CV rambling: official art

(Hey, I practically started this journal just so I could prattle about Castlevania, I'm gonna do it.)

I have mixed feelings about the Ayami Kojima art. I mean, it's totally awesome looking, and when you compare what the series art looked like before SotN, it's just no contest at all. However, the more I look at it, I have the same problem with it I eventually had with Yoshitaka Amano, that it starts to look like most of the characters are just costume changes of the same androgynously pretty person. Also there are at times some structure issues beneath the dazzlingly-pretty surface. Like, take this picture of Joachim from Lament of Innocence; in a vampiric angsty-gothic-horror kind of way, it looks really cool, I won't argue with that---but we might be able to debate how his right leg attaches to his body. If you look at the other leg, too, it's possible that he just carries that much weight in his thighs. ... ::blinkblink:: And wtf is going on with his left upper arm? This pic of Yoko has always bugged me, too; it's like her head is too small and her breasts are strangely large and low on her body; which doesn't seem to be a unique problem on clothed women (oh, and more strangely attenuated upper arms in that last one...). Not that there's much of a point to this; cool-looking does not equal God, I guess. It usually translates into pixels pretty well, too; like the in-game version of that Yoko pic, whether it's the cropping or what, it looks good.

I didn't necessarily mind the anime style they used for awhile... Although I am sore that they took away Soma's pimp coat. He looks better in fur. -.-;

While I'm on mixed feelings re: official CV stuff, the things they're currently hyping: Lords of Shadow I'm pretty indifferent about. A major issue for me is always whether I can incorporate a game into my fanfic universe, and LoS doesn't look like anything I would use, but that's irrelevant to whether it's a good game; there's only one way to know that, and it's not that time yet.

I'm more flustered about the CV3-based animated movie they're talking about. Partly because my fanfic universe does crucially revolve around CV3 so dissonance is a much bigger issue. Also they got Warren Ellis to work on it, and I was like "oh. shit." All right it could have been worse, it could have been Frank Miller, but I frankly can't think of any big name in American Comics whose stamp on a movie would tempt me to watch it, or who I would trust with a universe I adored. Maybe J. Michael Straczynski (I haven't kept close watch on him since Bab5, I admit, but someone with the sensibility behind Bab5 working on Castlevania might come up with something that would be my cup of tea. Being that my tack on it tends more toward the shoujo/J-pop humanistic side than the badass gothic horror side, and that's probably why no one would actually do it like that...).

Of course, big-name American Comics and I have long had a contentious relationship. Mind there is damn good indie stuff; I tend to like that better. If they got Lea Hernandez to make a Castlevania movie, I'd be all over that like you wouldn't believe. That should tell you a lot about me.

(BTW, I did tell my sister that I'd moved, so if you're reading this, hi, Jessie!)

Castlevania and History do not mix

I 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!