2025 has been a banner yr for queer vampire fiction, together with Patrice Caldwell’s debut YA novel The place Shadows Meet, Kat Dunn’s Carmilla-inspired Hungerstone, Kiersten White’s Dracula reimagining Lucy Timeless, Cheon Seon-Ran’s Korean bestseller The Midnight Shift, and many extra. Nevertheless it’d be onerous for any of them to dwell as much as the towering New York Occasions bestseller Bury Our Bones within the Midnight Soil, by V.E. Schwab, creator of the Shades of Magic sequence and The Invisible Lifetime of Addie LaRue, and creator of Netflix’s queer vampire sequence First Kill.
Schwab’s centuries-spanning epic Bury Our Bones hyperlinks three ladies who acquire the facility to reshape their constrained, pissed off lives after they develop into vampires, although that have takes radically totally different types in Sixteenth-century Spain, Nineteenth-century England, and Twenty first-century Boston. One factor hyperlinks them, although, past vampirism: All three are lesbians, and all three are in denial about their sexuality, till becoming a member of the undead releases them from societal norms.
In an interview earlier in 2025, when Bury Our Bones was printed, Schwab informed Right this moment that her e-book was impressed by traditional vampire fiction, and that “For those who return and also you take a look at these traditional vampires, they’re inherently queer.” It’s an irresistible quote, however that interview doesn’t unpack the that means behind it in any respect. So with the annual Fangsgiving vacation looming, Polygon reached out to Schwab to speak concerning the queerness of traditional vampires, and vampires on the whole.
Schwab clarifies that she isn’t essentially saying Dracula, Nosferatu’s Rely Orlok, Varney, and so forth are canonically homosexual characters. (Although Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Dracula predecessor Carmilla is, and Anne Rice’s Lestat is bisexual, and a confirmed homosexual dad.) She’s saying they’re queer when it comes to how they break the foundations of straight society.
“The unique literary vampires represented carnal information,” Schwab tells Polygon. “At their basis, whether or not we’re [Dracula author Bram] Stoker, [The Vampyre author John William] Polidori, Carmilla, vampires symbolize a defiance of societal gender and sexual norms. They symbolize a rejection of conformity, of the default, and particularly of heteronormative and prudish buildings.”
She significantly factors to Carmilla — one in all Stoker’s inspirations for Rely Dracula — for instance of how usually vampires in literature symbolize a darkish escape from conference. “She represents intercourse, however she additionally represents information, energy, autonomy, freedom, all of this stuff,” Schwab says. “I will get so canceled by someone for this, I am positive, however the hill I’ll die on is, I do not consider in straight vampires. I feel it’s antithetical to the underpinning of a vampire, which is actually a Byronesque, hedonistic kind that’s concerned with experiencing life, concerned with experiencing want, starvation, intimacy, love, no matter it’s, in such a manner that it does not conform itself, it does not restrict itself. So I’ve a tough time imagining a straight vampire.”
Bury Our Bones within the Midnight Soil incorporates a vary of same-sex and opposite-sex vampire {couples}, blended vampire/human {couples}, and vampires that aren’t essentially in relationships in any respect. However all of them in a method or one other symbolize this temptation to desert cultural norms. Even the e-book’s vampire protagonists constantly discover new types of darkish information in different vampires, who tempt the protagonists to alter, develop, and break the conventions they’ve developed for themselves. The one exceptions to that rule are the youngest, most newly undead vampires, who aren’t but refined sufficient to lure different vamps away from no matter represents conventionality to them.
“I can think about a younger vampire that hasn’t lived lengthy sufficient to discover all of the aspects of itself,” Schwab says. “However a straight vampire looks like a home as a substitute of a subject. To me, a vampire is a pure, natural kind that’s meant to exist on this planet, and you’ll’t convey it into the home. Generally that is taken to the deeply symbolic extension of vampires not with the ability to enter another person’s home. However I do not consider the vampire was meant to return in. I consider we had been meant to exit.”
Associating vampires with queerness is traditionally fraught: Vampires are nearly at all times depicted as predators, and sometimes as monsters and killers, with the power to assimilate and convert even unwilling or unknowing people. Given the lengthy historical past of conservative tradition making an attempt to color folks on the LGBTQ+ spectrum as predators who groom, convert, or simply assault susceptible victims — a cyclical narrative at the moment enjoying out once more in the precise wing’s struggle in opposition to trans folks — the “all vampires are queer” hyperlink may really feel like a harmful thought.
However Schwab says that when vampires are portrayed as harmful monsters, it’s typically as a result of the narrative is coming from the status-quo perspective of people that don’t need the foundations to alter, or for folks to flee societal boundaries. “The worry of queerness is the voice inside the home,” she says. “The people who find themselves saying vampires are unsuitable, unnatural, ‘It may possibly’t come into the home, it could’t stand daylight, it could’t eat meals, it could’t have all of this stuff, it’s an unnatural monster’ — that’s not the monster saying it, proper? It is the people telling the story. So one of many causes I’ve discovered vampires to be such a beautiful queer allegory is due to the distinction between these tales.”
That’s to not say all narratives written from the human aspect of the equation demonize vampires — books like Twilight make being preyed on by an obligate sanguivore appear thrilling and romantic, even when the vampire disagrees along with his prey about that.
“I’ve a tough time with among the newer vampires in popular culture, as a result of for some time there, it obtained actually straight and actually sanitized,” Schwab says. “That’s antithetical to me — it appears like, Effectively, you simply needed the attractive enamel half, however you did not truly need any of the issues they symbolize. And vampires, what I like about them, why I’ll stan for them, is that they symbolize a direct intersection of horror and romance. And I feel for queer identification, particularly — however actually, for any identification which isn’t the cultural default — romance has a little bit of horror to it, as a result of there’s a bodily hazard to romance.”
Schwab says anyone (and “any physique”) that “does not toe the middle line of what society deems secure and acceptable” takes dangers when opening as much as romance — LGBTQ+ folks, folks of shade, folks with out privilege or cash, folks outdoors a slender vary of typical magnificence. “We stroll out into the world, and we’re instantly at risk, by advantage of our our bodies,” she says. “That’s simply the character of being. So for me, it’s onerous for queer romance to exist with out horror. Additionally, being overtly queer is frightening! So the rationale the ladies are vampires in my e-book is, I needed to take people who find themselves so usually seen as prey by society, and make them predators, as a result of I felt like that was the best liberation I may give them.”
Once more, she emphasizes that “queer” doesn’t strictly confer with sexuality or relationship standing. “Not each member of the queer neighborhood is sexual or romantic,” she says. “However the factor about vampires is, whether or not it is a sexual attraction or not, everyone seems to be compelled by them. Each human in a vampire story is in a roundabout way drawn to or repulsed by the vampire. The identical is completely true for Dracula — the women and men in that e-book are drawn into his thrall. He has that energy over Helsing, over the boys that come into his life, as effectively. It may be an antagonistic enchantment. It may be an antagonistic attraction. It does not must be sexual to be obsessive, to be compulsive.”
She factors to Robert Eggers’ 2024 function Nosferatu as a transparent instance of a narrative a few vampire who’s repulsive, but compelling. “I used to be like, ‘That man was sizzling for everybody, and he was additionally a monster.’” she says. “I am simply fascinated by the intersection of worry and want, and the way the will is just not at all times genitalia-based. Want can simply be I need them to see me, I wish to be of their gentle, and even one thing you don’t need, however nonetheless really feel.”
Finally, she says pondering of vampires as a queer metaphor, as an emblem of something outdoors of a conventional heteronormative paradigm, is helpful as a result of it helps readers see outdoors of the boundaries they take without any consideration. (This explains rather a lot about Bury Our Bones within the Midnight Soil, which has all its protagonists questioning what they had been taught was true, or what they’re informed they must do, significantly within the roles enforced on them as ladies.)
“I feel something which provides nuance and complexity to the size of attraction between folks is nice,” Schwab says. “As a result of what I am saying after I’m speaking concerning the queer affect is only a broadening: Can we take it away from the binaries? Binaries are so ineffective to me. They’re ineffective to me as a author. They’re ineffective to me as a human. Life exists on spectrums. We aren’t good and evil. Only a few individuals are 100% straight, 100% homosexual. All of us exist on a spectrum that takes in all of our highs and lows and all of our identities. I feel vampires draw the people round them into that spectrum of existence.”
