fresh meat, page 34

whew... sorry, i mentally lost a day this week somewhere and had to crunch hard for this one today. i wanted to make this one longer to not leave it on an awkward cliffhanger-y part, but last week's page was already late. i didn't even bother to upload it here by the time it was done, as the main site is also easier to navigate for reading.

anyway... carmilla's introduction. she seems to already be making an impression on kim, but it won't last very long for now; kim is going to be pulled out for her evaluation.

carmilla is one of the cast members who isn't introduced at the very beginning with the rest, for a few different reasons, which i'm not sure i'll word well in the amount of time i have left before posting this at midnight...
i didn't want the audience to be overwhelmed with the entire cast at once. staggering some of their introductions helped solidify the narrative revolving door structure and mitigate this.
it's also because carmilla is particularly hostile towards staff members in the ward. i felt with kim's arc, it would have been harder for her to believably navigate the structure of the institution if she had somebody much older than her encouraging an uncooperative stance with the staff. kim doesn't know much of carmilla's home life, and she wouldn't think about it much. this way, she got a chance to fail on her own without being able to blame it on carmilla or the others for not joining in.
and these characters aren't in a story which necessitates many personal discoveries. all of them i gave what i felt were compelling arcs, but they aren't really huge epiphanies. they're kim's discoveries about their characters which help her figure out herself, and her view of their inner lives is limited. so some of the characters being introduced later stopped them from needing their arcs stretched out or built upon too much for such a story.