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Off Topic / Re: Do you like Bloodstained?

« Last post by BLOOD MONKEY on Today at 07:21:36 PM »

I don't care for Bloodstained but I like Miriam

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Off Topic / Re: Do you like Bloodstained?

« Last post by Gunlord on Today at 06:30:14 PM »

I like Xombiemike <3

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Off Topic / Do you like Bloodstained?

« Last post by XombieMike on Yesterday at 06:47:27 PM »

Someone elsewhere said "80% of fans hate Miriam", which I found amusing since people so easily pull statistics out of their butts on the internet. So, let's see how it lines up here.

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General Castlevania Discussion / Re: Dave Cox

« Last post by Lumi Kløvstad on Yesterday at 03:54:39 PM »

Count Dankula seems to show a bit of remorse upon his defeat by Alucard in 1797, but that small piece of insight quickly went away in subsequent games. All he cares about is world domination moving forward.

My adamant working theory since Portrait of Ruin has been that Dracula's human soul moved on that day.
Unfortunately, Dracula isn't JUST Mathias. He'd spent quite a lot of time killing other vampires, absorbing their souls, adding their powers to his, never mind his singular connection to Chaos... conceivably there was quite a lot to the entity we call Dracula that was NOT human. And that would have been so evil it never would be permitted into Heaven. So it stuck around.
And if you notice in chronologically later games, Dracula gets a LOT less chatty, and when he does chat he's much more stereotypically evil. He makes borderline sexist remarks to Shanoa (claiming she must have been the one to resurrect him and she "only" would have done so so he could grant her eternal beauty, or power at his side as his consort), and in Portrait of Ruin only seems to care about getting his "full" powers back ("One day, my power will be fully revived!"), which beyond being the most generic Castlevania villain quote of all time, strongly implies that he believes that he no longer has his full powers.
That would be consistent with losing his human side, and with what Alucard told him at the end of Symphony: "You have been doomed ever since you lost the ability to love. / You lost your heart. Your soul. You'll never win without them. / When you lose those you love, and stop loving, you have already lost..."

If you want to believe so, there's enough there to claim that God pulled a sneaky, and by taking Mathias when he was asking Lisa's forgiveness, denied Chaos its greatest champion, leaving it forever with a "broken and dulled blade", doomed to lose forever hence.

And eventually, the rest of Dracula would be reincarnated into Soma Cruz, finishing the redemptive arc. When he passes, all that remains of Dracula will pass from the Earth.
Whether some other Dark Lord takes over the job? That's someone else's game now.

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General Castlevania Discussion / Dave Cox

« Last post by crisis on Yesterday at 01:38:02 PM »

Count Dankula seems to show a bit of remorse upon his defeat by Alucard in 1797, but that small piece of insight quickly went away in subsequent games. All he cares about is world domination moving forward.

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General Castlevania Discussion / Re: Lisa's manner of death makes a tad less sense in context

« Last post by C Belmont on Yesterday at 12:51:43 PM »

I think the method of Lisa's execution is most likely symbolic meant to draw comparisons to a saint or martyr. Similar to how how the manual compares her to the Virgin Mary.

The crucifixion in the nightmare looks a little similar to the way Japan performed them, which involved the person being bound to a cross & speared from both sides. So there may be cultural reasons why it looks the way it does.

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General Castlevania Discussion / Re: Lisa's manner of death makes a tad less sense in context

« Last post by Lumi Kløvstad on July 17, 2025, 04:45:30 PM »

It's really an interesting read, although too easy to say "it's also unlikely Dracula was a vampire, afterall" , but as i said in a long post once i like to think of the series as a work of "historical -fantasy- fiction" so it's still very appropriate to find connections and mistakes in the setting and overall unfolding of the supposed "historical events" in the series, where possible. That said, in Sotn and subsequent drama, is it implied or specified she was burned, as it is in the anime (which was for the first part supervised by Iga, so I assume thats what he had in mind when he wrote the scenario of Sotn)? From what i recall from the Nightmare scene there's gallows allover the square, so its not unlikely she may have been hanged? Not to mention the fact she looks like shes in a "crucified" pose, and the implications of a possible metaphor of jesus christ dying innocent for people's sin, which is also reflected in her words in at least the english dialogue (if my death can save others i gladly surrender my life, or something along the lines of..) Does she say anything similar in the japanese dialogue?

In the Nightmare, she is indeed being shown crucified, and a flashback in the Symphony of the Night prequel manga has Dracula cradling Lisa's body, looking very unburnt, but stained bloody as though she's been stabbed, and there ARE two men with spears in the Nightmare, so if these two things both reflect the reality, it's likely this is how she was killed.



It's worth noting there's NO documentation of this being done at ALL in the Christian world in the post-Roman era, as executing someone by crucifixion, even partially, would have been seen as a TERRIBLE blasphemy against Christ. By Lisa's time, crucifixion was practically extinct in Europe as a means of execution.

Interestingly, while not documented, there are some historic allusions to Ottoman forces possibly executing Christians in this way as a deliberate mockery of the faith. Considering the historic Dracula's ties to the Ottoman Empire and their long term presence in the region by this point in real history, this opens up some intriguing historic possibilities in the setting. It's entirely possible the Ottomans might have killed Lisa then, especially to punish Vlad for his barbaric methods of combat -- after all, Castlevania IS clear that "The Impaler" was one of Dracula's many identities. And thanks to Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula film already linking the Ottomans with the death of Dracula's wife and therefore his ascendancy as a Vampire, this is a REALLY neat storytelling link that honestly works better than Konami's own official napkin notes on the subject.

[EDIT] It's worth noting that the Curse of Darkness manga strongly disagrees on the matter of Lisa's death. While it does not SHOW IT outright, it VERY strongly implies that Lisa was burned. (Thanks, PlotTwist!  )

And her message to Dracula is SLIGHTLY different in the Japanese script:

ドラキュラ・ヴラド・ツェペシュ
　アルカードよ、教えてくれ。
　リサは最期に何と言ったのだ…？

アルカード
　人間を怨んではいけない。
　もし、人間が許されない存在で
　あるなら、自ら滅びの道を歩む。
　その世界の住人に在らざる者は、
　手を下すべきではないと…。
　そして、父上…。
　貴方を永遠に愛していると…。

ドラキュラ・ヴラド・ツェペシュ
　リサ…。
　私は、間違っていたのか…。

Dracula Vlad Tepes
Alucard, tell me.
What did Lisa say in her final moments...?

Alucard
"We must not resent humans.
If humans are unforgivable,
then they will walk the path to their own destruction.
Those who are not residents of this world
should not lay hands on them."
And, father...
I will love you forever.

Dracula Vlad Tepes
Lisa...
Was I wrong...?

Personally I think Lisa comes across as kinder in the English version. "Life already sucks, so please don't make it worse." is a lot kinder than "If they ARE as bad as you want to think they are, they'll destroy themselves without any need for you to get involved."

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Off Topic / Re: WHAT DAY IS IT?!?!?!

« Last post by Jorge D. Fuentes on July 17, 2025, 08:33:53 AM »

It is two days after the Bad Gateway 502 errors so I can finally post!
But I won't forget two days ago.
Never forget

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General Castlevania Discussion / Re: Bloodstained: The Scarlet Engagement

« Last post by Eric Roman on July 15, 2025, 03:56:21 AM »

This kinda looks how a 2025 CastleVania should, don't it?

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Off Topic / WHAT DAY IS IT?!?!?!

« Last post by Eric Roman on July 15, 2025, 03:24:23 AM »