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Offline theplottwist

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Re: No, Barlowe isn't "Dracula's vessel."
« Reply #15 on: February 11, 2017, 10:22:01 PM »
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Hey guys uh... this was the most recent OoE thread I could find and I need your expertise.

Now I know this is going to sound really random and sketchy, but I swear I need to know this for plot reasons and it's totally relevant.

But uh

Does Shanoa wear anything under her backless dress?

She's a nun, so chastity belt.

Discussing Shanoa's undergarments is making me really unconfortable.
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Offline Shiroi Koumori

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Re: No, Barlowe isn't "Dracula's vessel."
« Reply #16 on: February 12, 2017, 12:55:55 AM »
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Plottwist, don't get worked out on waffle's queries. He is just wondering what to write for his fanfic's "plot".

Offline Super Waffle

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Re: No, Barlowe isn't "Dracula's vessel."
« Reply #17 on: February 12, 2017, 03:34:39 AM »
+1
well excuse me princess.

Offline zangetsu468

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Re: No, Barlowe isn't "Dracula's vessel."
« Reply #18 on: February 12, 2017, 04:34:55 AM »
+1
Plottwist, don't get worked out on waffle's queries. He is just wondering what to write for his fanfic's "plot".

He's just mad cos he gets................... Nun








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Offline Super Waffle

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Re: No, Barlowe isn't "Dracula's vessel."
« Reply #19 on: February 12, 2017, 08:52:39 AM »
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That joke really only works for Shanoa's Judgment design. I like that one more, but it's not what I was referring to.

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Re: No, Barlowe isn't "Dracula's vessel."
« Reply #20 on: February 12, 2017, 11:40:22 AM »
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Quote
In order not to succumb to his evil side, Soma had to destroy Chaos in order to stop this flow of evil intention.

Soma can't destroy Chaos, it's impossible. If he did then the universe as we known it would be destroyed as well. Our very existence cannot survive without both Order and Chaos. Without Chaos influencing change our Orderly universe would stagnate and die. A very slow death for all existence. Chaos has no physical form. Nether does Order. The creature you fight at the end of AoS I'm convinced is a chaotic being that is channelling chaotic energies into Soma. Probably a creation of Dracula's back in the day. So when Soma killed the creature the flow of Chaos was stopped.
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Offline Dracula9

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Re: No, Barlowe isn't "Dracula's vessel."
« Reply #21 on: February 12, 2017, 02:41:01 PM »
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Castlevania Chaos is in no way ever implied to be universal chaos. It's human chaos born from the essence of human evil. The series has hammered this home quite a few times.

Come to think of it, doesn't plot have a thread about this exact thing somewhere? I can't remember where it is.
« Last Edit: February 12, 2017, 02:45:47 PM by Dracula9 »


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Offline Lumi Kløvstad

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Re: No, Barlowe isn't "Dracula's vessel."
« Reply #22 on: February 12, 2017, 03:40:25 PM »
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The series has hammered this home quite a few times.

When? I only know of it ever being mentioned in any capacity whatsoever in the Sorrow games
How not to be a dark lord: the answer to that is a terribly interesting answer that involves an almost Jedi-like adherence to keeping oneself under control and finding ways to be true to yourself in a way that doesn't encourage the worst parts of you to become dangerously exaggerated and instead feeds your better nature. Also, protip: don't fuck with Alchemy or strike up any deals with ancient Japanese Shinigami gods no matter how tempting the deal or how suavely dressed the Shinigami is.

Offline Dracula9

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Re: No, Barlowe isn't "Dracula's vessel."
« Reply #23 on: February 12, 2017, 03:53:01 PM »
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Uh...literally any and every game wherein they drive home the whole "Dracula draws power from the darkness in the hearts of mankind and that is why he continues to be reborn" thing?

"Dracula comes back and draws strength from humans being shits" and "Chaos is the source of Dracula's power" is a pretty damned clear connection.
« Last Edit: February 12, 2017, 04:08:54 PM by Dracula9 »


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Offline Lumi Kløvstad

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Re: No, Barlowe isn't "Dracula's vessel."
« Reply #24 on: February 12, 2017, 05:31:56 PM »
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Uh...literally any and every game wherein they drive home the whole "Dracula draws power from the darkness in the hearts of mankind and that is why he continues to be reborn" thing?

"Dracula comes back and draws strength from humans being shits" and "Chaos is the source of Dracula's power" is a pretty damned clear connection.

I'm saying there being "a source" as named is only ever mentioned in the Sorrow games. The other titles have a much more allegorical yet logical "if it weren't for people being such jerks they'd stop bringing Dracula back and the Belmonts wouldn't have to deal with this shit" line of reasoning. There's very little (in fact practically nothing in the games themselves) suggested that human corruption is the source of Dracula's power, rather than simply being the reason he keeps coming back -- everyone just seems to want him back for one selfish reason or another.

Which is also a beautiful veiled "you suck" commentary aimed at the player. If YOU didn't enjoy the chaos Dracula caused, the dude could just rest in peace and the Belmonts could retire but noooo you keep asking for more games you horrible player-of-games, you! Dracula keeps rising because people inside the game universe keep wanting him to. And because people in the real world keep wanting him to.

His actual "flings fireballs teleports transforms and delivering of bitching axe kicks" powers have their source in his (super)nature as an atypical vampire who has spent a long time stealing the powers of his would-be rivals and generally doing everything possible to increase his strength. With or without human evil, he'd still have all of these abilities and be no less difficult to defeat. But humans are the predominant source of his resurrections -- usually on purpose but occasionally as an unintended side-effect. In that sense, human evil can be thought of as the source of his power: without it, defeating him would have very likely been a twice and done affair (as it was Death, not humans, who engineered his return in Curse of Darkness).

But I cannot and will not subscribe to this theory that there is some outside force without which Dracula is powerless if he were to be cut off from it. He's not a Battle Droid in Star Wars Episode One. There is no command post you can blow up, mystical talisman that you can smash, or Horcrux to neutralize, in order to switch him off for good. Dracula is his own power source. That being said, one can easily argue that his inability to stay dead is arguably his real, and most dangerous, power. And humans are definitely the majority source of that.
« Last Edit: February 12, 2017, 05:39:18 PM by The Bloody Aperture »
How not to be a dark lord: the answer to that is a terribly interesting answer that involves an almost Jedi-like adherence to keeping oneself under control and finding ways to be true to yourself in a way that doesn't encourage the worst parts of you to become dangerously exaggerated and instead feeds your better nature. Also, protip: don't fuck with Alchemy or strike up any deals with ancient Japanese Shinigami gods no matter how tempting the deal or how suavely dressed the Shinigami is.

Offline Dracula9

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Re: No, Barlowe isn't "Dracula's vessel."
« Reply #25 on: February 12, 2017, 05:50:08 PM »
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There is no command post you can blow up, mystical talisman that you can smash, or Horcrux to neutralize, in order to switch him off for good.

1999 would like a word with you.

It's also not a "theory," but blah blah I'd be repeating myself to explain again, so I'll not waste anyone's time with redundant information.

I lack both the means and moreso the desire to go digging up a Works Cited footnote for you, so I'll just wait for Plot to inevitably weigh in here to say the exact same thing in a manner you're more preferential of.
« Last Edit: February 12, 2017, 05:55:07 PM by Dracula9 »


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Offline Lumi Kløvstad

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Re: No, Barlowe isn't "Dracula's vessel."
« Reply #26 on: February 12, 2017, 05:54:36 PM »
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1999 would like a word with you.

And it might if it ever showed up as more than a slight inference of which practically nothing is known. And besides, Dracula still reincarnated, so in the end 1999 only accomplished half it's goal. He just essentially resurrected into a nicer guy this time around.
How not to be a dark lord: the answer to that is a terribly interesting answer that involves an almost Jedi-like adherence to keeping oneself under control and finding ways to be true to yourself in a way that doesn't encourage the worst parts of you to become dangerously exaggerated and instead feeds your better nature. Also, protip: don't fuck with Alchemy or strike up any deals with ancient Japanese Shinigami gods no matter how tempting the deal or how suavely dressed the Shinigami is.

Offline Dracula9

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Re: No, Barlowe isn't "Dracula's vessel."
« Reply #27 on: February 12, 2017, 05:56:10 PM »
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Also wrong.

His power revived, not his consciousness. His consciousness and being was never the problem, his power and the hands it was in was. Something something Hector mumble mumble Something™ Harmless™ whisper whisper.

But see above. I'm incredibly lazy and cannot be arsed to hand over MLA citations for information I already know to be correct regardless of whether such a citation exists.


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Offline Lumi Kløvstad

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Re: No, Barlowe isn't "Dracula's vessel."
« Reply #28 on: February 12, 2017, 06:32:48 PM »
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Also wrong.

His power revived, not his consciousness.

But see above. I'm incredibly lazy and cannot be arsed to hand over MLA citations for information I already know to be correct regardless of whether such a citation exists.

MLA is horrible and I'd never ask you to do that to yourself, though still not as bad as APA.

But Aria of Sorrow is one of the most divisive games in the whole franchise for exactly these reasons: it needlessly fucked up what was essentially up until then a given quantity, and left us with something that's poorly explained, endlessly reinterpretable, and further attempts to clarify things just wound up attempting to dig Castlevania out of that hole with a bigger shovel.

Here's my personal read on Soma, damning canon to it's convoluted and unpredictably self-contradictory self which I do not trust for many reasons (particularly since due to translation errors there are essentially two separate canons depending on which side of the Pacific you're on). I have read the canon a number of times and there is no end to the list of things that do not make a lick of real sense when held up to scrutiny (which was a HUGE flaw of the Iga era -- trying to make a unified timeline at all was a huge mistake).

Soma's power of dominance is one expression among many possible ones of Dracula's power. It is an expression that is unique to him. Graham is the first alternate "Dracula candidate" (Dracula isn't a Sith Lord after all) that we meet, and from what we understand of him, his "facet" of Dracula was his charisma and ability to sway people to do what he wants. Dmitrii essentially embodies Dracula's adaptability by being able to duplicate the powers of those around him, and Dario simply embodies the sheer raw power of Dracula as well as his rage at God. These are all relatively unimportant points of data. Maybe they help fill out a canon, but they lend zero sense of narrative, which as a writer I will stress is the ENTIRE POINT OF STORYTELLING. So. Moving on.

But let's address that narrative, because it really is great, but only if you disregard a strict interpretation of canon based on Word of Creator and instead firmly invoke Death of the Author.

Soma's physical appearance shares a LOT in common with Mathias. They dress very similarly (simply accounting for changes in fashion across a millennium). Their faces share a LOT of their basic skeletal structure: enough so that I don't think this is just Ayami Kojima is only good at drawing one type of face (that is also true though). I mean this in the sense of "change the hairstyle and color and they look like the exact same guy", which I am CERTAIN is intentional. We don't know much about Mathias, but we know a lot about Soma. And what we know about Mathias jibes with what we know of Soma --Mina is his Elisabetha and both Sorrow games go to almost PAINFUL levels of detail to communicate this (as in if they hammered that nail any harder it would have split the castle). Ergo, I'm gonna tell canon flat out that it's wrong here. Soma isn't some guy who inherited Dracula's power. Soma isn't even Dracula's reincarnation. He's Mathias'. 1999's result served to remove Dracula from Mathias' human equation, and Mathias is being given essentially a second chance. This is at once a very Eastern spiritualist viewpoint and one perfectly in line with the Christian New Testament; the greatest sinner has been given his greatest shot at redemption. This is also perfectly in line with Iga's preferred kind of story; those games of his which we typically regard as his best all share a theme of humanising Dracula and lending context to his actions that we can understand and empathise with. In that sense, Soma represents the ultimate culmination of what Symphony of the Night and Lament had set up: Mathias given a chance to cast aside Dracula and engage in the highest form of humanisation: becoming human again. One can easily infer that Soma's idealism and good nature represent what Mathias used to be (at least if we go by how Leon described him, which admittedly wasn't much).

The STORY BEING TOLD pretty much adds up to Mathias being reincarnated, Hindu style, for one last shot at spiritual redemption, rather than a "resume from checkpoint" which had been typical of Dracula's prior resurrections. The story's authors clearly were not aware that's what they were saying, at least what they were saying to me. Whether God is behind it or not is a matter for other debates.

Canon is GREAT. It helps explain a lot. But it's also tricky. You cannot read it like a textbook because it deprives necessary context and interpretation, especially when writing teams frequently change and have their own ideas (which was incidentally the thing Iga had been trying to clear up by enforcing a canon to begin with). The best way to understand a story is to read it, read what the author has to say and consider it, and form your own interpretations from what you've gathered. I am NOT a guy who feels that "canon" is a concept that deserves absolute loyalty, especially when I find something that makes more sense. Canon is not the be-all-end-all, not the Alpha and Omega. It's maybe an Alpha at best, but you, me, Waffle, Jorge, and everyone else who has taken the Castlevania journey represent the ACTUAL omega. What I have just spent a page writing is the result of my runthrough of this process, having played the games, read the notes, read Iga's interviews, and decided on as the interpretation that makes the most sense.

This isn't math. It doesn't all add up neatly and cleanly. It doesn't spreadsheet well (thank the gods). This is art (suck it Jack Thompson!). And art, at its core, is subjective and meant to be interpreted by its beholder, not its author.

I respect your views, and I have also given mine. I do not believe that our views are entirely incompatible, but I also believe that to argue that further is pointless as we can never truly see eye to eye.

As a peace offering, have a dove.

How not to be a dark lord: the answer to that is a terribly interesting answer that involves an almost Jedi-like adherence to keeping oneself under control and finding ways to be true to yourself in a way that doesn't encourage the worst parts of you to become dangerously exaggerated and instead feeds your better nature. Also, protip: don't fuck with Alchemy or strike up any deals with ancient Japanese Shinigami gods no matter how tempting the deal or how suavely dressed the Shinigami is.

Offline Dracula9

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Re: No, Barlowe isn't "Dracula's vessel."
« Reply #29 on: February 12, 2017, 06:37:20 PM »
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He doesn't reincarnate as Dracula, is all I'm saying, only to disprove this:

And besides, Dracula still reincarnated, so in the end 1999 only accomplished half it's goal. He just essentially resurrected into a nicer guy this time around.

It's not a problem for Dracula's residual power to be a-floatin' about so much as who's got it. Shitty Russian Beatle Reject, Poser In Desperate Need Of A Chill Pill, and Definitely Not Joel Osteen had some, but they were shits so they were a problem. Soma had the Whopper™ Value™ Meal™ Combo™ but wasn't a problem unless he went nuts and turned into a shit.

Sending Big D an eviction notice was a complete success, as the methods therein stopped him from coming back as himself, not that it just divided his entire power by zero and made it go blip.
« Last Edit: February 12, 2017, 06:59:20 PM by Dracula9 »


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