let her cook you cowards

You might ask how "lesbian vampires in the deep forest of Austria, creepy things happen" could possibly go wrong:

• Carmilla has cool vampire powers - unusual ones, since it's an early vampire book. Her main ability is that she's a charming liar. The other ones are not foreshadowed, appear once, and then are never seen again. Zero drama.

• does some amazing "show, don't tell" storytelling, but then tells you anyway in case you missed it

• massive info dump right at the end where it turns out that the creepy things that happened were the same as what happened to the other girls in the village, ruining the pacing. Should have doled that out throughout the story so that we'd be excited to find out when Laura (Carmilla's victim) finally realised, you dolt.

• Carmilla has gone to great lengths to hide her true grave, so how will we resolve the race-against-time at the end? Well, fortunately we've brought a guy with a map that there's no particular reason he should have it, and we thought to bring the minister as well so there's no threat, phew.

• 'tell you a story that happened to me ten years ago' should just have been struck out as pointless unless it was the set-up for a twist or something

Not that Dracula is exactly the finest literary work in all history, but:

• creepy things happen

• old dude with great knowledge turns up about a quarter of the way in, listing all of the vampire's strengths and weaknesses, which are then adhered to at all times

• the enemy is a cunning and dangerous foe, and there are scenes in the book demonstrating this

• heroes desperately gather clues while suffering great setbacks, and have a race-against-time to prevent terrible thing, the outcome of which is uncertain and not spoiled in advance. You know, drama.

It's a shame. You wouldn't need to change much about Carmilla to make it a truly great book - delete some stuff, reorder the rest, couple of extra scenes. Sheridan La Fanu has a lot of writing talent. But it fumbles a few of the basics.

you can't tell me what to do I'll w... oh amazon studios? yeah I'm out.

If my experience with World of Darkness has taught me anything it's that vampires are gay, werewolves are gay, everything is gay, straight people are a myth

I dunno but vampires and their general antics remind of Epstein class types or historical nobles with their parasitic ways

Yes my brain is totally broken lmao. China save us

Gay vampires (Carmilla) predates straight vampires (Dracula).

No vampires have ever been straight, not even Nosferatu (especially Nosferatu.) However, werewolves are so straight that it loops back around to being extraordinarily gay. Even gayer then the average vampire if you woulf believe. (Im reminded that vamp was a slur for bi people for some reason.) This has been documented in excrusiating detail by many, many, many lycanthrope scholars.