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Searching for information on Victoria Winters, I glimpse articles which suggest Dark Shadows has outgrown her.
Seeing this makes me sad. I wonder if they wouldn’t make Dan Curtis, Dark Shadows’s creator sad as well. A dream about her was what shaped the very idea of Dark Shadows.
The series began with Victoria Winters’s journey. I’ve always felt like that journey was incomplete. That she left before she could finish it. Or gets derailed by Barnabas Collins.
What if she continued that journey? How could she after returning from 1895? Disillusioned from being immersed in a past which felt short of her dreams, nearly hanged for a crime she didn’t commit? She even killed a man in the original series in order to save a life, giving her something in common with Will Graham from the Hannibal TV series. She fell in love with a man in the past who might or might not be part of the present.
All of this strikes me as fertile ground for conflict, change, and growth. The mistake is having Victoria Winters return and not experience these things. Even the actress who played her felt this. My heart went out to Alexandra Moltke, the frustration she felt. The lack of Victoria Winters’s growth was unfair to both the character and the actress.
Yes, Barnabas Collins and Julia Hoffman were and are extremely popular characters on Dark Shadows. I love them, too. There are ways to give Victoria Winters a more dynamic role at the heart of things while providing plenty of drama for Barnabas and Julia.
Easy for me to say years later, not fighting deadlines, studio expectations, and all of the practical concerns you have to cope with or you’re running, writing, or directing a TV series.
Maybe there are things I can do because I’m none of those things. Maybe there are things only I can do because I’m a fanfic writer.
Maybe I can let Victoria Winters finish her journey in a series of steps, stand alone stories which are interconnected.
Maybe in these stories she can discover her heritage, whom she really is. By tweaking a few details in the canon, here and there, her past and her future can be connected, allowing her to play a part in storylines she never got a chance to be involved with in the canon versions.
Maybe I can merge elements of the original Dark Shadows with the 1990s remake, the Innovation comic, and my own ideas to create a robust environment with rainbow flourishes to offer a taste of the Dark Shadows I always dreamed of. A Dark Shadows where Victoria Winters comes into her own as a woman and a witch after nearby being hanged for these things. Maybe she finds the strength to confront problems which others more devious cannot.
I’m still developing these ideas as I write them. I’ve been thinking about them for a long time.
I’d like for Victoria Winters to continue her journey. As a creative, imaginative girl with a hunger for the past, her own past in particular, but any past she can find herself within, she has a lot to offer viewers and readers as a protagonist. She got some of what she wanted in a nightmarish way during the 1795 flashback, but that doesn’t have to be the end. There’s more to learn, more to confront.
There’s something compelling about Victoria Winters’s softly-spoke narrative. Something distinctive and unique. It deserves another chance to speak and be heard.
I hope it will get more opportunities to do so. In the meantime, it speaks to my imagination, compelling me to tell her story where and when I can.
Perhaps it will do so for others as well.
Seeing this makes me sad. I wonder if they wouldn’t make Dan Curtis, Dark Shadows’s creator sad as well. A dream about her was what shaped the very idea of Dark Shadows.
The series began with Victoria Winters’s journey. I’ve always felt like that journey was incomplete. That she left before she could finish it. Or gets derailed by Barnabas Collins.
What if she continued that journey? How could she after returning from 1895? Disillusioned from being immersed in a past which felt short of her dreams, nearly hanged for a crime she didn’t commit? She even killed a man in the original series in order to save a life, giving her something in common with Will Graham from the Hannibal TV series. She fell in love with a man in the past who might or might not be part of the present.
All of this strikes me as fertile ground for conflict, change, and growth. The mistake is having Victoria Winters return and not experience these things. Even the actress who played her felt this. My heart went out to Alexandra Moltke, the frustration she felt. The lack of Victoria Winters’s growth was unfair to both the character and the actress.
Yes, Barnabas Collins and Julia Hoffman were and are extremely popular characters on Dark Shadows. I love them, too. There are ways to give Victoria Winters a more dynamic role at the heart of things while providing plenty of drama for Barnabas and Julia.
Easy for me to say years later, not fighting deadlines, studio expectations, and all of the practical concerns you have to cope with or you’re running, writing, or directing a TV series.
Maybe there are things I can do because I’m none of those things. Maybe there are things only I can do because I’m a fanfic writer.
Maybe I can let Victoria Winters finish her journey in a series of steps, stand alone stories which are interconnected.
Maybe in these stories she can discover her heritage, whom she really is. By tweaking a few details in the canon, here and there, her past and her future can be connected, allowing her to play a part in storylines she never got a chance to be involved with in the canon versions.
Maybe I can merge elements of the original Dark Shadows with the 1990s remake, the Innovation comic, and my own ideas to create a robust environment with rainbow flourishes to offer a taste of the Dark Shadows I always dreamed of. A Dark Shadows where Victoria Winters comes into her own as a woman and a witch after nearby being hanged for these things. Maybe she finds the strength to confront problems which others more devious cannot.
I’m still developing these ideas as I write them. I’ve been thinking about them for a long time.
I’d like for Victoria Winters to continue her journey. As a creative, imaginative girl with a hunger for the past, her own past in particular, but any past she can find herself within, she has a lot to offer viewers and readers as a protagonist. She got some of what she wanted in a nightmarish way during the 1795 flashback, but that doesn’t have to be the end. There’s more to learn, more to confront.
There’s something compelling about Victoria Winters’s softly-spoke narrative. Something distinctive and unique. It deserves another chance to speak and be heard.
I hope it will get more opportunities to do so. In the meantime, it speaks to my imagination, compelling me to tell her story where and when I can.
Perhaps it will do so for others as well.
