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Carmilla and Affect in Contemporary Lesbian Fandom

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Carmilla and Affect in Contemporary Lesbian Fandom Lesbian Feelings and Fandoms: Carmilla and Affect in Contemporary Lesbian Fandom by Sneha Shilip Kumar A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Film Studies Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario © 2020, Sneha Shilip Kumar Abstract My thesis explores the contemporary lesbian web series as being similar to fanfiction and its fandom as an affective community built on a set of inclusions and exclusions. My case study is Carmilla (Canada, Spencer Maybee 2014-2016), a YouTube web series shot in vlog format, and its lesbian fandom. I argue that Carmilla challenges the genres of the gothic and lesbian vampire in ways similar to fanfiction. Building on the work of fan studies scholars Katrin Döveling and Louisa Stein, I propose that affective bonds are created between Carmilla fans through various kinds of online activities and these flows of affect are influenced by the race and location of fans. My experiences at the first CarmillaCon in Toronto suggest that the online and offline Carmilla fandom both create and reflect each other. i Acknowledgements I am grateful to the Carmilla fandom for many reasons: giving me community when I thought I had none; allowing me to feel acceptance when I felt uncomfortable in my own skin; getting me through long nights filled with many assignments; and finally, providing me with the resources to successfully write my thesis. There are so many people I have to thank for giving me the strength and guidance to finish this project. First and foremost, I am indebted to my supervisor, Dr. Laura Horak. You listened to me rambling about this series that I loved and gave my thoughts structure. Your comments, questions, and ideas made me see things in a light I would never have considered before. Secondly, I would like to express my appreciation for Dr. Aubrey Anable. Not only were you central to the process of establishing a tentative bibliography and literature review for this project, it was your Media and Emotion class that led me to my central argument. Thirdly, thank you to my extremely supportive roommates, Andriyha Soans and Anamika Jayendran. You patiently listened to all my ideas, read drafts, and even conceded to watching Carmilla. Thank you for being my home away from home. Last but not the least, I must express gratitude for my parents. You may not fully understand what I study or my motivations for writing about this particular topic, but you have always stood by me unflinchingly. I appreciate you constantly asking about my progress and listening to my complex explanations. I love you. To Carmilla, Laura, LaFontaine, Perry, Danny, Kirsch, Will, JP, Mattie, Mel, Theo, and The Dean, I hope I did your story justice. ii Table of Contents Abstract ....................................................................................................................................... i Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................... ii Table of Contents ..................................................................................................................... iii List of Illustrations .................................................................................................................... iv Introduction: So Many Feelings................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 1: Contextualizing Carmilla ......................................................................................... 9 Chapter 2: Bitten by Feelings - The Online Carmilla Fandom as a Lesbian Community of Feeling...................................................................................................................................... 27 Chapter 3: Carmilla in the World - Globality and Race in the Carmilla Fandom .................. 51 Chapter 4: Attending CarmillaCon - Lesbians, Affect, Inclusion, and Exclusion ................... 70 Conclusion: Thanks for Watching! .......................................................................................... 92 Works Cited ............................................................................................................................. 96 iii List of Illustrations Figure 1: Vampires Get Their Periods ..................................................................................... 18 Figure 2: A Buffy/Carmilla Crossover .................................................................................... 22 Figure 3: Screenshot Of My Youtube Recommendations ....................................................... 36 Figure 4: Exchanging Positive Affect ...................................................................................... 39 Figure 5: Screenshot Of Tumblr Blog ..................................................................................... 45 Figure 6: Beating Heart Meme ................................................................................................ 49 Figure 7: My Interaction With A Fellow Indian Carmilla Fan ................................................ 52 Figure 8: Global Creampuff Domination ................................................................................. 54 Figure 9: Matska Belmonde (Sophia Walker); Source: The Mary Sue ................................... 58 iv Introduction: So Many Feelings It would never have dawned on my 19-year-old self that one day I would be writing a thesis on the Canadian lesbian web series Carmilla (Spencer Maybee, 2014-2016). Carmilla is a contemporary adaptation of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 novella of the same name. The series follows human Laura Hollis (Elise Bauman), her vampire lover Carmilla Karnstein (Natasha Negovanlis), and their group of friends as they fight ancient gods, a hostile university administration, and other supernatural beings. I discovered the series as a young queer undergraduate student in Pune, India, sitting in the library and looking for something new to watch. I remember, in vivid detail, the butterflies I felt while watching Carmilla and Laura fall in love. I cried when they broke up, when they lost friends and family, and burst into applause when they finally prevailed over The Dean. One early morning my mother burst into my room in panic, only to find me shouting “Hollis, you’re so stupid!” at my laptop screen. My many revisitations to Carmilla and participation in its online fandom made me want to explore why I and others felt so intensely about this series. The language of affect theory gave me tools to do so. The organization of the first CarmillaCon while I was writing my thesis provided the opportunity to also observe the Carmilla fandom offline. In this project I argue that the similarity of the Carmilla series to a fan work encourages the formation of a digital affective community through the exchange of positive affect between Carmilla fans on YouTube, Archive of Our Own (AO3), and Tumblr. This community is based on a series of inclusions and exclusions, which are also found in the offline fandom. I chose to focus on a web series because it is an audiovisual format that has little scholarship on it. I chose Carmilla in particular because of my interest in the series and participation in its fandom, and the fact that there is even less scholarship about queer web 1 series. Carmilla is a queer web series not only because most of the characters identify as LGBTQ+ but also because a majority of its cast and crew is queer. Carmilla’s reconfiguration of the lesbian vampire, tackling of the harassment young women and gender diverse students face on university campuses, and the omnipresent Dean as the monstrous mother seem to both challenge and reinforce traditional conceptions of female sexuality, ambition, and excess. I have not come across another lesbian show that directly speaks to these issues. The Carmilla web series has three seasons, released in 2014, 2015, and 2016 respectively. Each season has 36 episodes. The creators also released a Christmas Special as part of the first season and a season zero, released between season two and three, which has 12 episodes. A crowdfunded feature film, The Carmilla Movie (Spencer Maybee), was released in 2017. I chose not to focus on the film because the film’s visual and narrative work would require its own thesis. The Carmilla fandom seems to be a current iteration of a kind of lesbian fandom that can be traced back to Xena: The Warrior Princess (1995-2001), wherein the series gives fans the opportunity to discover their sexuality, form communities, and escape from daily life.1 Carmilla and its fandom are similar to the contemporary fan cultures surrounding other queer fantasy media in that fans of the series come together on similar platforms (e.g. Tumblr, Archive of Our Own, Tumblr) and in similar physical spaces (e.g., ClexaCon, Love Fan Fest). There are also significant overlaps amongst fans of queer fantasy media. For example, some Carmilla fans are also part of the Wynonna Earp (2016 – present) fandom. Wynonna Earp is a Canadian sci-fi TV show that features a group of women, two of them in a relationship with each other, fighting demons. Both Carmilla and Wynonna Earp reference previous TV shows with large fandoms i.e. Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series (1997-2003) and Supernatural 1 Liz Millward, “New Xenaland: Lesbian Place Making, the Xenaverse, and Aotearoa New Zealand,” Gender, Place & Culture 14, no. 4 (2007):
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