Ryne and Gaia are like. Such good parallels and foils to each other it makes me just a little insane.
Like Ryne is sweet and caring and she always wants to help others and make them feel better even to the detriment of herself because she has seen and known suffering and doesn't want others to have to live like that too. If she can make someones life better, even if just a little bit, then she will. But she also puts everyone elses well-being and feelings so far above her own that she often ends up trying to help in a way that doesn't actually solve anything because it still ends up with someone hurt (such as trying to properly fuse with Minfilia knowing it might end up with herself disappearing). She's not a doormat, but she does have some people-pleasing tendencies.
Gaia, however, is the exact opposite. She's prickly and sarcastic and thinks of herself and her needs first and foremost, everyone else is secondary. It's not that she's cold or uncaring, she doesn't ignore people's problems, she just doesn't see them as her business most of the time (A product of being raised in Eulemore most likely). She doesn't consider the long-term outcome of what she does or says, she lives solely in the present and the future is a problem for when it happens.
These opposite traits also play into each other. Ryne inspires Gaia to care more about others and Gaia inspires Ryne to prioritize herself more. Gaia makes Ryne live more on the moment without thinking solely of what the future will bring, and Ryne makes Gaia think more on what her life will be going forward and to actually consider what she does and says and how that affects things. They feed into each others good traits (Ryne's caring nature and Gaia's sense of self) while also helping them deal with the bad traits (Ryne's people-pleasing and Gaia's aloofness).
Their pasts are good paralells too. Ryne was isolated and lonely until Thancred took her away but even then, he was distant and emotionally neglectful, so she ended up lonely in an entirely different way. Gaia had a family and caretakers that she wasn't particularly close to, but after the 'Fairy' started talking to her they got even further away until she couldn't even remember them, and the 'Fairy' was the closest thing she had to a friend even though it was what isolated her to begin with. Ryne had constant companionship but no support, and Gaia had 'support' but no companionship.
Even just. Regarding the whole identities thing they are just. Perfect. Ryne has lived with Minfilia's shadow on her shoulder her entire life and never got to learn who she actually is. She thought that she had to become Minfilia for her life to be worth anything, that it's the only way her existance is justified. The person closest to both her and Minfilia(Thancred) indicated(in her mind at least) that he wanted Minfilia to be here in Ryne's stead(which wasn't really the case but she didn't know that). The only way to get her out of that shadow was to remove her from the identity of Minfilia, hence why her new name is so important(as well as the hair and eyes being her natural colors instead of Minfilia's all too recognizable ones).
But Gaia didn't even know about Mitron or Loghrif until Eden. She had the 'Fairy', but to her it was just some voice in her head which was nice enough to her. To her, Loghrif is just some lady Mitron loved, she has no real connection to her. She has a connection to Mitron, both as the 'Fairy' and as remnant feelings from Loghrif, but none to Loghrif herself(aside from the obvious reincarnation stuff). Gaia has always been her name. It may have been Loghrif's originally, but she is so far removed from that identity that even for all of Mitron's effort to 'return' her to Loghrif, it'd never work. Loghrif is Gaia, but Gaia is not Loghrif. Simple as that.
Eden's story works so well because Ryne and Gaia are opposites in that specific way that compliments each other, rather than pits them against each other.
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Hi hello I watched all of carmilla in a weekend when I was 17 because a student teacher who in retrospect I had a bit of a crush on mentioned that she knew one of the actresses. also I am pretty invested in all your recent vampire stuff because I watched iwtv in 2 days last week because your edit intrigued me
oh hiiii 🫶 thank you for indulging me. thats so cool that you watched iwtv! did it live up to the expectation?
i also watched carmilla at 17! or like, 17-19. i found it when s2 had just started and followed it to the end. did something permanent to my brain but i think it was a good thing. on rewatch now im like, i was right to like this. like it's a solid show, it's good. it has its flaws obviously but it's well written, the emotional moments still get me, i can see why i liked it and i still like it now even when it's not anymore, you know, meeting every need that baby gay me didnt even know they had
what it doesnt reaallyy do though - i dont remember if i posted abt this or if i left it in my drafts but - is explore vampirism as a concept. their subject matter is more lesbianism than vampirism. which is great! thats what they wanted to do and they did it and it's very good. but reading interview with the vampire the book rn im realising how much potential vampires have to be metaphors for like so many things and i started wondering like 'wait, did carmilla just not really engage with it or did it all go over my head'. but it just didnt really engage with it all that much. which again is fine bc that wasnt what they were doing. im glad they were more about the lesbianism than the vampirism
but there's this interesting difference in framing, because in iwtv they keep calling armand 'ancient' right? and emphasising how old he is. and he's like 500? and i was like 'wait isnt carmilla like 400?'. she isnt, shes 340, but still, thats getting there, you know? and we know quite a lot about her history, but kind of just the Big Events. when she was turned, the events of the novella, coffin of blood, silas. thats sort of what we know. but none of the long lonely slog of history day to day you know? with armand i feel like we can really feel how much time everything takes. how every one of those years is made up of single days. with carmilla i dont feel that as much. i keep kind of thinking about daniel, when louis calls him a boy in the first episode, saying "im an old man, with all the triggers that come with it"
because carmilla might look 18 (or mid twenties at this point) but she has lived all that time. shes also seen her native land be claimed by like a succession of ruling powers, right? like armand. shes been buried alive, like louis. when lestat is born, shes already 80 years old, shes lived a whole human lifetime, and the entire adult part of it shes been a vampire. shes lived through 1680-1870 being a lure. i compared her to abigail hobbs in some tags on a post, i dont know if youre familiar with hannibal the tv show, but i do also kinda keep thinking about that comparison
if youre not familiar, in the first episode of hannibal the murderer of the week is this guy garrett jacob hobbs who kills and cannibalises girls who resemble his daughter. and later on it turns out she was made to be his lure. like they'd go places and he'd sent her to the victims to make friends and maybe get them back to their home or smth. not sure if they specified all the details. but that's what carmilla did for mother. and in s2 we hear from mattie that while every couple of decades carmilla had to lure victims for the fish god, she also seemed to just enjoy humans between those times, right? like the doctor, gets lonely, gets a new companion. but we've only sort of got mattie's mocking word for it ("dont eat him, hes a poet! or her, shes got such a wonderful voice. or that one, shes just too pretty to ruin"), we don't know exactly from carmilla's point of view what she was doing or why. if mattie's talking about stuff that happened after the blood coffin, 1950-now, then i think it's a fair assumption based on what carmilla says in the s1 sock puppet show that after she'd figured out what the real situation was and what her role in it was, when she'd started trying to save girls from being sacrificed, that she mightve been doing the same trying to save people from becoming mattie's victims. it's probably more likely that she was just trying to find excuses to stop mattie from sucking someone dry rather than actually having like an aesthetic based morality. but it might be a bit of both. im still trying to figure out what her philosophy actually is, like i dont know what existentialism actually means ghkfjghkj but i will
i also found it pretty striking in the movie when shes turning back into a vampire she says like "this was supposed to be done, you know? the blood lust, the self-loathing, the sleeping tied to a chair in my own bedroom". thats what defines her vampirism, wanting blood and hating yourself for it (the third part is a joke/reference to s1 but also i think meaningful for how she sees her relationship with laura when she IS a vampire. little bit of that 'she will reject me for my monstrousness' shining through). and thats what defines vampirism for lots of vampires across the genre obviously, but i dont know, it struck me. we dont get a lot from carmilla's pov, we know a fair amount about her, but the story is always told through laura. we get laura's diaries, but just snippets here and there from carmilla, what shes thinking, how shes feeling
and i love that shes a philosopher. i love that thats how she seems to try and find something to hold onto, in a world that kind of moves around her, having been murdered, kidnapped, turned and groomed to be a lure on the cusp of adulthood, never having been properly loved (the relationship with her father wasnt good she says in s3, and her mortal mother i dont think has ever been mentioned (like laura's)). the only good relationship she seems to have had for the better part of 3 centuries seems to have been mattie, and mattie seems to love being a vampire. i can imagine carmilla just sort of going along with anything mattie wants to do just because shes so desperate for that friendship. not like, against her will necessarily really. but more like, she hasnt even had the space to develop her own will, you know? and philosophy lets you do that. philosophy gives you frameworks to understand the world and to develop your own opinions on it. and by the 21st century she seems to have developed those opinions, she has a sense of her own values, but shes also still stuck in that same situation. shes jaded and cynical in the face of laura's optimism and strong moral code a lot of the time in s1 because she feels probably pretty powerless. like she does what she can to save some girls but at the end of the day shes scared of her mother and she has nowhere else to go really, right?
i like how she grapples with that over the course of the series, in tandem with laura grappling with her black and white morality. she sort of jumps ship from her mother to laura bc theyve fallen in love, but then laura still stuck in her hero thinking refuses to see her monstrous side. not literally bc i think the biological vampirism never seemed to be a problem for laura, but morally. the having murdered. carmilla needs laura to see that and love her while seeing it bc the last girl she loved rejected her for being a vampire.
but you see her kind of swing back and forth in s2. she softens first with laura but then they break up and she leans back hard into the sarcastic cynic defense mechanisms, leans hard into "im a monster, dont expect heroism from me". but thats like, it's sort of learned helplessness i think. it's powerlessness, resignation. bc morally shes not a monster. maybe she doesnt have as strong a drive to help other people as laura does and is a little more selfishly hedonistic in that she just wants to enjoy her/their life, but she doesnt hurt people for fun, she never has. she just sort of didnt have another option for a Really long time. so she pretends she doesnt care. "im a vampire, this is what i do, this is who i am". but clearly from the way she talks about it when she turns back into one, she doesnt enjoy it
and i like how she goes even further in s3, where she starts swinging even more to the heroic side, bc she sees hope. shes like "wow if we kill my mother, i'd be free". theres hope and she becomes like a lot more active. and shes like that at the start of the movie too, a lot happier, a lot more relaxed, and then vampirism is back and bam depression gfhgkjh like shes immediately more gloomy, ashamed of her past and her self, retreats into herself
sorry i just took this as an opportunity to dump all the carmilla thoughts floating in my head on you. you didnt ask fhkghgjh consider this an open invitation to you or anyone else to come talk to me about carmilla
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