Castlevania and History do not mix
Dec. 28th, 2009 11:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
foxinthestarsI do like to do little bits and pieces of the research, but let's be honest, in any terms distantly approaching historical accuracy, Castlevania is a hopeless case. I fired up this video via Google, L'ed MAO within 20 seconds, and haven't even tried at the rest yet...
Crusades won't begin for a year. That is indeed important.
(Also on the accuracy front, I was actually looking for a Lament vid because while my copy of it is right here, my PS2 is 20 miles away, so the internet is the easiest way to check the sound of Leon's whip. It's amusing to me that while so many Castlevania heroes use basically a bullwhip, seldom if ever do we hear said whip crack. Most of the time it acts nothing like a real whip whatsoever, mind, and makes a nifty-in-its-own-right, perhaps even better than realistic sound, but I'm amused that in this respect it would act more boring than realism would recommend. ... Found a more mundane Lament vid now; Leon doesn't seem to actually crack the whip either, it just makes swooshing sounds unless it hits something.)
There's also the fact that, as has been pointed out, pretty much every female character in the CV3/1470s timeframe has faced the threat of being burned as a witch, one being killed that way even somewhat earlier. I just got done taking a "History of Witch Hunts" course*. Witch-burning didn't actually hit the bigtime as we think of it until about 1550, and came later in Eastern locales like Transylvania and Wallachia than to the French and Germans who pretty much thought it up. (Persisted a little later by similar token---which is why the supposedly-backward east takes so much of the rap for stuff that more western Europeans actually invented and did more of.) 1470s or earlier, you would not have had witch trials in what is now Romania. None.
Witch beliefs and reactions thereto are another matter of course; in my fanfic universe I finessed this with Lisa being burned by a vigilante mob rather than the Inquisition. Like I said, doing bits and pieces of the research makes me feel better...
Trying to make it all square, tho, will just drive you nuts---I knew that even before that Lament vid. There are no Ottomans, there are no Habsburgs, everybody's nominally Catholic, it's a videogame story, just relax... Hell if you go back to the original Castlevania the whole thing seems to have started as a lark; "Let's have some guy fight every movie monster, and base the title and credits roll on lame wordplay."
Basically my rule of thumb is that historical research is to be a creative not a destructive element. It's working pretty well so far. Like the above adjustment with Lisa I rather like. I had thought that Maria got Alucard a necklace, but it was research into period jewelry that suggested it might be a tiny painting of her in watercolor on ivory, which is like way cooler than what I would have just made up. (Okay, so portrait miniatures at that time were probably not as common in now-Romania than say England but still, people and stuff get around...)
*Must remember to talk later about the whole classes and history business...
ETA: I actually did watch the rest of the vid; pretty entertaining but I never did quite lose it again like that first 20 seconds revelation... The other highlight is at 17:45 where he covers the Sonia issue, and, er... I pretty much concur with his assessment. I finessed that too, but I think the original creators don't have the options I do, and it's easier for them to just give a game an "in or out" than to say "Yes but it was way different, see what really happened is..." Whereas me with my fanfic, I can just rewrite anything I want to, hah!
Crusades won't begin for a year. That is indeed important.
(Also on the accuracy front, I was actually looking for a Lament vid because while my copy of it is right here, my PS2 is 20 miles away, so the internet is the easiest way to check the sound of Leon's whip. It's amusing to me that while so many Castlevania heroes use basically a bullwhip, seldom if ever do we hear said whip crack. Most of the time it acts nothing like a real whip whatsoever, mind, and makes a nifty-in-its-own-right, perhaps even better than realistic sound, but I'm amused that in this respect it would act more boring than realism would recommend. ... Found a more mundane Lament vid now; Leon doesn't seem to actually crack the whip either, it just makes swooshing sounds unless it hits something.)
There's also the fact that, as has been pointed out, pretty much every female character in the CV3/1470s timeframe has faced the threat of being burned as a witch, one being killed that way even somewhat earlier. I just got done taking a "History of Witch Hunts" course*. Witch-burning didn't actually hit the bigtime as we think of it until about 1550, and came later in Eastern locales like Transylvania and Wallachia than to the French and Germans who pretty much thought it up. (Persisted a little later by similar token---which is why the supposedly-backward east takes so much of the rap for stuff that more western Europeans actually invented and did more of.) 1470s or earlier, you would not have had witch trials in what is now Romania. None.
Witch beliefs and reactions thereto are another matter of course; in my fanfic universe I finessed this with Lisa being burned by a vigilante mob rather than the Inquisition. Like I said, doing bits and pieces of the research makes me feel better...
Trying to make it all square, tho, will just drive you nuts---I knew that even before that Lament vid. There are no Ottomans, there are no Habsburgs, everybody's nominally Catholic, it's a videogame story, just relax... Hell if you go back to the original Castlevania the whole thing seems to have started as a lark; "Let's have some guy fight every movie monster, and base the title and credits roll on lame wordplay."
Basically my rule of thumb is that historical research is to be a creative not a destructive element. It's working pretty well so far. Like the above adjustment with Lisa I rather like. I had thought that Maria got Alucard a necklace, but it was research into period jewelry that suggested it might be a tiny painting of her in watercolor on ivory, which is like way cooler than what I would have just made up. (Okay, so portrait miniatures at that time were probably not as common in now-Romania than say England but still, people and stuff get around...)
*Must remember to talk later about the whole classes and history business...
ETA: I actually did watch the rest of the vid; pretty entertaining but I never did quite lose it again like that first 20 seconds revelation... The other highlight is at 17:45 where he covers the Sonia issue, and, er... I pretty much concur with his assessment. I finessed that too, but I think the original creators don't have the options I do, and it's easier for them to just give a game an "in or out" than to say "Yes but it was way different, see what really happened is..." Whereas me with my fanfic, I can just rewrite anything I want to, hah!
