Gothic Auntie

Most gothic heroines would have a much better time of it in the present, but whether they’d have a similarly positive effect on the people around them is another matter entirely.

Catherine Earnshaw

You can’t tell if that boy’s her brother or her lover, troublingly you’re starting to suspect that the answer might be both, but whatever this toxic drama is that’s playing out between them you’re a little worried that somebody’s going to wind up dead before the end of semester.

On the other hand you did hear that if a student dies all their classmates automatically pass the year, so maybe you’re starting to root for it. It’s certainly hard enough to get any studying done when you’re constantly being sexiled by these two, and if you hear him screaming her name under the window one more time at night you’re going to drop a brick on his head.

Christine Daaé

At first you thought rooming with another music student would be nice. You could practice together, help each other prep for auditions, have someone around who’d get it instead of asking you how you thought you were ever going to get a real job with a degree like that. Sure she was always talking about angels, but you just thought she was religious, and that maybe there was a bit of a language barrier which was why it always sounded kind of weird (you don’t know what she was trying to say but there’s no way she meant that her guardian angel was literally in the walls).

Then you got cast as the lead in the summer musical and she ended up as your understudy. She wasn’t even mean about it! She genuinely seemed excited for you, right up until the freak accident with the stage light that broke your leg. You can’t prove that it was her, and her look of shocked terror when the incident happened proves she’s a significantly better actress than you’d thought, but still, you’re definitely transferring across the country next year.

Jane Eyre

Possibly the perfect room mate, at least on paper, Jane is hard working, helpful, and always keeps her half of the room neat. Very neat. Extremely neat. You suspect she’s about ten seconds away from going postal, or handing the RA a neatly handwritten little book containing all the infractions you and your floor mates have gotten away with so far. Maybe that’s unfair, as far as you know she hasn’t snitched on anyone yet (and to be fair, there’s a lot she could snitch on), but her fiery eyed speeches on morality are down right unsettling and absolutely kill the vibe. You’d rather have her as a friend than an enemy, you saw how she winged that frat boy with a biology textbook the other day, but you didn’t go all the way across the country for college to have to sneak past a smaller, scarier version of your mother just to have some fun.

Laura

You desperately need her to notice that she and Carmilla are dating. Or for Carmilla to say something about it other than increasingly obvious poetry that’s still somehow going over Laura’s head. “I live in your warm life,” Carmilla says, only for Laura to ask you later if you think Carmilla’s in love with some guy while trying her hardest not to sound jealous. The whole thing has become a Sapphic comedy of errors of Shakespearean proportions and you’re really trying to focus on midterms here.

Also you’re pretty sure she’s suffering from sleep paralysis or something, because the other night she woke up shouting about a giant black cat in the room. She should maybe talk to someone about that. Maybe you’ll get a single next year.

Lucy Westenra

You really need her to stop opening the window after you’ve gone to sleep. It can’t be helping that serious case of fresher’s flu she’s come down with, and now its starting to look like she’s passed it on to you as well. Hell, maybe its mono? You’ve been so tired lately, and you’ve certainly never had a sore throat like this before.

Maxim’s girlfriend

Look that sounds terrible but she genuinely hasn’t told you her name and at this point it would be weird to ask. You do know her boyfriend though, because he’s the TA for the English Literature class you’re taking together. Weird and inappropriate? Yes, but he’s also always buying the two of you beer and food that’s significantly nicer than the cafeteria plan, and apparently his family own a mansion upstate so maybe she’s on to something there.

You’re also way too familiar with his ex girlfriend’s name. Boy does your roomie talk about Rebecca a lot for someone whose never even met her. The other night you caught her Instagram stalking the girl all the way back to 2020 with a Vinted tab open beside it. In fairness she didn’t have to go back that far to get there because it seems to be an old account, and the two of you can’t find the one she’s using now no matter how hard you look. (You know you shouldn’t be encouraging this but at this point you’re invested in the drama). It makes sense though, because if you were Rebecca you too would have locked down your social media too and vanished off the face of the earth.

Mina Harker

Actually the perfect roommate, Mina is kind, tidy, and helpful, without any of the terrifying repressed rage Jane has burning in her eyes. If you’re struggling with a subject she’ll tutor you, if your life falls apart at 2am she’ll be there with spreadsheets and a cup of tea to sort it all out again. Even her boyfriend’s completely unobjectionable, which is saying something at this university full of brooding wind swept men. At this rate you might even join them when they go railroading around Eastern Europe this summer (she loves trains that one), it’ll be the adventure of a life time!