Postface
The initial Idea was that in the original 'Carmilla' Laura's simultaneous embrace and repulsion regarding Cramilla and her own same gender attraction could also apply to a trans identity. I took this aspect of Laura as well as her constant rationalizations ( “a we related?” & a boyish lover in masquerade etc) and mapped them onto the Ethan/Esther.
Further I wanted to create a true gothic (horror) story, which makes use of the associated themes, tropes and structure.
The clash between modernity and the old, the sublime (here in architecture and a city not a highland moor), “reflections”, encounter with the supernatural, an outsider/foreigner and so forth.
Taking the gothic aspects Carmilla furthermore represents for Ethan/Esther their confrontation with their own Id (after Freud) and subsequent reconciliation (the horror!).
Taking Carmilla’s actions from the original story, how she “forces” herself onto Laura with kisses and declarations of love, I made her “force” Ethan/Esther into their actual gender.
The fic is in a sense wish fulfillment and yet I never wanted to lose the horror aspect of the story, the unease, the monstrous. The potential that Cramilla is “actually” manipulating/using Ethan/Esther, the idea of corruption, the incestuous/libidinös aspects of Carmilla & Esther, etc. It gives the story the for me necessary spice, I have no interest in something “clean”.
I all forcefem stories I personally came across, the protagonist always immediately folds, which I find rather anticlimactic and flat. Transition is even in the best of cases is still a PROCESS! I want to go down into the muck and actually engage with it. With the horror but also the joy of it.
