Finished S4. You can def tell it was still written by Ellis, which... i've got complicated feelings on i dont really want to dig into here. (it's more of a Debate & Discourse topic + i havent formulated my thoughts very well)
It was pretty good. If they can find a different writer who can keep the quality up, i'd really enjoy seeing Aria & Dawn of Sorrow adapted - there's some good meat there, and it'd be cool to see this aesthetic and take applied to modern-day castlevania.
I wonder if this was the original plan, or "Dude, we're firing you but not before you wrap this up because goddamn it gets a mountain of views."
Without seeing it, just going off news and theories, it sounded like both the plan and rushed because of firing him.
Like, "well, squeeze in everything because you're not coming back" or "we've got all this material from him but it was for 2 seasons, what do we do".
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BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
edited May 2021
I suspect that he had already written up most of the script before the allegations started surfacing, tbh
He's a superb writer in many ways and I'm glad the team was able to at least close out the arc with the same writer to keep things tonally consistent, but the things he inflicted on other people aren't worth keeping him around regardless and (this is something I hadn't really pondered), his writing isn't without flaw. His early criticism of religion as corrupt human institutions is really slick, but when it gets into shaping it around in-universe worldbuilding it starts looking like a pretty surface reading of how religions are actually founded.
His character writing is impeccable, though
BRIAN BLESSED on
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
I wonder if this was the original plan, or "Dude, we're firing you but not before you wrap this up because goddamn it gets a mountain of views."
Without seeing it, just going off news and theories, it sounded like both the plan and rushed because of firing him.
Like, "well, squeeze in everything because you're not coming back" or "we've got all this material from him but it was for 2 seasons, what do we do".
He actually had finished the season 4 script before getting fired.
And Netflix has plans for another Castlevania series. Different characters it'll focus on. No other details, but I wouldn't be too surprised if it is a time jump and we follow descendants or something.
edit- I mean it could just as easily be a completely new setting and completely new characters too.
Axen on
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
It definitely had some padding to it too, excessive scenes that you don't really need important writing consideration for. Such as
redoing all the Infinite Corridor shit with Saint Germaine again, or the fight the big lady vampire gets into, etc.
Like where season 4 went plot-wise and conclusion-wise makes sense as far as what the intended goal was, but yeah, you can tell they had to rush to it all. Isaac's conclusion is the biggest out-of-nowhere thing in that regard.
But hey, it could've been worse. They could've Game of Thrones'd this shit.
I suspect that he had already written up most of the script before the allegations started surfacing, tbh
He's a superb writer in many ways and I'm glad the team was able to at least close out the arc with the same writer to keep things tonally consistent, but the things he inflicted on other people aren't worth keeping him around regardless and (this is something I hadn't really pondered), his writing isn't without flaw. His early criticism of religion as corrupt human institutions is really slick, but when it gets into shaping it around in-universe worldbuilding it starts looking like a pretty surface reading of how religions are actually founded.
His character writing is impeccable, though
Yeah, as much as I like warrens writing (while disagreeing strongly with his actions), this series made me really think he needs an editor with a tight hand on the reigns. It's good, but it's... Indulgent.
Which is not all bad! But I found his characters to end up all having very similar voices, and stuff that's both predictible and uninteresting in it's execution
the whole royal family thing in s4 was... Yep. Zero surprise, zero interesting
Still, I hope they follow this universe up with some equally talented writers
It definitely had some padding to it too, excessive scenes that you don't really need important writing consideration for. Such as
redoing all the Infinite Corridor shit with Saint Germaine again, or the fight the big lady vampire gets into, etc.
Like where season 4 went plot-wise and conclusion-wise makes sense as far as what the intended goal was, but yeah, you can tell they had to rush to it all. Isaac's conclusion is the biggest out-of-nowhere thing in that regard.
But hey, it could've been worse. They could've Game of Thrones'd this shit.
Striga fight:
I don't think this was padding at all. Morana wants out, Striga isn't sure. The fight is the final nail in the coffin (heh) for her when she sees the fear in the eyes of the farmers she's fighting. She realizes here that she'll never stop fighting if Camilla has her way, and it won't be glorious battles against warriors, but mindless slaughter of people who don't know how to fight. This thoroughly demoralizes her and seals the deal for her and Morana to stop Camilla.
It definitely had some padding to it too, excessive scenes that you don't really need important writing consideration for. Such as
redoing all the Infinite Corridor shit with Saint Germaine again, or the fight the big lady vampire gets into, etc.
Like where season 4 went plot-wise and conclusion-wise makes sense as far as what the intended goal was, but yeah, you can tell they had to rush to it all. Isaac's conclusion is the biggest out-of-nowhere thing in that regard.
But hey, it could've been worse. They could've Game of Thrones'd this shit.
Striga fight:
I don't think this was padding at all. Morana wants out, Striga isn't sure. The fight is the final nail in the coffin (heh) for her when she sees the fear in the eyes of the farmers she's fighting. She realizes here that she'll never stop fighting if Camilla has her way, and it won't be glorious battles against warriors, but mindless slaughter of people who don't know how to fight. This thoroughly demoralizes her and seals the deal for her and Morana to stop Camilla.
Definitely what they aimed for but it was so ham-fisted, especially when it happened hot on the heels of the question so much as coming up.
They gave Dracula a happy ending? wtf that dude killed tens of thousands of innocent peasants.
Only in anger!
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
I'm honestly not familiar with Ellis' writing, but there's so many scenes in the show where they love to just let characters breathe, sit back and talk with each other. I hope whoever does the follow-up series keeps that tone intact.
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BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
I'm honestly not familiar with Ellis' writing, but there's so many scenes in the show where they love to just let characters breathe, sit back and talk with each other. I hope whoever does the follow-up series keeps that tone intact.
This is absolutely the part that makes Castlevania one of the best videogame adaptations I've seen. It takes creative license with what we know of the characters and uses that to just spend time with them, to explore their feelings and motivations to make them more real and empathetic. The script is more concerned with poking at the same broad themes than with trying to match the story beats of its source material, which makes it much easier to form a more natural plot
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KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
I'm honestly not familiar with Ellis' writing, but there's so many scenes in the show where they love to just let characters breathe, sit back and talk with each other. I hope whoever does the follow-up series keeps that tone intact.
This is absolutely the part that makes Castlevania one of the best videogame adaptations I've seen. It takes creative license with what we know of the characters and uses that to just spend time with them, to explore their feelings and motivations to make them more real and empathetic. The script is more concerned with poking at the same broad themes than with trying to match the story beats of its source material, which makes it much easier to form a more natural plot
It's also one of the features of the series that led to what is still one of my favorite moments, where Alucard explains that he matured faster into an "adult", and Sypha basically says that he's a moody teenager in an adult body and he gets that "the fuck" look on his face and it's just glorious. A beat like that, comedic or not, is what sells these characters.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
I'm not through all of S4 yet, but holy shit do I love Isaac's story as of the end of episode 6. The way his story is done is itself just fantastic. We get these great pieces of philosophical discussion that are drenched in character and they're paced just right, punctuated by stellar action scenes. I honestly feel like Isaac's story has powerfully overshadowed Trevor and Sypha's at this point.
Also, it kills me every time Alucard despairs at falling into, not madness, but Belmonte.
It's also so weird, but good, how the show will so easily slip in and out of scenes that are obvious nods to the games. I'll barely even notice how into a sequence I'm getting and then I realize the music is almost right out of a game, then notice how the scene itself is set up to emulate the game as well.
Overall, it's just so utterly bizarre what a great show they've pieced together out of the patchwork of the Castlevania fiction.
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Golden YakBurnished BovineThe sunny beaches of CanadaRegistered Userregular
I was not a fan. Well, not as much as I was of season 1&2. I think 2 had a much stronger finish as a series end-point. I still enjoyed the action and combat animation, and some of the character moments (especially the presence of a classic series boss), but overall I was kind've disappointed.
The Hector/Isaac/Carmilla storyline was okay, but since it was completely disconnected from the other story it's outcome didn't have much impact for me. I was also disappointed to see Lenore go from manipulative puppet-mistress vampire to this aimless, suicidal nothing of a character. I had expected Issac and Carmilla's story-threads to weave back in with Alucard, Trevor, and Sypha, but they didn't and all their respective casts just sort've fizzle out and go nowhere. I liked Carmilla enough as a potential antagonist that I was sorry she never got to interact with any of the heroes really at all. All the buildup in S3 felt like it amounted to nothing, storywise. Cool swordplay from Carmilla, though.
I didn't get much out of the side-characters either. The woman Alucard meets seems like a really ham-fisted love-interest out of nowhere setup. Crazy-girl in Targoviste wasn't all that likeable and so her sacrifice-redemption left me pretty unmoved.
Funnily enough the only side-character that I kind've wound of liking was Varney - I enjoyed his weird conversation moment with the other russian vampire more so for his reactions than the monologue of the other guy. I noted some people liked that scene - I was left wondering what the hell it was for. It failed utterly to make the russian vampire at all interesting, though it did make him gross and vile enough that it was satisfying when he died.
Varney turning out to be the main villain was fun, though I'm almost sorry he didn't get to really shine as Varney, the fucking vampire of London, though Death has pretty much the same personality so I guess it amounts to the same thing. But it bugs me as to how the cast was united for the final battle. Why did Varney/Death need the mirror in Targoviste to teleport to Dracula's castle at all? He's Death, a transcendent elemental spirit. If he can't just teleport he can use the Infinite Corridors to go anywhere, even after giving some of his power to St Jermaine. Why bother with the mirror? It seemed like it was just a contrived way to reunite the big three.
Also, the big plot was to turn Dracula and his wife into a... divine hermaphrodite? And it actually happens. ...alright. The Rebus is a real alchemical concept I realize, and alchemy does actually have a pretty major role to play in the series. But they could've drawn upon stuff from the series itself, delved into the alchemical ritual of the Crimson and Ebony stones that Dracula actually used to turn himself into a vampire, or the alchemy that granted the Belmont family the vampire-killer weapon and the affinity for fighting evil in the first place. But... stitch together a hermaphrodite corpse and put Dracula in it instead, I guess.
I wouldn't have minded the series leaning a bit more heavily on game material, actually. The aforementioned alchemy concepts, characters like Olrox, Galamoth, maybe explore the nature of Dracula as the avatar for Chaos, the supernatural source of all evil power. Dracula's death could have left the cosmic balance of Chaos out of kilter and been the impetus for many other characters and monsters to try and take his place. That might've been a more interesting goal for both Isaac and Carmilla in the end.
I was also sad that in the end that asshole priest who killed Dracula's wife didn't wind up coming back as Shaft. Always liked Shaft.
I still liked the series for existing at all, good video game adaption, spectacular fighting and action animation. But I think the story is strongest in season 1&2, I found S3 to be almost unnecessary filler and set-up, and it mostly just doesn't payoff in S4 for me.
@Golden Yak - I think that's a very fair read. S3 and S4 are msotly carried by very strong charater work and animation - when you actually dig into the story going on, it's as you point out, weak as hell and very weirdly paced.
AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
People have raised a number of gripes and or complaint about the series. Generally I either agree or can understand the person's position and while these may be valid I'm of the opinion that none are damning. That is to say I can't point to any one thing that I'd say brings down the quality of the show. Could some things have been done better? Yeah. Was the show still immensely enjoyable to me? Oh hell yeah.
Overall, I fucking loved this series. I was very happy with the ending.
Though part of that may be because I've gotten used to series either having a completely stupid ending or no ending at all. So when one has a proper ending it is somewhat novel.
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
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BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
Yeah as much as I wish we could get a ton more stuff with some of the characters I absolutely love, I also appreciate the fact that (whether or not it was by choice) that this story got its definitive conclusion instead of stringing these actors and the audience along for a neverending ride out of sheer financial obligation. Sucking out the staff's genuine enthusiasm of this show would be the worst
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KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
Yeah as much as I wish we could get a ton more stuff with some of the characters I absolutely love, I also appreciate the fact that (whether or not it was by choice) that this story got its definitive conclusion instead of stringing these actors and the audience along for a neverending ride out of sheer financial obligation. Sucking out the staff's genuine enthusiasm of this show would be the worst
The nice thing is that if they do carry forward, they could always bring actors from this series back if they so choose for a variety of reasons. Or they could just cut clean and that works just fine as well.
Apparently the voice for Trevor at least has been semi-vocal about wanting to do a live action version of his character which even if it never happens still makes me grin.
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So this season, we are introduced to a new character named Greta from the town of Dinasti, Who becomes a staunch ally of Alucard and essentially becomes an honorary member of our core group of heroes by the end of the show.
Greta of Dinasti...
I wonder what her name would’ve been if she had been born a man?
So this season, we are introduced to a new character named Greta from the town of Dinasti, Who becomes a staunch ally of Alucard and essentially becomes an honorary member of our core group of heroes by the end of the show.
Greta of Dinasti...
I wonder what her name would’ve been if she had been born a man?
That Simon is the future offspring of Trevor and Sypha.
Ticaldfjam on
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
So I'll put down S4 as not my favorite season, but I'll put all 4 seasons down as an excellent series.
And in regards to the ending
Lisa and Vlad coming back and getting a second chance is essential to the theme of the ending, which is a theme throughout the whole series.
And that theme is that you can't build a future on blood and power. The future the church wants is built on the bones of the wrongfully accused it uses to demonstrate its power, a power which is useless in the face of the likes of Dracula. Dracula's future isn't going to be order, it's just going to be death and his wife will still be dead and he will still be in suffering from that. Carmilla and her crew taking over isn't building anything, it will just create an endless churn of death as they fight to keep the land they've taken. Isaac's desire for revenge will do nothing for the world. The crazy-ass woman trying to prop up the myth of the royal family running everything does nothing but spread misery.
So why do the good guys win? Because they build for a better future.
Trevor and Sypha organize people to defend and take care of themselves. Alucard brings the villagers into his castle and into his life. Isaac realizes how vain and pointless his quest for revenge is and realizes what he should be doing is destroying Carmilla's madness.
So the good guys win because they want to make a better future, not trample people until their future is better. Even Vlad gets a happy ending because the theme isn't poetic justice or karmic punishment, it's seeing that the way forward is in peace, not bloodshed and destruction. Virtually any punishment to be leveled at Vlad for his crime would just be vengeance, and vengeance just spreads pain and misery.
For a show with so much death and darkness, I am way okay with a bright, shiny ending for everybody. Not to mention there's a solid mix of actual enjoyable dialogue and stellar combat sequences, which is great too.
I'm definitely onboard with seeing what happens with the series generations down the line. Even if everything after this is terrible, at least this part is a self-contained enjoyable work. But it could be pretty interesting seeing how things play out in a world with actual immortals alongside the likes of generational monster-hunters like the Belmontes.
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
I only have two episodes left, and like I expected, the parts when a c t I o n happens are not nearly as interesting as the parts with just world building and dialogue. My favorite part of the season so far was the conversation between Hector and Isaac in episode 7.
I love the bit about revenge being for children, it's time that we grow up and be adults.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
I only have two episodes left, and like I expected, the parts when a c t I o n happens are not nearly as interesting as the parts with just world building and dialogue. My favorite part of the season so far was the conversation between Hector and Isaac in episode 7.
I love the bit about revenge being for children, it's time that we grow up and be adults.
Yeah, that whole exchange might legit be my favorite point in the whole series.
Question, but it's 100% not related to Castlevania at all, so I'll put it in a spoiler:
What happened to Henroid? They appear to have been banned? Anyone know what happened?
I'll try to summarize in the spoiler, because I don't know if the Private Message Feature is still present, but Ill be as respectful as I can, with respect to the PA Mods
I think he got banned from D and D for the immigration thread, even though, and once again, with respect to the PA Mods I highly disagree with the decision to ban Henroid, when he basically was stating his point of view on that respective thread.
and I'll leave it at that, with respect to the topic.
Finished season 4, all I'm gonna say is it needed more Barkerville soundtrack. That is to say any Barkerville soundtrack.
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
I couldn't help but notice that there were quite a few bits where the characters were repeating themselves. Like when Carmilla was telling Lenore about her plans, and later when Lenore was talking about it with Hector. "Carmilla's gonna do this. I did this. Carmilla's gonna do this. Then I did this. Carmilla said she's gonna do this."
Almost as if something happened and the writer wasn't able to do a final pass on the script.
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
I enjoyed the ending enough, but 1/2 are definitely the high point.
Lenore's ending was... fitting, I guess, if random, but I wanted to see them as a power couple a la Trevor and Sypha.
I don't mind Dracula and Lisa having another chance, just more curious how this is going to work into the canon where Dracula is constantly coming back and is constantly a bad guy.
Shaft, I guess, to set off SotN? I'm fine with that.
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Dr. ChaosPost nuclear nuisanceRegistered Userregular
I couldn't help but notice that there were quite a few bits where the characters were repeating themselves. Like when Carmilla was telling Lenore about her plans, and later when Lenore was talking about it with Hector. "Carmilla's gonna do this. I did this. Carmilla's gonna do this. Then I did this. Carmilla said she's gonna do this."
Almost as if something happened and the writer wasn't able to do a final pass on the script.
Yeah, there's at least three points I can recall where the character reiterates the same speech at least twice. I think Carmilla does it like three times, so it's especially bad there. Comrade Vampire definitely repeats himself in his self-important speech. Pretty sure Trevor repeats himself later on.
That's the sort of thing I don't get because I'm not a writer and I could absolutely review that script and say "we need to fix these lines". I'm a hundred percent sure I could even do it myself and it wouldnt sound any different than the rest of the series. So I guess the script just got no review whatsoever from anybody at any point?
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Golden YakBurnished BovineThe sunny beaches of CanadaRegistered Userregular
I enjoyed the ending enough, but 1/2 are definitely the high point.
Lenore's ending was... fitting, I guess, if random, but I wanted to see them as a power couple a la Trevor and Sypha.
I don't mind Dracula and Lisa having another chance, just more curious how this is going to work into the canon where Dracula is constantly coming back and is constantly a bad guy.
Shaft, I guess, to set off SotN? I'm fine with that.
It would also make Aria of Sorrow tricky if Dracula doesn't die permanently somehow, since it's supposed to be about his true reincarnation and heir.
Three episodes in (stupid busy life), and woof, this season's taking its sweet time getting anywhere. I mean, I like and appreciate all the quiet character beats, but it's pretty overwhelming when there's like 47 different characters to give them to.
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38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
Three episodes in (stupid busy life), and woof, this season's taking its sweet time getting anywhere. I mean, I like and appreciate all the quiet character beats, but it's pretty overwhelming when there's like 47 different characters to give them to.
We haven't finished the season yet either and this is an ongoing problem. Several characters launch several minute monologues where they say the same thing over and over and over. Wife fell asleep last night during the second in the same episode. Oh whoops that has been mentioned.
38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
Okay having finished the season:
Day armor? What the hell? This really ruined immersion for me. If vampires can just wear armor and be immune to daylight and apparently they have enough for all the armies of Strya(sp?) why are they not wearing it constantly? Always seemed to me like daylight just killed vampires in this reality and vampires just worked around that by being inside or underground or something. Most of them can teleport even. It seems a silly thing to stick on but come on. Maybe they should make holy water armor, or edged weapon armor. And its easy enough to make that they can have their whole army in it?
Then the whole trevor and syfa plot but especially targovista just seemed like wasting time. Also Trevor seems to have forgotten he has a whip that instantly explodes anything he is fighting for the duration of the season almost killing him over and over while he randomly tries out whatever random object he is near as a weapon.
And the monologuing was out of control. Carmilla and varney's buddy were really bad.
Saint Germain randomly trusting some mysterious stranger seems a bit off for his character but maybe he just really loves and misses steampunk-april-o-neil to the point of not thinking things through.
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It was pretty good. If they can find a different writer who can keep the quality up, i'd really enjoy seeing Aria & Dawn of Sorrow adapted - there's some good meat there, and it'd be cool to see this aesthetic and take applied to modern-day castlevania.
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Without seeing it, just going off news and theories, it sounded like both the plan and rushed because of firing him.
Like, "well, squeeze in everything because you're not coming back" or "we've got all this material from him but it was for 2 seasons, what do we do".
He's a superb writer in many ways and I'm glad the team was able to at least close out the arc with the same writer to keep things tonally consistent, but the things he inflicted on other people aren't worth keeping him around regardless and (this is something I hadn't really pondered), his writing isn't without flaw. His early criticism of religion as corrupt human institutions is really slick, but when it gets into shaping it around in-universe worldbuilding it starts looking like a pretty surface reading of how religions are actually founded.
His character writing is impeccable, though
He actually had finished the season 4 script before getting fired.
And Netflix has plans for another Castlevania series. Different characters it'll focus on. No other details, but I wouldn't be too surprised if it is a time jump and we follow descendants or something.
edit- I mean it could just as easily be a completely new setting and completely new characters too.
But hey, it could've been worse. They could've Game of Thrones'd this shit.
Yeah, as much as I like warrens writing (while disagreeing strongly with his actions), this series made me really think he needs an editor with a tight hand on the reigns. It's good, but it's... Indulgent.
Which is not all bad! But I found his characters to end up all having very similar voices, and stuff that's both predictible and uninteresting in it's execution
Still, I hope they follow this universe up with some equally talented writers
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Striga fight:
But again, time restraints and all that.
This is absolutely the part that makes Castlevania one of the best videogame adaptations I've seen. It takes creative license with what we know of the characters and uses that to just spend time with them, to explore their feelings and motivations to make them more real and empathetic. The script is more concerned with poking at the same broad themes than with trying to match the story beats of its source material, which makes it much easier to form a more natural plot
It's also one of the features of the series that led to what is still one of my favorite moments, where Alucard explains that he matured faster into an "adult", and Sypha basically says that he's a moody teenager in an adult body and he gets that "the fuck" look on his face and it's just glorious. A beat like that, comedic or not, is what sells these characters.
Also, it kills me every time Alucard despairs at falling into, not madness, but Belmonte.
It's also so weird, but good, how the show will so easily slip in and out of scenes that are obvious nods to the games. I'll barely even notice how into a sequence I'm getting and then I realize the music is almost right out of a game, then notice how the scene itself is set up to emulate the game as well.
Overall, it's just so utterly bizarre what a great show they've pieced together out of the patchwork of the Castlevania fiction.
I didn't get much out of the side-characters either. The woman Alucard meets seems like a really ham-fisted love-interest out of nowhere setup. Crazy-girl in Targoviste wasn't all that likeable and so her sacrifice-redemption left me pretty unmoved.
Funnily enough the only side-character that I kind've wound of liking was Varney - I enjoyed his weird conversation moment with the other russian vampire more so for his reactions than the monologue of the other guy. I noted some people liked that scene - I was left wondering what the hell it was for. It failed utterly to make the russian vampire at all interesting, though it did make him gross and vile enough that it was satisfying when he died.
Varney turning out to be the main villain was fun, though I'm almost sorry he didn't get to really shine as Varney, the fucking vampire of London, though Death has pretty much the same personality so I guess it amounts to the same thing. But it bugs me as to how the cast was united for the final battle. Why did Varney/Death need the mirror in Targoviste to teleport to Dracula's castle at all? He's Death, a transcendent elemental spirit. If he can't just teleport he can use the Infinite Corridors to go anywhere, even after giving some of his power to St Jermaine. Why bother with the mirror? It seemed like it was just a contrived way to reunite the big three.
Also, the big plot was to turn Dracula and his wife into a... divine hermaphrodite? And it actually happens. ...alright. The Rebus is a real alchemical concept I realize, and alchemy does actually have a pretty major role to play in the series. But they could've drawn upon stuff from the series itself, delved into the alchemical ritual of the Crimson and Ebony stones that Dracula actually used to turn himself into a vampire, or the alchemy that granted the Belmont family the vampire-killer weapon and the affinity for fighting evil in the first place. But... stitch together a hermaphrodite corpse and put Dracula in it instead, I guess.
I wouldn't have minded the series leaning a bit more heavily on game material, actually. The aforementioned alchemy concepts, characters like Olrox, Galamoth, maybe explore the nature of Dracula as the avatar for Chaos, the supernatural source of all evil power. Dracula's death could have left the cosmic balance of Chaos out of kilter and been the impetus for many other characters and monsters to try and take his place. That might've been a more interesting goal for both Isaac and Carmilla in the end.
I was also sad that in the end that asshole priest who killed Dracula's wife didn't wind up coming back as Shaft. Always liked Shaft.
I still liked the series for existing at all, good video game adaption, spectacular fighting and action animation. But I think the story is strongest in season 1&2, I found S3 to be almost unnecessary filler and set-up, and it mostly just doesn't payoff in S4 for me.
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Overall, I fucking loved this series. I was very happy with the ending.
Though part of that may be because I've gotten used to series either having a completely stupid ending or no ending at all. So when one has a proper ending it is somewhat novel.
The nice thing is that if they do carry forward, they could always bring actors from this series back if they so choose for a variety of reasons. Or they could just cut clean and that works just fine as well.
Apparently the voice for Trevor at least has been semi-vocal about wanting to do a live action version of his character which even if it never happens still makes me grin.
Greta of Dinasti...
I wonder what her name would’ve been if she had been born a man?
Greg.
And in regards to the ending
So why do the good guys win? Because they build for a better future.
So the good guys win because they want to make a better future, not trample people until their future is better. Even Vlad gets a happy ending because the theme isn't poetic justice or karmic punishment, it's seeing that the way forward is in peace, not bloodshed and destruction. Virtually any punishment to be leveled at Vlad for his crime would just be vengeance, and vengeance just spreads pain and misery.
I'm definitely onboard with seeing what happens with the series generations down the line. Even if everything after this is terrible, at least this part is a self-contained enjoyable work. But it could be pretty interesting seeing how things play out in a world with actual immortals alongside the likes of generational monster-hunters like the Belmontes.
Yeah, that whole exchange might legit be my favorite point in the whole series.
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
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I'll try to summarize in the spoiler, because I don't know if the Private Message Feature is still present, but Ill be as respectful as I can, with respect to the PA Mods
Almost as if something happened and the writer wasn't able to do a final pass on the script.
I don't mind Dracula and Lisa having another chance, just more curious how this is going to work into the canon where Dracula is constantly coming back and is constantly a bad guy.
Shaft, I guess, to set off SotN? I'm fine with that.
Yeah, there's at least three points I can recall where the character reiterates the same speech at least twice. I think Carmilla does it like three times, so it's especially bad there. Comrade Vampire definitely repeats himself in his self-important speech. Pretty sure Trevor repeats himself later on.
That's the sort of thing I don't get because I'm not a writer and I could absolutely review that script and say "we need to fix these lines". I'm a hundred percent sure I could even do it myself and it wouldnt sound any different than the rest of the series. So I guess the script just got no review whatsoever from anybody at any point?
We haven't finished the season yet either and this is an ongoing problem. Several characters launch several minute monologues where they say the same thing over and over and over. Wife fell asleep last night during the second in the same episode. Oh whoops that has been mentioned.
Then the whole trevor and syfa plot but especially targovista just seemed like wasting time. Also Trevor seems to have forgotten he has a whip that instantly explodes anything he is fighting for the duration of the season almost killing him over and over while he randomly tries out whatever random object he is near as a weapon.
And the monologuing was out of control. Carmilla and varney's buddy were really bad.
Saint Germain randomly trusting some mysterious stranger seems a bit off for his character but maybe he just really loves and misses steampunk-april-o-neil to the point of not thinking things through.