soulsteal | we can stay forever young

stats

name. Soma Cruz.
canon. Castlevania: Aria & Dawn of Sorrow.

age/sex/gender. 19/M/M
height. 5'7" (170cm)
weight. ?

basic info.
An ordinary high school or university student from 2035 who happens to be the reincarnation of Dracula himself. For all that he may naturally exude a certain lordly presence, Soma is actually a slightly flippant and irreverent young man who is rather cool and collected about all the crazy things he's been through. Despite being fairly normal with a mild "bad boy" streak, he comes off as somewhat intimidating and cold to other people, and Mina Hakuba is his only friend. Can be very earnest, vulnerable, and sweet under the right circumstances, but he is equally stubborn, vengeful, and vicious. I can play Soma either as himself or in his Dark King persona!

appearance.
A strikingly handsome young man who seems menacing and stern. In reality, Soma's actually just a pretty normal teenager with a bad case of resting bitch face. Has remarkably pale skin and naturally wavy, snow-white hair that is typically cut in soft layers around his face, but his eyebrows and lashes are a dark brown. Pale grey eyes (they turn red the closer he is to becoming Dracula). Has surprisingly sweet, boyish features if you look more closely at his face. Normal people may be irrationally inclined to feel afraid of him, though people more familiar with dark powers may realize that his are non-aggressive.

voice.
Much deeper than you'd likely expect from his face. I have voice clips on my extras post. Also tends to speak in a coarse and rough manner in Japanese; I try to strike a balance between this roughness and his more polite manner in English.

ic permissions

platonic contact.
No problem!

shipping & smut.
For shippy content, M/F, M/M, and M/* are all fine, as long as it's between castmates. By "castmates" I mean everything under the Castlevania title (with the caveat that I'm almost completely unfamiliar with the Netflix series at this point, though I do know that it differs significantly from the games in terms of tone and I can adjust my writing to complement that). My favorite ship for Soma is actually Alucard/Soma, and I'm fine with it being fluffy or problematic. PM me if you need to work out boundaries around the whole "theoretically it's incest" thing (I have a lot of thoughts). Smut is on the table here, but Soma's not going to be terribly good at it at first.

physical violence.
Sure.

medical info.
Depending on canon point, a healthy human boy with the powers of darkness, or a full vampire. I often default to a sort of "endgame Soma" state where he's essentially transforming into a vampire with all associated powers, but still retains his human identity.

mindreading.
Sure! Depending on how much "Dracula" is in control versus "Soma," he might have a little resistance to that sort of thing, but there's not a lot going on in his head anyway.

offensive subjects.
Nothing in particular, but he can get a little snippy if you give him a reason to be.

ooc permissions

backtagging.
No problem.

threadjacking.
Yes, always fine. gagtags are fine too.

personal boundaries.
None in particular.

anything else?
The original American release of Aria of Sorrow implied that Soma was a foreign transfer student, but subsequent game releases, such as Grimoire of Souls, have now clarified that he is actually fully Japanese. That being said, I do myself like the cross-lingual localization of "Soma Cruz" for "Kurusu Souma" so I'll play with a headcanon that he is Japanese with some Spanish ancestry, spent several years in America, and has often been treated like a foreigner because of it. I won't necessarily refer to this in threads unless it comes up naturally. Though he is culturally and ethnically Japanese, he presents as white European; luck of the draw on his genetics there. Speaks (American) English, (European) Spanish, and Japanese; the Spanish is his worst language.

On a really nitpicky technical level, the "Dracula" Soma turns into isn't necessarily "Alucard's father" or "Mathias Cronqvist" but instead a malevolent entity that's an amalgamation of various lives that include Mathias Cronqvist and Soma himself. This entity is referred to as Dracula in Aria of Sorrow, but I've played both of Soma's games in Japanese, and there are clear reasons he's subsequently been localized as "Dark King Soma" rather than "Dracula."

By the time Soma's games take place, "Dracula" seems to be used more as a title or position than a reference to a specific person, so "Dark King Soma" absolutely has memories of the Belmonts and other people who killed him over the centuries, but he's more like several people in one body who have agreed to become one force of evil than someone with a clear self-identity. This doesn't mean that other characters wouldn't recognize him as Dracula, but once Soma's lost control, he doesn't seem to be particularly attached to Lisa, or Alucard, or Mina. He is also, as is frequently pointed out, far more flippant about randomly killing people who are loyal to him than Dracula ever was; he is very chaotic and wild and carefree in a manner that is entirely Soma's. As such, I don't think he thinks of himself as an individual named Dracula, and it's simply more accurate to think of him as "evil Soma."

According to a fan theory, his birthday was most likely August 21, 2017: the date of a solar eclipse!

preferred threads.
At the moment, looking for cute, comical fluff; gen content, generally; casual monster-slaying conversations; awkwardly trying to avoid vampire hunters; soul-dominating adventures; bad end angst. Anything goes! I haven't played all the games, but I'm happy to RP off anyone from gameverse. I stopped watching the Netflix series after Season 1, but I'm happy to play off of it too (totally spoiler-friendly). I also love Harmony of Despair as a crosscanon jamjar situation and would like to RP similar crossover situations!

bonus.
You don't have to read this at all, but... I wrote fanfic about Soma, Arikado, and Mina many years ago if you would like to read it! I would revise some aspects of this fic now (mostly with regard to Soma's characterization, as Grimoire of Souls shows us a Soma that is actually very mild-mannered and contrite) but I still think it's pretty good.