I’m wondering what other totally non-MC classic stories could be transformed into Spiral stories by someone with sufficient imagination and skill …
I think it’s a good question for the forum. I’ll go first: I think Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter would be a good candidate. Of course Hester Prynne has to become Lester. Rev. Dimmesdale should be an anti-gay preacher, but over the course of the story is not only revealed to be an insatiable gay man but it’s revealed that Lester is warping his mind and bringing him lower than Lester.
Jane Eyre might work, although it would have to be ‘John Eyre’. He goes to work as a tutor for Mr Rochester’s (male) ward. If set in modern times, they could attempt to get married, only to find that Mr Rochester’s deranged former husband is still alive in the attic.
It’s more folklore than a classic story, but for obvious reasons, I have to go with Robin Hood. How did he get his band of Merry Men? Surely, that many law-abiding young men can’t all want to side with our anti-hero. It’s rumoured that some who enter Sherwood Forest…never leave. No one thought twice about it being mostly men who disappeared—after all, nearly all who went through the forest were men such as caravan guards and the various trappings that surround royalty. Furthering that oversight, there was the Maid Marian. She was able to traverse the woods safely and, as a result, it was widely rumoured that she might even be a love interest of Robin Hood’s. Who would ever suspect that she actually remained unharmed so she could act as Robin Hood’s beard in the wild rumours about him that were so commonly heard in the local pubs?
Also, while not exactly what the OP was asking for in that there’s no MC in it, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the 2003 re-telling of Oliver Twist, featuring the hot boy from Terminator 3, Nick Stahl, as a hustler named Dodge in modern day Toronto.
And speaking of the retelling of folklore, I was going to suggest @RobinHood70’s Der Rattenfänger, although the classic it is based on might have had some MC already. Still, a very cool update.
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” - substitue a secret gay sex cult for the secret devil worshippers.
William Golding’s Lord of the Flies - age the characters up (college students? athletes?) and change the descent into violence when they’re stranded on the island into a descent into gay sex. (This one has probably already been done.)
Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew - make it same-sex and change the ‘taming’ to humiliation/ mind control.
I’m thinking of Shaw’s Pygmalion or Lerner’s My Fair Lady. I mention both to give an option, as in the Shaw there is no love interest between Higgins and Eliza while in the musical there clearly is a love interest. Here you have Pygmalion mold the mind of guy (I’ll call him Eli, perhaps a straight guy) and teach him how to love. The end result could be that Eli learns what love is about far more than Higgins could and ultimately rejects him (the Shaw ending) or that Eli has learned not only to love but accept the weaknesses of the one who molded him (the Lerner ending).
Maybe one could go further and have Eli turn the tables and mold Higgins to his will.
Also, it just occured to me that @StageShowMM has just started a new series called A Thousand and One Hypnotic Nights which is, of course, a retelling of the classic One Thousand and One Nights. So far a really good start! Eager to see how it continues.
