Petals on the Wind, Part Nine: You Really Didn't Think This Revenge Thing Through, Did You?

Greetings to the thousand extra page views per day I've been getting since Lifetime released Flowers in the Attic! 

 I feel I should warn you right now: if you love these books unconditionally, this blog is probably going to disappoint or upset you.  Here at the VCABlogorama, our love for the works of V.C. Andrews is as conditional as it is genuine, and we do a lot of snarking and criticizing.  The lesson of V.C. Andrews' novels is that people sometimes do terrible things out of love.  We snark because we love.    And hey!  At least I'm not poisoning anyone's doughnuts!*

But to serious matters.

This section is a little . . . rapey.  I dare say this is about as rapey as these books get, at least until we get to My Sweet Audrina (where I advise you to slip on some hip-waders because we're going to be wallowing in it).  It is almost impossible to get through this section without devolving into babbling Lovecraftian incoherence about how rape is portrayed in this section.  Therefore, trigger warning:

You have been warned by Trigger!

Petals on the Wind, Part Eight: Everything's Coming Up Carrie

Carrie is the buttmonkey of this series.

Fairly recently a commenter said that the character of Carrie made her uncomfortable simply because whenever Carrie appears on the page, it's because she's about to be victimized.  I agreed completely with the reader's opinion, but I also grimaced because I had just finished drafting the post for this section, I knew what was coming, and I really don't like making people uncomfortable (I'm a Southerner; it's engrained).

I feel sorry for Carrie as a character, though probably not for the reasons Andrews intended.  She's such an underutilized character when she could have been so much more.  Cathy claims to love her like a child, but Carrie's feelings and well-being are constantly neglected and forgotten.  She could have been a grounding force for Cathy, or her opposition, or anything.  Instead it seems the plot forgets all about her unless it's about to do something terrible to her.

Anyway, you are very, very correct to be suspicious of the book's sudden interest in Carrie right now.

I hope you brought your flashlights, gentle readers, because the book's about to get dark.

Buzzfeed: The Ghost of V.C. Andrews

The Ghost of V.C. Andrews: The Life, Death, and Afterlife of the Mysterious 'Flowers in the Attic' Author 

A really good overview of the relationship between Andrews' editor, her publishers, and Andrew Neiderman as they all worked to sustain Andrews' writings after her death, this also includes what might be a couple of "new" photos (at least, I'd never seen 'em) of Andrews and a hint that we may be at the end of the Andrews era so far as ghostwritten sequels are concerned.

As of late, Ann Patty (Andrews' editor) has been coming forward a lot more.  I don't know if this has anything to do with the upcoming film attracting more attention.  I suspect, too, that she may be on the verge of retirement.  She's also said in a few interviews that she'd like to publish a memoir on her relationship with Andrews, so she might be establishing her presence in anticipation of that move.

Either way, an interesting read, with some especially insightful info on Neiderman.

Um. Oops?

Those of you who visited this blog late last night--and my stat-box says there were about twenty of you--may have seen a partial review of the first section of If There Be Thorns.  It was late, I was sleepy, someone at Blogger put the Post button next to the Save button . . . mistakes were made.

Just wanted to post an apology and an explanation of why that post is no longer here.  You weren't hallucinating, and there was nothing wrong with your browser.  But hey!  At least there's proof that If There Be Thorns is a thing that will happen!

Meanwhile, Part Seven of the Petals on the Wind recap is up, and we're one week away from the new Flowers movie!

Petals on the Wind, Part Seven: In Which Cathy Marries in Haste

Fun Fact: the file from which I'm working is titled "Peddles on the Wind" which always makes me think of this:

We are on the cusp of Part Three, the shortest section of this book at about fifty pages.  It's also, strangely, a very eventful section: Cathy embarks on her violent first marriage, achieves her dream of becoming a world-renown ballerina, and becomes a mother and a widow at roughly the same time. Yet the plotting issues that have plagued the first three-fifths of the book are largely non-existent.  In fact, this is a section Andrews inexplicably glossed over long periods with a handwave even when the story might have done well to linger on a few scenes.  There's barely even a Christmas to mark the passage of time.

There are other things, though.  Horrible things.  Implication-y things.

Anyway: very short section, but a longish review.  We have an entire marriage to get through, so let's get to it!

Lifetime Orders Flowers in the Attic Sequel, and Other Less Impressive Updates

Lifetime Orders Flowers in the Attic Sequel
I never thought I'd say this...but Lifetime loves us.

The real news is in the headline.  The remainder of the article is just a summary of the upcoming FitA remake.  I hope that this level of optimism mean that the film is going to be great.

While I'm here and since it's on topic, the next Petals on the Wind post will be up on Saturday.  It, too, is going to be long, since I'm trying to cover Cathy's entire first marriage in a single entry.  The pacing is just weird in this section.  Keep an eye out!

Background Blogging: I Sense a Theme

Checking my stats after the long absence reveals a certain trend in my search hits.

"incestuous rape Flowers in the Attic":  This blog discusses the rape scene in Flowers in the Attic: Part Six, which is the secondmost viewed entry on this blog by several hundred hits, surpassed only by the entry on the Andrews estate's court case with the IRS.

"flowers in the attic rape": Yes, same section.

"flowers in the attic chris and cathy make love": Cathy and Chris don't make love in that book.  They do in later books, but in the first one, it's straight-up rape.

"flowers in the attic nude": There is a lot of casual nudity scattered around Flowers in the Attic, particularly in the section covered in Part Five.  There is no nudity in this blog, unless you count that one picture of Burt Reynolds.

"flowers in the attic sex excerpt":  The whole scene?  It's not very graphic compared to some of the scenes in say, Petals on the Wind, and it's rather short, and it's, well, a rape scene.  There's an earlier scene where Chris and Cathy kiss and make out a little that's probably more satisfying on the sensuality front.

"flowers in the attic porn":  I'm sure it exists, although a quick search reveals that, if it's out there, it's surprisingly difficult to locate amid the tons of cheeky articles that describe the book as "softcore porn for preteens."  Andrews' own sex scenes tend to be soft focus.  You'll have to go to the fanfiction for anything more graphic than that. 

At any rate, there's no porn in this blog, and there's no porn in Flowers in the Attic, except for maybe scenery porn.  Andrews does love to describe her sets.

In a bit of mood whiplash, however, I'd like to talk about some other search results that really bothered me for a number of reasons.

"was vc andrews raped/was vc andrews molested/vc andrews was an incest victim"

Serious talk about incest and some analysis of Andrews' oeuvre under the cut.

Flowers in the Attic Remake, Long Trailer

At the request of an anonymous reader, I've uploaded a copy of the longer trailer for the new Lifetime remake of Flowers in the Attic, which comes out 18 January.  As of the last week of December, Lifetime was sending out C&D orders to websites hosting the leaked long trailer, so this video's stability is in some doubt.  Likewise, let me know if there's trouble watching the video here.  I've never used Blogger's video upload function and can't vouch for its reliability.

I have the trailer saved to my hard drive and can shoot you a copy on request.  It can also be found for now at DailyMotion.  If someone knows a different source, or if there's other trailers available (other than the official 32-second promo), please let us all know!