as u can tell, my mains are drac and clown and the amount of times i would get survivors using the bat signal (either bc i scared them or bc it's hard to get used to the recoil on flashlights fr) inspired this lil au. since they're my mains, it was bound to happen eventually bc i also love the idea of batman and joker's rivalry, the hero vs supervillain trope-- their story, descending not only into other universes, but into the entity's realm albeit differences here and there.

i've been thinking abt it while i was drawin these two but basically you've got drac as bat, and clown as joker. unlike clown who plays too well into the role of the villain (and who loves it), drac doesn't lean into the role of the hero. he still hates the guts of every human out there, even in the trials. however, there are times where in confrontation with clown and a survivor, he'll stand between them. he'll hold his cape outward, survivor behind them and all-- acting as a shield even if unintentional. don't be fooled by it though, because it just means he'll deal with chasing the survivors later.

in the entity's realm, drac is no hero but on occasion he catches glimpses of humanity from survivor to survivor in the very few lucky trials it happens in (basing it off of my experience where i ran into a survivor who was way too altruistic for their own good and it made me so mad for them, not at at them mind you, bc their teammates went afk waiting for the altruistic survivor to die. the survivor in question told me in egc that it wasn't a winning game, and it was wild to me tht despite waiting for their teammates to save the altruistic survivor and giving them many chances to do so, the altruistic survivor already was dead set on how the game was going to play out. i think that experience really shaped this lil au; i think it's interesting playing as killer but also being the judge and serving a sense of justice when survivors literally become each other's worst enemies for no reason LMAO).

anyways some other things; even though both drac and clown are broken ppl (drac with losing lisa and clown going through abuse and neglect growing up), of the two, it's not drac who gets to heal; it's clown who almost gets to be a better father than his old man, and even drac in some ways.

"stick with me kid, you'll be alright,"

with a slight nudge to shoulder to shoulder, reassuring, is what kenneth softly tells to alucard when the dhampir brings up how his mother would have become heartbroken seeing what's become of her family. in truth, the clown never has thought of his past, but sometimes-- just sometimes, kenneth does. he thinks about his mother, and how things would be so much more different if she were alive; and his father, he prefers to bury the memories and thoughts deep, but he knows alucard shares the same sentiment of wondering what could have been with his family. as you can imagine, clown becomes sort of a father figure (in his own fucked up clown way. i like to imagine he's mostly crude, and while waiting for the trials to start, alucard has to sit there in disdain listening to clown ramble. but there are real special moments where it's jeffrey who brings up the big top and teaches the dhampir a song everyone would sing back at the circus) to alucard.

remember though, there are no redemption arcs, not in the entity's realm. alucard is also leverage for clown, and you can imagine just how pissed and insulted drac is when he learns that his son happens to be in more trials with THAT awful thing-- clown (basing it off an experience where i played as alucard and went up against a clown who ended up letting me live bc i went to pet maurice on death hook and some other things lol). you can imagine the conflicting feelings that ends up running through drac when the survivor he'd stand between and protect, if you can say that, is instead standing alongside clown and it just so happens to be his own son.