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Post by Trace on Aug 6, 2016 23:51:23 GMT
Exactly right...it follows right into The Salem Branch....and you will find out if Antoinette is Angelique or not. It's all explained! Enjoy DotD!
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Post by barnabaslives on Aug 7, 2016 2:18:56 GMT
Yes, the Old House had a fire, but they state that it wasn't completely burned down, and it's my understanding that the new totally-not-Angelique owner wants to have it completely restored, so that's no issue. Really seems like a tragedy after Frid's stunning recitation to Vicki of the detail that went into the place, but Gods only know what they'll find if they do too much restoring - bodies, the uncensored Collins history, seventeen secret rooms, six sets of shackles, three coffins, Willie Loomis, and OMG - come to think of it, wasn't that the last place we saw Quentin's portrait on the OS was up in the Old House attic?!?
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Post by omega on Aug 7, 2016 2:55:35 GMT
Speaking of which, I had gotten my timelines mixed up earlier. Angelique's not actually around in the audios during this period, is she? She doesn't really show up again until the Tony & Cassandra stuff. So I guess there's plenty of room there (well, a few years) for her to show up again as "Cassandra" and start reintegrating herself into high society. Yes, the Old House had a fire, but they state that it wasn't completely burned down, and it's my understanding that the new totally-not-Angelique owner wants to have it completely restored, so that's no issue. It seems to me that it's a rather common trope to have a new vampire running around for a story or so. Happens in a couple of the other novels as well, yes? So, final rambling thought, the 1971 segments basically serve as a prologue to The Salem Branch, yes? I'll get there eventually. Next up, Dreams of the Dark, featuring Vicki! Angelique shows up as Cassandra shortly after Vicki gets back from 1795, and starts using Tony as her agent. Dreams of the Dark has a short-term vampire character. As far as I can tell this is set after 1795 but before Cassandra comes on the scene (and thus before Vicki buys the portrait of Angelique which compels Roger to make Dr Lang overact more than he usually does). A couple of minor continuity quirks, but this was written when the only way to watch the episodes was either video tape (you'd need a whole extension to your house to store all the Dark Shadows episodes on that format) or not at all, and before the age of the internet and the Dark Shadows wiki.
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Post by Zagreus on Aug 7, 2016 5:11:01 GMT
I think I figured that Dreams of the Dark has to take place between episodes 462 and 463 somewhere, ie: Barnabas mucking with Vicki's memories at the end of 462 (she seems to think that her time in the past was a strange dream in the novel) and Vicki coming home with the painting of Angelique (the epilogue seems to be about Angelique coming up with the idea to seduce Roger).
I'm only a handful of chapters in, but I'm enjoying it so far. I've moved into the period of the show that has pretty much ceased to focus on Victoria, basically relegating her to a background plot in what has quickly become The Barney and Angey Show, so having a novel with her as the main focus is quite nice. I've only got a couple hundred more episodes before she gets written out, and god I'm going to miss her.
I wonder if they could talk Moltke or Going into doing an audiobook reading of this.
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Post by omega on Aug 7, 2016 5:30:15 GMT
I think I figured that Dreams of the Dark has to take place between episodes 462 and 463 somewhere, ie: Barnabas mucking with Vicki's memories at the end of 462 (she seems to think that her time in the past was a strange dream in the novel) and Vicki coming home with the painting of Angelique (the epilogue seems to be about Angelique coming up with the idea to seduce Roger). I'm only a handful of chapters in, but I'm enjoying it so far. I've moved into the period of the show that has pretty much ceased to focus on Victoria, basically relegating her to a background plot in what has quickly become The Barney and Angey Show, so having a novel with her as the main focus is quite nice. I've only got a couple hundred more episodes before she gets written out, and god I'm going to miss her. I wonder if they could talk Moltke or Going into doing an audiobook reading of this. Even in 1795 Vicki gets sidelined in favor of Angelique and Barnabas. I'm in the early Adam episodes (around 502/503), and waiting for Vicki to return when she inevitably gets the Dream Curse (aka the way to keep all the actors around during this very Barnabas-centric period). Apart from Jeff Clark possibly being Peter Bradford, Vicki doesn't have much of a storyline anymore. I think it was around this period that Moltke was contemplating leaving. I can't really blame her, but Vicki never really adapted into what Dark Shadows had become. I'd say that it was Roger coming into contact with the portrait that gave Angelique influence over him. I know I'm trying to apply logic to something like Dark Shadows, but hear me out. The only way Angelique could have influence events was to compel Vicki to purchase the portrait, leading to contact with Roger and her manipulations of him (a number of characters connect Roger's strange behavior to the portrait). Cassandralique actually states it was Vicki's time traveling shenanigans that alerted her to what was happening in the present, so perhaps she cast some compulsion on her in 1795 in order to gain a foothold in 1968. Alternatively, the audio Echoes of Insanity has Angelique interrogate Willie while he's in Windcliff, learning of Julia's intended cure. Confused? That's where logic in Dark Shadows gets you. That's an issue that's faced sometimes when writers try to squeeze new stories into a gap that doesn't really exist, especially in a soap like Dark Shadows where there's never a point where a storyline isn't running.
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Post by Zagreus on Aug 7, 2016 6:25:33 GMT
Yeah I'm looking at the wiki and for that time period Vicki's only listed as being in every fifth episode or so. Unfortunate :/
I'm looking forward the Heiress bringing her home, and hope the audios can follow suit at some point.
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Post by Zagreus on Aug 9, 2016 7:12:08 GMT
Am now a little under halfway through Dreams of the Dark. It's good so far. Only like two days have passed, story-wise, and we've spent a good half the book just getting Rathburn into town and introducing him to everybody. So, very much like the show in that regard. I could easily see this being four or five episodes in length, depending on what happens in the latter half of the novel, filling up about a week. Definitely comes between episodes 462 and 463. Vicki no longer knows she's traveled in time, Barnabas having smoothed over her memories at the end of 462. This is also the only period of the show where Barnabas, briefly, feigns romantic interest in Vicki, more concerned with her revealing his secrets than actual romance, and briefly plans to elope with and whisk her away.
Burke and Peter have both been mentioned, when talking about Victoria's past loves, or what she thinks of as loves, but isn't sure at the moment, in her confused state.
Rathburn is... idk. I'm not super enamored with vampires to be honest, so having another moody elegant stranger with a thick accent and vampire powers roaming around Collinsport doesn't really do much for me. I understand that they wanted to push boundaries with the novels, and do stuff they couldn't on the show, but I don't think we really needed to see the scene of his wife's rape and murder played out in flashback.
Angelique is a presence in the book, if not really seen in person as of yet. She was in the prologue, and is obviously driving events, but isn't taking much of an active roll at the moment.
In an imaginary reading / dramatization of this, who would play Rathburn? If id had been part of the show proper, I'd almost be tempted to suppose this as the final showing of Anthony George, across five episodes. As far as the audios go.... I propose Alex Mallinson. He played a dying civil war soldier in The Carrion Queen, and an unnamed vampire in Operation Victor. Getting him to play the roll of Thomas Rathburn, soldier turned vampire during the civil war, could allow one to suppose that that all three of those rolls are one in the same character!
Anyway, onwards, to the latter half of the book!
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Post by Zagreus on Aug 10, 2016 6:16:32 GMT
Well, I hadn't intended to sit down and finish this all in one go, but that seems to be what I've done. So... notes. Hmm. The latter half of the book is a bit of a rush. The whole story takes place over the course of not even a week. Maybe four days. Five? I may have lost track a bit. A week's worth of episodes, let's say. Rathburn ignores Barnabas' warnings to stay the hell away from Victoria, and instead gets closer than one probably should, at least until the third date. He then, of course, finds out that his strong attraction to her is most likely Angelique's doing, and feels kind of horrid about it, offering to help Barnabas stick it to her on Halloween night. Victoria spends a lot of time having Angelique-induced more-than-hallucinations about her time in the past, and we get a nice little spectral cameo from The Reverend Orville Viloris Trask (I will never stop using his full name, now that we know it ) We find that one Andrew Collins, cousin to Edward Collins and son to Gordon Collins, was the one responsible for the deaths of Rathburn's wife and son. The fire that Trace remembers at the end of the book is in Eagle Hill, and is confined to the summoning circle Barney and Rathburn have whipped up to teach Angelique a lesson. By the end, Rathburn's dead and he's smoothed out the hatchet job Barnabas did on Victoria's memories, so she'll be well and happy again, just in time for the next episode (463! Just in time to go buy a painting!). And at the very end, Vicki is also, most surprisingly, tacitly let known by Elizabeth about some of her parentage, under the auspices that "some things must never be spoken aloud", for fear of curses and consequences, the implication being that Paul was not happy about the baby, with all that that entails. So, Victoria knows, but is also determined to never actually say anything about it out loud, as per Liz's wishes. For all the good it did her. For an audio reading, I'd want Going and Ben Cross, just to thoroughly confuse matters. For an adaption... well, shit. First of all, it's 23 chapters, but you'd probably only need like five or six episodes to get through everything that happens. Maybe four forty-five minute episodes, similar to Blood & Fire. You'd have Angelique, you'd need someone to play "classic" Barnabas, someone to play Rathburn, Liz, Roger, young David, Carolyn, Sheriff Patterson, Mrs Johnson, and Roger's man Stiles. Curiously, Julia's nowhere to be seen, or even so much as mentioned. Oh, I guess you've the short scene with The Reverend Orville Viloris Trask as well. And, of course, someone to play Victoria Winters. But yeah, I enjoyed it. A little tired of everything being about Barnabas and Angelique, but that's just part and parcel with the series at this point I guess. Was nice to get more Victoria, and Rathburn was a fun diversion (for Vicki as well ), even if he only lasts for a week. Now... what's next on the list? Ah, I see it's Labyrinth of Souls. Cool.
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Post by Zagreus on Aug 10, 2016 23:00:35 GMT
Okay, just a quick note, was Angelique not alive at the end of the show? Like, the Angelique who died in Barnabas' arms in 1840 was chronologically from 1840, not some time travelling shenanigans, right? So her timeline would be something like:
1795 storyline 1840 storyline The Final Judgement The Carrion Queen 1967 - Echoes of Insanity 1968 - Dreams of the Dark 1968 - "Cassandra Collins" Time travels back to 1897 to fiddlesticks with Barnabas, has a thing with Quentin 1970 - lives out her life to modern day, marries and retires from witchcraft before fighting leviathans 1973 - The Tony & Cassandra Mysteries 1982 - House of Despair, and beyond
So, why is Angelique's Descent acting like she chronologically died most recently in the 1840 storyline, even though that's relatively early in her life from her POV?
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Post by omega on Aug 10, 2016 23:20:41 GMT
So, why is Angelique's Descent acting like she chronologically died most recently in the 1840 storyline, even though that's relatively early in her life from her POV? Like I said before, these books, or at least Angelique's Descent and Dreams of the Dark, were written in the 90's when the episodes weren't readily available nor the internet as it is today. Lara Parker couldn't go on the Dark Shadows wiki, get out the coffin box set or consult an online for research purposes. Indeed, the liner notes for the Angelique's Descent audios have Lara Parker saying that it was the writers on the 1991 series asking her about Angelique's origin story that inspired her to write the novel. The section of the audio at least that covers 1795 has some notable differences from what we see in the TV episodes, even if some of those differences can be accounted for by the novel version being Angelique-centric (no mention of Vicki, Abigail or Trask for example) it's possible there are some things Lara could only have found by rewatching old episodes or consulting the internet. The fact that Lara had to be asked about Angelique's background shows that the information, or lack of, wasn't available to the writers of the revival, which Dan Curtis worked on.
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Post by Zagreus on Aug 10, 2016 23:26:08 GMT
Ah that's a good point I suppose. And I guess it makes sense, from that point of view, that Lara's book would follow on from the last performance she made as the character, specifics indeterminate as they were at the time.
Do The Salem Branch and/or Wolf Moon Rising do anything towards reconciling these continuity hiccups, being written much more recently?
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Post by omega on Aug 10, 2016 23:37:39 GMT
Ah that's a good point I suppose. And I guess it makes sense, from that point of view, that Lara's book would follow on from the last performance she made as the character, specifics indeterminate as they were at the time. Do The Salem Branch and/or Wolf Moon Rising do anything towards reconciling these continuity hiccups, being written much more recently? No idea, I really should get my hands on them. It must have been tough being a collector of TV shows in the VHS days, building an extension to your house just to store a few seasons of something. Thank goodness for DVDs being so slim, able to hold more and contain special features like commentaries. It also makes season box sets more affordable and more environmentally friendly (much less plastic!).
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Post by Zagreus on Aug 10, 2016 23:42:48 GMT
My parents used to have an entire wall of Doctor Who VHS tapes that I, a few years back, sat down with a usb tape-player and converted the entire corpus to digital, the entirety of the classic run they had either commercially or taped off of broadcast now fitting on an external drive the size of my wallet, alongside Blake's 7, Red Dwarf, and The Red Green Show.
Anyway, I've got both The Salem Branch and Wolf Moon Rising, and will be getting to them after Labyrinth of Souls and Hawkes Harbor. Though, I was recently made aware of Dark Passages, so I might slot that in the queue appropriately.
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Post by Trace on Aug 12, 2016 1:37:24 GMT
Ah that's a good point I suppose. And I guess it makes sense, from that point of view, that Lara's book would follow on from the last performance she made as the character, specifics indeterminate as they were at the time. Do The Salem Branch and/or Wolf Moon Rising do anything towards reconciling these continuity hiccups, being written much more recently? All I will say is that Angelique DOES play a big role in both books, in the flesh. If you recall I was equally cryptic about Antoinette at the end of AD...is she or isn't she? And I think that's the question our main characters were wondering too. The answers are not as predictable as one may think at first! Ah, yes...Dark Passages! While not really a Dark Shadows novel, one could certainly see it as another parallel version of our story! I really enjoyed it!
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Post by Zagreus on Aug 15, 2016 1:29:40 GMT
Intriguing stuff! I'm looking forward to getting to them in the stack.
Am currently about a third of the way through Labyrinth of Souls. Quentin is home, suddenly aging. Carolyn has been attacked by some weird spider thing. And a very old very scarred man has moved into the next estate over. I... think that's probably all the setup out of the way, if this follows the same format as Dreams of the Dark. Let's see where this all goes, shall we?
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Post by Trace on Aug 15, 2016 2:03:53 GMT
You know, all this talk about the DS books has me wanted to read them all again--INCLUDING the 33 Marilyn Ross novels, which, while somewhat formulaic and repetitive, are just each unique enough to provide intrigue all the way through. As I recall, the other time I read them, I did them in about 2 months, averaging about 1 book every other day. At only 150 pages each (and very easy reading) one can literally fly through them!
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Post by Zagreus on Aug 15, 2016 3:43:35 GMT
I've spent so much time collecting Doctor Who over the years that the amount of Dark Shadows that exists is relatively small in comparison, and I'm sorely tempted to make a go at owning all of it in some form or other. How would one go about getting ahold of those 33 Marilyn Ross novels?
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Post by Trace on Aug 15, 2016 4:38:47 GMT
eBay is the best way! Most of them will be easy to find for small money. Just a few of them (like the last one) will be harder to locate but eventually they will be there. I had to pay over $30 for a couple of them--the rarest ones.
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Post by Zagreus on Aug 15, 2016 6:34:17 GMT
An where in the sequence should one read "The Secret of Victoria Winters"?
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Post by Trace on Aug 16, 2016 0:56:30 GMT
Vicki is only in the first six or seven novels if I recall correctly, and sometimes only in the framing sequence. Later she gives up the heroine throne to Maggie, Carolyn, and a number of other past and present girls! None of the stories are necessarily sequential, except in the vaguest of ways...BUT, I would say read The Secret of VW immediately following her last appearance in the books. It is very clear in all the books that she doesn't know her own secret yet....so The Secret of VW would have to be the last Vicki story.
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