#a queer and poly dracula retelling

[diarythebookwyrm]

Stuff on your Dracula thingy? :)

Oh lordy XD okay, so that's a very vague question for a project I've been batting around like a cat with yarn since last year's Dracula Daily/Re: Dracula started.

But! As you very well know, the title is High Stakes (you absolute punster menace <3)

As for what the basic idea is, it's "what if the polycule modern readers are all pretty sure existed between Lucy and the Boy Squad actually was a thing, and throw in the Harkers for color". Or, in less words, what if the novel Dracula was a queer poly mess?

I have actual FLOWCHARTS to track the relationships between everyone in the polycule, because it's an insane six people large. Six people! Two of whom are going to be giant wolves at least three days a month! That's so many limbs.

Oh, and because it's me, there will be monsterfucking because I am a werewolf enby all the way.

What I'm actually working on is how to do this without it being a full shot-for-shot and beat-for-beat remake of Dracula. I do have some ideas (Mina and Lucy having actual scenes of character development with the various members of the boy squad; Jonathan having more horrifying and borderline sexual interactions with Dracula; more development on Van Helsing and why he knows what he does about Vampires), but there are still a lot of parts I'm batting around and rotating like a rotisserie chicken to figure out how I want them to work.

And of course I have to come up with reasonable worldbuilding that will at least allow this wild polycule to live together without it being wildly weird and scandalous. And debating how to or if I can reasonably save Lucy. Because the inherent tragedy of Lucy is that she was so deeply loved, and that love wasn't enough to save her. That is the tragedy of her story; the love was there, it just wasn't enough to save her before it was too late. Now, I do want to have her be in the actual polycule, so I gotta figure out how to work that out.

But if you want me to go into more details, feel free to ask for more intense details while I go off on tangents.

^Me explaining the intricate interpersonal relationships in this story

[sepptember]

𝐬𝐧𝐚𝐢𝐥 — your turn! tell me about the characters you headcanon as queer. <3 I'm all ears.

okay this is a lil headcanon of mine!! all of draculas brides are queer in their own way and are really just draculas girl friends (key word: friends) who live with him cause it’s easier !!

now there’s three of them and two canonically have dark hair and the others blonde but i gave them names :3

the first: judith! i hc her to be from medieval times so a bit before dracula and she was born a vampire instead of being turned, and while being like an either french or german medieval countess or duchess or some shit she had this fiancée who she was gonna marry in secret and was very good at making it look like she was just friends w her or some shit idk but then she died and judith was like absolutely pissed and before meeting dracula juat terrorized thr shit out of that town for centuries on end before she n dracula found the other two wives and they all just moved into a castle tohetger

the second: sybil! the brides canonically don’t have races (i think) so i just decided that sybil is black because i can 🎀 anyway she was born human in the italian renaissance towards the beginning of where it started and she was a painter but not really a famous one but was popular in tht town she lived and because she was a girl kisser she liked the paint women mlre and was wirh definitely a few (not a lot but a few) of the women she painted and therefore she has a lot of paintings of a few of them instead of just one and one day a man wanted hee to paint him and she was like “no sorry i’d rather not i only paint women” and cause she didn’t have a business and was painting on her own accord and whoever she wanted so basically she painted whoever she wanted and the guy she refused was a newly turned vampire so he (attempted) to kill her and it turned her into a girl kisser vampire instead and eventually she met judith and dracula and they all became besties

the third: cleda! i was gonna have hee american at first but dracula takes place in europe so i didn’t ! but anyway my hc is she’s the youngest bride and was alive and an opera singer in the mid 1700s :3 and she was very popular and very famous and judith (the first bride) rlly liked her and went to a shit ton of her operas cause like i said she loved her voice and just her in general (fag. I CAN SAY IT) but cleda was unhappy with herself and how she sounded and had a terrible “i need to be the best” complex and out of straught up anger was like “yk what i hate u all” and also rlly rlly liked this ballet dancer but hated that she felt like that and didn’t think t was normal and after she got rlly pissed amd just (tw!!) tried to commit and judith was coming to be like “hi ur literally amazing” and saw her like unconscious and abt to die on the floor smd bit her and turned her before anything could happen

anyway now they’re all gay and live in a castle together (until they die at the end of the book) and just hrlp dracula out with certain things and vice versa and are only rlly called his brides cause of homophobic pieces of shit and him being like “erm they’ll burn u guys alive” and it’s just a cover for them all being gay and are actually poly and eachothers brides

the way I ate every word of this up?? hello?????

I'm gonna read this book now. and I'm going to envision all of them in this way. idk anything about the book, but this genuinely sounds more interesting than the actual book itself does.

all of them are girl kissers and they kiss each other now! it's canon. you should make a rewrite of the book like this... yk like a retelling? you'd eat it up!! and I'd buy it!! and so would a lot of other people honestly.

[sufferingandasense]

I've been thinking of writing a queer retelling of Dracula

For all its fame, I think very few people have actually read the book, cause there's a bunch of stuff in there that's never discussed in pop culture? Due to its epistolic nature, obviously you can't make a TRULY faithful Dracula film adaptation. And there's so much interesting stuff that, since it can't be put onto the screen in a satisfying way, I think doesn't get, like. Considered by the 2 million and a half Dracula retellings.

For one thing, I want to do a villanous Dracula. For no other reasons that there are so many sympathetic Draculas out there, I think a lot of meat has been left on the bone of a villanous Dracula. Especially with his potential as a sexual assault metaphor- maybe even a conversion therapy metaphor wrt a queer retelling.

For another thing, there's a joke in the book about Lucy and her suitor's being polygamous- in context its a gallows humour joke about blood transfusion (Holmwood says after her death that he feels spiritually married to her, if not legally, because his blood was in her veins. Not knowing that all the other suitors+van helsing donated too). But what if we elaborated on that? Lucy even says that she wishes she could marry all 3 of the suitors.

Because another thing that doesn't make it to screen, probably because modern audiences would find it sacharrine, is how all of the protagonists love the fuck out of each other? Like, for most of them it's a platonic love, more of a brotherly or parental bond. But there's so much gushing about how much they adore and trust one another, from everyone to everyone, it's a shippers field day.

Bottom line is, I don't think you'd even need to tweak the source material that much to put all of the protagonists into one big poly relationship. They really do defeat Dracula with the power of love, after all.

The only thing is, another theme in the book is knowledge- Dracula is at his most dangerous when the protagonists are in the dark about him and his nature. When they finally compile all the knowledge they have about him, he ceases to provide much of a threat- he's on the run for most of the book after that point. Repeatedly, characters conceal information from one another for benevolent reasons, and every single time, Dracula takes advantage of this to do harm to whoever was left in the dark. Both literally and metaphorically, he is defeated by being dragged into the light of day.

....and I don't think I could justify writing a queer retelling of Dracula without linking that theme to the aids epidemic. Which is outside of my comfort zone, and would require a lot of unfun research before I could properly do justice to.

idk. i think that'd be interesting is all. i know a lot of people hear 'queer modern retelling of classic novel' and roll their eyes, but I think there's potential here.

[mermaidsirennikita]

um the name of that dracula retelling pleeeease 🤲

Dowry of Blood by ST Gibson--NOT a romance, but has great Gothic romantic vibes. Super queer, super poly, would recommend. I've gotta say, I've really been enjoying the poly books I've read lately.

I will say that I read this because ST Gibson is apparently writing a queer/erotic/poly(?) fantasy romance and I wanted to try their work before it came out. GREAT writing style.

[saintmachina]

My dark and sexy queer Dracula’s brides retelling is out in the world today!

GRAB YOUR COPY FOR 

sapphic longing at the opera 

religious overtones 

all bi cast 

poly m/f/f/m relationship 

cathedral kisses 

overcoming abuse in gothic chateaus 

the horror of love 

european carriage roadtrips 

vigilante vampires 

AMAZON // INDIEBOUND // NYX // BARNES AND NOBLE // APPLE

[nataliescatorrccio]

Book recs but it's pride month so make it queer:

*A Dowry of Blood (horror in that it's a very bisexual and poly retelling of the brides of dracula but not in the it's super scary kinda way)

*Dreadnought (superhero with a queer twist! Basically if like supermans succesor was a transgirl)

Idk if fantasy/sci-fi are your thing tho (they're very much my thing).

I'll check them out, thank you so much!!

[diarythebookwyrm]

So a few days ago, I got inspired by @silvergryphon to write a poly/queer retelling of Dracula.

And friends, I am so excited to write this. Like I have basic timelines, character studies, and a list of extra reading I am gonna do to properly write a victorian era alternate universe.

Also, there will be fluffy werewolf puppers because I love werewolves

[saintmachina]

You can now request advanced review copies of my queer Dracula’s Brides retelling! If you’re a book blogger, book seller, podcaster, or publishing professional who would like a free copy for review, drop your name and email in this nifty form my publisher made. 

Be sure to request if you like:

Dracula's Brides w/ an all bi cast 

poly m/f/f/m relationship

cathedral kisses

sapphic longing at the opera 

overcoming abuse in gothic chateaus 

crumbling empires 

vengeance

Everyone else can add the book on Goodreads!

[diarythebookwyrm]

Y'know what, I'm not done ranting about this!

So I mentioned I have flowcharts for how this Polycule Insanity is gonna fit together. I do. But I also have notes on how each character feels about each other character, because I don't want each romance to feel too "same-y". I want them to feel organic and real and like fully fleshed relationships.

Now, in the original book, we don't have a lot of context for the relationships between the Boy Squad or between the Boy Squad and Lucy. We also don't have a lot more than "we are comrades in arms in this war against Dracula" for the Boy Squad and the Harkers. I wanted to flesh that out more so it made sense for these six madfolks to be in a large family unit together.

So, I gave the Boy Squad I like the sound of that more than "Suitor Squad" even tho I typically love alliteration more of a backstory that will come up either within High Stakes itself or in little oneshots I'll do about them.

The original Dracula gives us some context, but not much. Quincey writes to Art to congratulate him on his engagement and mentions them going off on adventures around the world (WHERE IS THAT BOOK BRAM), but not much about how they met or why they went on these wild adventures together. So, I have built up my own backstory for them and how they all met and how that altered the relationships between each of the Boy Squad members.

Then, of course, I had to work out how each of them felt about/for Lucy, what she felt for/about them in turn, and what they feel about/for Mina and Jonathan. Poly groups are hard to write, I'm finding. But it's gonna be so, so, so worth it, I just know it.

So everybody's getting more backstory and context for how they know each other/what their relationships are to each other, etc. And now I just gotta figure out how to save Lucy. This really is the biggest sticking point for me...I have no idea how to do it.

Stuff on your Dracula thingy? :)

Oh lordy XD okay, so that's a very vague question for a project I've been batting around like a cat with yarn since last year's Dracula Daily/Re: Dracula started.

But! As you very well know, the title is High Stakes (you absolute punster menace <3)

As for what the basic idea is, it's "what if the polycule modern readers are all pretty sure existed between Lucy and the Boy Squad actually was a thing, and throw in the Harkers for color". Or, in less words, what if the novel Dracula was a queer poly mess?

I have actual FLOWCHARTS to track the relationships between everyone in the polycule, because it's an insane six people large. Six people! Two of whom are going to be giant wolves at least three days a month! That's so many limbs.

Oh, and because it's me, there will be monsterfucking because I am a werewolf enby all the way.

What I'm actually working on is how to do this without it being a full shot-for-shot and beat-for-beat remake of Dracula. I do have some ideas (Mina and Lucy having actual scenes of character development with the various members of the boy squad; Jonathan having more horrifying and borderline sexual interactions with Dracula; more development on Van Helsing and why he knows what he does about Vampires), but there are still a lot of parts I'm batting around and rotating like a rotisserie chicken to figure out how I want them to work.

And of course I have to come up with reasonable worldbuilding that will at least allow this wild polycule to live together without it being wildly weird and scandalous. And debating how to or if I can reasonably save Lucy. Because the inherent tragedy of Lucy is that she was so deeply loved, and that love wasn't enough to save her. That is the tragedy of her story; the love was there, it just wasn't enough to save her before it was too late. Now, I do want to have her be in the actual polycule, so I gotta figure out how to work that out.

But if you want me to go into more details, feel free to ask for more intense details while I go off on tangents.

^Me explaining the intricate interpersonal relationships in this story