Carmilla
Back in the spring of 2014 I never would have thought that the little novella that I read and fell in love with would ever become a web series, I read it for a lit class and I loved it so much that I didn’t want the book to end. My main reasoning for thinking this was that the novella was so short, only 86 pages of story and then some additional pages of illustrations and a glossary of terms ending at 93 pages. The book was published in 1871-72 and was written by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu is one of the earliest works of Vampire Fiction, dating even before Bram Stokers Dracula by 26 years. The novella like the web series follows Laura who lives with her father in a castle in Styria with her wealthy widowed father, from Childhood Laura has lived in this secluded area, and she really doesn’t have that many friends or people to talk to. Twelve years later Laura’s father’s friend is supposed to bring his niece Bertha Rheinfeldt to visit the two of them, but the niece mysteriously dies and she is longing for a friend and a companion. Carmilla who was injured after a carriage accident is left in the hand of Laura and her father, by her mother who has some business that can’t be delayed before leaving her mother says that Carmilla will not talk about her family, her past, or herself. Carmilla and Laura become friends, and Carmilla is the friend that Laura herself has always wanted and Laura is very happy. As the story progresses things to happen weird and strange things, but nobody can really pinpoint why weird and strange things start to happen. The novella ends when her father sends his daughter to Italy to recover and regain her health, she never really does and it is implied that Laura dies after her encounter with Carmilla.
In the summer of 214 I wasn’t expecting to see that a web series based on the book that I had just read was going to be a reality, and if it ever was a reality I didn’t think that many people would watch it as most people probably wouldn’t have heard of the or read the novella. I certainly didn’t expect it to become such a phenomenon, and I really didn’t expect for a full-length movie to be made about this little novella that I was sure nobody ever heard of. What I loved about the web series was that they stuck to the book was much as they could, but they needed to take some creative freedoms to make it relevant to our world. I went on a two-year journey with these characters every week, and when the last season happened three Thursdays every other week I was taken on the journey with these characters. I loved every moment of the series, and I really felt like it did the book justice and it added so much that really would have worked in the time line of the book that it was almost alarming to me, how close the added story line because they had to make it three seasons how much that could have happened in the novella. Even the fandom is lovely, and I’m a general member of the fandom as I don’t make art, or write fan fiction but I haven’t seen much fandom discourse I’ve just seen a lot of love for each other and I love that.
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