𝔅𝔞𝔯𝔫𝔞𝔟𝔞𝔰 ℭ𝔬𝔩𝔩𝔦𝔫𝔰.

You've heard of multi-shipper now get ready for multi-headcanoner: where multiple interpretations of the same character coexist in your head and they are all great.

Something I hadn't grappled much with before, but now am thinking about in my second Shadows watch, is how important Vicki's attachment to and relationship with Josette's ghost is to both her character, and her narrative weight on the show - and how those things are a casualty of Barnabas emerging from the family crypt. By moving into the Old House, Barnabas literally replaces Josette as the spirit of that House and the most important supernatural power there! It was Josette who appeared to Vicki before her anticipated death, telling her "Don't be afraid,", it was Josette's voice repeating Bill's posthumous charge against Matthew (a life for a life), and it is Josette who will be David and Vicki's greatest champion against Laura in the Phoenix arc. I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but I'm appending it to my usual list of "ways Barnabas's arrival did Vicki's character dirty": making Vicki's connection to the Collins's ancestral past irrelevant.

the "my favorite character did nothing wrong" mindset is completely unappealing to me because i love thinking about all the things my favorite characters did wrong

Barnabas

Thank Queer Barnabas🙏