#rodispeak

castlevania doesn't always portray religious people or religious leaders in a good light,

lisa died being burned at the stake by the townspeople because they believe she's a witch,

the belmonts pre castlevania 3 were exiled because of their powers and are only summoned to help as a last resort,

sypha has to hide her true identity due to being a witch,

Isaac's character could be interpreted as an allegory for religious fanaticism (doesn't wanna think for himself, believes he can only be happy by serving a higher power, caused mass hysteria that lead to someone being burned at the stake, he even died for said higher power) (idk if allegory is the right term but ig he also serve as a sort of parody considering his "religion" in this allegory would just be dracula)

barlowe is a priest who abuses his power over shanoa and albus to revive dracula, hell ooe in general has a lot of themes of cult abuse and shanoa's amnesia could be read as an allegory for cult brainwashing,

there's more thru out the games but listing them all would take forever, my point still stands that castlevania doesn't always portray religion, religious people, or religious leaders in a positive light,

while yes, castlevania took a lot of influence and aesthetics from christianity, castlevania is NOT a purely pro christian game,

hell id even argue castlevania is actually the perfect series to criticize religion with,

castlevania 3 especially because the 4 playable characters are literally those the church and authority figures wouldve hated,

trevor is an exile, sypha is a witch who even has to hide her true gender, grant is a thief who we can assume came from a poor background, alucard is literally the son of dracula and is part vampire,

you could strengthen this theme by following it with curse of darkness, hector and isaac facing discrimination from presumably religious people because of their "dark magic" and being swayed to evil because of that,

my problem with netflix castlevania's (im just talking the first 4 seasons not nocturne cuz i haven't watch it) way of portraying religious discrimination (and bigotry too for that matter) is the fact that it's done in such a shallow way with literally 0 nuance,

the church is just comically evil, the common religious folk are usually portrayed as stupid and backwards, the only people who aren't like that are those who dont believe in god or dont actively practice religion (isaac probably the only exception but tbh they handled him so weird i could talk abt it longer later as someone who is raised muslim and has complicated feelings regarding islam now),

no exploration on how people are persuaded into religious beliefs or how the authority and government use it to justify discrimination and spread propaganda or even anything about Dracula's hypocrisy considering there's several times in the games that imply he actively deifies himself (the forgemaster uniform resembling priest uniforms, his followers usually being cultists, shaft and barlowe being priests that worship him)

no, just the most smug reddit atheist argument of "christians are dumb and im smart because science" it's genuinely so vapid it's annoying