There has been a trend online lately of people complaining about how a lot of these modern Disney remakes and reboots making their classic Villainesses more sympathetic ruins what their original appeal was. But comparatively they’ve had it a lot better than Carmilla, at least they are still allowed to have some Edge.
Carmilla in the most well known recent adaptations isn’t even allowed to be an Antiheroine, she has to be made completely innocent of any wrong doing in order to be considered good “reclaimed” Lesbian representation. And I’m seemingly the only person who’s not fond of it. And no I'm not counting the many In Name Only Carmillas who pop up in franchises that were not originally about her, that Castlevania wanna be Anime's take on the character is a Joke to me.
One thing I want is a genuinely faithful direct adaptation of the original Novella. So many people talking about Camrilla just assume a book written by a Male in Victorian England must have actually had a homophobic agenda and there can’t possibly be any positive pro Lesbian reading to the original text itself. So we have to change things in order to make it Gay affirming. One YouTuber in their video on Male Bisexuality in Vampires went into a lot of speculation about Bram Stoker’s own Sexuality. But no one’s willing to do the same for LeFanu. As a connoisseur of Lesbian content written by people who were assigned male at birth from different cultures, for reasons I can’t explain Carmilla feels to me potentially like the work of a Transbian Egg who never hatched.
But regardless of what gender LeFanu actually was, something about the Ending, how Laura still misses Camrilla in-spite of everything, tells me Laura was a Lesbian herself, not just a victim of one.
In the 1970s we saw the opposite of this trend I’m complaining about now. The Lesbian Vampire craze of that decade shows us what it looks like when Straight men write Lesbian erotica while still actually morally condemning it. They are titillated by it in spite of viewing it as a threat, like how many White Men fetishize their fear of the Black Man’s Penis.
Most of those films were not officially adaptations of Carmilla, but regardless what symbolizes them as a counter point to this modern approach to making Lesbian Vampires more Woke is the Het male Romantic rival for Carmilla, the difference is whether that Het male is a Hero or not. He's the coin with two sides.
So if you really need to add something to your modern retelling of or sequel to Carmilla to make it more unambiguously Pro-Gay. Instead of pretending women can never be just as abusive and manipulative as men can, add a Lesbian Romantic Rival, make it a full Lesbian triangle. In part this is what The Moth Diaries is, which is mostly what I like about that movie, but that film also has this “maybe the MC was just imagining it all” subtext which distracts from that and also just can’t work on film as well as it may have in the original Book which I own but haven’t read yet. There is also a Yuri NTR Manga I like called Your Fault who’s code on a certain website is 115990. Take that story, make Senpai into Carmilla, but also switch the Hair Colors of the Carmilla and Laura analogues, (I’m also very pedantic about how Carmilla should have Dark Hair and Laura should be Blonde), and you have the start of something pretty good.
I'm not saying she needs to be a one dimensional villain, she should have depth and complexities, and maybe as a part of grander saga one of those villains who seems less evil once you get to contrast her with the greater threats. And maybe even eventually character developed into more of an Anti-hero. But her introductory baseline should still be as a Lesbian Femme Fatale.
I could now go deeper into the complex relationship in my mind between Yuri Anime and Lesbian Vampires. Or the broader problems with making Vampires an allegory for Marginalized groups. But those are potentially their own posts. However the next Vampire related post I might make on this Blog for October 2021 will mostly be about Male Vampires.
There are some decent Carmilla adaptations already in existence. A Radio Drama you can find on YouTube, I think it was a BBC one. A Polish movie that I can’t fully critique because it’s never been Subbed but it looks better then most glancing at it. And a Comic Book adaptation that I bought, you won’t find it on Amazon searching for Carmilla because it’s in an Anthology, look for Gothic Classics: Graphic Classics Volume 14. Due to its lack of Color you could almost mistake it for a Manga adaptation. And if you want something 80s, try the Nightmare Classics TV Movie starting Roddy MacDowell and Meg Tilly, but even that has some twists I don't like. I've meanwhile still been unable to find a way to watch 2014's The Curse of Styria.
Among those of us who are true fans of the original Carmilla Novella, the word “Languid” is practically a Meme. And as someone who likes to intersect my various Nerdy interests, I've started wondering if there is a Dere type I could use to explain what Languid means to my fellow Otaku. An argument could be made for either Nemuidere (Sleepydere) or Darudere (Sluggish). But The Dere Types Wiki has not proven all that useful in helping me understand these more obscure Deres (as a self identifying Kuudere, I kinda hate their Kuudere page). What I will say is that one Anime character I would definitely describe as Languid is Mako Reizei from Girls Und Panzer. Margaret Burton in Madlax could also be described as Languid.
Update: So Curse of Styria is on Amazon called Angels of Darkness which doesn't register to me as a great name for a Carmilla adaptation. It's a decent film, but manages to in it's own way annoy me as an Adaptation. I guess Carmilla is the one subject where I am everything I hate about VN fanatics hating on every VN Anime. But the changes I'm being petty about are comparatively far more story relevant.
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