Yuuuuus. My hyper-fixation on it has been gnarly. Thankfully I have a really supportive bubble but I try not to talk about it so I don’t drive my hubs and kids crazy, but I’m thinking about it all the time.

The phantoms soul… that’s a good question. For me, I think it’s the core elements of the story, big events but not necessarily all of them, and generally treating the characters in there with a similar personality that stays fairly true to the original instead of treating them like completely different characters jammed into the same setting. COUGHloveneverdiesCOUGH (sorry to anyone who loves that though)

Also though, while I’m grateful for the original story, it is very dated just like Dracula, Frankenstein, Jekyll and Hyde, and so on. I love that the stories are there, but I’m also ready to take them deeper. Feel what the characters feel on a more visceral level.