#convenient curses | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

beevean · 11 months

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...so wanna rant about Netflix Isaac for a few minutes ? :P

My calm and collected reaction when I read this ask.

I was just debating on how to write about Isaac and N!Isaac (or Abraham, as I prefer to call him). Unlike Hector and N!Hector (Caesar), where I could prove that the latter could have been like the former if not for terrible writing… I simply do not like Abraham. At all. The more I think about him, the more resentful I feel, which I know it’s not fair because 99% of my resentment comes from people shitting on Isaac to prop the guy. I honestly simply wanted to explain why Isaac is deeper than people give him credit for, and leave Abraham aside, since, as we all know, the dude has nearly nothing in common with his canon counterpart.

… but if you ask so nicely :)

So alright. I will primarily talk about my man Isaac, because I love him and he deserves more love; by doing so, I’ll also explain why there was zero need to turn Abraham into Diet Hector :)

Since this first part mainly focuses on the prequels, as a counterpart to Season 2, it’s better to start with the biggest misconception about Isaac, and what almost certainly lead to Abraham becoming what he became: his personality.

To give a summary of Isaac as most fans know him, he’s extremely flamboyant, theatrical, cruel, consumed by hatred, but also intelligent, strong and determined. He doesn’t appear much, but he steals the scene every time he does. He acts in theory as the rival, much like his predecessors Hugh and Maxim, but he’s far more antagonistic than either of them: he’s not a friend to be saved, he’s an enemy to be punished for his crimes. However, much like the other rivals, he’s strictly connected to the protagonist, and the story treats him as a victim in its more important moments.

Kou Sasakura, who was a hired writer, kept herself fairly close to the game: you can tell not only from the accurate Innocent Devils she drew, but because, well, there’s not much difference between her Isaac and the game one. He’s already dressed in his magnificent CoD outfit, he’s pretty much a dick to everyone who isn’t Dracula, he talks about troops of people dying with glee and boasts about embracing the “laws of heresy”: clearly, he has never been particularly sane to begin with. He’s an entertaining asshole, as he should be. That’s not to say he’s completely flat, though: there’s still plenty to say about this version.

Instead it’s Ayami Kojima, who worked directly on the characters (and clearly preferred Isaac), who wrote a mini-arc to actually show what the Curse did to him. And therefore, he starts off quite unlike one would expect. These posts explain how, in Kojima’s interpretation, a non-Cursed Isaac is an honorable warrior who respects Hector even in battle, cares about a fair fight, is just as compassionate towards his Innocent Devils as Hector is, and is even sensitive to his Lord’s plight. He also uses an elegant sword, rather than his iconic and brutal Chauve-Souris. This paints him as an even more tragic character, and gives weight to Julia’s words when she says that “[her] brother is in the venomous grip of the Curse”.

… but of course who even read Prelude to Revenge :^) certainly not our man Ellis :^)

Abraham has none of this. At the start of the series, he’s not charming, nor he has hidden depths. What you see is what you get: a stonefaced, serious, no-nonsense, contemplative man who hates humankind and trusts Dracula without question and beyond reason, the latter being literally the one thing that connects him to the name Isaac. He self-flagellates, which I can only assume it’s meant to reference Isaac’s BDSM aesthetic – Abraham even changes reasons for doing so between Season 2 (a self-focusing discipline, implied to be a result of the abuse he went through) and 3 (a religious practice), before dropping it completely.

On his own, he’s… fine, I just think he’s pretty dull because he has no quirks or anything that makes him stand out, but he didn’t irritate me as Alucard did. I enjoyed his utter trust in Dracula, which makes him far less approachable compared to the manipulable Caesar: notably, poor Godbrand didn’t even finish airing his grievances to him before getting swiftly killed, and never mentioned again. This establishes Abraham as being strong, efficient, fanatical, and even concerned for his Master’s mental wellbeing – no point in telling him what happened, right?

As someone who is presented as being Isaac, he irritates me: he feels scrubbed down, neutered, because Ellis or whoever was responsible for the personality change clearly thought there was nothing salvageable about Isaac, and removed everything that made him iconic save for the simpness. Well, they were wrong.

Isaac doesn’t get a childhood flashback like Hector, but we see the day he found Dracula’s castle, which tells us already his priorities. His past doesn’t really matter: his devotion to his Lord does. His blind loyalty is his defining characteristic.

Look at this little baby, so happy to have finally found a place that can welcome him and his little sister <3 he has no idea what fate has in store for him <3

But yes, Isaac’s very young age in this scene tells us a lot without actually showing us what he went through. Whatever happened to him broke him far more than Hector’s own traumatic childhood: poor kid can’t be older than thirteen, and he’s already bragging that he has turned his back against God.

In CoD, Julia says that she escaped from the witch hunts in Western Europe. We don’t know if she meant in adulthood or childhood. If the latter, then Isaac was probably involved as well.

We also see that he still cares about Julia, and he wants her to come with him. Sadly we don’t know what happened to her afterwards – if we go by their canonical ages, she’d be a very young child here – but she’ll be important later. Presumably, Dracula didn’t want to take in such a young, inexperienced witch, while Isaac’s more cursed powers could already be honed.

The other half of his flashback chapter in the MF manga sets up other important factors:

Isaac is learning to Forge Devils, but he has trouble with stabilizing them: Isaac is talented, but just not enough, and it’s not a surprise that being “stable” is what gives him the most trouble (we can infer Hector never had an issue with that, as he’s more levelheaded than his companion);

The Succubus taunted Isaac that he’d be surpassed by a new boy: this establishes his inferiority complex, and while this never comes fully into play in the same way it does for other rivals, the implication is that he always saw Hector as an adversary, and it bred even more animosity in his easily corruptible heart;

isaac is the gayest man in wallachia seriously have you seen how he looks at hector

So this is Isaac. What about Abraham?

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Since Isaac’s childhood is far less defined, Abraham had to get his own unique tragic past. Admittedly, not much to point out here: he used to be the slave of a priest who abused him (because CHURCH BAD), but nonetheless Abraham fell in love with his master, and when he confessed, he got punished for it. After killing him, Abraham spent his life on the run, hunted by other people who wanted to kill him and worse, until Dracula personally rescued him. I like how this, much like the MF flashback, paints Abraham as someone who has the tendency to cling to his masters no matter what; and while I prefer the idea of Hector and Isaac knocking on Dracula’s door, I don’t mind the man himself actually helping Abraham. Indeed, Dracula treating him like an outright friend ensures that Abraham will be 100% devoted to him. (if only Dracula’s good relationship with Abraham didn’t come at the cost of the two of them shitting on Caesar…)

Speaking of Caesar! You can’t talk about Isaac without mentioning his crush relationship with Hector! And how it was turned in NFCV :)

Sadly, both mangas give us meager crumbs of what the two thought of each other before Hector’s betrayal, and they diverge quite a bit.

Not much to say about what very little is shown by the PtR manga: Isaac comes off as friendly… or as friendly as he can be:

That power... Perhaps you can become even scarier and crueler than me…

The two even have something resembling a heart-to-heart conversation: Isaac more or less attempts to calm down Hector when he’s in the middle of a morality crisis, although by downplaying his grievances. If the two were friends, they weren’t close ones, or maybe their different moralities were already driving a wedge between them.

The MF manga emphasizes the resentment Isaac felt for Hector, “from the moment [they] first met”:

When he has the confirmation that Hector is alive and has hidden himself on holy grounds, Isaac is ecstatic to face him, so much that he kills his own underlings to go against Dracula’s express order to bring Hector back to him. He is that determined to not only prove his strength to his Lord, but most importantly to kill the traitor with his own hands.

Of course, things may not be as clear-cut as he pretends to be :) He even tried to spare Hector, allegedly in the name of their Lord, but who knows :)

Yeah, who knows.

And CoD itself, while sadly barely touches on Hector and Isaac’s former relationship, gives us another little gem:

I know that Julia has some kind of divination powers, but this doesn't seem like the kind of information she could garner from them. He told her, didn't he?

I was, as you can imagine, immensely disappointed that Abraham and Caesar’s relationship is barely on the level of “coworkers reluctantly forced to share a building”. Abraham’s lack of respect for Caesar is not endearing at all: he treats him with condescension, he insults him behind his back (and to Dracula’s face, who seems to agree with him, and yet again I must ask why did he choose someone he thinks he’s a complete idiot as a General), but he still has time to make a joke about kissing him which at this point comes off as even inappropriate. Caesar, on his part, seems to ignore his existence until Carmilla reminds him of the fact. Not only this complete lack of chemistry is utterly boring, and doesn’t take advantage of the potential differences between the two characters, but it becomes a characterization issue later on.

This all culminates in the fateful moment when Hector and Isaac fight right outside the Castle, freedom and loyalty clashing! And its NFCV equivalent, which has Caesar being dragged against his will into Carmilla’s assault of the castle, and Abraham being yeeted away by Dracula. Yeah, the two don’t fight at all. Because why have a compelling relationship in this show when you can rely on snarky one-liners.

The exact events of the fight differ between the two versions, but they hardly matter in the long run. What matter is that the two fought to the death, Hector emerged superior, and Isaac discovered to his immense horror that, without him and Hector guarding the castle, Trevor Belmont and the others managed to slay Dracula.

Both versions are heartwrenching.

Not only the Curse that Dracula cast upon his death already reached his Generals, but Isaac had a full mental breakdown. You can tell he’s blaming himself for not protecting his Lord, and laments that he has to live without him – Lord Dracula was everything to him, and now that he has failed him to this degree, what else has he to live for?

Why, Hector himself. He can blame him. He was the one who ran away, he was the reason Dracula had to send Isaac in his pursuit. Sure, the Belmont is the one who physically dealt the killing blow, but maybe, if Hector remained loyal, the two could have defeated him together. Even in CoD, Isaac doesn’t direct his fury at Trevor (in fact, in the Japanese version, he even compliments him), because Isaac’s main concern isn’t not him: it’s his former friend who turned his back on him and their Lord.

And what can I even say about this masterpiece from PtR?

I won't let you say that your rebellion has nothing to do with this! Had you cut off my head as well, I would not have seen this… Hector!

Isaac crawled back in shame using his broken sword as a cane, fully expecting to be punished by Dracula for once again proving how inferior he was to Hector. He did not expect to come back to this.

Not only Hector deliberately left Isaac alive, which comes off as a humiliation (interesting contraposition to the MF version, where it’s Isaac who grants Hector mercy in the name of Dracula – they will both regret their decision)… these pages really convey just how much Hector’s defection has taken away from Isaac. In one fell swoop, he has lost his beloved Lord, the only place he could call home, the closest thing he had to a friend, and the work of his lifetime. Is it any wonder that even in this version, he seems to regret that he has to live? Is it any wonder that he’d be fueled for three years with pure hatred for Hector?

In short, Isaac has every single understandable reason in the world for wanting Hector dead.

What’s Abraham’s reason?

First of all, Abraham is, technically speaking, also partially responsible for the fall of Dracula’s castle. While Isaac lost everything through no fault of his own (yes, he killed his underlings in the MF manga and that’s fucked up, but that did not influence the chain of events at all), Abraham was also roped by Caesar into asking Dracula to move the castle under Carmilla’s request. His first reason for agreeing was even “it will stop her from making mischief”, which is a nice way to say “Iook I just want her to shut the fuck up”. Agreeable, surely, but I feel less sorry for him.

But that’s not the issue. The issue is that the Hector vs. Isaac fight simply did not happen, because Caesar did not flee on his own (because he was prevented from having agency), so Abraham was sent away by Dracula when the assault started, out of concern for his soul (or because Dracula wanted to die in peace), and Abraham only knew that Trevor, Sypha, Alucard and the Styrian forces were attacking, not that Caesar was involved.

Thematically, I like that Abraham chose to die for Dracula, but Dracula denied him the choice. He’s a tool, and he’s not even allowed to die on his own terms – much like Isaac, who was forced to live. But I’m still not satisfied.

So, Abraham gave zero shits about Caesar, knew that Carmilla was bad news from the start (but still agreed to her idea), didn’t actually see how the battle ended, actually saw Trevor and the others storm in with his own eyes, and didn’t know that Caesar “betrayed” Dracula.

Why in the fuck is he so pissed at Caesar? What weight does his revenge plan have?

This is what happens when you shoehorn a plot point you read on the wiki without understanding the context. Abraham by all means should either blame himself, or blame Carmilla exclusively. His animosity makes far less sense, and I don’t feel as sorry for him.

On top of this, his loss doesn’t feel as severe. Yes, he was separated from his Lord/friend and the castle, but he still had his immense power (even his Forging knife; he didn’t even have to, for example, find himself another weapon while living vulnerable in the meantime), and he actually has lived in the desert before, meaning he knows how to move and what to do. He also is not afraid of travelling among humans, while Isaac couldn’t let himself be seen even if he wanted to (he looks very visibly “wrong” for the average Middle Age person, and that’s not including the possibility that he was known in Wallachia). He did not lose his entire life: there is simply a big obstacle in his way.

Before I move on, two interesting scenes to compare are the different versions of the Hector vs. Isaac fight, mostly for what the latter says.

In the PtR manga, Isaac seems to be genuinely resentful of how humankind treated him:

Were we known in the human world, we would be chased away with stones… A place where we can exist… a place to cling to… Where was it?!

This is fairly in line with what you would expect from him: humans hated him, so he hates human in return, and this is why he’s outraged that Hector would even dare to turn his back to their Lord.

But the MF version has a slightly different flavor:

I pointed out different times that Isaac seems to put more focus on how humans did not respect Dracula enough than how they were cruel towards Hector and him. And indeed, Isaac rarely if ever expresses outright misanthropic views, in the same way Dracula does. This is a more interesting approach, in my opinion: Isaac genuinely doesn’t care about mankind, he’s not motivated by spite against them, he’s only motivated by the love and gratitude he feels for the first creature who showed him respect. And if said creature orders him to slaughter humans, oh well.

I have already talked extensively about Isaac’s “tool” mentality, so I won’t repeat myself. Long story short, Isaac nearly dehumanizing himself and refusing to have his own agency outside of Lord Dracula acts as a contrast to Hector, whose main goal is to gain agency over his own life.

Needless to say, Abraham gets this only halfway through. Yes, he also starts the series believing to be Dracula’s tool. Unlike Isaac, though, he spends two season unable to shut up about how much he despises mankind and considers them the root of all evil and believes that by exterminating mankind the world will be full of love. His dialogue gets incredibly repetitive in no time flat. Abraham is not endearing: he's pretentious.

So I suppose it’s time to jump to the three years between CV3 and CoD/Season 3.

In short, my man Isaac is not coping well with the divorce :’D

This post by @the-crow-binary is a great breakdown of Isaac’s mental state in the MF manga. The Curse has taken a hold of him already, and he’s ranting, obsessed, shaking in fear and rage: an absolute mess.

Still better than how we find him in PtR:

Mmh… So you can make that kind of face… I've gotten a lot better too... How many times has the moon waxed and waned, I wonder? That’s a nice expression… I'm happy. Good pain is proof of life. I won't grant you the peace of death so easily: live, spit blood, and then…

Lord Dracula is with us!

As I have pointed out, in this version, Isaac rotted the entire time completely alone in the ruins of his old home, easy prey for the Curse. He had nowhere else to go, and apparently he didn’t consider to find his sister again. Anyone would have gone mad, even without Dracula's help.

(side note, I love love love how this manga justifies Isaac's iconic outfit by showing that Hector ruined it first, and then Isaac let it fall off his body, no longer in the conditions to care:

Hector broke Isaac's outfit. Hector broke Isaac's mind and heart. It's so interesting how Hector truly is the villain in Isaac's story <3)

And speaking of broken heart! I'd be remiss if I didn't mention this small detail of Isaac writing Hector's name on the sole of his boot. Whether you interpret it as a hex or him expressing twisted romantic feelings, one thing's for certain: Hector is at the forefront of Isaac's thoughts. I cannot stress enough how personal Isaac's revenge is, much like Hector's own revenge quest will be.

This is how we feel the weight of his devious plan to get revenge on the man who took everything away from him, by taking his hard-earned happiness away as well.

So how’s Abraham doing?

This is the part of the show where he turns from secondary antagonist to full protagonist and darling of the narrative.

Season 3 is where Abraham supposedly starts his super compelling character arc, moving away from being Dracula’s tool and giving himself a new purpose. Allegedly, his ingrained misanthropy gets constantly challenged by actually experiencing human kindness, although sadly the lessons don’t quite stick. On paper, this sounds very intriguing, not unlike Hector learning what love is thanks to Rosaly (hint hint). However, I find the execution laughable at best, and irritating at worst.

This is what Abraham does in this season. He decides that he wants a big army, which means killing humans. He travels. He meets a kind shopkeeper that gifts him a mirror that tells him where to go next. He’s stopped by guards because he has an army of demons: Abraham is sad that they’re not as kind as the previous person and kills them. He travels. He boards a ship with an intriguing captain, who manages to tell him that committing human genocide would deprive the world of happiness. He’s stopped by guards because he has an army of demons: Abraham is sad that they’re not as kind as the previous person and kills them. He travels. He talks with a philosopher demon who tells him that CHURCH BAD. He meets a woman that tells him where to go next. He kills a bunch of people and kills a magician.

This is… not really an arc. Abraham allegedly takes one step forward, and then immediately one step back. He doesn’t get better nor worse. He just talks a lot in the meantime pretending to be deep.

Now, I do like the scenes with the shopkeeper and the captain, those two are well written; I also like Miranda as a look on what Abraham could become if he gets consumed by despair, ironically acting as the Isaac to Abraham’s Hector (hint hint). But this scene, one of the most popular ones for Abraham, pisses me off.

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Abraham wants to travel with a giant army of demons in tow. The guards insist that he must turn back because, well, giant army of demons. This is literally the second time in a row that this happens, hence the famous “is this the definition of insanity?” quote. Oh, but not because Abraham is stupid in expecting that humans would move out for him, but because poor thing, he really had hopes that humans could be good, but no, they keep hurting him! By doing their job! Oh no, they are slightly aggressive to the dark wizard who can control demons, how awful of them!

Sure, Abraham is correct in saying that he literally can’t turn back because he’s at the harbor, and yes the guards had no chance against Abraham, but the way this scene is framed, we’re supposed to feel sorry that poor little Abraham got confirmation that all humans are stupid and evil after all, and really, is it any wonder that he snapped and killed them all?

This is what Isaac would do. Slaughtering a bunch of humans because they were “fucking rude” to him? It’s just as cartoonishly evil as Abraham fans accuse Isaac of being. Except that in his case, it would be clear that he’s batshit insane, and not in the philosophical way Abraham pretends to be.

Abraham ends Season 3 in the same place where he started, and I have no idea how he managed to become this popular.

Most insultingly, Abraham isn’t allowed to lose. Abraham isn’t allowed to be set back. In the season where every character suffers, is traumatized, or loses something (Caesar and Alucard being by far the worst victims), Abraham ends the season happily killing brainwashed people to then kill a generic magician to get to a magic mirror that would lead him directly to his destination, along with the army of demons that he created by killing people, after a lady he happened to meet told him about the existence of said mirror.

People in NFCV can smell magic? Well, I can smell favoritism.

But okay, he’s still a bad guy, right? I’m not meant to sympathize with him, right? I’m just in for the ride because he’s “cool”, right?

Enter CoD/Season 4.

You, who gave up your powers and became the lowest of the low, nothing but mere scum.

Sadly, CoD has a severe dearth of Isaac appearances, after the iconic first cutscene. He is as I described him in the beginning: an utter bastard. However, I appreciate his overall plan that sets up the whole plot.

There is a lot of speculation and holes-filling to do here (I suspect he had Death’s help, at least when it came to the Infinite Corridor part of the plan, but we have no proof), but the point is, he has all the means to inflict a most terrible punishment on Hector, by taking advantage of the Curse that he’s spreading and that consumed him, and also by taking advantage of Hector himself. The two knew each other well: Isaac knew that Hector would be unstoppable in his quest for revenge, to the point that he felt confident enough to spell out his plan, which is to guide Hector so that he can regain his cursed powers (even drawing schemes to explain how to Forge, which is hilarious when you think about it). What would Hector do anyway, give up? That’s not like him. Isaac knows this. The only part he omits is that he needs those immense powers not just to make their fateful match worth it, but to break the seal that prevents the castle from resurrecting. A very clever spin on the classic “get stronger so that our fight will be worth it” plan.

(contrast this well-thought out plan with Abraham getting everything he wants on a silver platter.)

We also get a cute moment where he retreats at the sight of Julia, almost as if he was afraid of hurting her, implying that he can feel more than smugness and rage.

Sadly, the end of his story is not a happy one. By the time he faces Hector like he wanted, his former friend is absolutely livid that he had been played like a fiddle… and more important, he regained all of his strength. Which was more than Isaac’s. Oops, that part wasn’t very well thought-out. But it’s not Hector who kills him: he saves himself from the Curse taking complete hold of him just in the nick of time. No, it’s Death, who decides to use the “other one” (even making fun of him in the process) to resurrect Dracula. Either the ritual or Hector slashing his possessed body to pieces puts an end to Isaac’s madness. Despite Julia’s best wishes, Isaac never rose from the darkness that consumed him. He constantly chose loyalty to Dracula and hatred, and that doomed him. Furthermore, his own name acted as an omen: much like the Biblical Isaac, he was set to be sacrificed in the name of the closest thing to a God he worshipped.

As for Abraham… at this point in his arc, it’s pointless to compare him to Isaac, because he has officially turned into Hector. By reversing Isaac’s downfall, the writers accidentally recreated Hector’s character arc of finding agency for himself, killing the person responsible for his pain (well, he wants to, but Carmilla in true #girlboss fashion peaces out on her own terms), and then moving on from Dracula, accepting to live in full. It’s. It’s Hector. Except worse.

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What else can I say? Abraham got his revelation off screen, during a time-skip: now he wants to create, to do good in the world like when he killed the evil magician. He sets out to invade Styria to kill Caesar, but then changes his mind at the last second, and even tells him to not go with his plan of resurrecting Dracula. No internal struggle, just a ton of words. No mention of all the people he has gleefully killed for petty reasons. No remorse at all. Not an obstacle he had to overcome. Not even an ounce of self-loathing that at least made Hector more sympathetic. Abraham fails at being a good reinterpretation of Isaac, and fails at being an interesting anti-hero with a solid journey.

To be clear, I'm not saying he should have died like Isaac. Again, at this point I accept that he became Hector. But his happiness simply doesn't feel earned. He got what he wanted after a fairly small loss (Dracula died, sure, but he never got confirmation for that), and he had his character development offscreen. His narrative is a rushed version of what Hector was allowed to be through two mangas and a game, and yet he's the one hailed as the best character of all time.

Just to cap it off, I can’t help but complain about how dull and forgettable Abraham’s design is. He’s literally just a man who walked into the set and stole Isaac’s full Devil Forgemaster outfit. There is no reason for him to be associated with red (his magic), since the Red Oni Blue Oni dynamic with Caesar has been lost. His tattoos do not convey anything, and we rarely see them in full anyway. Also why does he have a different crest on his back???? IT'S A UNIFORM! It drives me mad! At least try to understand the source material for fuck's sake!

Isaac is iconic. He’s immediately recognizable in the Castlevania cast, but still fitting in thanks to key elements. He doesn’t look fully human, with his bright red hair and yellowish eyes: he doesn’t have the typical Kojima pretty face, but he has more distinguishable features such as a big nose: the tattoos tell a whole story about him and it’s fun to imagine what they symbolize – high pain tolerance? A desire to defile his own body to spite God? Some arcane symbol, the result of a ritual? And then there’s the Devil Forgemaster crest forever embedded in his back, representing his full devotion and the fate he could not escape from. He truly looks like everything Hector isn't.

This post got long. And again, I didn't even care to talk about Abraham, because I don't like him one bit and because I love Isaac independently from this overhyped character. But hey, you asked, and I ranted with great pleasure :P

also have this absolute banger

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does abraham have a sick ass theme? yeah didn't think so

#castlevania #curse of darkness #isaac laforeze #anti netflixvania #long post #like really long #like really fucking long #oh my god it took me a whole ass day #and i had to watch nfcv clips for this it did not calm me down at all #at least i got to explain why i love isaac so much in a convenient masterpost

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