#WritersCoffeeClub Jan 2: Talk about something you’ve retold.
"What You Will: A Queer-er Shakespeare" is a re-telling of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night with the queer turned up to 11.
If you aren't familiar with Shakespeare, it may surprise you that he was a very queer writer. There's decent evidence based on his sonnets that the man was bisexual and had a specific man who was, if not his lover, than at least his muse.
And Twelfth Night was his queerest play.
It's also my favorite (not entirely because of it's inherent queerness). But, all the queerness is implied. Very loudly implied in some cases, but still... and I could make an argument that Orsino and Viola's relationship is the first known case of queer baiting, because the whole play is Orsino falling in love with who he thinks is a man, then at the very end Viola is revealed to actually be a woman, and Orsino is like, 'wonderful, let's get married.' And suddenly the implied queer relationship is a-ok because it was never queer in the first place!
Gag.
So I decided one day to retell the play as prose (I intended novel, but it ended up being novella length). I used all the original dialog with only a few mostly small changes, made Viola a trans egg who never goes back to living as a woman, and made... well, if you're interested in the rest, here's a link, you can check it out:
