#not anti nfcv but close enough

[beevean]

Some ideas on how I'd personally write Lenore. for future reference?

We keep the trait that she's the black sheep of the sisters, who don't take her and her job seriously. Maybe they don't even speak to her often, judging by Striga's ill-fitting jab about her supposed "romantic" nature. Perhaps we could see her act in different ways, tougher in the council and softer with Hector. This establishes her as a seasoned liar: we never know if she's sincere or not.

Unlike Hector, who seemed to be blissfully unaware of how much Dracula and Isaac looked down on him, Lenore is more than aware of being seen as "weird" and "weak". However, she prides herself on being needed, as a balance for the others.

We also keep that she is "compassionate" towards animals (and humans), and that she has experienced war as a child, which left her with a desire to be a benevolent ruler.

tl;dr: she is superficially kind, but has no empathy, and her priority is the council's wellbeing and desires. She and Hector share this trait of very misguided, ultimately selfish mercy. He needs love, she needs to feel good about herself.

We emphasize the implication that she clings on her humanity. She's shown eating food despite not needing it (maybe she feels ill?), she insists on the importance of diplomacy and how violence and conquest should be last resorts, and she seems fascinated by human culture, in the same way Hector is fascinated by vampire culture. However, she also comes off as condescending - think Rose Quartz when flirting with Greg.

(bonus: she struggles with her vampiric instincts. Show her resisting the temptation to bite Hector, not wanting to frighten him. Show her resisting the dark thoughts that he's nothing but meat to devour and a warm body to fuck.)

Hector falls for her diplomacy because she is (seems) genuinely kind. She's apologetic for his conditions, she seems really eager to help him as much as she can. She's not smug at all, although she points out the holes in Dracula's logic and tries her best to paint Carmilla as a better mistress. No pet play. When Hector attacks her, she does her stunt of leaving him alone for a week then acting scared around him, to make him feel guilty and dependant on her. In short: her manipulation is more emotional, and it hits Hector's weak spot, his need to be loved.

No rape. They never have sex. Lenore slips that ring as they're talking, and Hector accepts of his own volition to be loyal to her. He still feels betrayed, though, as that act confirms he'd been played again and Lenore is no different than Carmilla. Even worse if Lenore goes to gloat about her victory to the sisters in that "cruel vampire" way, bonus if we keep the "the real people are talking" line. She apologizes for speaking about him so rudely in private, but at that point he refuses to listen to her.

Their interactions at the beginning of S4 are awkward. Lenore tries to be friendly and even jokey (not in that childish "penis jokes" way), but Hector acts exaggeratedly professional, calls her "mistress" and is clear that he's full of resentment. Lenore is frustrated and asks what more does he want. Hector refuses to answer. No more will he shown weakness. Bonus if he makes a cruel joke asking when she's going to fuck him, since clearly he's nothing more than a toy. (to be fair, being the only man in the clutches of predatory women could put some fears in his mind... especially if he was abused as a child.)

Lenore's love language is being clingy and possessive. She won't leave Hector alone. She genuinely thinks that tying someone to you is showing care for that someone, much like Carmilla did. She's growing fond of Hector, his wit and his knowledge on black magic, and she doesn't understand why her affection isn't reciprocated. She's treating him well, isn't she? Why is he so moody?

We keep Lenore's fears about growing useless in Carmilla's big, insane scheme. Finally, she opens up about her worries to Hector, and this is what makes him warm up to her. He understands that she only acted out of loyalty, but now they're in a similar position: he understands, on his own, that it's no so different from his position as the unfavorite in Dracula's court. It's not enough to become friends, but the two now can at least be civil towards each other. They're the first to do so. Maybe Hector opens up himself about his past and how he now feels about Dracula.

When Isaac attacks the castle (Hector did not participate in that stupid plan to revive Dracula), Hector and Lenore decide to go stop Carmilla together. However, Lenore still wants to reason with her. Hector wants to kill her 🙂 he and Isaac do so. Whether Carmilla kills herself or not is honestly irrelevant at this point, but she's dead and Lenore, once again, feels powerless. Hector cutting his own finger hurts her even more: she wants to see it as him gaining the freedom he deserves, but her vampiric instincts tell her that it's him refusing to be with her.

When she effectively becomes Isaac's captive, she starts to understand why Hector never grew fond of her; she could never love that bastard who stole her home and destroyed her existence. She's horrified at the realization. She knew that she had to hurt Hector to give the sisters what they asked of her, but she understands that not only it was worse than she imagined... it was all for nothing. They never cared about her. She starts to wonder if she could ever be a good person.

The suicide scene is kept, but it's clear that it's because Lenore feels terrible about herself and her own nature, nothing about not wanting to be in a cage since in theory she could just wait for Isaac to die. When she suns herself, she dies horrifically just like Dracula did - behind her prettiness and good intentions, she really was nothing but a vampire at her core.

bonus: Hector, who has learned to appreciate his own humanity more, decides to travel and meet more people, so that he won't resort to beg for scraps of kindness anymore.

[beevean]

hi, i set out today looking for fellow haters of the netflix castlevania show and it was honestly so tough, but amidst all the "why do people hate castlevania?? it's so great!!" circlejerks i finally found you. and thank god for it. i never played any of the games, so it's good to know at least that they make more sense in terms of characters and plot than that netflix shitshow

a friend who really loves it sat me down about a year ago and we watched the first three seasons or so together before i could finally escape it and never touched it again. i do like the animation and some of the fight scenes, but none of it comes even close to balancing out the corny dialogue, the lackluster character dynamics, and oh GOD the cultural faux pas. like?? why did they not google a single one of the romanian names they very frequently say? i heard at least three different mispronunciations of "târgoviște" and "greșit", and "țepeș" they somehow managed to get approximately half right (it's pronounced "tzeh-pesh", not "teh-pesh"). it's absolutely mind-boggling to me. wikipedia includes standardised phonetic spelling and google translate can just read it out to you. idk how it is in the games, but considering how big on alleged wokeness the netflixvania production team seems to be, they could at the very least have looked up these very basic and frequently used words once or asked a singular romanian for a pointer here and there

i am romanian, so obviously these things tick me off much more than they would someone who isn't. i just think that if they weren't going to pronounce anything right anyway and wanted to use a very generic western european backdrop (note: romania is in eastern europe), they could just as well have set the whole thing in a fake fantasy world and spared themselves some trouble. the houses look german. the priests and churches look catholic. there are way too many blonde people, especially for southern romania. i just don't like it at all

i hope you have great day btw 💞 thank you for lending me some new faith in humanity

Oh 🥺 I'm glad you sent me this ask <3 I feel that there are very few people who outright dislike NFCV (for the right reasons, at least), because you hear left and right about how not only it's excellent on every front, but So Much Better Than The Stupid games, Best Adaptation of All Time, and it kills me inside every time because am I stupid for not buying the hype? So yeah, thank you <3

I'm vindicated that you didn't like the show even without playing the games. The most common rebuttal against antis is "wah you just want the adaptation to be 1:1 with the games!" (or "wah you're just a bigot!", which drives me mad), but I always insist that the show fails on its own product as well. It's exactly as you say, and yes, I was also bothered by how every "foreigner" has an appropriate accent, but the Romanians speak in perfect British English. It wants to be inclusive but it ends up being confusing and lowkey xenophobic - what, Romanian doesn't sound sexy enough for you?

(also count your blessings that you managed to escape S4. Some of the plotlines enraged me like I can't convey in written word :) )

Eh, if incorrect pronunciation bothers you (and as an Italian who has seen what the English language does to their native tongue, I fully sympathize lmao), the games don't do much better. In one game the translator of the manual didn't know that Wallachia was a real place, they thought it was the fantasy town of Warakiya (which is how it's spelled in Japanese), and in another it's pronounced "woh-LAY-sha" lol. The chapels also look very Catholic for the aesthetic, even though the Orthodox Church exists (I'd wager that in Japan they're far less familiar with it). Overall, the settings in the games tend to be vaguer than in the show, rarely namedropped, except for two games set in Wallachia (the ones the show takes "inspiration" from) and two other titles set in Japan. The show tries a little harder, but hardly hides the historical inaccuracies and just went for the aesthetic as well :P

Same to you, anon 💕