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“Toujours” — A Dark Shadows Story

by Barb Lien-Cooper

FOREWORD:

Like a lot of Dark Shadows fans, I was not a fan of the character of Roxanne Drew. I eventually realized that the reason I had no emotional connection to her was that she had just sort of showed up one day in Parallel Time. Usually, when the DS writers introduced a new character, the new character either had a major tie to the Collins family, or a tie to a character on the show that wasn’t a Collins, or the new character would be a major player in the plot that was going to be introduced. None of this seemed to properly apply to Roxanne. The writers had Barnabas say he was falling in love with her, and we, the viewers, were just supposed to accept that idea.

I said to my husband once that I had an idea for a story concerning how Roxanne could’ve been introduced to the audience in a way that might have worked better, which is how this story came to be.

However, much later, as I was writing this story, the idea I had turned into something else: the story of a very unusual friendship.

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A Dark Shadows Story: The Stuff Nightmares Are Made Of

Tony Peterson sat in his law office in Bangor, Maine, thinking about how far he’d come in such a short period of time. I went from trying to sue the Collins family for a worker’s injury—and lost— he thought, to moving to Bangor and starting over again with this practice. The clients kept pouring in, as if by magic…

Tony shuddered a bit at the word magic. He did not want to think about Cassandra Collins, and the love spell she’d put on him to bend him to her will…

He was shaken out of his thoughts by a knock on the door. “It’s open,” he called.

Tony’s secretary Effie came in with a package. “Today’s post had something unusual in it,” she said. “There’s no return address, but the name on the package just says ‘Cassandra…’”

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War and Remembrance: How Dark Shadows Makes the Political Personal in 1795

One (or 8 for that matter) isn’t enough to satisfy y’all! So here’s another essay about the 1966-1971 gothic daytime soap opera Dark Shadows

In my previous essay about Angelique, I mentioned that Angelique had ambitions to better her station in life. Angelique, a lady’s maid to Countess Natalie du Prés, was raised from a young age as a servant. In the du Prés household in Martinique, Angelique learned the manners and mannerisms of the upper class, and wanted the lifestyle they lived.

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Was Angelique SO Wrong? (A Dark Shadows Essay)

Time for another essay about the 1966-1971 gothic daytime soap opera Dark Shadows

When it comes to the 1795 Dark Shadows storyline, I am a bit of an Angelique apologist, with two huge exceptions:

1/ What Angelique does to Victoria Winters, the only person who, in the Collins household, offers Angelique friendship, one of the few people who wants to be kind to Angelique, and Angelique frames Vicki for being a witch (instead of herself)! Yes, it was an act of self-preservation on Angelique’s part, but it was still a nasty thing to do.

2/ What Angelique does to Sarah Collins when Barnabas tells Angelique that he knows that Angelique is a witch. Yeah, I get it, Angelique, you’re angry as heck at Barnabas, but sticking pins in a voodoo doll representing Barnabas’ little sister and then threatening to stick one right in the dolly’s heart? Sorry, that’s a step way, way too far. I was totally on your side before that (I wasn’t all that fond of Vicki, sorry).

Still… let me tell you why I have more compassion for Angelique than I do for most villains.

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WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT DARK SHADOWS (Part TWO): How To Watch Dark Shadows

Okay so: Dark Shadows. The 1966-1971 gothic soap opera. Maybe you are thinking about watching it.

Here’s some stuff you need to know.

You have two options:

1. Start at the very beginning. NOT RECOMMENDED UNLESS YOU ARE INTO 1960s SOAP OPERAS IN THE FIRST PLACE. OR unless you are not used to scary/supernatural stories in the first place. If you are not used to scary/supernatural stories, then yeah, maybe you di want to start with episode 1. (But if either of those don’t sound like you, then come back and watch the first 209 episodes later, after you’re totally hooked.)

2. RECOMMENDED for some people : You might want to consider starting with the vampire. The vampire is where practically everyone, at the time, started paying attention.