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datcloudboi · 4 months

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List of Video Games Turning 10 Years Old in 2024

Alien: Isolation

Assassin's Creed: Rogue (the one where you play as an Assassin turned Templar.)

Assassin's Creed: Unity (the one set during the French Revolution.)

Atelier Escha & Logy: Alchemists of the Dusk Sky

Azure Striker Gunvolt

The Banner Saga

Bayonetta 2

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth

BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea (the DLC where you go back to Rapture)

A Bird Story (a sort of spin-off of "To the Moon")

BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! (is this a sequel to 1 or a prequel to 1? I forgor)

Bravely Default (in North America)

Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (the one with K*vin Sp*cey)

Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 (to date, the last new Castlevania game to release)

Child of Light

The Crew (going offline at the end of March)

D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die (a wonderfully strange game from the guy that made Deadly Premonition)

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc (in North America)

Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair (in North America)

Dark Souls II

Deception IV: Blood Ties

Demon Gaze

Diablo III: Reaper of Souls

Disney Infinity 2.0

Divinity: Original Sin (from the team that would go on to make Baldur's Gate 3)

Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze

Dragon Age: Inquisition (the winner of GOTY at the very first TGAs)

Drakengard 3

Earth Defense Force 2025 (EDF! EDF! EDF!)

The Evil Within (from the creative director of Resident Evil)

Fable Anniversary

Fairy Fencer F

Far Cry 4

Freedom Planet

Guilty Gear Xrd Sign

Hyrule Warriors

Inazuma Eleven (in North America. And digital only.)

Infamous: Second Son (as well as its expansion, First Light)

Kirby: Triple Deluxe

The Last of Us Remastered (just one year after the original version came out...)

The Legend of Korra (the game from PlatinumGames that you can't buy anymore)

Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham

Lego The Hobbit

The Lego Movie Videogame

Lethal League (from the team that would go on to make Bomb Rush Cyberfunk)

Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII (the third and final chapter of the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy)

Lisa: The Painful (yes, really)

LittleBigPlanet 3

Lords of the Fallen (not to be confused with Lords of the Fallen, which came out in 2023)

Mario Golf: World Tour

Mario Kart 8 (the original version)

Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes (the prologue to Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, which came out 18 months later)

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor

Might & Magic X: Legacy

Murdered: Soul Suspect (it's like Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, but not as good)

Natural Doctrine

Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty! (a from the ground up remake of the first Oddworld game from 1997)

Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures 2 (yes, it got a sequel. I don't know how or why.)

Persona 4 Arena Ultimax

Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth

Pokemon Omega Ruby & Pokemon Alpha Sapphire

Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy (the last time that Professor Layton himself was the protagonist. At least, until the New World of Steam comes out)

Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

Pushmo World

Risen 3: Titan Lords

Sacred 3

Samurai Warriors 4

Shadowrun: Dragonfall

Shantae and the Pirate's Curse (the 3rd one)

Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments

Shovel Knight (yes, really)

Skylanders: Trap Team (the 4th one)

Sniper Elite III

Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric

Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal

South Park: The Stick of Truth

Steins;Gate (in North America)

Strider (the one from Double Helix)

Sunset Overdrive

Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and Nintendo 3DS (or Smash 4 for short)

Tales of Xillia 2

Tales of Hearts R

The Talos Principle

Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call

Thief (the reboot)

This War of Mine

Toukiden: The Age of Demons

Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark (this game merged the storyline of the War for/Fall of Cybertron games with the storyline of the Michael Bay movies. I’m not joking)

Transistor

Valiant Hearts: The Great War

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

The Walking Dead: Season Two

Wasteland 2

Watch Dogs

The Witch and the Hundred Knight

The Wolf Among Us (sequel this year!)

Wolfenstein: The New Order

Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z

Yoshi's New Island

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multiverse-imagines · 1 year

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More Trigun Reverse Isekai Headcanons

How the turntables! The Trigun crew are on our turf now!

(generalized excerpts of a personal fic I've been writing, that I plan to never release)

Vash

Would probably enjoy cosplay. You accidentally use his real name at a con, and the person he's talking to just goes, "If your real name is Vash why are you cosplaying [character]? you could have been Vash the Stampede!"

"I'm always Vash the Stampede, I wanna be someone else for a little bit, dammit!" He retorts playfully.

Would probably be a Godly House Husband. He's very creative, and loves messing with cooking recipes, and feel like the type who enjoys feeling productive.

Taking him to a Botanical Garden for the first time, he nearly lost his damn mind. Like a kid in a candy shop, he bounces around from plant to plant, gently feeling it's leaves, reading the descriptor plaques, and making sure to take pictures on his phone as he explores every inch.

He loves to walk on the nature trail closest to your house. Once he learns how to drive (and not crash the vehicle) he goes on a walk as part of his morning routine, which he insists on keeping, despite not having to keep up with it anymore.

On a similar note, homeboy can't relax. Due to his past traumas, he has a hard time believing the nomadic, misery filled life he had is truly over. He often has nightmares, and ends up curled up with you by morning because of it. He has his own room, but most of the time he just sleeps in bed with you.

Despite having a cellphone, he's pretty inept at using it. He's kind of like a grandma using Facebook for the first time. After an incident with a bot, you make sure to teach him about internet safety.

A little nsfw-y, but once Vash realized that water is plenty supply on earth, he takes as many baths and showers as he can, whenever he can. He also drags you along with him.

Wolfwood

He has a job at the local bar as a bartender. You told him you wouldn't buy his cigarettes, so he makes his own money for his cancer sticks.

He's very interested in Earth's weather patterns and meteorology. Whether it be local weather, or weather of other countries, he's always looking at weird weather documentaries, daily weather, and looking at weather almanacs to test their accuracy.

The first time he ever saw snow and rain, he thought the end was near, and the rapture had begun.

Yeah, you helped him get a motorcycle. It gave you two something to work on in the garage together. He, working on his motorcycle, and you, working on your vehicle's maintenance.

Nicholas is another who often has rampant nightmares. Like Vash, he tends to end up in bed with you, soon just becoming his permanent sleeping place, despite having a sleeping space of his own.

Knives

Still hates humans as much as ever, but without anyone to exact revenge on the existence of Plants (because they don't exist in our world) his anger needed to be directed somewhere. Thus, you introduced him to video games. As many as you could get your hands on. Though his favorites are First Person Shooters with high stakes and higher kill counts, he gained a soft spot for games like Mass Effect, Castlevania, and even Animal Crossing.

To make money, he's a streamer. He ends up gaining a cult of followers very quickly. I mean, just in general he's hot af, but then you have people who just kind of know he's Knives Millions.

Knives' 'cover up story' is that him and his twin brother were homeschooled to travelling parents, and loved Trigun so much that they modelled their entire lives off of them. Style to legal name changes, and even the Mole 'tattoos' on their faces. It seems to keep people satisfied, so you seem it safe.

#wanted to write more but accidentally hit post #how does one tumblr #trigun #vash the stampede #vash x reader #trigun brain rot #isekai #millions knives #nicholas d. wolfwood #this is what i get for writing a draft on tumblr xD

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maxwell-grant · 8 months

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If you were making up a gang of super-villains from classic Horror Movie characters (Count Dracula is an obvious 'In' being pretty much a super villain even in his original novel!), may I please ask which characters you would include and what role they would play in the gang?

First thing to establish is that Dracula is not leading the team. And obviously Dracula’s not gonna be a team player in a supporting role, so what we’re gonna do is this: Dracula is the threat that the team was assembled to fight.

Pretty much anytime you see the classic monsters gathered in any fashion, Dracula’s always the leader, and if we wanted to do that, we already have Monster Mash and Castlevania and so forth. I think assembling a Legion of Doom out of the Classic Monsters makes you particularly subject to law of diminishing returns that affect both supervillains and monsters, in that having a bunch of characters who demand to operate solo in narrative wind up greatly diminished when they're all doing the same thing together. So instead of Legion of Doom, I'm making these something more low-key like Secret Six, Thunderbolts and Suicide Squad and etc.

Here, it's all a bunch of classic monsters, but they all have a grudge with him, because everyone’s got beef with Dracula, and Dracula wants them destroyed so he may rule monsters and humans alike unopposed. Dracula is The Flash, and they are the Rogues. They bond together because it's the only way to win. Dracula is several orders of magnitude more evil than them, has countless weird magical abilities to counteract them, and he’s skilled enough in manipulation that he could conceivably trick them into doing his bidding, but he’s got no need for them past whatever unique abilities they have for momentary use, when he’s already got so much else at his disposal, including the ability to call in the universal ending to most monster stories: Call in the cops to shoot them dead.

In itself, this already gives the team a motivation to stay together regardless of what else is in the setting to give them trouble: They need to survive and beat Dracula, and they can’t call on anyone else for help. In fact, if the urge to have Dracula lead the Monster Squad again gets too strong, we could even establish that Dracula is able to create his own monsters, imperfect copies of their archetypes to serve as his enforcers, and thus, our group could have to fight off Frankensteins and mummies and werewolves and clones of themselves on their way to take him down.

Formation for this hypothetical group goes as follows:

The Leader - The Bride of Frankenstein:

Couple of reasons for why she’s leader besides favoritism being, she’s a Frankenstein and thus has to play a major role, but she doesn’t need to be a shambling brute, and if we’re gonna do a ragtag group of people fighting Count Dracula, in any form, it would be quite wrong to not have them led by a headstrong, brilliant woman. Also Elsa Lanchester plays Mary Shelley in the same movie, and Mary Shelley rules so she's qualified to rule this team-up by default.

We could establish her as having had significantly more time to mature and develop into something resembling the book Creature’s intelligence and sense of self, having picked up alchemical expertise from Pretorius’ notes to combine with her survival skills, and as a Frankenstein she could have the kind of superhuman strength and endurance that follows, allowing her to be sort of a jack-of-trades suitable for the leader position. Imposing, stoic, capable, and being a Frankenstein, crushingly lonely in more ways than one and in dire need of guidance.

The Mentor & Magician - Imhotep (The Mummy):

Because there’s no way we can pass on having Boris Karloff on this team. If The Bride is the Mina of our anti-Dracula crew, then Imhotep is our Van Helsing. Functionally similar to Dracula in many ways, but playing on a different side (definitely not on humanity’s side though). He's a prideful, manipulative grumpus from a bygone era with his glory days long behind him, with access to a wide array of magical powers, but not quite as rotten or powerful as his ancient enemy Dracula.

Imhotep has lived a long, long, long life and an exceedingly longer afterlife, constantly raised from death to be bothered by mortals again and again, which has granted him a considerable know-how of navigating strange worlds of magic and terror and history, but remaining out of touch with modern times. The team's magic user, with his main weakness being that he’s fragile and old and rotting and dying. Imhotep’s not quite able to transverse the mortal realm as easily as his rival, and he’s held back by the countless forms of decay that have set within him, which is part of why he’s agreeable enough to work with The Bride and for the two to put this team together.

The Resources & Social Interface - Janet Smith Jekyll (Daughter of Dr Jekyll):

We can't have a classic Universal Gathering without at minimum a Talbot werewolf in the mix and Jekyll & Hyde is as Classic as classic monsters get, so we're going here with Gloria Talbott's character in Daughter of Dr Jekyll, a mysterious orphan who inherits a huge mansion and fortune that used to belong to the infamous Dr Jekyll, and who discovers that she may indeed share his two-faced affliction and proclivity for going out at night on uncontrollable murderous rampages (and yes I am very much ignoring the movie's climax to make this character, shut up)

The movie sort of treats Mr Hyde as a werewolf transformation with quite a lot of vampire in the mix, which suits our purposes just fine because now we get to have a vampire on top of a werewolf in the team. She's got a cool homebase for our team to operate from in Dr Jekyll's mansion, she's super rich which never hurts to have in a team setting, she's the only one that can fully pass for human and also the one who accumulates the biggest body count the longer she stays active, so there's always some tension with her.

She is the monster most suited for operating within modern society, high and low class alike, which makes her an invaluable operative in the battle against Dracula and his game of predatory psychological class warfare, and the one most suited for keeping the team out of trouble. However, it's up to question how much can the team trust her. Even she doesn't quite know how much she can trust herself. Her teammates may not have blood, but a girl's gotta eat and all.

The Reality-Warping Assassin - Cesare:

Cesare is, strange. He’s a sweet young man, but around him hangs the faint echo of dead, ancient eons. He’s unmatched at subterfuge, able to slip through the shadows not just unseen, but unheard in a way that shouldn’t be possible, as he makes absolutely no sound whatsoever, not even when he does things that should make noise, like trip or cry or stab people. On the rare occasions he vocalizes, it's like the words emerge in your head fully formed. Everything he interacts with turns colorless and frayed the way he is.

He’s able to tell the fortunes of most he meets, but only for their deaths, and if he's bothered by his own prophecy of Dracula ending the worlds of monster and man alike, he doesn't show it. The world around him seems to occasionally warp into strange angles and crooked architecture and thick, tangible shadows, and it’s difficult to tell if any of it is even his doing in the first place. He also has an unusually intense grudge of clowns and hamburguers

He seems to sleep most of the time off-duty, and he’s docile as a lamb even while commanded to kill, though he may resist more immoral commands. Though his eyes hang open, he only wakes up very rarely, and when he does, the monsters see the world around him blink out of existence to be replaced with a greyed out mental hospital, where they all look like doctors or regular people in straightjackets, and it only lasts for a few brief, maddening seconds before he falls asleep again.

This can be an advantage to the team as a potential safeguard from threats and space to regroup, provided they don’t lose their selves and can get Cesare to stop playing with the flowers and go back to sleep, and you can imagine it only gets harder every time, convincing him to abandon a peaceful existence to once again be a murderous slave for eternity, and maybe convincing themselves to not join him there.

Better he’s on our side than Dracula’s, The Bride and Imhotep figure.

The Warrior-Healer & Aquatic Specialist: The Gill Man

I already said much of my piece on The Gill Man in terms of their role and personality here and obviously, they gotta be in the team. In terms of their powers & skillset, Gill Man is actually much better suited for this kind of stuff than most of the other Universal monsters. They are strong enough to move boats on their own, stealthy enough to consistently evade his human pursuers (and human civilization for countless years) and tough enough to survive and come back for two sequels.

Another idea to me comes from using The Shape of Water and it’s take on Gill Man, who was believed to be an Amazonian river god, and throughout the movie displays magical healing powers and traits that call into question just what it is exactly. Dracula would certainly find no use for The Gill Man as anything other than muscle for his army of the undead, but for a team that does have at least a handful of living members and may even depend on human assistance, a medic is a invaluable thing to have, as is someone still living and in touch with nature.

The Scientist & Swarm Controller: Doctor Delambre (The Fly)

Picked here to represent the original version of The Fly but can also adapt traits from Seth Brundle and other takes on this idea. We need a resident mad scientist (who's really not a mad scientist, but when you look the part, y'know), a sci-fi guy to represent that other vein of classic horror, somebody who can contrast the resident magicians and alchemists, and also no self-respecting team is complete without a bug guy, so here we have Dr Delambre, who joins the team as an assistant to The Bride and has found a way to hold off the mental decay process and made substantial progress on his matter-transporter devices as well as find ways to live with his newfound biological quirks. He's even found a way to utilize insects with humanoid limbs and intelligence in daily chores and missions, although he resents the idea that he's "controlling" them, mind you.

But with his wife under trial for his botched suicide ruled a murder, and his inability to show up in society and testify in her favor, and all of his former military contacts having cut off all ties with him, he's desperately trying to find a way to reverse the process of his transformation for good to save her and is willing to do whatever it takes. Doctor Delambre even winds up being sort of the team's wild card, because his technology is very potent and just as capable of breaking reality under the wrong hands as Cesare's weirdness, but he is not a "monster" by birth or choice and is merely a guy in a rush to try and revert his condition, and if Dracula comes along with a better promise to save his wife and life, perhaps...

And last but certainly not least,

The Transportation & Muscle - The Rhedosaurus (The Beast from 20.000 Fathoms)

We might have to shrink them down a bit but we absolutely can’t NOT have a giant monster dinosaur on the team, but neither Godzilla nor Kong would have much business palling around with these monsters. The Rhedosaurus, on the other hand, is a perfect fit, seeing as he’s Godzilla’s inspiration and the movie he’s in is credited as being the revival of the giant monster genre as well as the first to introduce the atomic bomb to the mix. The Rhedosaurus here would be sort of composited from the movie version as well as the original story by Ray Bradbury and obviously composited from Godzilla variants and the Toho kaijus who owe their existence to it, a vicious and violent creature defending itself and one that's deeply lonely and desperate and strangely noble as the last of it’s kind, one that has nothing else to help protect it but these strange not-humans it’s formed an unlikely bond with. It has a particularly strong bond with The Gill Man, the only one who’s able to communicate with and steer it properly.

The Rhedosaurus is a global danger on a bigger and more direct scale than the other monsters, not just as a giant powerful dinosaur, but also a creature whose death could unleash a plague powerful enough to wipe out mankind, something the characters wouldn’t discover until late into the story (something Dracula, and maybe even Imhotep, would certainly want to exploit for personal gain). Maybe this radiation seeps over and forces the team to move their location around to stay undetected, maybe it's instrumental to powering whatever plans Dr Delambre and The Bride are cooking up in their lab, maybe it's affecting the environment or reality itself in strange unforeseen ways the way certain Godzilla works like KOTM and Singular Point have done.

It can be the key to saving the world or destroying it in equal measure, and so the fate of the Rhedosaurus is the fate of the future, and it falls up to the team to protect it as much as it will protect them.

So yeah, maybe I took this from a super-villain team and made it something a lot more League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in setup, but this team I imagine is grouped together less by a desire to save the world or serve a higher cause, than a simple matter of survival against a mutual enemy and the world that''s turned against them. They want drastically different things and employ drastically different methods and they each constitute powerful threats, and together, they are as likely to destroy themselves first if not the world with them. But survival is a matter they all have a stake on. Alone, they don’t stand a chance. Together, they may just have a chance and live, if only to finally rest in peace.

#replies tag #universal monsters #monster #horror #frankenstein #the bride of frankenstein #imhotep #the mummy #dr jekyll and mr hyde #cesare #the cabinet of dr. caligari #the gill man #the fly #dracula #hero forge

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effypcfc · 7 months

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While watching Castlevania Nocturne on Netflix, my brain just happened to notice some familiar faces.

Whether it's just a coincidence or a deliberate shoutout from the Castlevania crew to the Owl House crew, idk yet.

#another lumity reference in a different piece of media #I'm freaking out about this reference #this reference is too clever to not be noticed #castlevania nocturne #the owl house #guilty men to be judged #castlevania #netflix castlevania #lumity #amity blight #luz noceda #luz x amity

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ariaofsorrows · 2 years

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so y’all know how in the AoS manuals, Mina is described as well loved by everyone and that everyone thinks Soma is too intimidating to approach?

I wonder if Mina has ever had an interaction where people told her she didn’t have to be friends with Soma just to be nice. She didn’t have to take pity on the asshole with no friends. Did people ever think that she was exhausting herself by being friends with him? I wonder if she had to defend Soma from people talking behind his back and trying to provoke him.

I wonder if she tried her hardest to get people to understand him. She probably tried to convince people he was not an asshole, and that he just has a little trouble communicating with others.

I really like the concept of Mina being Soma’s defender against everyday occurrences. She may not be Julius, Arikado, or Yoko, but I swear up and down that she has fought many battles for him.

#castlevania #all this for a girl who only has 6 lines of dialogue per game #this girl did not hold the Dark King’s forces at bay just for y’all to reduce her to some damsel #everyone go home i win the title of number 1 mina stan #she is such an underrated member of the sorrow crew lol #idc how bad i am at fanfiction i’m gonna write this #mina hakuba

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svartalfhild · 5 months

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I think it's very important to find people to be in cahoots with, platonically, romantically, or otherwise. Being in cahoots is good for you. Gotta have people to get up to shit with. Gotta have people to share looks with. Gotta have people to do shenanigans with. Gotta have people whose inner gremlin speaks to your inner gremlin. It demonstrates a certain sort of closeness that adds an essential spice to life.

Here are several examples of people who are in cahoots to illustrate what I mean:

Miles O'Brien and Julian Bashir from Star Trek

Rick and Evy from The Mummy movies

Trevor, Sypha, and Alucard from Castlevania

The Hobbits from Lord of the Rings

The entire crew of the Moya and their frenemies from Farscape

Vex and Vax from Critical Role

So you see, cahoots comes in many different forms, but it's always about the closeness of the conspiratorial bond.

#Svar shitposts

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demigoddessqueens · 1 year

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Hello! First I just want to mention that I love your post about VM, Castlevania, etc.. and you're reblogs of runway shows (I'm working to be a designer myself and they give me so much inspiration because of you!) and could I request on How would the VM crew react if they had a full proof plan to save the reader from being kidnapped and when they are about to start the plan all of the sudden they here, "uhm what are you guys doing?" next to them and all of the sudden they turn to see the reader escaped themselves.

Aww 🥰 🥹 I hope you achieve your goal in fashion design and wish you all the best of luck!

Also, this request is funny, Like it’s a whole “we were worried!!”, “why? I got free?!”

Percy

He’s the worst one of the group who is sick with worry over you! Going over the plan repeatedly through gritted teeth, his patience wears as he’s interrupted every other sentence until he finally snaps. “Percy…”, “wHaT??!”. Only he turns to find everyone else with a type of 😑 expression and you free from your binds.

Grog

Mad and wants to rage against whoever or whatever has captured you! Saying out loud what he’s going to do as an attack, he still feels Pike pulling at his tunic to get attention. “Not now Pikey, I’m trying to rescue ‘em!” “No, ugh Grog turn around!” He sees you waving casually at him with a smug grin.

Pike

If she could, a summon from Sarenrae could wipe those assholes out but she’ll never take the chance of potentially hurting you. Lost in her thoughts, Pike feels Grog pick her up by her shoulders and turn her around to see you standing there free but some of the rope burns still there.

Vex’ahlia

Third most worried of the group! Fiercely calling out orders with a tinge of worry in her voice, she’s prepping her now from the Echo Tree. Percy and Vax try to get her attention before she sharply snaps back! “What is so damned imp—?”, and behold there you are with a sheepish grin.

Keyleth

A bundle of nerves and anger, and is about to morph into Minxie form. This is the maddest most have seen her, so they try to not rule up even more as you make your way over. Rather instead, she hears you call out to her as she sees you safe and free. Anger subsiding, Keyleth just wraps you into the tightest hug.

Vax’ildan

Second most worried of the group!! He’s mad, anxious, frustrated, all the feelings! Armed with a Vestige and his weapons, he could make quick work of these thugs and carry you away. Just as he’s about to rescue you, Vex alerts him to turn around. There you are with a shy “hello sweetie” as he feels relief.

Scanlan

He’s worried as hell, but also extremely frustrated. Who the hell do these jerks think they are kidnapping you like this? Of course he just wants to charge in, magic blazing, but that grand scheme evaporates when Pike and Grog turn him around to see you. He wastes no time to jump into his arms but not before a “aww!! Now how can I make a cool song about this??”. “Good to see you too, Scanbo.”

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see-arcane · 2 years

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Defanging Dracula—The Noble-Romantic-Playboy VS The Horror Villain

Now that the ranting and raving on behalf of Lucy, Jonathan, and Mina’s character portrayals in media adaptations is out of the way, I think it’s only fair that Dracula has someone vouch for him too. Not because he deserves it as a person—being an entity powered exclusively by the Need to Be a Bloodsucking Bastard—but as a character who has always been, and deserves to be respected as, a genuinely insidious, terrifying, incredibly engaging monster of a villain.

To be clear, if this prick were to be updated on the state of all the myriad movies and spinoffs and offshoot tales centered on him, I have no doubt he would be delighted with what his fellow heroic cast members were relegated to. The man lives for other people’s misery. Up to a point, I think he’d love things like Francis Ford Coppola’s take, his Castlevania counterpart, even the Sexy von Suaveman version of himself in, The Invitation.

But he would only suffer it up to a point. Because hilarious as it must be to see his favorite victims watered down, pimped out, and/or erased outright? There’s no way he’d be able to stomach the unironically wistful charismatic prettyboy romance novel-cover treatment he gets subjected to.

Canon Dracula: “Wow, you’re really going all out on this ‘fake pining for the mortal chick’ stance. Amazing how you don’t break character.”

Assorted Noble-Romantic-Playboy Draculas: “Oh, it’s not an act. We legitimately are just on the hunt for the Right Lady to sate our sensual and yearning hearts. Also taking revenge when she dies. Or reincarnates. Or whatever. Anyway, all our acts are powered by sexy sexy desire and liberation and love :)”

Canon Dracula, has aged another 300 years upon hearing this: “…Is this what it’s like for the humans when they’re around me? Because I can feel every atom of my being trying to retreat and die in an effort not to suffer your presence.”

Really, I want you to sit and think about the last time you ever encountered a Dracula—or the goth heartthrob being sold as ‘Dracula’—that was horrifying. Not ‘ooh, he’s such a bad boy!’ not ‘oh he’s such a tragic villain!’ or ‘oh he’s so badass and cool!’ dark fantasy crap. I mean actually, legitimately frightening.

The kind of creep you would feel watching you at a party. And leaving the party. And going down the street. And in your room.

The kind of bogeyman you pray every night isn’t standing in a shadow—or is the shadow, trailing along after you, waiting for you to wear out. Because you will. He won’t. He’s got all night, friend.

The kind of walking, talking, smiling nightmare that embodies the worst (affectionate) of mastermind manipulative abusers and no-frills vicious monstrosity. Psychological torture for his ‘friends’ and idle slaughter for the cattle (sorry, tiny children, nameless mother, Demeter crew, Mr. Swales, the mastiff pup, the list goes on).

Dracula is meant to be intimidating. And sure, that can be alluring. But before that, and after that, the intimidation has to come from the fact that he is a next level sadist. Directors could never throw this guy into a romantic setting without defanging and sandblasting him down to a smoldering caricature.

If you had Canon Dracula in a story with an interested admirer going full-blown willing victim~ ;) <3 xoxo at him, all while their friend tried desperately to break through the haze of contemporary, ‘But humans are the REAL VILLAINS, monsters are just HOT INHUMAN OTHER-METAPHORS who want love..!’ lens to point out, hey, this guy has absolutely rancid serial killer vibes, we should go, do you know what would happen?

Dracula would, in evil cat fashion, either ignore or immediately kill his admirer and set his sights firmly on the person who wants absolutely nothing to do with him. Why? Because he’s fucking Dracula and he wants what’s most miserable and terrifying for everyone.

He’s meant to be gleefully evil. He’s meant to be The Classic Supernatural Gothic Villain © ™. None of this misunderstood monster shit. The characters understand him. He understands himself. And that understanding is that he loves being a torturous (not tortured :’c), unrepentant overpowered utter asshole of an immortal self-made demon.

The world is his playground and unlimited blood buffet. But fresh necks and undead babes aren’t even the half of it. We’ve seen how much fun he has playing mind games as much (or more than) the actual fruition of the fulfilled threat. This guy burned two whole months on toying with Jonathan. He’s just starting the slow burn game with Lucy. He’s all about savoring the flavor of a well-seasoned nightmare inflicted on new playmates/playthings.

And that is so goddang interesting in a monster! It’s rare! It’s unique! Here’s a guy who has nothing but time and power on his hands, and he uses that to amuse himself with picking out victims to turn into hobbies. Some get menaced and massacred. Some special cases get the full ‘courtship’ play as he drags them kicking and screaming into conversion against their will; which, if we’re looking at his pattern so far with Jonathan and Lucy, is absolutely his preference.

He. Is. A. Bastard!

And I love that for him! I love hating him, I love studying him like the malicious little bug he is, I love watching the victims and heroes put up a fight against him, I love all the tasty horror genre menace he’s been radiating for over a century!

But even he isn’t immune to being compressed and warped into a mockery of himself for adaptations’ sake. The vision of him as some Don Juan ravishing/wooing/pining for/avenging [INSERT DAMSEL HERE] has become practically the only version of him the general public is aware of. And that’s just as unfair as what’s been done to Mina, Jonathan, and Lucy.

tl;dr: Directors of all eras are seemingly allergic to treating the plot and cast of Dracula with any kind of respect in their takes, including the eponymous monster man himself. But as a token of goodwill, the Count has cordially invited all of them to a dinner at Castle Dracula to talk things over civilly. We’re sure they’ll be fine in the company of such a noble and trustworthy fellow.

#my awful evil no-good undead bastard man deserves better treatment in his movies too #if anyone has recs of adaptations where Dracula is a legit actual factual Monster #and not another goth Ken doll making kissy faces at Current Damsel #please let me know #I'm starving and my horror crops are dying #dracula #dracula daily #adaptation #bastardization #francis ford coppola #horror

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aimzicr · 8 months

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Okay I saw Last Voyage of the Demeter! I have thoughts. As someone who spent three years essaying about Dracula, as a fan and student of literature-to-film adaptations/transformations, and just as a reader and listener of Daily Dracula and Re: Dracula, I have thoughts. Mild spoilers below the cut, but nothing that would ruin the experience completely if you haven't seen/can't see it.

But please be aware: Dracula DOES go about in his Lizard Fashion™.

I wasn't expecting a one-to-one transformation of the Demeter's Log to make it on screen. After all, the story of men being silently hunted until all are dead makes for a great dread-inducing setpiece for Stoker's novel, but not so much for a standalone film. I did enjoy seeing how the story took the 'based on' as far as they could before they started stretching it.

I did have a quiet laugh as the first title-card almost seemed to suggest this was REAL and TRUE EVENTS for a second. Way to get me engaged and reference the epistolary nature of the original novel.

But yes, the story does get turned into a bit of a Last Girl Horror Movie, because they see and know there's something wrong and they're actively fighting against it, even as they get picked off one by one. An interesting take, a pretty damn good method of turning a bleak setpiece into a proper standalone story.

Dot points to follow, before I forget:

The opening with the wagons moving through the countryside was breathtakingly beautiful

(I couldn't help but think 'oh they're wearing the same hats my good friend Jonathan Harker wrote about')

The captain's log being read aloud, word for word, in quieter moments was very very good. (And, of course, by this point I know it word-for-word, so picking up on the small tweaks was quite a delight).

I enjoyed hearing the familiar names as we're introduced to the crew.

The captain's decision to retire and pass the ship on does make me reconsider the mate's stoic nature in the story as a man dedicated to his duty, rather than just an antisocial asshole. Always nice to consider things from a new angle.

Chekov's Black Dog (kind of a missed opportunity to not show Dracula using a mockery of Huck to escape, but this wasn't a one-to-one transformation of texts as I said; also no reference to a black dog being an omen of death? Missed opportunity.)

Dracula being the only one on the ship being allowed to eat meat, just a glimpse of his hypocrisy and tyranny

(Though I'm not a huge fan of modern vampires being depicted as messy eaters, Netflix's Castlevania etc: just DRINK THE BLOOD stop biting people and letting them BLEED EVERYWHERE, did your mother not teach you dining etiquette???)

"Can this disease be passed to people?" "No. Not without a bite" very cute.

The initial reveal of the face in the spyglass FUCK that was terrifying.

Considering inwardly 'why he look like that? We know he was an aristocrat when he left his castle -- wait, hang on, is this what happens when vampires get seasick? When they cross running water? They stop wearing clothes and go feral?' before I turned off my brain and stopped thinking about Seasick Naked Count Dracula

They really did need to add this new character, because the audience and the crew both needed the context and information. Otherwise, how could the crew fight back? RIP to canon, I guess, (but look at it this way: once Mina starts putting all the letters together, she gives Hellsing and the others the necessary information to kill Dracula, so... not too much of a reach?)

But Dracula, sir, bringing along a snack for the road and it ISN'T our friend Jonathan Harker?

The subtle reveal-and-conceal in the early parts of the voyage of Dracula's face and form was well done and genuinely terrifying. Just the parts where you look away for just a second and he's gone? Fuck.

"No, please! D:" "No, please~ :3"

HE'S GOING ABOUT IN HIS LIZARD FASHION AGAIN. THAT BOY AIN'T RIGHT.

Knock Knock. Who's there? Not your friend, that's for sure. (Dracula stealing this is Fucked Up, in the best way. He takes EVERYTHING from you! :) )

Vampirism as possession is an excellent way to recontextualise its parasitic history/links

Where's that tumblr post about how you can tell what a good horror film is? 'This movie's great, a kid DIES in it!'

Seeing the cloth move a second before the captain says 'I saw him move' but doubting myself. I didn't see that, right? It was just the wind. Right?

Oh. It wasn't the wind.

Men of Strength overpowered, Men of Faith made to doubt, Men of Reason rattled by answers that make no sense, and the Innocent hunted down. Dracula as a force of Pure Terror that tests one's character (and then eats, because he's a boyar and he dines on the cattle of his choosing)

Did he just slam this guy down so hard his BRAIN popped out of his skull, holy shit

'In my country, there's no-one else for him to feed on' what, do people go stale after a few bites? Dracula's a picky eater?

'He's rationing' puts the journey into even greater context. A chilling sentence in the film and in the broader understanding of the Demeter's place in the novel.

a Cool Plan to Survive The Monster is very action-movie, but I knew it wouldn't work (sorry, sometimes the spoilers/pre-knowledge ruin things)

'This is my home.' Augh. 'I'll do it.' AUGH.

The slow creeping fog rising up (like hands? like an embrace?) in the final hours was CHEF'S KISS. Beautiful effect

(Also loved the effect of the wind from His Wings displacing the fog, too. Even if you don't see him, you can see where he's been)

"What's going on?" "He knows." Oh. Well. Fuck.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter isn't told from the Captain's perspective, so much of the man's nobility and sacrifice in the name of duty is lost (even to the point that his iconic death pose is capital-m Mocked by The Dracula (almost like the old BAsTard was like 'I know you've read Stoker's book but I'm here to fuck with you, dear audience'). The Captain isn't the Final Girl in this horror movie, but they do give him a proper end as far as the film goes, even if he does get a lot more rattled and shaken than his log might suggest

There's also a sense of blurred intertextuality in vampire lore here, because they drew heavily on the Hammer Films/Buffy The Vampire Slayer context of 'vampires burning in sunlight'. Not truly Stoker's Dracula...

... then again, Dracula has a very particular Design, and is credited in the crawl as 'Dracula/Nosferatu'. He was for sure Count Orlock, rather than Dracula.

Knock Knock. I'm here watching you :3

That brief touch from Dracula as he leaves the bar was - fuck, it was a split second to make a poor man flinch, but in that brief touch was the playful terror of a tyrant: I own you, I don't fear you, you can't stop me, I control you. Nothing you said to me on the Demeter had any effect on me and you are just meat. Ta ta, darling~

The movie ending with a new survivor, the potential for a new vampire hunter, was very good. Instead of the Log of the Demeter ending in bleak despair and all hands lost, instead we have a man galvanised and ready to fight against evil, even if he has to do it alone.

Music kicked ass. Very raw, very primal, very Gothic Victoriana

Lots of fun! It felt a little like they were setting up for an Extended Dracula Universe (I hope I'm misinterpreting) but I did like how Getting To Live after a traumatic experience leads to 'Fuck this guy, he's not getting away with this in the future'. Like I said before, we wanted the monster back so we could kill it, so I appreciate that's the vibe they went with for LVotD. A little bleak? Sure. But the fact that people are willing to keep fighting, even in the direst circumstances with the odds against them? That's what we need. That's what it's all about.

#last voyage of the demeter #dracula #dracula daily #re: dracula #introspective #thoughts #mild spoilers #I love me some

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