Vermilion is about a ghost hunter in the 1800s who is hired to investigate rumors of a vampire running a mental asylum in the Colorado rocky mountains. So it's definitely a Weird Western and I was interested. But as the story went on, I started to notice a trend in all the characters. I'm going to give some mild spoilers in terms of the characters, but no plot points.
The main character is a 19 year old girl who dresses and acts like a boy to get a job as a ghost hunter. I figured "sure, standard Mulan scenario" and didn't think anything of it. And then on her journey, she meets a male familiar who's attracted to the male vampire. I figured "that's an interesting twist on the vampire seduction trope" and still didn't think much of it. And then the main character runs into the boy she has an unrequited crush on and the boy reveals he's actually gay and introduces the main character to his boyfriend. Sure, a gay character, that's a pretty solid reason for the crush to continue being unrequited. And then the main character reaches the mental asylum and meets a girl whose parents sent her to the asylum because she's gay and her parents wanted to "fix" her. And this point, I finally had the realization that pretty much every named character in this story is queer in some way. My "standard Mulan scenario" was probably leaning closer to trans and I just wasn't thinking of it that way.
Having queer characters doesn't affect the plot at all, but the author really seemed to go out of her way to include as many queer characters as she could. So if you're on the look-out for a queer Weird Western, maybe you'll enjoy Vermilion.
