Carmilla 2x30

carmilla-reviewed:

I finally understood what I haven’t in a year and a half. 

Carmilla is a fully cognizant person. She is not evil because her vampirism corrupts her soul. She has lived centuries, living with and loving monsters as family, doing unspeakable acts and being allowed decades to understand their purpose, learning how people are and knowing how they will be for the rest of their lives. She cares little for casual friends because she’s lost thousand and has grown numb to their influence. She clings desperately to her passing loves because they are the only ones who can give her a brief surge of emotion. Her low moments last decades, her high moments a lifetime. 

She is not the way she is because she’s a vampire—a vampire in particular. Rather she is the way she is because she’s an immortal. Hers is the one of many tales of an immortal human. 

With Danny’s slaying of Mattie, we see the essence of narrative conflict. Not good versus evil. We see three people doing what they feel as they have every right to do in their worldview. To Maddie, Danny is a short-lived but still very dangerous bug that dares to taunt, and fully deserving of death. To Danny, her life is of course highly significant to her, and she is completely justified in protecting herself even at the cost of taking a life. To Carmilla, the loyalty and love she has for Laura, how harming a hair on Danny’s head would be an unforgivable betrayal, means as much as a gust of wind to the person who murdered her sister of three centuries. There is no rooting; there is only pain.