If you’ve been anywhere near Tumblr recently you’ve probably seen posts about this new web series called Carmilla. Based on the novella by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, which is a precursor to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Carmilla the novella focuses on an aristocratic young lady named Laura and the mysterious guest she and her father take in—the lady Carmilla. In contrast to the novella’s Victorian origins and style, the web series is more like a College AU fanfic and is over 9000% better.
Short novella summary: Laura lives on an isolated estate in Austria with her father. Being so isolated and alone, Laura longs for friends and for love as there are very few people her age around. A young woman named Bertha was supposed to come visit, and Laura was all excited and they were already BFFs in her head, except Bertha died suddenly. Shortly after that a cart accident outside their front door sees her and her father taking in a young lady of similar means named Carmilla.
Laura and Carmilla become fast friends and Laura finds herself *gasp* falling in love with Carmilla. Of course this is forbidden—and then there’s the issue of Carmilla’s odd behaviour (like the fact that she never rises before noon) and her mysterious disappearances. And Laura keeps having such odd dreams, and is growing steadily weaker while people from the village down the road keep dying. Ultimately, Laura and her family find out that Carmilla’s a vampire, and they imprison her in her crypt.
The web series is set 243 years after the events of the novella and takes up where the novella left off. The trailer explains it much better than I ever could:
Basically it’s a college AU, and everything is shot from the webcam on Laura`s computer. The single set and fixed viewpoint really work for me, visually recalling the epistolary style of the novella, as well as actually feeling like college because people keep bursting into Laura’s dorm room.
The web series gives the whole thing a modern twist and that is what makes it so delightful. Instead of being her governesses, Perry and LaFontaine are now Laura’s floor monitors, and her overprotective dad sends her bear spray. Laura’s excursion to Carmilla’s tomb now becomes an excursion to the library basement, but the demonic possession and flames stay the same.
What makes the web series so much more engaging for me than the novella (aside from the fact that I normally avoid Victorian literature like the bubonic plague) is the personality update they gave Laura. In the novel, Laura is your typical Victorian heroine, all dainty and delicate and pining; this is stubborn, driven (to the point where it’s nearly pathological), drinks out of a TARDIS mug, freely references Veronica Mars, and knows Krav Maga.
This is an actual line from the series.
What annoys me most about Victorian literature is the passivity—partly in the writing style, but so often at the heart of the female characters. Novella Laura in particular is someone that things happen to; “tiny gay Laura” (as she has been dubbed by Tumblr) makes things happen. She goes looking for answers, she doesn’t take no for an answer when the school administration tells her that Betty just up and left (because Laura has evidence to the contrary), and she even seduces the girl she suspects of being a vampire to get the information she wants.
See why I love her?
Carmilla is also a lot more complex than she is in the novella and the series does a good job of subtly calling into question her circumstances and making her more sympathetic than the novella. The webseries also features a ton of positive female and homosexual representation of which there can never be enough. Where the novella has Laura’s desire for Carmilla as this big, forbidden thing Laura must keep from her father, here, well…the possibility of hate sex is very high and it’s fairly obvious Laura and Danny have hooked up at least once.
Oh, and Carmilla openly ridicules Twilight.
For those of you who dislike Victorian lit as much as I do (mostly because of the convoluted style, and the rigid social classes and moral views) there is also an adapted version by Timothy Baril[1] which uses language in a more modern way and has some changes at the end of the tale. These I find actually make it a more fulfilling story, and Baril notes where the text deviates appropriately. While I found Baril’s version more readable, he (unfortunately) manages to completely retain the essence of novella Laura and you should really just watch the series. Episodes average around 3-6 minutes each, and the channel updates Tuesday and Thursdays, with episode 26 coming out today.
The series also has other media outlets on Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram, and Laura and Carmilla have their own Tumblr (here and here) and Twitter (here and here) accounts.
What are your feelings on Carmilla? Have you read the original novella? Do you ship Laura/Danny or Laura/Carmilla? Sound off below!
[1] I accidentally read Baril’s text first because it was available for free on my Kindle, making my personal Carmilla chronology go from: THIS IS TOTALLY AWESOME!! To:…meh… To: F.M.L.
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