Reimagining of Vampire Academy

So unfortunately, with the first Vampire Academy book being almost 20 years old now, it has aged. And it really hasn’t aged well. Like, there’s countless 200 year old books you could point to that aged better than this one did. But still, I wonder. If I was given a mandate to adapt it today, to like a second TV show, what would I do with it?

As mentioned, the books aged not particularly well, so you can’t really adapt it “as is” since you got stuff like the first book being like 50% just slutshaming and homophobia, neither of which gets done today, and people don’t really care to see it in a period piece for more than like an hour anyway. So how would I reimagine it?

First of all, Rose is a transgender girl. Whaaaaat? Well, Rose, even in the original, always seemed really transfem coded to me. There’s always this edge to her where she wants to be a teenage girl, where she wants to be feminine and be all these things, and she does do them in the few little moments she gets the opportunity to, but ultimately the world just doesn’t really let her.

Off the top of my mind I can think of passages like her wearing Tasha’s dress to Priscilla’s banquet, or doing her nails with Lissa when they got the opportunity,it’s or all the pretty clothes in Russia. Mind you, all of these were thwarted by something (by her mother, the nail polish chipping off, or the impracticality of traveling with luggage).

Lissa has ASPD. This is more of a wild one. It’s mostly based on vibes to be honest. Rose was always partly taking care of a chronically mentally ill girl, so that part is not new, not really. I’m not sure what exactly led me to this specifically, but I think the result is interesting.

Of course, in the original, she was very empathetic, so this is almost like an inversion of that part of her character. However, with being a spirit user already being a disorder of sorts, I think this complements that pretty well actually. It’s this sort of ancient, seemingly unfixable “damage” that she has to carry around with herself everywhere, and something Rose has to manage as well. I also just think that once you get down to it, it really can make the stories more interesting.

Rose is in love with Lissa. That’s another issue with the books aging, especially with the first book: the way its written, it’s almost impossible to read it now without reading the relationship between Rose and Lissa as incredibly gay. In my opinion, “fixing” this would require such structural changes that it’s not worth it and might as well just lean into it.

So yea, Rose is in love with Lissa. And Lissa knows it. And one of the new big themes of the story is whether Lissa can ever love her back. I think by the time we meet them, this has been the status quo for a while for them, so it’s just this thing that’s boiling over in the background perpetually, from before Rose even knew she was trans. Speaking of which.

Rose finds out she’s trans while she’s hiding with Lissa in Portland, and fully transitions there, supported by Lissa every step of the way. Feels like just the most natural time. And it achieves that, by the time we meet her, she’s already herself and so when the Moroi world strikes back, we really see the contrast in their treatment of her. Speaking of which.

When the guardians come for them, they just see Lissa feeding on what they assume is a random human girl. When Dmitri gets them into the car, he probably even asks Lissa “where’s novice Hathaway?” only for her to gesture to Rose. Rose’s attitude throughout this is more resigned than would be typical for her perhaps. A defense mechanism. Lissa’s really the one that advocates for her. And she does it well. Playing this role of an incredibly empathetic, progressive princess.

When the characters get settled a bit into the Academy again, Lissa encounters Christian and does pursue him, which Rose is jealous of for a bit, before she realizes that Lissa is mostly doing it just to entertain herself, with Christian being just the right amount of fucked up.

Mia is probably the character that tends to go through the most changes in adaptations. No different here. Here she’s actually quite similar to the book: hurt, insecure, traumatized by poverty. She acts antagonistic to Lissa, but not really to Rose. But since Rose is, as always, so consumed by Lissa, an attack on Lissa doesn’t register as different from an attack on her, and since the story is narrated by her unrealiable self, we the audience think Mia is antagonistic to them both.

In the beginning, it’s always quite ambiguous why Mia is like that. Some petty squabble between her and Lissa or something, it’s never stated out loud, Lissa never really says anything about it. Eventually, though, it gets revealed to the audience that Mia and Lissa were in a relationship of sorts. But Lissa pretty much just toyed with her and treated her like shit. And once we know this, it recontextualizes everything. Mia really is just a hurt girl. And all the conversations she had with Rose are just her trying to get Rose to have a life outside of Lissa. To be healthier than she was.

The craziest part though, comes when we find out that Lissa & Mia wasn’t actually over by the time Rose & Lissa ran away (induced by Sonya compelling Rose). And that Mia was basically left sulking over being abandoned. Though she mostly blamed that on Lissa, with Lissa already being the one that treated her bad and everything.

Once we get to the “Lissa’s spirit addiction” beat, we find out something new: spirit usage lessens the symptoms of Lissa’s ASPD temporarily. We find this out when Rose asks her why she keeps using spirit and Lissa breaks down, saying it’s because she loves her. Like. Actually. Loves her. And eventually that she feels so bad about what she did to Mia, which is the first time either of them acknowledge what happened as wrong.

Eventually though, the moment passes. Lissa stops using spirit and goes back to her usual state. It’s very bittersweet. With Rose asking her if she’s going to do anything about Mia. Lissa pretty much just signals to her to back off. After this, we start getting some more Mia & Rose being friendly content.

It’s still a major question whether Lissa’s condition can be improved long term. There’s this implication that maybe the reason why Lissa treated Rose so well over the years was that during the night of the car crash, when spirit flowed through her in a big way for the first time, she felt the love she had for Rose, and then remembered it for years after. It also serves as a major motivation for Lissa’s study of spirit.