft and Dracula in Rondo of Blood, perhaps wishing to continue Dracula’s work of destroying humanity, or even to sort help Olrox of ‘take’ Dracula’s place as the leading, most powerful vampire lord in the world (two goals that, aren’t incompatible now that I think about it). And that’s the reason why the Rondo part of Nocturne happens, their own invasion of humanity, following Dracula’s footsteps directly or indirectly.

I’m less sure of how a hypothetical Symphony portion would go, assuming the series goes there, but there wouldn’t be a lot to change if it did. Shaft can still kidnap and brainwash Richter to take over maybe Castlevania itself, maybe Olrox’s castle? (and please I’m begging the writers to make said brainwashing explicitly more like “Richter actually believes he might become obsolete when his purpose as a Belmont vampire hunter is complete, and is terrified of it, even if he would never act like his brainwashed self under normal circumstances” like the game kinda sorta implies, rather than a straight up possession, it would be so much more interesting), and have Olrox either not die in the Rondo portion, or just not have him here! and let Shaft take center stage as the main villain trying to continue what they started after Richter is saved.

SO YEAH, that’s my theory. And sure, the writers might just, create new villains for Nocturne and throw me (and us all) for a loop, and I’d be fine with that, but if they’re primarily working into translating the story of the games, I think this might be a very possible way for the story to go.

#castlevania #castlevania nocturne #castlevania netflix #richter belmont #now time for the tRAILER TOMORROW TO PROVE ME WRONG-

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mellowgoop · 1 year

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big spoilers for the entire castlevania super show

So I watched 4-6 (season four must be consumed piece by piece I guess) and like 65% of the series resolved so I have a ton of thoughts...

first and foremost, I think Isaac is one the shows absolute biggest accomplishments! I get the sense that either carmilla losing herself or isaac finding himself was something OG fans did not like about the netflix show, but not knowing their characterizations in anything else, I was pretty happy with both.

in season three (pretty much for every moment since dracula spared him) isaac was the most interesting character to me because I just had NO idea what he was working towards, even though he had the power and the will to get it done like, no questions asked. there were numerous, *numerous* points in season three where I was like youre seriously doing all of this to get revenge on *hector???* the poor sopping napkin meow meow chained up in a puppy kennel right now? it seemed like this kind of. pain projection thing blaming him for the fall of draculas army because of their bond? meanwhile isaac versus carmilla was OBVIOUSLY the more interesting revenge story. I didnt really know if the writers acknowledged that or were just hoping we really did buy him wanting revenge on hector specifically that badly, but now thats one thing that Im preeeeeetty sure they had a plan for. compared to lots of other things. ... more on that later

at the personal level, isaac finding his will to live and "become human" again despite all he's been through is one of the best parts of the series to me. but, as you start to expand it outwards, a lot of other things start to feel a little less good. Like, I haven't seen Lenores final scene yet, but I DOUBT anything is going to change about my thoughts on Hector by the end and that definitely soured. maybe intentionally?? for a while, I felt like he was the most relatable character because he seemed to be the only person with a pure heart left in season three carmillas castle, and was doomed for it. but then one day I was like hey... why did hector join *draculas human eradication campaign*??? wh... why did he do that?? and this last scene definitely threw dirt on this even more like. HUH? you made a last ditch deal with st. fucking germaine to revive dracula for.. pennance?? or no, its because you wanted to throw this at isaac who you were deathly afraid of (rightly) in hopes he would spare you. *maybe???* it just seemed so random. and why did you build a portal to carmillas room of all things?? why do all this for a desperate shot at surviving isaac AND turning him against carmilla? like, it almost holds up as a smart persons self-preservation ploy but its too forward-thinking when its based on a coinflip of isaacs mercy. i think a fucking. teleporter out of the castle would have made more sense, if we are to believe he is a. smart and b. self preserving in a disaster? and as much as i can infer hes afraid of all the god tier people out to get him in this scenario... he ends up thinking of a random way to cut the ring off so .... i think he could have just warped out and ditched the ring and helped lenore leave too.

and thats verrrry granular thinking for character whose motivations werent even clear to me, he definitely went from product of the situation to way too much a product of the situation.

meanwhile. CARMILLA is a fun character jesus christ. In S3, I misunderstood a couple of things and thought I didnt like carmilla and lenore at all. I thought lenore was legitimately so broken she could manipulate someone that deeply on the daily but, thats absolutely not it lol. she was very much earnest and torn up. that concept was significantly more disturbing than the rest of the show to me at first so i was like... swag but what? I didnt like carmilla because I thought we were legitimately meant to emphathize with her or at least get her angle in S3 but... that is very much not the case lol

like isaac, on a character level I really like carmillas downfall because its very clear! yeah no, you lost everything about yourself in the name of revenge and """""ambition,"""" thats clean and it was explained very clearly in her convo with lenore. its a lot like dracula again, and the fracturing of her court seemed like it would be interesting but then that just... didnt really happen? Im not sure why isaacs attack couldnt have waited one more day for these people to squabble? on one hand, I was very afraid for strigana getting bury-your-gays'd and im happy they moved on as a family unit. but like. that DEFINITELY happened too soon, carmilla didnt even know they had their change of heart. and at the least, how did we not get them saving lenore???? i seriously doubt that would change whatever lenore and hectors last scene will be. i buy lenore and strigana moving on from carmilla, thats like their whole point, but i diiiiislike them just assuming lenore is dead. like what?

in the end, it happened a little too quickly and while isaac and carmilla had fitting endings theres a lot of weird in there. It wont keep me from rewatching, but it reminds me of GOT ending things prematurely because uh... life is cruel and things happen. forget about that chara and plot. moving swiftly on!

#castlevania #thoughts #long post

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misscammiedawn · 6 months

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Permit me some self-indulgence to share my Favorite Character Bingo.

For this bingo I favored my fandom tags (17/24 spaces selected from my 25 listed fandom tags) and tried to round out with movies that I adore.

I wanted to diversify my range of franchises to include TV, animation, books, comics and video games and also pick characters that resonated most with each of us, though Camden's influence is felt the strongest. I won't state where the attachments lay but I'm sure those who know us can infer.

Descriptions and reasons under Read More.

Full spoilers for any character featured. Content warning for suicide discussion under cut.

1: Miles Edgeworth - Ace Attorney - Literally the last square filled in and we looked at the remaining 9 fandom tags and thought "which of these 9 have a character that we feel strongly about", it was either him or Alucard Castlevania and both for the same reason, daddy issues. I love the idea of a virtuous child of anime Atticus Finch being raised by a deliciously evil prosecutor to become everything his father would have hated. I love the conflict between two siblings raised in the house of Perfection. I love his dramatic ass (except when he pulls that "chooses death" bullshit. That was unforgivable). Plus I just adore his slowburn romance with Phoenicholas, how supportive he is of their daughter, Trucy, and how the sequel trilogy is sparing enough of him that we always miss him when he's not around. He is our favorite Ace Attorney character by a mile. Plus he's a the straight man (well, he's got his hidden eccentricities, but for comedic purposes he's the straight man) in a world of lunacy. The first game leaned heavy on that joke and it always made me smile.

2: Catra - She-Ra (2018) - Our tag for She-Ra is "Catra Did Nothing Wrong" and she is the character in all of fiction I would go up to bat for every time if I saw a debate start up on a Discord I frequent. I'll be straight. She's our (Camden's, anyway) BPD projection character. I adore watching characters with crucial personal failings get swallowed up by dramatic irony. There's something so powerful in being an audience member and knowing what a character wants, what they need, what they should do-- while understanding it's not in their nature to do it. I wanted her to stay with Scorpia in the desert where she was respected and comfortable but knew that it just couldn't be. I loved all the moments where her failings caught up with her. When Scorpia walked away from her, when Double Trouble gave her emergency therapy, the way she struggled with her hair and entire season to force herself to be something she couldn't sustain. I love Catra more than I can measure. I could write essays on how I would do exactly as she did in Season 2 and ruin EVERYTHING for just the chance of a parent proving that they loved her. To be consumed by self-doubts and paranoia and terror of abandonment. Catra is the character we are most like in all of fiction. For better and for worse. Much like her, we're trying to be better.

3: M'gann M'orzz/Miss Martian - Young Justice - Surprisingly I have two Greg Weisman shows on this bingo and no fandom tags for his work, I am using my generic DC tag here. I should change that at some point. M'gann gets so much character development over the 4 seasons of Young Justice. From a starting point of her blue and orange morality of being a Martian not understanding Earth customs causing her to break consent boundaries with her abilities and hurt people (including a fairly uncomfortable angle where she grooms Connor to be her fantasy boyfriend without him knowing what she's doing) to her learning in season 2 that a black and white morality is hardly any better (she mind crushes enemies, thinking that it's good to pacify evil until she does this to someone who turned out to be innocent) to her being a transgender allegory in season 4 (where she meshes the two cultures that she's part of and tries to gain cultural acceptance). There are elements of her story which are under baked, we know that she received a heavy amount of discrimination growing up due to her being a white martian and the arc of her embracing her heritage happens off screen between seasons 2 and 3. Her romance with Connor was well handled, though, particularly as she was not virtuous. In season 2 she was in the wrong (having tried to mind control Connor against his consent) and reacted very poorly to his rejection of her and used a rebound relationship to make him jealous (fortunately Lagoon Boy ended up in a healthy poly family and is doing great. Did I mention Young Justice has good relationship dynamics? Because it does). As with Catra I adore characters who have made mistakes and take a slow road to making up for those mistakes because it begins dialogues about their ethics and every season of Young Justice is about trust, communication, deceit and manipulation and Megan is easily the most complex character when it comes to those themes, particularly as her abilities allow her to blur those lines even in her personal relationships. She's an ethical trainwreck and I love her.

Every character in Young Justice brings something to the table and I think I should note how that deep vein of character driven story telling brings out the best in others. I had mentioned Megan groomed Connor. She was obsessed with an Earth sitcom when she was on Mars and decided to become the main character of it and then when presented with the newly born Superboy decided to start treating him as that Sitcom's love interest who was named Connor. It was a massive violation and Connor was hurt and confused when he learned and it was also in an episode where Megan lied about her racial heritage and Connor, who had been inside her mind, KNEW she was lying and told her outright that she shouldn't fear his judgment. The thing about Connor is that his arc is about finding personal identity when he is defined by everyone else's expectations and impressions. Cadmus and Lex literally programmed him, Superman put him in a box and kept distance from him, the Genomorphs have expectation of him, the team have expectation of him, even his girlfriend is trying to shape him and for much of the show he struggles with it but doesn't reject it. He finds comfort in being accepted in these windows of projection and expectation and I find that him learning who he really is and what he stands for to be one of the more compelling narrative threads throughout the 4 seasons. He and Megan are the main couple in a show about trust and communication after all and I think it should go that the character who typically displays the most raw honesty and vulnerability should be paired off with the most ethically complicated character because they bring the most out of one another while still wanting their relationship to succeed. I know much of the audience dislikes the pair and thinks Connor forgiving and eventually marrying Megan is a bridge too far but I really think they work for one another and even when they don't, from a storytelling perspective it's compelling as shit.

4: Briar Moss - The Circle of Magic - When I started this meme Daja (username relevant, yes) asked if I was going to pick Tris or Briar. They are both "Camden characters" with one being a child who has been kicked out of her biological family and the other being someone who grew up in extreme poverty adapting to moving up the caste system. I went with Briar purely because of the 4 siblings he is the one with the most interesting dynamics with his mentor and student. Evvy sticks around in the main cast while the other apprentices do not hang around and Dedicate Rosethorn is my favorite adult in the franchise easily. Briar is a streetwise kid who has to learn how to trust and rely on people and sadly in the third quartet (pending Tris' Lightsbridge book being written) he gets a painfully accurate depiction of PTSD. I wrote about my reaction to the ending of Will of the Empress a while ago and I stand by my comments. Briar building a safe place as the home he built with his siblings and staying there when he was tortured burned my heart. As did the sequence of him deciding that if Rosethorn was going to let herself die then he was going to follow her. As I'll allude later, I have experience there... and it certainly aided my fondness for Briar.

Much of the fun of the Circle of Magic series is seeing how the siblings adapt to their abundance of magical potential and I love the fact that for 3 of the 4 this is depicted via external means. For Daja Kitsubo and Sandry it is via their art, Daja bends and shapes metal, pouring her power into items where Sandry weaves it into fabric. Briar cultivates his via life. He grows plants and those plants are imbued with his magic. If I had picked Tris this would be where I note that her magic is entirely stored within her, bottled up (literally when she starts glasswork) and too much to contain. Magic is emotion, it is passion, it is a connection to life and the world and with Briar his is not giving shape to his creations, it is cultivating the growth of things that cannot be tamed, he communes with the wild of the world and aids it and heals it. Daja and Sandry give their power shape and form as art. Tris tames the raging storm inside and eventually scries the winds to connect with the world without letting it break her, Briar's power is in love and nurture (which I adores as he is the only member of the 4 with masculine pronouns- as with all Tammy's work, gender is not a box) and it's fitting that his connection to both mentor and student be the strongest due to this.

Also his tattoos are cool.

For a personal anecdote that happened while we were reading Briar's Book. Towards the end there's a sequence where Rosethorn and Briar had an argument in the afterlife and Rosethorn only chose to live again because Briar would have let himself die otherwise. That parent-child suicide gambit--- that's what I was alluding to before. I don't want to type more than is necessary about it. We have experience. It caused a switch and our girlfriend, Daja, is observant enough that she noted the shift in how we typed. Particularly in how we used the word "ain't" which apparently is something specific only to our male part, Craig. Daja was so lovely, kind and caring in accepting him, seeing him and not pressuring him when he was out that it helped us heal a part of our heart that we had pushed away. I'll always remember that whenever I read that book or think of Briar. It's a huge part of why we're fond of the character.

Incidentally if I picked from Tortall I'd have been paralyzed for choice with Numair, Daine, Kyprioth, Farmer, Kel and Alanna herself. Tamora Pierce writes amazing characters.

5: Jesse Faden - Control - Is Control an isekai? It starts with our main character talking about crawling through the hole behind a poster as if it were the Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole.

Anyway, there's a fantastic character analysis I read once that spoke about the relationship between the director of the FBC and the service weapon with Northmoor trying to impose his will upon the Oldest House and the items within it and Trench being a turn-key manager who simply filled the power vacuum and spent his career trying to find a suitable replacement. These represent the two extremes of Jesse's potential leadership of the Federal Bureau of Control. She could either go all in and try to claim ownership of the Bureau and impose her will upon the forces that are too strong to control or she could reluctantly attempt to maintain the Bureau without considering herself actually in charge of it. What she actually does is she finds a path of humility. She is the janitor's assistant. Neither king nor steward of the bureau but the custodian of it. She does not seek control nor does she seek to pass on the responsibility. She merely manages the messes and does so as an assistant. Ahti is the most powerful entity in the game by far and by trusting in him and following his direction, Jesse becomes the perfect head of the bureau.

I was predisposed to love her because she has red hair, she was a lot like the tabletop character I took my name from, she's got a queer dynamic with the head of research and technically she's plural. She's wonderful.

Oh and she's an oddball. I love the little hints of just how weird Jesse is beneath her protagonist swagger. I should probably write more about her, particularly as much of her depth as a character is not obvious from a surface read of the material. Maybe I will some day, but I love her.

6: Chidi Anagonye - The Good Place - The Good Place is a sitcom adaptation of Jean-Paul Satre's play No Exit and involves 4 people sent to hell and are utilized to be one another's unwitting tormentors. The thing is that part of the message of the virtue ethics driven show is that in the modern world every action we do or do not do causes additional suffering in the world and the 4 "cockroaches" are not bad souls, they just made choices that made them bad people. For Chidi he is a good and loving person who is kind and heavily believes in virtue ethics. He belongs in hell because he's anxious and indecisive and makes people's lives harder by worrying so much about how to be a good person. I love Chidi because his growth is less about becoming a better person and more about being confident enough in his convictions to know he's a good person. In every reality he will inevitably help the other cockroaches and teach them to be better people because that's who he is. But he's also selfless to a literal fault. It's one of his damnable traits. After everyone makes it to heaven people can enjoy paradise until they're ready to move on and he decides to continue past the point of which he makes peace with moving on because he doesn't want to hurt Eleanor.

The final episode of Good Place made me gross sob so much and a big part of it is the sofa scene where Chidi explains his personal philosophy after countless lifetimes of discussing, teaching and learning philosophy he gives Eleanor one final lesson on their final night and then, on request, disappears while she's asleep. Heaven knows I understand making that request of someone you love.

He's the heart of the entire experience. Truthfully I love all 4 of the cockroaches and it comes down to how I reacted to their final episodes. Chidi's final moments were the most powerful of the show for me. I love him so much and admire him.

Plus he's a philosophy nerd and as a fellow philosophy nerd <3 I love love love him!

7: Allison "Ally" Carter - Sunstone - Every character in Sunstone deserves to be on this list but I went with Ally because (much like with Chidi) when I have difficulty picking between a stacked cast of great characters I go for the love interest of the protagonist because people really shine when the perspective character is in love with them.

Ally is a god damned dork and she's also an incredible domme. Sunstone is a romance about entering the world of kink circles and navigating the troubled waters that come with consensual risks, emotionally charged play and non-standard relationship dynamics. I love the way the story is presented so much that it is my strongest inspiration for Madison/Belladonna stories.

The thing I love most about Ally is that she's not just the amazing dominant that she plays during the spicy scenes. We get to see her freaking out with nervousness, scared about having to host and live up to expectation, we see her be an absolute nerd, we see her in her element while performing.

I've been Ally and the people I love most have been Ally. Being a Top is hard as heck and you can't help but love the dork as she lives up to expectation while trying to be an adult. Seeing her and Alan literally learning the ropes in the recent GNs has been a gosh darn treat!

8: Elliot Alderson/Mr.Robot (Alderson System) - Mr. Robot - What can I say about my dear Elliot that I haven't already said in my DID Representation in Mr. Robot essay? I love him. The whole system. Though I have an affinity for protectors and so Mr. Robot himself is my favorite. He is such a protector that he will attack his host (well, the show fucks up that aspect of DID enough that it's complicated to call the Elliot we see in the show a host) in order to save him from the evils of late-stage capitalism. When pre-show Elliot wants a way out of loneliness and the evils of modern society he fantasizes about taking it all down. The Elliot in the show just wants to make the evils of the world pay, Mr. Robot is perfectly okay killing entire buildings of collateral to achieve his goals. Not because he's evil but because he's laser focused on his mission. I respect the shit out of that, especially as later seasons show that he's not even remotely as capable as he thinks he is.

The scene during the "sitcom" episode where he takes a beating so Elliot doesn't have to was the moment he won me over and then in season 4 he has the speech where he begs Elliot to understand that he is not their father and that he will disappear if it will help him out of the dark hole he's in. Just the fact that, post memory retrieval, he starts by saying "hey, kiddo..." despite that being the reminder of who he is modeled after. Mr. Robot cannot help but be a manifestation of Edward Alderson, it's who he is, it's why he is. Elliot needed a version of his father who was not a monster. I love him deeply. I love the whole system. Even Magda for all her 7 minutes of screen time.

Plus, Elliot summed up the thesis of the show in the final episodes in saying that changing the world is about living and being visible and in not backing down, no matter what.

And then there's the monologue. Fuck I love this show and these dumb hacker boy.

9: "Badeline"/A Part Of You - Celeste - Well, we're on the topic of plurality so let's stay there. Badeline's a fairly subjective character. Celeste's narrative isn't very long and she doesn't even have an official name. Even the DLC chapter refers to her as "A Part of You". But whether she is a living symbol of Madeline's depression, the doubts and fears she holds towards climbing the mountain/transition or is a protective alter in a plural system, I love her. I always have. The fear she puts into thinking Madeline wants to just get rid of her, the fact that she pushes Madeline to move past grieving Granny faster than Maddy is ready for.

Watching the pair learn to loan one another strength and conquer the mountain was lovely and then seeing Baddy try to stop Maddy from hurting herself in the DLC chapter only to be pushed away was heartbreaking. I just want these two to play nice.

I love that the entire objective of Celeste 64 was for Maddy to reach Baddy and say she's going to go on another adventure and soothe Baddy's fears. Climbing mountains is tough (happy trans day of visibility everyone!) and these two are going to continue doing it, so long as it's together <3

10: Laura Palmer - Twin Peaks (Fire Walk With Me) - So first off, read this essay for better words than we have. We could have picked Dale but Twin Peaks is a show about Laura Palmer and the community that failed her. Laura was a victim of abuse from her father and was commodified by the town who all chose to only see parts of her that they could use for sex, charity, kindness, validation etc etc. There's a meme that goes around:

and I think that at face value it's silly, but it's important to know that everyone in Twin Peaks was complicit in her murder because they used her up for all she was worth and the story works best when you consider that she had no one protecting her, no one saving her. This is why, in Fire Walk With Me, she talks about the angels not coming for her and Donna tries so hard to convince her that they can and will, because Donna, of all the people in Twin Peaks including Dale Cooper, does not want anything from Laura but her trust and friendship.

If you watch Twin Peaks and view Laura as "the victim" then you're doing yourself a disservice. She's a nuanced character and a horrifying Lynchian portrait of those who are caught in webs of abuse. But she has agency. She just has no meaningful way of escaping, particularly when by the end of her life she views the whole world as a prison full of users and abusers and when she finds someone who tries to offer her kindness, she rejects them at first and when they refuse to leave or back off, she tries to drag her down with her. It's only when she realizes that she's so far gone that she'll bring Donna into her personal hell that she decides to become the angel for her and save her. The Pink Room sequence in the movie may well be my favorite part of all the Twin Peaks saga. Laura Palmer is such a compelling character. I love her.

11: Lady Bird/Christine McPherson - Lady Bird - Lady Bird is a phenomenal movie and one of my all-time favorites. I'll split this one up into character and then personal attachment.

For the film, Catherine/Lady Bird is a young woman raised in Sacramento in 2002. She goes to a catholic school because her parents are afraid of sending her to the local public school. Well, I say her parents but the movie is entirely about Lady Bird and her mother. In that regard it is a tough movie to watch because the pair clash so much. Lady Bird and her mom are both willful women and care a lot about what other people think about them. They see one another in the other and hate what they see while still loving one another.

The conflict between Marion and Lady Bird typically displays itself in Marion's refusal to refer to Lady Bird by the name she has chosen for herself. In the Opening Scene she says that "it's stupid and it's not your name" and continually talks down to her daughter, saying that she cannot get into a New York college because she couldn't pass her driver's test (which Lady Bird argues was because Marion refused to let her practice). These clashes continue throughout the movie and any time Lady Bird figures out a way to reframe a critique against her mom she just pivots away. Another example is the "Name a number" scene where after being told that she has no idea how much money it takes to raise her and Lady Bird responds by demanding a number so that she can pay her back; Marion just says "you'll never get a job that earns that much money".

All of this squabbling makes the most sense with the scene in Goodwill where Lady Bird confesses "I just wish that you liked me" to which Marion, dodging again, says "Of course I love you" and Lady Bird calls her on it with "But do you like me?"

Marion pauses and says "I just want you to be the best version of yourself you can be" and Lady Bird, hurt and knowing she won't make a connection says "What if this is the best version of me there is" and Marion gives an incredulous look before letting it sink in. The fact is she is trying to be the best mother she can be and is confronted with the vulnerability that maybe neither she nor her daughter is failing to be their best, maybe this is the best and she has to make peace with that.

That's why I love the movie so much. Two women who want the best for themselves and thus each other but are completely unable to understand one another or connect and speak different emotional languages. It's such a powerful and honest narrative about growing up and becoming your own person. I find the conclusion a little too forgiving on the mother's side, but I love Lady Bird. I love how willful she is, I love how cultured she wants to be. I love how she just wants to be part of the world she feels connected to while knowing she is on the outside of it. Legitimately one of my favorite film characters of all time.

For personal attachment. Camden Dawn is the name of one of my OCs, I first wrote her in 2001 but the version I consider "Camden Dawn" started off in tabletop games that began in 2010. Camden was a raised catholic by two parents who were obsessed with optics and how Camden's behavior reflected on her and their household and she successfully emancipated herself from them after managing to get them to fund her to go to college in Chicago. Over the 7 years I wrote that version of Camden she was always special to me. More than I think I could display to my tabletop group at the time. I considered her my "trainwrecksona" the fantasy version of what we would be like if we were allowed to express our anger, frustration and pain. Camden smoked, she had an alcohol problem, she made bad relationship decisions and was a mess. Watching Lady Bird was like seeing a film version of everything that I was trying to do be done by a masterful actor, director and screenwriter. There is no amount of language I can put into how powerful it is to pour so much of yourself into a fictional character you created, enough of yourself that you adopted her name as your own and to see someone take all the passion and soul that you tried to convey through fiction and do it better. It was awe, admiration and connection.

I'm not Camden (the character) and I'm certainly not Christine. But I understand what emotions go into writing a character like that. How can I not love her when she's the culmination of everything I love about my favorite original character?

12: Bill - It's Such A Beautiful Day - Three heavy movie characters in a row. Bill suffers from an unspecified psychological disorder that messes with his perception of reality and his memories. The movie is an outside view of his life and the narrator becomes so attached to him by the end that it cannot bear to let him go. "He lives and lives until all the lights go out." is such a powerful line to end the production with because that's it. That's all any of us get. The world may continue on without us but our capacity to perceive this beautiful trainwreck is only within us and there's no grander design than that. We live and then the lights go out. Even our memories may die before our ability to perceive. The movie talks about how we start looking forward, start looking back and in the end... all we can do is look around.

Which makes the bus ride so unspeakably poignant, long before the titular Beautiful Day. As the narrator says early on in the experience, life isn't the big memorable experiences, it's all of the tiny little things that happen in between. That bus ride, Bill looking at the raindrops and admiring the world. That's far more true than any moment in the film and what Hertzfeld wants the audience to pick up through the experience.

I became attached to him during the runtime. The mundane thoughts of a person who begins the story with the news that he's going to die and ends up finding the sentiment that gives the movie its title.

Hertzfeld does such an amazing job with Bill. The subtle gestures like how he wrings his hands together or the wrinkles under his eyes betraying his fear and worries. He's a stick figure in a world of stick figures and all he has to differentiate himself is his hat. We cannot even hear him speak because the movie is conveyed only by the narration and yet the animation gives him so much personality.

There are so many scenes which just connect so well, like when he meets his father despite both men being so incapable of understanding the relevance of what is happening.

Bill lives until he doesn't anymore and we share the journey of life with him. It's breathtakingly beautiful.

13: Susan Sto Helit - Discworld - Susan is really three characters. Soul Music Susan, Hogfather Susan (goth Mary Poppins) and Thief of Time Susan (goth Ms. Frizzle).

I love her. I love her more than I have words for. Especially Thief of Time Susan.

She's almost human. Part of her will always be a deity. She is the granddaughter of DEATH and much of her character in Hogfather and Thief of Time is attached to her wanting to embrace her human side. But it's in Thief of Time where she learns that what she's looking for is not to be accepted within humanity, but she wants to find someone who is like her. That's why I adore her connection to Lobsang. She puts up a ward of sensible Susan and tries to be practical and put together but she's a deeply emotional woman and she's lonely because no one else shares her experiences.

She loves her grandfather very much but she cannot abide by "the family business", she is kind to him but wants to be her own person and she ends up finding herself more attached to children because they haven't lost their curiosity yet, in many ways she finds they are more sensible than adults because they haven't decided how things are and closed their hearts and minds to ideas outside of what they think and expect.

Susan is important to me. I love her dearly.

14: Ben Reilly - Spider-Man - We're unapologetic in our love of the clone saga. The thing about Ben (and Kaine) is that he's a fantastic character study into the nature and nurture of Peter Parker and the writers had so many fun and cool ideas for how to handle a version of Peter who had 5 years to not be Spider-Man.

One of my alltime favorite moments in comics is when Aunt May died and Peter is embraced by MJ and Anna, he's surrounded by family. Ben is on the roof, alone. Ben's has no one because he's a clone and completely broken off from others. He slowly builds his own family over time and considers Peter (and Kaine) his brother(s) but it takes time.

The lost years are where he exemplified himself in my eyes. We get to see how he grows from finding out he's not Peter Parker until he returns to New York. How he tries to walk away from responsibility, how he tries to live a normal life. He's a tragic character because no matter how much he wants to be a different man, he still has Peter's memories and cannot help but have the drive that makes him Spider-Man.

15: "Sunshine" Joe Fixit (Banner System) - Hulk - So I did two whole essays on Banner's system with the second part entirely about Joe and Betty's relationship. Fact is Joe is what happens when a man is so repressed and ashamed of himself that he cannot act out. Joe is all of the things that Bruce wants, lusts for, desires but cannot allow himself to act out upon. He's capable of lying, cheating, stealing and killing in a way Bruce can never allow himself to believe he is capable of. The period of time that Peter David was writing Joe as the main front of the system gave us some incredible insights into the widening chasm between his morality and Bruce's as well as what Joe finds himself wanting. There was a period of time where changing into Banner was the greatest fear of Hulk(Fixit) and it worked remarkably well to see the two having their day and night battle for dominance.

But what really made me love him more was the Immortal series where he's in Banner's body and needs to keep the body safe the way that only he can. The latter half of the comic Bruce is not even in the system and it's just Joe and Savage against the world. Joe's a reluctant protector. He used to be a hedonist but over time his affection for the system

Look at this page (first panel especially) from a 4 page side-story where Joe is talking to their therapist and briefly remembers Brian Banner beating the shit out of him and how he would take the beating so Bruce didn't have to.

Joe's attachment to Mike was evident in Peter David's run and solidifying that Joe just wants a father figure is such amazing characterization. With both Mr. Robot and Hulk I love how these adults are driven by childhood notions of safety and comfort. I even hint on it a bit with Catra too with how she sold herself out to get a chance of Shadow Weaver's affection. Good trauma representation is showing how a character carries their past into their present and Joe is a manifestation of Bruce's repressed anger and childhood trauma just as much Hulk himself is. Joe just wants what we all want, to be loved and protected in a world where the person who owed him both those things failed to do either. In lieu of being loved himself, he's damned well going to love his inner family, especially the kid.

16: Kimberly Wexler - Better Call Saul - Kim is a phenomenal character in a character driven drama. Again, when surrounded by amazing characters I go for the protagonist's love interest. But here it's different. In the final season Kim is approached by Mike. Mike is the most level headed guy in the canon. He's the one who is objectively right about everyone and has a good eye to who people are. Enough that Season 4 of the show only makes sense if you consider they needed a season long plot arc for why he didn't execute Walter where he stood in during BrBa.

Mike approached Kim because he judged that she was the one who could be trusted with the information that he had about Lalo Salamanca, another incredible character in a show full of them. Kim is headstrong, crafty and hates being talked down to. She is attracted to Jimmy because they are equals and she typically acts up when Jimmy doesn't display the trust and respect that he owes her.

Throughout the show we get glimpses of her childhood and there are some gems with her mom. She refuses to be picked up from school when her mom shows up late and drunk and ends up walking home miles on her own. There's a scene where she steals from a store and her mom picks her up and acts up the punishment she would get only to laugh about the store manager after leaving the scene. Kim had a tough childhood and bad rolemodels and yet still clawed her way up to being a lawyer.

We get to see her realize that the system is inherently broken to its core and no amount of pro-bono work within the system will make a difference, she is reduced to constantly being hit with "did Jimmy put you up to this" levels of disrespect for her agency. Kim is fascinating because she was always the capable one and Mike and Jimmy are about the only people in the show who can see it and even Jimmy can't when his ego gets in the way.

Aren't you tired of being nice? Don't you want to go apeshit?

Kim is best girl and Rhea Seehorn should be given every Emmy forever.

17: Johnny Truant/Pelafina H. Lièvre/The Book Itself - House of Leaves - This one is a total cheat. The fact is I wanted to type "anyone who types in Courier or Dante fonts" but the book is a mind worm and the mere act of trying to communicate about it is a bottomless pit that will make you look like you're in front of a Pepe Silvia wall. The fact is nothing inside of the book House of Leaves can be said to have happened in any meaningful sense. It's a journal of a man reading an analysis of a film of events that likely didn't happen and the person at the top of that narrative pyramid (well, under The Editors, I suppose) is an admitted liar. Which means that I cannot say The Whalestone Letters are true or not. I can say that they are my favorite part of the book and judging from my interaction with the only fandom, this makes me a little unhinged. Johnny's panic attack at seeing purple ink, the back and forth on whether Pelafina attempted to strangle Johnny as a child or not, why her secret decoded message mentions Zampano, how her letters can refer to events after she died... as I said, it's a bottomless pit and the more you think about it the more insane you become. Fact is, Johnny is an interesting character and there's a lot to him and part of that IS the fact you cannot tell if he's lying and that means that if he forged his mother's letters they are his words and if he didn't she's equally compelling in her complexities. We have an unknowable psyche of someone who is both inviting us in to see the innards of his soul AND pushing us away so we can not know him, see him or judge him. It's brutally honest AND guarded. Deceptive while bearing everything. I tend to feel strongly for characters if they go through something I've been through because I get to see someone else deal with the thought processes I went through, I don't need to see myself reflected in that, just empathize with the fact they're dealing with it. A parent being put away in a mental care facility is fucking tough shit and as I saw Johnny's trauma unfold through his journals I cared more about him and wanted to understand him more.

Which brings us to the end of his portion of the narrative and his big "fuck you" to the reader. I'll admit it. Upon first reading I was hurt by Johnny's betrayal of the reader and then I realized, much in the same way HBomb's described during his analysis of Pathologic, that I knew the entire time I was reading a book and Johnny wasn't real, that by feeling betrayed and hurt by his lies it just showed I cared and that he had made me care. No character has ever violated the attachment I form with fictional characters in such a way that really made me understand how one-sided and false that connection was and it was a unique experience. Certainly one that makes me love the character, for all I know they are an unknowable wreck and I cannot ever truly understand them. House of Leaves is a mirror and it reflects everything you put into it and that's why I love it so much. The experience of reading that book is mine and mine alone. My relationship with the book and its characters is unique. It cannot be replicated. It can barely be described.

18: Puck/Owen Burnett - Gargoyles - Seems I posted without writing about Puck! Better edit it in. I LIKE FAE AND BUSINESS MAN OWEN AND I'LL EDIT THIS IN LATER I PROMISE!

5/4 edit: okay, I promised. So here's the thing about Greg Wiesman's writing. He sometimes is fixated on his internal consistency to the detriment of story. I love Gargoyles, I love Spectacular Spidey and I love Young Justice. But they are flawed works and their flaws are Greg shaped.

I love them, though, because in the 90s, only a few years after Twin Peaks brought long-form storytelling out of Soap Opera and into drama, Gargoyles had consequences and growth which at the time were not really things. Gargoyles was essentially Disney's version of the 80s TMNT cartoon and by all rights it should have been a pale imitation. With Turtles the archetypes were baked into the DNA and the growth typically came from new toys being added to the line. So my "too young to remember watching but young enough to imprint and rewatch a ton of times as an adult" mind was spellbound when Eliza is shot and takes months in universe to recover. Xanatos is imprisoned from corporate crimes and serves a 6 month sentence in show that opens the door to new plots. Brooklyn's or Lex's reaction to Demona's or Fox's betrayal inform how they treat people and situations throughout the show. Broadway's hatred of guns. Hudson's illiteracy slowly being worked on.

The show rewarded you for paying attention in a time when such things didn't exist.

So why is Owen my favorite?

Well, as stated above. We love Fae. Dawn considers herself to be Seelie and though the show is actually really bad with sourcing its folklore and mythology, famously placing the Norse pantheon under Shakespeare's interpretation of Fae lore (the lengths of "all worldwide culture is sourced to The Bard's depiction of Celtic/Gaelic folklore" is actually kind of Ancient Aliens levels of xenophobic to my adult mind), their depiction of Faerie was deeply enjoyable.

Owen is Puck. The same guy who rides on Kratos' belt in the latest God of War games. He's a trickster and a magician and the supreme master of Keyfabe. There are big damned twists that are introduced in shows that you wonder "when did they know?" And for this one I really do think it was from the start which is ambitious as heck. If not from Season 1's 13 episodes then from day one of Season 2's 50+. When Preston Vogel is introduced the similarities between Owen and Preston are apparent instantly. When Demona turns NYC into stone she binds Owen in iron and calls him "the tricky one."

It's a fair mystery in what may be the first ever kids cartoon to do long-form storytelling. It may not be easy to work out the specifics but it fits so perfectly. With most of these other characters my love comes from who they are, what they are allegories of or how I relate to them. I could have picked Demona and just had her be Proto-Catra. But Owen was the first time I was shown a character who had all the puzzle pieces for a big twist that made sense and was fair to an audience. It taught me how to tell stories and how to reward those I tell stories to. I owe him a lot for that. Plus I want to make out with him. Human or Fae form. He's hot.

Also, also, love the addition of his stone fist. The loyalty to plunge his hand into the cauldron and the continuity to just keep him with an unbreakable/unmoveable stone fist was just awesome.

19: JJ MacField - The Missing ((JJ Macfield and the Island of Missing Memories) - Beating this game made me come out the closet. I'd known I was trans for almost 20 years before playing it but when I beat it I told the support network in my life at the time that I couldn't stay in the closet any longer and began formally socially transitioning.

The Missing is about two girls going to an island. JJ and Emily. Emily tried to initiate intimacy and JJ pulled back and soured the mood, when she wakes up the next morning Emily is gone and JJ has to puzzle solve through themed areas of the island to find her. As you progress text messages fill you in on JJ's life.

So. Being honest? I thought it was a game about being a lesbian. I thought that it was about JJ coming to terms with her sexuality, even when her mother is controlling monster (literally in terms of the game) and sent her to conversion therapy. Nope. Turns out JJ is trans and I didn't see it. I didn't know.

I played the game on release day and just... didn't figure that out.

JJ is a cutie who loves donuts, she loves her stuffed plushie, she loves Emily, she loves flowing fashion. The game sadly is a nightmare from her trying to kill herself and being saved.

The thing is, though, the game's aftercare is so healing. After beating the game you have the opportunity to play the game without JJ's "idealized" dream form. You can play as socially transitioning JJ with her developmental voice, change her wig, let her experiment her look. Here's some gallery items showing the differences between first run and second run versions of JJ.

and I think it's beautiful to show her as being the same person no matter what she appears on the outside. Because she's JJ. Voice, wig, eye color and outfit do not change the fact she's a sleepy donut gremlin.

I could write more. Like how the themes of the game are the amount of pain one must endure to actualize as their true selves and how learning to live with that helps you pull yourself together and become endure more (not to fetishize suffering, but well, learning to endure pain can be virtuous if you cannot avoid it) or how the player becomes the final boss themselves and lashes out against Emily to show how her attempted suicide was a harmful act.

The thing I adore most though is that the final secret in the game, the reward for everything is photographs of JJ and Emily going clothes shopping and buying the outfit that JJ wears during the game.

Fuck that story makes me so happy. Especially from the perspective we were in when we were closeted.

As a sidenote, I own a F.K plushie and love it very much.

20: Korra - The Legend of Korra - Running low on steam but I'll be quick and say "Avatar is the story of a normal little boy finding out that he's the chosen one and having to learn how to save the world. Korra is the story of the chosen one who was raised to save the world learning to become a normal woman."

I find the latter so much more compelling than the first. Especially when season 4 spends so much time on her rehabilitation after Season 3 left her disabled. The depiction of both recovering from a severe injury and the PTSD was well handled.

Anyway. She's rad.

21: Hal "Otacon" Emmerich - Metal Gear Solid - He's the spiritual child of Dr. Strangelove and The Boss. Huey was a sperm donor and nothing more. Hal's an idiot. He's a geek. He's a hopeless romantic who makes dumb mistakes. He's also Snake's husband and Sunny's father and he saved the world. I love him.

But really the single 10 minute recording from Strangelove in MGSV where she outright explains that Hal is the true heir to The Boss' will is what elevates him. In a world of war, he is peace. Yes he's a dumb otaku who built a nuclear battle tank that could destroy the world but he truly and dearly believes in peace and spends his entire life being better and being kind and being compassionate. In time he turns from Snake's failwife to the savior of humanity.

Hal is a good father, a terrible heterosexual and a cute lil' guy.

22: Adonis "Donnie" Creed/Johnson - Creed - Gosh I wish I wrote about him when I had more in the tank but I'm 22 characters in, the end is in sight and I'm tired. The Rocky franchise is a special series of movies. We get to see the same man through 50 years and even in the first film they were talking about him being past his prime. I chose Donnie over Rocky though because Creed is my a contender for my favorite movie of all time. Ryan Coogler said about it

"[My father] used to play [the Rocky movies] before I had football games to pump me up, and he would get really emotional watching the movies. He used to watch Rocky II with his mom while she was sick and dying of cancer. She passed away when he was 18 years old. And so when he got sick he was losing his strength because he had a muscular condition. He was having trouble getting around, having trouble carrying stuff. I started thinking about this idea of my dad’s mortality. For me he was kind of like this mythical figure, my father, similar to what Rocky was for him. Going through it inspired me to make a film that told a story about his hero going through something similar to kind of motivate him and cheer him up. That’s how I came up with the idea for this movie."

"If I fight, you fight"

It's about a father being a hero, it's about being strong enough to live up to legacy, it's about passing down knowledge and inspiration from one generation to the next. Donnie is a conflicted character. On one hand he is the foster care kid who got into fights in juvie. On the other hand he is the son of world famous Apollo Creed and raised in a mansion. He is Adonis Creed and he is Donnie Johnson. Both of these are true and that conflict burns within Donnie because he burns for a father he never got to meet and connection to a world he's not part of anymore. In being rescued from his group home situation by Mary-Anne he left behind all he knew. We learn more about his childhood prior to juvie in Creed III. Point is, he's hurting to make a place for himself and prove he belongs. The armor piercing quote in the first movie is when he says "I gotta prove it - That I wasn't a mistake."

I cried when I first saw that scene and just loved him. Rocky movies are about underdogs putting their heart into what they do and overcoming the odds and winning the moral victory. Donnie isn't a perfect person. He's kind of an arrogant jerk at times, but I adore him.

The second and third movie are heavily about his growing relationship with his wife, Bianca, who is the star of her own movie that should exist too, about becoming a performing music artist while her hearing is fading. His daughter is born deaf and he has to adapt to her hearing loss. Watching Donnie learn ASL and just exist with his family is one of the highlights of the movies because though there's a brief scare in Creed II where Rocky asks if he's going to love his daughter if she's born deaf, the franchise never treats Bianca or Amara's disability as anything more than a part of who they are.

Creed movies are the best. I hope Michael B Jordan makes them as long as Stallone hung with the Rocky franchise.

23: Parker - Leverage - She was a side character who became the star of the show. Parker is brilliant. A foster kid who tangled with a brilliant gentleman thief and learned to be the best there ever was. She's autistic, she's brilliant and she's an oddball. Her relationship with Hardison was the emotional backbone of the show and throughout the entire show her need for a family is one of the threads that ties seasons together. Season 4 includes an episode where she needs to learn to dance from Hardison and he says "I've got you, I've always got you" and prepares an escape route for her at the end of the episode only for the finale to have a callback where she saves him on an elevator wire with the "I've got you". If you watch Leverage through the lens of her rising to become the new mastermind you have a 5 season show (and ongoing revival) about a girl who never fit in everywhere, prickly and defensive and unable to understand other people creating a family for herself, building a better world and being the best version of herself she can be.

Also she really hates it when people are mean to kids and I love that about her.

I love Parker. Häagen-Dazs!

24: Asuka Langley Sohru - Neon Genesis Evangelion - Why did I leave her until last? Asuka prides herself on being the best EVA pilot. She is not the best EVA pilot.

She wants Kaji, a grown man who will never be with her.

She wants her mother to have not succumb to mental illness and projected all her maternal affection onto an inanimate doll who she hung alongside herself, leaving Asuka alone in the world and so thoroughly rejected that when her mom killed herself she took the effigy of her daughter with her on the way out.

Asuka doesn't get what she wants.

Instead she gets Shinji. Someone who, while complaining the entire time about how much he hates and doesn't want to do it, is a better EVA pilot than she is. Who in End of EVA...

Well.

Y'know.

Asuka is a cautionary tale of what happens when you pin all of your personality, your reason for existing, your pride and passion onto a single thing that you do not control. It can be taken away from you and it will leave you with nothing.

Asuka needs to put others down to feel good about herself because the source of her self-esteem is in her ability to perform a task that may not always be there, that others may surpass her in. She needs to learn to create worth from within, not from external praise and validation. Shinji shares that flaw.

EVA is a show with a lot to say about isolation and connection. About drive and purpose. About the reason why we exist and what we do with our the time we're given. Hopefully through looking at the other 23 entries and seeing the themes, you'll see it's pretty clear she's just my type of character.

I love her.

BONUS

Because I didn't do all my tags, here's the remaining tags with my favorite characters:

POTO - Erik Castlevania - Alucard Umineko - Beatrice Sonic - Fleetway Super Sonic Persona - Aigis Sailor Moon - Makoto Kino/Sailor Jupiter Scott Pilgrim - Kim Pines Pathologic - Bachelor Daniil Dankovsky (the fact I do not have to justify this down here is a big reason he's not on the bingo)

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