#victoriocity spoilers

[leliesblou]

[hephaestuscrew]

Books and reading are really important to Clara Entwhistle. She bonds with Jasper the cabbie over having read The Grey Book, with Titus Byrne over Captain Swift novels, and with a random pickpocket over Figgler's Prestidigitation. She sees the right reading material as a potential solution to any uncertainty in her life. Trilling's Arts of Detection can teach her how to be a detective. Posner's A Guide to Business for Gentlemen can tell her how to make Fleet-Entwhistle Investigations a success. She only moved to London in the first place because she read Horrocks' Tales from the City in the Harrogate Herald.

I find this particularly interesting because we have significant evidence that Clara's access to reading material has been tightly controlled and subject to judgement for most of her life. She tells Fleet, "once, when I was young, Mother caught me reading a sensation novel and threatened to send me to the Mesmer Institute". She considers this a formative enough experience that it's one of the first facts she lists when wanting to share information about herself with Fleet. As a child, her reading choices were something shameful, something that indicated she wasn't the kind of young woman her mother wanted her to be. And even as an adult, arriving into London for the first time, she is chastised by her mother for wanting to buy a newspaper: "What need have you for a newspaper?... You can read my copy of this month's All a Lady Need Know. Disagreement resolved." In the world Clara has been trapped in, the ladylike thing is to only access a very limited sphere of appropriate information and not to read anything that falls outside of that sphere. And those boundaries of ladylike-ness will be rigidly enforced.

So perhaps it's no wonder that after Clara arrives in London, she's devouring everything from taxi regulation manuals to adventure novels, repeatedly calling the librarian for recommendations in the middle of the night, taking out 20 books at a time and then realising she's underestimated how long it will take her to read them. No wonder she's so often telling people about books she's read. For Clara Entwhistle, being able to do any of those things openly is a new and thrilling kind of freedom.

[captainjonnitkessler]

I just love how skeptical Fleet is. Like sir. Sir you are a cyborg brought back from the dead by dark and unknown sciences and you are drawing the line at the concept that a big dog might be mauling people. I support you fully but I'm dying to know what your logic looks like

[the-illustrative-interloper]

I think Fleet should get to be a lil’ inhuman and scary sometimes. As a treat.

[unmechanism]

can you even imagine what I'm feeling rn ??

[queenbirbs]

Fleet: I had this idea…

Clara: Yes?

Fleet: I thought you might like to go to the theatre.

Clara: I’m sorry?

Fleet: The theatre. Today. Catch a matinee.

Clara: Archibald Fleet, are you inviting me to a social activity? Like a friend might?

[dathen]

I think Sasha Rackett and Archie Fleet should hang out and have a group existential crisis over being Formerly Dead

[lydia-bell]

Clara Entwhistle in the foundry

Me getting a new fic idea:

[maandarinee]

reading the Victoriocity novel and this is making me insane. Fleet is the piña colada of mental health <3

[leliesblou]

Have a low quality meme

[hephaestuscrew]

Thinking about the protective way Clara tells Fleet not to go into DeVries' dangerous-looking training set-up, and about how when Septimus mentions Fleet's friend Fleet's immediate assumption is that he must mean Clara, and about "This is Miss Clara Entwhistle, my partner - in business, my business partner." / "I'm also his friend, but he doesn't like to say it.", and about how Fleet rarely smiles but he smiles to himself at Clara having a good idea (and Clara notices the change in his expression), and about how Clara is trying to work out Fleet's birthday through a process of elimination, and about how Fleet tries twice to shut down the conversation with Frances Byrne that's making Clara uncomfortable, and about how panicked and angry he sounds after realising she's been poisoned...

[florraisons]

aaaa yes i am so stoked for the next season and the book!! and sincerely hoping for more sandringham and balmoral!

i read your meta post and i do def think sandringham is trans— but i had never really thought about all the other ways in which he and maud are no longer alike! I feel like they must have been close to try and stick to the plan after so long? But i wonder how much he told her like did she know who balmoral was when he grabbed her? Did she know what it cost her brother to shoot him? i am certainly assuming that he and balmoral talk about it all (gender, sister, past, their entire relationship) and settle things, and while i know we'll probably never get to see a full detailed scene centered on them, i am crossing my fingers for more content!

as for other thoughts— i know fleet's whole thing is being kinda quiet and stoic but i absolutely love the hints of rich interiority you get every time he talks to someone and i think the one thing I'd love to see from the book is his like,,, thoughts on the whole being half mechanical thing? Cuz it feels like season 2 moves so fast that other than glimpses of the fact that he's clearly still kinda unsettled and weirded out there's not a lot of slow moments for reflection (and these are moments that are inherently easier to do in a novel than an audio drama!). Fleet is one of those prime examples of why i enjoy quiet characters cuz like you can tell a lot about his personality even though he is not the chattiest and that is a really well done thing in an audio drama of all mediums

Also because I'm like that as a writer i want to watch him unravel <3 but maybe I'll just have to write that fic myself!

Hey!!! I just want you to know i read your victoriocity fic and am absolutely obsessed with the way you wrote Balmoral and Sandringham!!!! The yearning, their closeness, the years of something that has now shifted was all impeccable!!! Anyway victoriocity fans seem so few and far in between so i wanted to pop in here to tell you that i loved your work 🥺 and would happily be down to trade theories and chat about the show at any time!!

Thank you so much!! I just really love those two and the one-two punch of their delightful chemistry followed by the devastating twist in season 2. I had to cram as much of my thoughts about them into Business as Usual as I could.

It's great to chat with another Victoriocity fan! I'm eagerly looking forward to the book and season 3 and hoping there will be more of my boys. (Though even if they're not featured, I'll still hugely enjoy it - I mean, it's Victoriocity.)

I have a little bit more meta and things under the #victoriocity tag on my blog, like this post with all my Sandringham thoughts. Would love to hear any of your thoughts!

[littleacebee]

I really loved High Vaultage and I have many thoughts about it but one of the things I extremely enjoyed is how there was a chance to give a descriptions and writers decided to describe 101 chairs Clara and Fleet sat in.

[unmechanism]

FLEET IS A SAGITTARIUS !!!!!!

[hooklineandpodcast]

Big recommendation to listen to Re: Dracula of course, but if you're already listening I also highly recommend the bonus content that just came out, Bonus 2: Victorian Class and Gender.

It was an extremely good conversation between Hannah Wright and Dr. Jen Sudgen (of the Victoriocity podcast and soon book) about class and gender and how it relates to the writing in the period and in Dracula particularly. It was a joy to listen to. Very enlightening, and Dr. Sudgen's expertise in the area really sparks a lot of ideas I have thinking about Lucy and Mina in particular, but also Dracula as a whole.

Both are also contagiously enthusiastic about the subject which was also very wonderful.

They do go into some end-of-the-story spoilers, so if you're reading/listening for the first time go back and listen to it once you're all finished up. It really is a great listen.