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seacavepuzzle · 2 months ago

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For the character asks: Vicki my best friend Vicki <3

GIVE ME A CHARACTER.

How I feel about this character

MY VERY GOOD FRIEND VICTORIA WINTERS! I adore her. I think she’s wonderful and beautiful and the specialest little Jane Eyre this side of the Atlantic. I love that she’s doomed by her relationship with the ghost she adores — the same ghost that leads, inhabits, and protects her. Did Vicki actually die on Widows’ Hill? Did she go back into the past only to be immediately hanged? Is she living out a western in the early 19th century? Did she escape back to 1970 where she’s happily fucking Roger in Europe while ghosts and zombies tear apart Collinwood? Who can say!

in seriousness I do get somewhat frustrated with the way people tend to talk about Vicki? and it’s not really just a fandom issue — her writing gets significantly worse as time goes on, and you sort of get the sense that everyone was bored with Vicki (the writers, producers, and consequently, Alexandra herself), so there’s some justification for the pervasive dislike of her character considering after some point they 1) rob her of her intelligence, curiosity, and stubbornness; 2) strip away her defining character motive without a satisfactory conclusion; 3) make her a passive object in her own romances that lack not just chemistry, but any kind of sincere engagement with Vicki as a character beyond Generic Available Female.

If you joined up after we already swapped Jane Eyre for Dracula, you hardly get to know her nuances beyond Virgin Ingenue. You don’t see her barking back at Roger and Liz when she’s had enough of their lies and intimidation; you don’t see her agreeing to go up to Burke’s hotel room because her curiosity about her origins is stronger than her need for the appearance of virtue; you don’t see her sharing a kinship with David because she was also a lonely, violent, unwanted little kid — or being charmed by Roger because she also has a strange and morbid sense of humor. And you don’t see her going toe-to-toe with Laura even though the supernatural is well beyond her understanding of the world; she isn’t daunted by her lack of knowledge, but perseveres out of a genuine love of David (and, as previously mentioned, a morbid curiosity) — even when men older and allegedly wiser (certainly more wealthy and influential) than her try to stifle her efforts. She’s always out of her depth, from the beginning; and because she’s in comparison to the people around her, she seems like a normal, strait-laced girl scout.

But the heart of who Vicki is is a weirdo who is holding it together under a carefully-constructed veneer of politeness, gentleness, and virtue, because that’s the route she took for a poor girl with no people that love her to gain acceptance and success in the world. And there are always moments where the orphan kid from New York shows up again, or her wants override her sensibilities, or the facade of normalcy fails. She feels belonging with the Collinses — I think — not out of cri du sang, or the love she feels for or from them (there’s not much of that at the start!), but because they share the same kind of strangeness — Vicki’s plaster over the warped planks is just newer and more well-kept than theirs.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Honestly there are a lot of Vicki ships that I enjoy, she has compelling relationships with almost everyone except her canon-mandated husbands. Obviously Roger/Vicki and Roger/Vicki/Burke are my favorite <3 There’s just something about r/v that enamors me and gets more compelling over successive rewatches, which is partly their insane freak4freak chemistry (the Bangor cabin! The rescue from the West Wing! The kidnapping and pleading, purifying confession!) and partly the evolution of their relationship over hundreds of episodes (which is something that DS rarely invests effort in, if at all). To see Roger going from bullying her and scaring her and trying to get her to leave because he feels this curious little girl is a threat to him, to begging her to stay because he can’t imagine his life and home without her? Because she’s one of the few people he finds worth caring about? Going from selfish and conceited and manipulative, to preserving her happiness even at the cost of his own? It drives me insane.

And R/V/B isn’t canon per se (although it’s surprisingly more canon than you would think, considering me and tortie basically made it up) but I think that maybe the most concise way to describe its appeal is a) as their attempt to play out R/L/B again, with justice corrected and love for David, this time (with all of them in semi official, biological, or metaphorical parent roles) and b) the way that they meet each other’s needs, or scratch open each other’s flaws, in ways that they don’t in separate pairs? Par example — Vicki, though she’d never say so, and probably not likely to face it about herself, does enjoy that Roger is willing to yearn and endure wretched loneliness and ten thousand ego deaths for a little bit of time with her — that she’s not just worth love, but suffering, from one of the more selfish people on the Eastern Seaboard? Roger will always put a little more effort in to chasing something he can’t have, and that belongs (rightfully) to Burke. and Burke, for all his efforts to assert himself as Midcentury Ideal Husband and Father, is willing to gamble that stability for the sake of putting Roger on a leash — to rewrite the story of their relationship with himself in control and with his younger double (Vicki) protected from harm. But in a way it’s their sins that go rewarded, because the performances collapse around each other — Vicki makes them vulnerable and honest, Burke and Roger prod into old wounds and egos. And Vicki is (compared to those two) something to be corrupted into something less literary and more human that has desires and jealousies and ugliness.

Anyways. I do also love her with Burke as a pair! Primarily Mitch!Burke, or @tortoisesshells' writing of them as a proper couple, rather than AG!Burke (though as I’m saying this I’m remembering the scrapped dialogue about the apple orchards visible from the west wing, and they did have potential in canon, they just… fell vastly short of what they could have been). I also love her and Carolyn, which is half-incestuous in most answers to Who Are Vicki’s Parents, but I don't really care and honestly that adds something to it from Carolyn's perspective. Everyone cuddles and practices kissing for their boyfriends in bed with their governess, right? And ofc Josette. Which there’s no real simple terms to put them in — they’re doubles, friends, they protect David together, Josette’s freedom relies on Vicki’s doom, Josette possesses her and makes her moan and throw her head back, etc, etc. Vicki’s not weird about anyone quite like she’s weird about Josette. Mildly — Laura, Liz, Maggie. Not as much there but there is considerable chemistry; and I think Liz could have gone in a vastly different direction with her if they didn’t decide to suggest mom!Liz (... maybe I like Lady Dimitrescu and her maidens fic too much) And distantly, though they never, or never substantially interacted — Tony, Quentin, Edward. I just think they would get on. Tony has all her desired qualities of vengeful moral lawyer, Quentin the heart of gold prodigal son, Edward the pretentious family man with a secret bisexual triangle. It'd work! and Quentin is always in the market for another true love of the week.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

David. Partly as a parallel to her romantic relationship with Roger (another petulant, lonely boy who lashes out at those who try to care for him) and it evolves on a similar track over time as Vicki doggedly pursues compassion even in the face of worsening threats against her. I mentioned this above, but I think part of the reason she feels such a strong bond with David is not just the loneliness, or the separation from their parents, or their affinity with ghosts as the patron protectors of outsiders among the Collins family — but that Vicki deeply understands his desire to go ape shit and turn violent on a world that was unloving to him. And if there’s a reason she forgives him the kidnapping, abetting her attempted killer, the patricide, etc; it’s that, not just because Vicki, generally, forgives more than Jesus Christ. Vicki sees David’s intelligence (even if put to horrible uses), his artistic sensibilities (again, kind of devastating outcomes here) and actively encourages them — wants him to daydream, wants him to see beauty in the world and be recognized for something other than Roger’s monstrous son, that we’re really not 100% sure is Roger’s, anyway.

And the Laura arc really adds such dimension to their relationship — oceans more than just the typical bonding between the governess and child figure? She begins really firmly on Laura’s side in part because she sees herself so strongly in David, and there’s no stronger fantasy in her mind than her mother showing up unexpectedly to claim her and take her away with her to love. And Vicki, at the beginning of that arc, sees no higher degree of love beyond blood ties — to separate a child from his mother would be cruelty in her mind. But as the arc continues, her own love for David strengthens and she takes the threat Laura poses more and more seriously, to the extent that it’s her love that saves him — not a biological mother, but a symbolic one, via preserving/giving him life. (And you could really go one step further and say that even though she has a relationship with both his official and biological father, since there’s a lot of emphasis on the unconsummated nature of those relationships, there’s a biblical virginal element as well)

Anyway! I digress. If there is any kind of resolution within the show itself to Vicki’s own search for family, I think it’s also the Laura arc — that she asserts (and proves!) her and David’s bond is stronger than that between a blood mother and son, relegating blood relationships as not in themselves the ultimate degree of belonging and care. And that she self-defines her role in the Collins family: not as unwanted daughter, but protective mother. The question over David’s paternity is put to rest, then, at the same time that Vicki’s is — they love each other, even if their mothers didn’t; Burke loves him regardless of if he can claim him or not, and Roger (largely through Vicki’s efforts to protect David) comes around to care about his son as a person, rather than an unfortunate extension of the rot born out of the trial.

My unpopular opinion about this character

I like her

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

Other than generally not writing her Badly and keeping her on the show … hm. I do think it’s unfortunate that she’d been swapped for Maggie by the time the Quentin haunting happens, because I think Vicki being the governess while David’s possessed/dying would have been much more emotionally meaningful. Not that Maggie doesn’t care for him! But it’s not nearly on the same level as Vicki and David’s relationship — after having saved him from a blood relative who wanted to possess him and gain his love to the level of corruption and death once already. And I think Vicki being there would have drawn out more of the other themes of family that go unremarked on (well, maybe not, considering their laziness with Vicki’s writing by that point, but in my dream world).

What I mean is that Quentin’s haunting is a return to form for the show, in that their biggest threat to themselves (i.e. to the corruptible nuclear family structure, isolated against the outside world and made vulnerable to abuse within) is the incestuous older generation feasting upon the young — either metaphorically, with Liz and Roger draining Carolyn and David, or literally with Laura and Barnabas returning to fuel their eternal lives with those of their descendants. They digress away from that for quite a while and wander around in outsiders causing all of their wrongs — Barnabas' witch ex-wife, or her devilish middle-manager, or Frankenstein, or reincarnated French serial killer women, or mad camp doctors, or Jeff. But Quentin’s arrival is similar to form to Barnabas’ release — the walled-up family secret, freed through curiosity and transgressing forbidden ancestral ground — but they don’t fully dive into the implications of that, imo. And Vicki being there, who craves a place of belonging in the family tree, would make — raw? Roger’s son being claimed (and consequently drained) by the spirit of his father, because of the jealous, possessive love of his great uncle — by, mostly, his family not being willing to address secrets, but sweeping them under various rugs to rot until it poisons the next generation. And she could witness another attempted David patricide! This time caring a little more significantly about Roger than she did the first time.

I do like David uncovering his own doom? (And Amy uncovering her own blood secret, inadvertently) But I think there’s potential to continue the long-abandoned thread of Vicki’s intended restoring of the West Wing to live in (with Barnabas’ help), because it picks up that theme of … remaking the past the way it was, but fashioned forcefully into a romantic and idealized image, in the body of the new, as parallel to Barnabas remaking his relationship to Josette in Maggie’s body, and Quentin remaking his relationship to Jamison in David. (If she’s intending to marry into the family itself with Roger, so much the better — talk about inheriting ghoulish in-laws!) but I think it picks at the scab of Vicki’s empty family tree either way, and Vicki and David as a pair have a long history with imprisonment in the west wing. I’d like to see Vicki begin the process of unearthing secrets in that wing, which could prompt David’s curiosity to pry further at loose boards and false walls. and they can deal meanwhile with Vicki's ghosts — her latest husband, or the life she might have had with Burke here, or her own family secrets that she never seems to manage to unearth (which, one might suppose, is for the best, considering what tends to happen when we find long-lost relatives around here)

#words of an unbelievably soothing quality #dark shadows

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