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Apr. 24th, 2014 10:39 pmSo I haven't had a story in my head for the past few days and I had a boring meeting this morning, so I started going through the old standbys to find something to occupy me. I started out with Renfield, because that is my default state, but actually ended up poking at the Countess Marya Zaleska/Kay Caldwell crossover femslash fixit story. Because that story needs to be told. And then I started an actual outline because someday I'm really going to write that one if it's the last thing I do.
I actually have Complicated Feelings about this story because I have Complicated Feelings about both of those movies and how they're both about women who go against the accepted patriarchal guidelines, either willingly (Kay) or not (Marya) and are punished for that transgression by the representatives of the patriarchy who are, in both of these movies, embodied in the figure of the heterosexual protagonist/love interest. I neither know nor care whether the creators of these films intended them to be read that way, but when I watch them they are absolutely movies about how our society punishes women who don't do Being Women correctly. Dracula's Daughter also explicitly links monstrosity and queerness - monstrosity is then figured as reaching beyond the mainstream patriarchal heteronormative demands of society to act as your true self. Which is a beautiful thought for someone like me who is queer and always wanted to be a monster.
But of course they both die at the end of their respective movies because Marya can't be a straight non-monster girl no matter how hard she tries and Kay outright rejects that, outright tries to become something else and of course we can't have that. And of course I want very badly to fix it. I want the story about how the two of them help each other - how Marya helps Kay become the thing she so much wants to be, how Kay shows Marya how to love her monstrous nature. I want them to be happy, I want them to be loved because they're monsters and not despite it, I want them to win. I want them to rip into everyone who stands in their way with their big shiny vampire teeth and I want them to own the night forever. Because I deserve a power fantasy too, right?
Also, I want them to kiss, because they are both very pretty and I like vampires. (And it would be nice, once in a while, to get some lesbian vampires who aren't there to titillate a male audience.)
Maybe I will actually write it and maybe it will be at least half the story I want it to be and I can be happy with it.
(And then I can move on to the story where the Bride of Frankenstein gets to do, I don't know, anything. Or Malita's amazing adventures in mad science. Or the story where it turns out that Asenath Waite is indeed the amazing fish-person witch-woman that she appears to be and it's awesome.)
I actually have Complicated Feelings about this story because I have Complicated Feelings about both of those movies and how they're both about women who go against the accepted patriarchal guidelines, either willingly (Kay) or not (Marya) and are punished for that transgression by the representatives of the patriarchy who are, in both of these movies, embodied in the figure of the heterosexual protagonist/love interest. I neither know nor care whether the creators of these films intended them to be read that way, but when I watch them they are absolutely movies about how our society punishes women who don't do Being Women correctly. Dracula's Daughter also explicitly links monstrosity and queerness - monstrosity is then figured as reaching beyond the mainstream patriarchal heteronormative demands of society to act as your true self. Which is a beautiful thought for someone like me who is queer and always wanted to be a monster.
But of course they both die at the end of their respective movies because Marya can't be a straight non-monster girl no matter how hard she tries and Kay outright rejects that, outright tries to become something else and of course we can't have that. And of course I want very badly to fix it. I want the story about how the two of them help each other - how Marya helps Kay become the thing she so much wants to be, how Kay shows Marya how to love her monstrous nature. I want them to be happy, I want them to be loved because they're monsters and not despite it, I want them to win. I want them to rip into everyone who stands in their way with their big shiny vampire teeth and I want them to own the night forever. Because I deserve a power fantasy too, right?
Also, I want them to kiss, because they are both very pretty and I like vampires. (And it would be nice, once in a while, to get some lesbian vampires who aren't there to titillate a male audience.)
Maybe I will actually write it and maybe it will be at least half the story I want it to be and I can be happy with it.
(And then I can move on to the story where the Bride of Frankenstein gets to do, I don't know, anything. Or Malita's amazing adventures in mad science. Or the story where it turns out that Asenath Waite is indeed the amazing fish-person witch-woman that she appears to be and it's awesome.)
