I Know We Only Met (But Let’s Pretend It’s Love) - Carmilla Fan Fic Review & Recommentation
Title: i know we only met (but let’s pretend it’s love)
Tags I’d Assign: #fairy tale #beauty and the beast au #hollstein
Author’s Synopsis: There is a story. (Have you heard it before? A girl, a beast, a dying flower. Do you know what happens when the last petal falls?) There is a story, and it is about a girl, one that’s tired of her life, tired of the boy who wants to wed her. Tired of not being able to love another girl. Tired of not having any girls to love. There is a story, and it is about another girl, too. One that’s more thing than girl, more monster than lover. More beast than human. There is a story, and it is about them.
Readability: Easy, well-written prose, with the occasional heightened narrative tone for effect.
Reviewer’s Plot Summary: Stripped down, slightly altered Beauty and the Beast AU. Laura doesn’t want to be the low-class, provincial girl. But she is. (Or is she?) There’s Will, the too-aggressive suitor. There’s her over-protective father, willing to do anything (foolish) to protect her. There’s the fact that there simply aren’t enough books to read. And then there’s Mircalla, fated to a curse thanks to an evil-scheming demi-god. Mircalla, the Beast. (But also, definitely not.) Perhaps, women handle ill fates with more grace then men? It feels like this is a fairy tale we all know. And it is. It is. (But it also isn’t.) Or, maybe it’s both.
Review: Confession: I’ve never been able to stand the Beauty and the Beast story. (Confession: I’ve only ever seen the Disney versions.) Confession: Until this. It’s a bare-bones version of the story, stripped of all the boring parts, but then augmented, and then tweaked on top of it. (And plus, there’s no singing!) The author gives us a pleasing sense of high-narrative whimsy (though it’s a serious whimsy, not a sweet one), joyously juxtaposed with bouts of here-and-now language.
The story is written in third person semi-omni POV.
The Good: The heart of the reason I enjoy this story is that it’s a critical satire of the latest Disney version of the tale. (Sorry, Hermione: You’re wonderful, but not even you could rescue this for me. Though, you were great. Really, you were.) The narrative blatantly calls out problems which underlie the primary and secondary male characters in the Disney take, while also asserting that women should be stepping up to claim a legitimate role in changing the world around us. (The more time I’ve spent refining this review, the more I’ve realized just how political a piece this fairy-tale-on-the-surface really is.)
Primarily, Gaston’s (here, Will’s) behavior isn’t buffoonery or a comedic form of narcissism. It’s recognized for what it is: obsessive and dangerous. And LeFou’s (here, Kirsch’s) admiration for a stronger man (we’ll leave it at ‘admiration’ for now, though see the concrit later) seduces him into a passive accomplice. Belle’s (Laura’s) father, Maurice (here, Sherman), takes a slight deviation from the movie, in that he is so unwilling to lose his daughter (feel like a failure at protecting her?) that he disrespects what he knows would be her wishes and allys with an evil man to ‘rescue’ her. There’s no question the author is using this piece to address social commentary at three different types of masculinity.
When it comes to the Prince/Beast, the author substitutes Mircalla, who is still self-pitying, but is far less angry and more humble than The Prince/Beast, and, more typical of a woman who has been victimized, for some reason finds ways to blame herself far more than she should.
But Belle (Laura)… Here is where the story truly twists. The Beast doesn’t do anything to rescue Belle, or her father, or become the hero. Instead, when Laura is told she has significant power to affect others, to change the world around her, she simply accepts it. She doesn’t assume she’s unworthy of it. She doesn’t run away from it. She respects it. Honors it. Spends time and thought and effort trying to understand how to wield it, not in a reactionary way, but responsibly.
She accepts it so deeply, that she, in turn, ultimately convinces Mircalla that it’s okay to raise her voice and challenge the status quo.
The Concrit: For me personally, the piece waded a few shades too far into anti-male territory. Repeated throughout is the idea that all men (clearly meant in contrast to women) have it in them to be “monsters,” whether through poor character, simple weakness, or stupidity. (And, oddly, even gay men got lumped in with this idea, as being, rather than ‘evil’ themselves, too passive to… I’m not sure what… not be men? Not take a stand?) I disagree with what I interpret the author says on this. There are good men in the world. They shouldn’t be lumped together and stereotyped anymore than anyone else.
That being said, I don’t deny men are responsible for most of the terrible things that have happened in human history, and are by far still the dominant demographic in that arena today. I’m not blind to this, even though I would argue that it’s a subset of all “man” kind who perpetrate these things, and that other “men” take/took stands to resist to them. But I do actually appreciate this story’s attempt to message younger women that we (and the world) no longer have to labor under the same paradigm, that times are changing, and we can step up with them.
Remember: Please please please… if you enjoy the stories I review and recommend- whether you’ve only just read them because of my reviews or you’ve read them in the past and these rec’s remind you of them- stop by the authors and send them some love. They’ve given a tremendous amount of their time, effort, and passion to provide us with high-quality, free entertainment that keeps Carmilla alive for us. Let’s thank them. (I’m not looking for props, either: You don’t even have to mention this blog; just send them a note or a comment to let them know they’re appreciated!)
