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F/F Friday: Carmilla
A few weeks ago there was a thread on FFA about “what’s gay on Guternberg?” so of course I went on a shopping spree, insofar as downloading free ebooks can be described as “shopping,” and began reading with Carmilla.
Carmilla - and I suspect this will be true of the other books acquired in this spree - isn’t technically f/f, but it does feature an atmosphere saturated with pent-up longing and also a pairing where one half tries to kill the other, which is really what you want in all the best pairings, isn’t it? Catradora. Stucky. Buckynat. Really the only thing that keeps Steve/Bucky/Natasha from being the best OT3 is the fact that Steve and Natasha have never tried to kill each other, worse luck.
I really liked the ingredients of the story, but the story is so short that there were places where the execution is rather thin. In particular, I would have liked more details about the friendship between Laura and Carmilla. It starts off with a great scene where the two of them meet each other, and Laura realized that she’s seen Carmilla once before… long ago… in a dream!!!! Where Carmilla attacked her!!!!!!
And Carmilla, canny lass that she is, is all “I saw you years ago! In a dream! That must mean we’re meant to be friends,” and then they exchange compliments about how they are both completely gorgeous.
But after this promising beginning, we get very little actual interaction between the two girls, just a broad overview of their friendship: while Carmilla stayed at the schloss, she and Laura were always together and became intimate friends, but Carmilla had a few odd habits, like never appearing till one o’clock in the afternoon, and always seeming extremely languid, and occasionally gazing ravenously at Laura and murmuring things like “I live in you; and you would die for me, I love you so.”
In short, Carmilla seems so obviously sinister that it’s not really a surprise when she turns out to be a vampire, and I think it would have more impact if we saw more of their friendship and could therefore feel the cold sting of betrayal when it turned out she was literally eating Laura alive.
So: A++ idea, execution could have been stronger.
Carmilla - and I suspect this will be true of the other books acquired in this spree - isn’t technically f/f, but it does feature an atmosphere saturated with pent-up longing and also a pairing where one half tries to kill the other, which is really what you want in all the best pairings, isn’t it? Catradora. Stucky. Buckynat. Really the only thing that keeps Steve/Bucky/Natasha from being the best OT3 is the fact that Steve and Natasha have never tried to kill each other, worse luck.
I really liked the ingredients of the story, but the story is so short that there were places where the execution is rather thin. In particular, I would have liked more details about the friendship between Laura and Carmilla. It starts off with a great scene where the two of them meet each other, and Laura realized that she’s seen Carmilla once before… long ago… in a dream!!!! Where Carmilla attacked her!!!!!!
And Carmilla, canny lass that she is, is all “I saw you years ago! In a dream! That must mean we’re meant to be friends,” and then they exchange compliments about how they are both completely gorgeous.
But after this promising beginning, we get very little actual interaction between the two girls, just a broad overview of their friendship: while Carmilla stayed at the schloss, she and Laura were always together and became intimate friends, but Carmilla had a few odd habits, like never appearing till one o’clock in the afternoon, and always seeming extremely languid, and occasionally gazing ravenously at Laura and murmuring things like “I live in you; and you would die for me, I love you so.”
In short, Carmilla seems so obviously sinister that it’s not really a surprise when she turns out to be a vampire, and I think it would have more impact if we saw more of their friendship and could therefore feel the cold sting of betrayal when it turned out she was literally eating Laura alive.
So: A++ idea, execution could have been stronger.