Look, let’s not sugar coat this one, I adore this show. The tiny little webseries that could, and it has taken my gay heart by storm. It has been rewatched numerous times, to a degree that I have developed such an ability to passive watch it I can get work done while it plays, and generally speaking, multitasking is not one of my best skills.
It never ceases to be a favourite, and I never seem to get bored of it. I love the romance, the lesbians, the love, and the demonic creatures from the depths of hell. It’s all part of the meal, and it is a fantastic one at that.
I’m not necessarily going to talk about Carmilla extensively here, and I fully intend to revisit it a few more times in the future. This is just a start, a small show of appreciation. It’s spooky season coming up, and vampires equals spooky to me, so hopefully they’ll come up again this October. With that being said, I hope this brief introduction into this lovely imperfect webseries is enough to get you hooked, or at the very least a fun read for those that are as deep into this as I am.
And so, with that established, let’s dive in, shall we?
An Introduction
Carmilla is a web-series very loosely based on a novella of the same name, written by Sheridan Le Fanu in 1872. The inspiration largely being the names, and the sheer queerness of this story.
Premiering in 2014 with its first season on the Vervegirl (later changed to KindaTV) YouTube Channel, Carmilla would continue for a further two seasons, and The Carmilla Movie, which released in 2017. Each season spans 36 episodes, that are never longer than 10 minutes, often making it a very easy watch. It was co-created by Jordan Hall, Steph Ouaknine, and Jay Bennett. Directed largely by Spencer Maybee. Full details can, of course, be found on IMDb.
Starring in the leading roles are Elise Bauman, as Laura Hollis, and Natasha Negovanlis as Carmilla Karnstein. They bring a love to their roles, and genuine chemistry that comes from a friendship they seemed to gain as the series went on. They both excel in the respective roles, and it is always a blast to watch them.
Carmilla was known for usually shooting its entire seasons within a few weeks. It didn’t have the largest budget, and it was only able to increase it for the second season when they were sponsored by U By Kortex. They did a phenomenal job with what they had, though. It may not be perfect, most things aren’t, but it sure is fun.
Carmilla is available to watch on YouTube.
A Summary (Mostly Spoiler Free)
Carmilla follows the nerdy and loveable Laura Hollis, a student at Silas University in Austria studying journalism. She begins recording video blogs as a project, and when her roommate goes missing, and is shortly replaced by the allusive Carmilla Karnstein, with whom Laura clashes with, she turns her attention to finding out what happened to her.
This, is, of course, only the first season, with the following two delving deeper into the mysteries of Silas University, and following the ever so dashing Laura and Carmilla as they navigate Sumerian mythos and their relationship with each other.
This is your SPOILER WARNING
Blind
A note. I am noticing that a reoccurring theme in my posts is love, and what can I say? I am just a sucker for a good romance. Some get my little gay heart fluttering; others get my romantic side buzzing. I rarely care whether it’s gay, straight or all the in-betweens. Happy, healthy and thriving? Well, that’s all I really need from a cute couple. So, with that mentioned, I apologise to those that are not big romantics, but buckle up, Creampuffs.
Love is, as the cliché goes, blind. Carmilla does not dispute this, but as the Carmilla theme song so clearly gets across to you, love will also have its sacrifices, which is a very lyrical way of saying: love is hard, which is true. For Carmilla and Laura their love is fraught with misunderstandings, and miscommunications, and presumptions, but eventually it bristles with devotion, and deep understanding, and of course, in the end of it all, love.
So, let’s start in Season 2. Love is blind.
Laura and Carmilla have only been dating for a short while when we come to meet them at the start of this season, we watched the tumultuous way with which they got here and at the least are happy to see them at a degree of happy with each other.
Watch the first few episodes of this season and tell me you do not find yourself wishing you could find yourself someone who looks at you the way Carmilla looks at Laura. That is a vampire in love, my gays, and she is head over heels.
Here, the love is blind, because both characters are deeply flawed, but for the first half of the season willingly overlook a lot about the other person. Here, I like to point out that Laura is a teenager, a freshman in University. Her life experience, as things go, is probably somewhat limited, considering the overprotective father and all that. Carmilla has centuries under her belt sure, but I don’t think she ever claims to be more mature than the others. She’s a vampiric child, 4 centuries is nothing to a millennia, and so on and so forth.
However, Laura is the worst girlfriend, and for a while Carmilla lets it pass. She, after all, is in love. In this instance, Laura is being wilfully blind, but I would argue she is not ignorant. She knows what she is attempting to ignore, for her own comfort, and actually doing so quite successfully, she’s not unaware. She knows who Carmilla is, because she feared her just a few months ago, she is wilfully opting to be blind to it.
Carmilla tells her, over and over again exactly who she perceives herself to be (which is a conversation for a whole other time) and Laura ignores her. The thing is! Laura knows who Carmilla is talking about, this person she says she is, because she met that girl! She tied her up! Laura, though, wants Carmilla to change, she believes she has, she believes that to love her, and for her to love Carmilla, Carmilla must be a good person.
I’m not here to dispute Laura’s beliefs. I do think that deep down Carmilla was a good person in the making, she was changing, but so much slower than Laura thought she was. Carmilla needed a lot more time to become who Laura was enforcing upon her. Over the next few seasons sure, Carmilla gets that time and changes, and her redemption arc is completed in the movie, but for right now, who Carmilla believes herself to be, this amoral, murderous, ass of a vampire, is the only version of herself she is willing to be comfortably perceived as.
You can see how uncomfortable Carmilla is being paraded around as a hero, because that’s not who she thinks she is. A hero is what Laura needs her to be, and this fact that Laura is just not listening when Carmilla tells her to stop and expresses her worry that being a hero is Laura’s reason for loving her, makes Laura seem like such an ass.
Now remember, Laura is young. She is imperfect, and inexperienced, and still very much learning. We don’t know her dating history, but there is a very good chance that Carmilla is one of the first, if not the first girlfriend she’s had. Do not take away from this that Laura is a bad character, she is not. I love her just as much as I do Carmilla, flaws and all. If you can love the morally grey vampire, you very much can love the do-gooder she falls in love with.
Love is blind, because despite all this between them, they both are very much in love. This does not change.
They break up, yes, but they do come back together about a season later, and I would argue the reason they work this time is because their moral lines meet. Laura has experienced more and been brought down to similar lows as Carmilla. Ya know, the experience of endangering her friends, and killing Vordenburg to save Carmilla, in effect going against all the morals she had held herself to, brings her down. This is a low for her. Carmilla, though, has been to places like this, and is understanding and accommodating and very grateful. So, while Laura’s absolute good, black and white thinking starts to shift, changing this understanding of the world that she’d had. Carmilla’s morals are shifting upwards, as it were. Carmilla has solely been on a selfish path for survival most of her life, detached from a lot of things, with limited connections, but Laura changes that. Laura, for a lot of it, is her reason to do something besides just survive. We hear evidence that she was changing before she met Laura, just a little, but it is in the course of knowing Laura that she continues to change.
Now, arguably, her reasons for pursuing her mother in Season 3 are still selfish, possibly as displaced revenge for Matska’s death, because of course, love is blind, and she can’t take that out on Laura. It should, however, be noted that if it was just revenge, she may have gone for more of an all-consuming ‘let’s just murder her ass’ kind of method, she wouldn’t even entertain Laf’s discussions about not murdering Perry in the process. So, she’s changing, she wants to stop her mother, and for the time being is willing to save Perry while they’re at it.
Their morals meet each other, and they can love without presumptions and expectations. They’ve now taken the time to understand each other and love each other as they are rather than what they want the other to be or perceive the other to be. Their love, then, stops wearing its sunglasses, and looks as it should.
Here, I realise I got a bit side-tracked, but you largely get my point. Love was blind, and it stopped working, when they opened their eyes, finally something clicked.
Now, in an interesting chronology we move to Season 1. People are blind.
Laura would not see it if Carmilla wrote it across her forehead. Do you not see, Laura dear? SHE LOVES YOU. Even on rewatches, when you know the kind of commitment that is coming, it can still be incredibly frustrating. Everything Carmilla does for most of this season, and parts of Season 2, is FOR LAURA and she doesn’t see! She doesn’t get it! She doesn’t hear it! I’m almost certain Carmilla outright states it and Laura is still like “I know you didn’t just do it for me.” Boo, yes, she did.
Laura is blind! Is my point. In a different scale than she is in Season 2. Then, she’s wilfully opting to ignore stuff she knows, and arguably is blind more to her own inner cognitions than she is to stuff about Carmilla (yet again a conversation for another day). There is a difference here, because love can make you blind, or you can just be blind. Laura, this season, is the latter. That is the point here.
Laura may or may not be in love, that is a debate. Has a crush? She does admit as such. Let’s not forget we have the very sexually charged waltz this season, which is arguably one of their most charged scenes throughout the entire show and movie included. She is, though, blind as a bat.
Carmilla walks in with 16th century flirting, a corset, and champagne, which is a bit much, poeticises and still? Nope. Waltz? Only just getting it. Saves her life? Nah, “I know you didn’t just do it for me.”
Laura, my gay heart weeps for you, and I am arguably as bad as you.
It really does take her seasons to realise, if she ever does, that of course she did it for her. We can all see it, but we’ve got an outside perspective. Carmilla’s only motivation for like a season and a half is ‘protect Laura’, and she’s not particularly hiding it. She is so in love, and Laura can barely even see it when she’s kissing her. Arguably, Laura is then still blind to just how deep Carmilla’s love for her goes come Season 2.
Though, as stated above, Season 3 has all the understandings come into play, so let’s let our gay hearts think that by then everything has been laid out on the table and she finally gets and understands it. I mean, she does now know how far some people may go for love, having crossed her own lines to protect Carmilla. They are more than a teenage romance, but let’s let them be as flawed as one when they just start out. Everyone has to learn.
And so, Love is blind, but people can choose to be blind for love, and some may be made blind by love, others may just be blind in spite of it.
A Conclusion
Thank you, once again, for lending your eyes to read my posts. This post took a minute, and there is still so much I could say on Carmilla and will plan to do so in the future, but for now, there is this. An attempt to make an understanding of the complexities of their relationship.
This show is the kind I’d hope to write, the icon of queer internet culture, and a blessing to the queer people who struggle to find themselves in media. It is a beautiful piece of representation, and despite its unusual format of like 5-minute episodes, it is one of my all-time faves. I can admit it’s a flawed show, but you will still have to pry it from my cold dead hands to get me to stop watching it.
This discussion of their relationship, by the way, is completely subjective, and for all I know it might change next time I watch it. Opinions change, you learn more the more you watch and decipher new things, it’s lovely, and the nature of enjoying something so deeply. What I can say, is that I love them way too much to possibly admit to them being overly flawed. That is one perfect and healthy relationship, and no one can change my mind on that. They love each other and try so hard to do so. Love might have its sacrifices but it sure as hell won’t be them.
So, with all that said, I hope you enjoyed this post and will join me in October where I aim to get somewhat spooky with my posts, though no promises are made. I’m not a big horror fan, so we shall see, regardless I hope you join me in another fortnight for the next edition of Fortnightly Fixations!
Thank you once again for reading!
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the images, narratives or characters present or referenced in this post. All rights belong to KindaTV and all other relevant parties.