foxinthestars

First, the housekeeping: crossposting everything to LJ basically just made me feel like I was on LJ still, and the same old writer's block came right back; witness the paucity of posting since I did that. I've actually been writing things in a physical journal (not a bad habit generally) because I didn't feel like putting them up on LJ, and I mean, some of my LJ friends might like them fine, but I just don't want to get into it; somehow the atmosphere over there felt kind of toxic or stifling, through the fault of no one in particular. So, I will now try to get back to what seemed to be working when I moved over here, and from here on out I will not be crossposting by default, but only if I actively choose to.

Okay, the other part! Awhile back, it was a very dangerous realization for me that I can watch video game playthroughs on YouTube and such, but, still in the throes of my Castlevania obsession, I've been using this for research so I can at least see all of games that I lack access, skill, or inclination to fully play through myself. I also have a bad habit of discarding the links once I do so, and then later wanting them, so I'm going to post in my blog links to playthroughs of everything I can find, in storyline-chronological order.

Usually, I have favored playthroughs over "Let's Plays" with commentary, preferring to watch the game and draw my own conclusions. This is not so in all cases, as you'll see today. Let's Plays should be assumed to contain off-color language and such, but I will only post ones that I find entertaining (unless there's a case where it's the only playthrough of the game I can find).

So, today, the first installment: Origin Myths! (Both of them.)


Because it purports to be longer ago (1094... or maybe not), we begin with Lament of Innocence.

I did re-find the playthrough I watched, this one by TheRagnarokSeeker. Between the ones I found, it's significantly shorter; to eliminate backtracking, it doesn't do the five stages in the standard recommended order (to the extent that there is one), but the story scenes they yield are not sequence-dependent, so it doesn't matter much. The inkiness and the English voice acting (I prefer the Japanese myself) are sadly unavoidable; practically all videos of the PS2 Castlevanias are just about this murky, it seems... (ETA: Link broke; here's another one by Cychreus, a shorter one by Rodriguezjr, or just the cutscenes from Chapel of Resonance.)

Honorable Mention: My favorite Let's Player I've encountered, EvilTim (known on YouTube more recently as CruelestChris), started a run through Lament but only got three videos in. (I posted the first part of it before and have since found the rest of his stuff; we'll revisit him when we get to the N64 games.) Still, here they are: One, Two, and Three.

As for my own reactions, I have some mixed feelings about it all starting in a welter of magibabble like this, but decided it was material I could work with. There's some deep human tragedy underneath all the silliness...


But of course, Lament is not the only Castlevania origin story! For the "Igarashi is a stupid jerk" crowd, or for the academic curiosity of others (such as myself), I also present Castlevania Legends (c.1450)!

I did find a plain playthrough of this, but it had multiple problems (so-so sound, bad sync, rushed cutscenes, missing epilogue, plus with this one some explanation helps, of the magic and Burning Mode and such), so I'll just give you what I watched myself: this Let's Play by FreezingInfernos, who amused me with his comments on how game-breaking some of the magic is and his sympathy with this game being struck from the canon. (That Sonia/Alucard thing? It's not implied, it's stated with a wink and a sledgehammer. They just fawn all over each other; my head a splode.) He did all three gameboy Castlevanias, actually, so I'll plug him again when we come to Christopher.

My reactions, well, you already know which side of this I'm on. I watched it for academic curiosity, and the plot hurts my head (but not as much as it hurts Alucard-in-my-head's head). Not that I didn't enjoy doing so, of course, and I've mentioned before that I did keep the fact that there was a Sonia, but the rest is tossed. In general I do tend to be more drawn to the "IGA-verse" stuff, if you will, but I don't have any particular respect for the guy. Maybe it's the way of an activist fan-author like me to be a nasty ingrate. ^__~;

Okay, seeing no reason to make things harder on my friends, I set up another LJ account for crossposting, so if you want to friend foxinthestars, you can read and comment there, and I still don't have to look at annoying ads and stuff. Hope that helps!

So for reasons none-too-definable I was feeling kind of boxed in on LJ. Plus my LJ bore the name of my old website which I hadn't updated in forever and which was mostly full of now-perhaps-embarassing 'fics that were on FF.net anyway, and to try to untangle it into something I would invest myself in now wasn't worth the hosting money, so I just shut it down (that would be ShiningHalf.com; probably all in the Way Back Machine).

So did I want to pay LJ for a rename ticket just to stay in a place where I felt boxed in? Not really. I started to think a new journal would be the thing, and I'd heard good things about Dreamwidth, so wth, let's give this a whirl.

I will also admit, I went through what was essentially a divorce about a year and a half ago, and pathetic or not, I'm still not completely over it, so that may be part of my problems. I also just kind of felt like prattling on about my fanfic universe or whatever would seem somehow unfashionable or unserious where I was hanging out---not to pin it on any of my friends, that might be quite an unfair assessment of them, but if I felt self-conscious about it, the blockage is still there.

So I decided to make a new journal, where I could prattle about Castlevania and petty things without a care for who (if anyone) reads it and might judge as to how "serious" or "in the loop" I am. Some of my friends I will certainly tell that I've moved, but given the nature of the enterprise I think I want to get myself settled first and not jerk them around until I feel ready.

But that's pretty much the deal; here I am! I even found a theme I liked (although my fox photo icons fit the colors better than my old Oekaki fox pic; I should draw a new one anyway, but I'm in pretty serious writer/artist's block---counterproductive not to admit it or to beat myself up about it...).

To anyone who happens into this, Douzo yoroshiku onegaishimasu!