r/VCAndrews • u/Infamous-Thought-765 Joel did it! • 5d ago
Character Names
Some of VC Andrews characters had really over-the-top names. And sometimes, particularly with AN, they'd get redundant (for example, I think Millie was a common generic name in the gw books., like for a maid or a cashier).
What are some names that stand out for you?
Here's My List
Heaven Leigh Casteel
Leigh Diane VanVoreen
Audrina Adele Adare
Trevor Mainstream Majors
Lance Spalding
Simon Chillingworth
Pru Carraway
Theodore Alexander Rockingham
Faith Morgantile
Also, what are some of your favorite fictional town/location names?
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u/topsidersandsunshine 5d ago edited 5d ago
I actually like to think it’s the same Millie job hopping. I also really like the old fan theory that she was Celine’s first failed Janet and that’s why she’s a music-loving teenage girl Celine calls her act of charity.
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u/Infamous-Thought-765 Joel did it! 5d ago
I've heard that fan theory too. I remember it from VC's Pieces Podcast. In Butterfly, right? Celine? I love the idea of a job-hopping Millie! Kinda like the recurring characters that will sometimes come up in series like RL Stine's Fear Street. I read those books as a kid, and it was fun to see which characters would make a cameo appearance.
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u/topsidersandsunshine 5d ago
Whoops, edited the name flub. Thanks for catching!
Oh, I LOVED that with the Fear Street books. And the Sarah Dessen books, too, where Annabelle from Just Listen popped up as the radio show host in one of the later books; there were some other cameos, too.
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u/Infamous-Thought-765 Joel did it! 5d ago
Or Kathy Santoni in Full House -- DJ's much talked about classmate.
I never read Sarah Dessden.
I loved it when Suki Thomas would show up in a Fear Street book. Most likely to steal some girl's boyfriend!
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u/topsidersandsunshine 5d ago
Hahaha, it’s been so long since I thought about Suki Thomas! What a blast from the past.
Degrassi: the Next Generation had a fun one. The meanest, prettiest, most popular girl in school was Heather Sinclair, who… never once appeared on screen. She was just someone every character talked about.
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u/Upper-Ship4925 5d ago
I’ve always loved cameos in any authors work - it really makes their worlds feel real.
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u/Prior-Entrance3156 5d ago
On that’s so Gumball coded 😂 In the cartoon the Amazing World of Gumball, there’s a character named Larry who does every single job in town: cashier, bank manager, pizza delivery guy. It’s one of the show’s cute quirks.
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u/Infamous-Thought-765 Joel did it! 5d ago
Turns out, it's Mildred (Milly) in Butterfly and Millie in Brooke. Bummer! AN really dropped the ball. If you're gonna give characters the same name, at least spell the name the same so we can come up with interesting head canon!
There's a Millie the maid in Gates of Paradise as well.
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u/topsidersandsunshine 5d ago
Oh, dear, I think I must curl up and read Orphans for the ten billionth time.. just to make sure.
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u/lulubelle724 4d ago
I mean he can’t even keep the spelling consistent when we know for absolute sure it’s the same character…Corrine/Corinne, Gabrielle/Gabriel…
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u/Infamous-Thought-765 Joel did it! 4d ago
True! And we're to believe he wrote all of the Landry series himself. No excuse!
On a related note, I noticed Mal was called Mel in SoY, and that bugs me. I don't want to believe VCA would make such a careless mistake (I mean, how do you get Mel out of Malcolm Jr ?) And it wasn't just once. It was multiple times. Making me wonder...is that a hint that Joel is an imposter?
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u/MontanaDukes 5d ago edited 5d ago
The name Damian isn't unique at all and I know it existed before then, but Damian Adare sharing a first name with the antichrist child and later adult in The Omen movies felt very fitting.
I always loved the names of the Whitefern women. Ellsbeth, Lucietta/Lucky, Vera, Audrina, Sylvia. Lucietta, liike Audrina's middle name also started with the same letter as her first. Lucietta Lana Whitefern Adare.
I can see why Alex went by that name, even though neither his first nor middle name is bad. They''re very good names. It's just a lot.
I loved the names of the houses/properties, like Whitefern, Foxworth Hall, Farthy or Farthingale. Also, the names of the boarding schools and prep schools in VC Andrews books. Especially the name of the boarding school that Carrie was sent to. It was so damn long.
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u/Infamous-Thought-765 Joel did it! 4d ago
Winterhaven sounds like a breath mint lol.
I wonder if VCA named Damian after the boy in The Omen.
Emily Dewhurst School For Properly Bred Girls. Very pretentious lol. And Cindy goes to a school in SC as a teen. I wondered if it was the same school. Why SC and not CA or even VA?
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u/MontanaDukes 4d ago edited 4d ago
Or gum. lol. Like wintergreen Lifesaver mints or wintergreen gum. Both of which were something my grandma always carried in her purse when I was growing up. Winter Haven is a place in Florida, though. A city in Polk County, specifically. It's an hour away from Orlando.
It's possible. The Omen came out in 76 (when Damien is 5/turning six), the second where Damien is around twelve/thirteen and it came out two years later, and then the third, where he's an adult. It came out in eighty one.
Right? lmfao. Such a long name. If she did attend that school, I hope that they got better people in charge or she gave them hell. Right? Weird choice. Honestly, I feel like if I was in Cathy's position, my sister's own experience in boarding school would've soured me against them completely.
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u/Infamous-Thought-765 Joel did it! 4d ago
It could have been a different boarding school. But I was thinking Cindy's head was properly-proportioned to her body. Does that count as properly bred? Maybe they figured she'd be fine.
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u/MontanaDukes 4d ago
True. There are a lot of boarding schools in the books. lol. She most likely wasn't bullied in the boarding school for that exact reason. I just wonder if the people who work there are as bad at their job as other boarding school workers seem to be in the books. I mean, I think Carrie was able to be locked up where she was because the adult on the floor was meeting up with hey boyfriend.
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u/Infamous-Thought-765 Joel did it! 4d ago
In the movie, she was teased for playing with dolls at 17 or 18. Kids can be so cruel.
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u/MontanaDukes 4d ago
They really can be. For all we know, she could've been teased for being adopted and just never told anyone.
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u/Infamous-Thought-765 Joel did it! 4d ago
True. I remember how being adopted was treated as an insult when I was a kid, and that was the '80s and '90s. I feel we've come along way since then, but I'm not a kid anymore, so I don't know. But I remember how it was treated as a joke in the movie Problem Child, and I figure you could never get away with that today.
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u/MontanaDukes 4d ago
Yeah, and Seeds of Yesterday was basically set in that time frame (the nineties). Even though I'm in my thirties, I remember Problem Child showed a lot, I think on TBS or TNT. Some channels. It also had a sequel, Problem Child 2 and there's another troublesome child, in the form of the school nurses' daughter. lol. I think people know better now or would at least actually be called out for treating someone differently because they're adopted.
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u/Infamous-Thought-765 Joel did it! 4d ago
The line in the TV version of Problem Child, "He's not even a real kid. He's the devil" was a censored version of the girl making fun of him for being adopted. I remember that.
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u/Round_Daisy_23 Every dern fool's been to McDonald's! 4d ago
Vera and Audrina are somewhat popular girl names today, too.
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u/Upper-Ship4925 5d ago
I love when she just gives characters the same name.
Michel Michael, Nicole Nichols, there are a few others I know exist but I can’t remember. Like how hard is it to invent two names?
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u/Infamous-Thought-765 Joel did it! 5d ago
I noticed that too! Might as well have called him Michael Michael! And many of these ballet characters had rhyming names. Michael Michelle, Alexis Tarrell, Denise Danielle, Norma Belle.
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u/MrsPhuckHughson Grandpere Jack’s Discount Swamp Tours 4d ago
The Dumas family gets kind of right on the nose. Pierre Dumas, Jean Dumas, Giselle…try not saying those with a silly accent
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u/Infamous-Thought-765 Joel did it! 4d ago edited 4d ago
I think of this commercial where the guy mispronounces Dumass. Lol
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u/Round_Daisy_23 Every dern fool's been to McDonald's! 4d ago
I pronounced Dumas as doo-muss for years before I found out it's pronounced doo-mah.
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u/seatea7777 3d ago
You know what they always say: if you don't like a character's name, don't worry! The ghostwriter will change it in the prequel!
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u/yfunk3 Read these books when I was way too young 5d ago
I don't think anything beats "Jory" on the WTF scale...