*****THIS WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS FOR CASTELANIA SEASONS 1 THROUGH 4*****
Hello Internet!
I hope everyone is doing well and staying healthy. We’ve officially reached autumn which means it is spooky season. I am so excited for all because I absolutely love fall. I am not a basic, white girl but I am basic and white. So pretty close. Honestly I just love the cooler weather and wearing scarves and rocking a beanie. Truly living my best life during fall. Anyway, enough about that. You’ll definitely hear enough about fall throughout the next few Weekly Blogs. For now I want to quickly talk about the stuff I’ve published in the past week and then we can move on to a super topical Netflix show that everyone is talking about…as long as you are somehow reading this in May 2021.
Last Sunday I published a Weekly Blog giving you all an update for the Blog. It had been quite awhile since I last published a Weekly Blog and figured I’d give an update for what to expect for the rest of the month as well as a little bit for the rest of the year. I am determined to end this year strong and I’m pretty excited about this month full of fun and spooky pieces for October. Then on Wednesday I published a Poem titled “Shattered.” This Poem is all about love and break-ups. Sometimes things completely fall apart and you are left with nothing but pieces. I mean it’s not really the most subtle title I’ve even given a Poem so I’m sure you understand the premise of it. On Friday I published a Writing Prompt Piece titled “The Golem of The Windswept Valley.” This piece is all about a metal golem who becomes the centerpiece of a town that is newly established. Although the people see the golem as a protector and guardian, the golem believes they are an unredeemable monster based on the things they’ve done. When a dark threat looms on the horizon, it puts the town and the golem in an interesting place. This piece may also have some hints that it connects to another one of my Writing Prompt Pieces I wrote a few years ago. All I’m saying is that dark forces on the horizon definitely sounds like something. Lastly I published my latest chapter of my Pokemon Fanficiton: Pokémon HGSS #31: Ruins of Alph. Jonathan and Beatrice have finished up in Olivine City and now must make their way to the Ruins of Alph. It’s possible that this might be where Entei, the third legendary beast, is located. However once they arrive they are met with some sort of puzzle within the ancient ruins. If you missed any of those pieces, I highly recommend you go back and read through them. There’s some good stuff there. There are also a lot of pieces from September and even August that didn’t get highlighted well by me, so I’d really appreciate it if you went back and read some of those as well.
Now let’s quickly move on from the pieces I’ve published in the last week to a show I just watched recently. Well recently as in a couple months ago, but I just watched Castlevania on Netflix and it’s really, really good. So I thought I’d talk about it. Also it kind of fits the whole horror and spooky vibe of the month. Overall I’ll say that I didn’t start watching this show until Season 4 was released in May and I heard how crazy good it was. Before watching the show I had a very vague idea of what Castelvania was based on a very slim knowledge of the games. Like, I play some Smash Bros. I know that there are people with whips and throwing axes and they kill Dracula. Plus I was vaguely aware of a character named Alucard. That’s all I knew as I started watching this show. And let me tell you that if you’ve gotten this far and haven’t seen the show, you need to go watch this show. It is so good! The animation alone. And that fourth season finale! But I’m getting ahead of myself. I had basically no knowledge of the game’s lore beforehand and I loved it so don’t let that stop you from enjoying the show.
So what is this show all about? Well basically there are three main characters. First you have Trevor Belmont who is the last remaining member of the family Belmont. Belmonts are famous monster hunters who have a huge collection of knowledge all about magic and demons and monster hunting. Trevor is the reluctant hero with a great sense of humor and a crazy awesome whip. Then you have Sypha Belnades. Sypha is a member of the Speakers which are traditionalists which collect knowledge and pass it down through spoken word. They are kind of like mystics. Sypha is also a powerful mage who uses an array of ice and fire magic to kill monsters. Sypha is by far my favorite character of the show. I love her creative uses of magic and she reminds me a ton of the Dungeons and Dragons character I’m currently playing. I feel like the creators of the show were fans of D&D because I noticed some connections between Sypha’s spells and spells in D&D. I can not overstate how much I love Sypha and she is my favorite character. Last but not least we have Alucard who is a golden-haired, half-vampire. Alucard is the son of Dracula and a super skilled fighter. These three characters make up the core of the series as the protagonists, but honestly that’s only half of the story, because Castlevania has some amazing antagonists which really help the show reach another level. Dracula is the big bad and he is the driving force of the show. In the first couple seasons we spend as much time with Dracula as we do the protagonists. The other members of the vampire court also make for great villains throughout the show.
The basic rundown of the show’s plot is that Dracula meets this woman named Lisa who is a doctor and they end up falling in love. They get married and have a son named Alucard. However the people of the church think Lisa is a witch so they burn her on that stake which sends Dracula in a fury. He tells the world in one year’s time he is going to unleash an army of demons and vampires to kill every single human in revenge for his wife. Trevor, Sypha, and Alucard all end up meeting up together and they come up with a plan to kill Dracula and save humanity from extinction. The show develops from there as we learn about two human forgemasters that work for Dracula and are helping him end the rest of humanity. There is also infighting between the powerful vampire lords who do not trust Dracula for a variety of reasons. Eventually one vampire named Carmilla teams up with her Vampire Sisters to try to take over the country and establish vampire rule. I know I said this already but the villains of this show are so good. Like I obviously love our protagonists, but having such strong villains help the heroes shine even more. And the animation. Oh boy is this show gorgeous. The backgrounds and set pieces of this show are so beautiful. You can tell they put so much detail into this show, even if it’s a scene you see for only a second. They really spent the time to make this show look great. The action scenes really highlight this too. The fight choreography is so smooth and the fights are always interesting. They also find cool ways to use Sypha’s Magic or Trevor’s whip. It’s honestly so hard to describe because it’s so good. My words cannot do it justice. Just go please watch this show if you have Netflix because it just blew me away.
I don’t want to say too much about the finale just in case people really want to read this before watching the show, but I will say that the final battle where Trevor goes all out. It’s some of the most beautiful animation I’ve ever watched. I was so hyped and the battle definitely delivers on that hype. I’m not super familiar with Castlevania lore or anything like that so when literal Death shows up at the end it seemed like a bit much, but honestly the final fight made it all worth it. The very last episode was a bit of a let down because I think the ending is a little too happy. This show is bloody and brutal and it can really be soul-crushing at times for the characters. We’re talking about middle-ages Europe over here. Life as a normal peasant was not pleasant at all. Then you add demons and vampires to it. Overall not great. So basically when this magical infinite tunnel of light does its thing and all our main characters are safe and sound, it was a little…eh… Like don’t get me wrong I liked the ending, but it would also make sense if things weren’t 100% ok by the end of the show. I would say that the infinite corridor as it’s called felt like the most out of place element of the show. It was an interesting concept but it often felt like a very hand-wavy magical thing that could basically do anything the show runners needed it to. Also I could be wrong but I don’t think it has any basis within the previously established Castlevania lore. So if I had to pick out one thing I didn’t like, I guess I’d go with that.
Overall I’m a big fan of Castlevania and I’m glad that I didn’t let my lack of knowledge about the games keep me from watching the show. There are so many more things that make this show awesome like the locations and the monster design and the gut-wrenching violence. Ok that last one might not be a positive for everyone. Even though I’m not a big horror or gore fan, I do think the violence in the show just highlights how brutal this world is, so it’s a positive for me. So if you need a show to watch and maybe you just got Netflix to watch Squid Game (only a few episodes in and loving it), then I recommend giving Castlevania a chance. Do it for me or do it for Sypha. Seriously, she is the best!
Thank you so much for reading that Weekly Blog. Hopefully you enjoyed hearing all about Netflix’s Castlevania and how much I enjoyed it. If you liked this Weekly Blog, I hope that you will give it a Like to let me know how much you enjoyed the blog. You can also leave a comment down below about Castlevania. What did you love about the show? What did you not love about the show? Did you enjoy the protagonists of the villains more? Who is your favorite character? I want the answer to all of that in the comments. Additionally if you really liked this Weekly Blog and want to read more of my stuff, I recommend you Follow Me here on WordPress. I’m building a positive and creative community ehre on the internet and I’d love it if you were a part of that. Following me also puts the stuff I write in your reader’s feed so you’ll always be aware of when I publish new stuff. I really do appreciate all my readers new and old. I have people from all over the world reading and enjoying the stuff I write and it just blows me away. If you want to share some love, then Like and Follow.
Thank you again for all your support and I hope you have a wonderful week!
-Allen_The_Writer
Header Photo Credit to Netflix Fandom Wiki
https://netflix.fandom.com/wiki/Castlevania
Allen The Writer 