November 14: Dracula is a Fool

[Zeke]

Guess what? Today is the first honest-to-God real update in just over a year. But it'll take a little explaining, so pull up a chair.

The forums at GameFAQs are well-known for a number of things, one of which is having a separate board for almost every game ever made, and another of which is not being particularly good. But if you get just the right balance between an empty board and one that's full of morons, great things can happen. One example was a series of comedy threads that appeared on the Castlevania boards. It began with a post called "Dracula is a fool", in which the series' main bad guy was criticized for always using the same attack pattern. People started writing little scenes about this, the subject matter grew broader, and soon the thread was an ongoing sketch comedy about Dracula's terrible ideas, with recurring boss Death as the long-suffering straight man.

This all went down in 2007. I was really enjoying the threads, though not contributing; I had a few ideas but nothing solid. Eventually someone started a companion thread, "Death is a Fool", which was supposed to turn the tables. I didn't really see where that could go, as Death is generally pretty sharp (he even varies his attacks more than Drac does). It was with this in the back of my mind that I read the much-anticipated final Harry Potter book, The Deathly Hallows.

All of a sudden I had the perfect Death is a Fool concept. But by the time (much later) I got around to writing it all up, there were no more active Fool threads. I shelved the piece pending a new thread or other opportunity, and after a while, pretty much forgot about it. It wasn't till this year, pondering some Hallowe'en stuff I could post, that I decided to just go ahead and publish the thing already.

I call it Death is a Fool: Hallow Pursuits. It was written for Castlevania fans, so it's full of series in-jokes, but you can safely let them wash over you. (Or play the games! Everybody knows Castlevania has great gameplay and music, but what's less well known is that the series has a rich ongoing story, with each new game filling in a different spot in the timeline. Until the reboot, of course.)

And if you find it strange that I would make a whole new title banner for this one piece, don't worry. It's probably nothing.