Thank heaven it is Saturday and we can all sit around the cyber-stove and just jaw a bit.....
In real flight, VRS is not a steady state condition. It is actually very hard to find, and not at all steady. It has absolutely nothing to do with any stall event of any kind. The angle of attack of the airfol is very low, thank you, and the flow through the rotor is quite unstalled.
What VRS is is a recirculated flow where the rotor works quite nicely to push a package of air downward, but the outside air simply walks that air package around the outside of the tips so it can get sucked back into the rotor. In effect, the rotor is simply recirculating the same air again and again. If we stated it simply, the rotor is now behaving very selfishly, and not taking much new air, and not letting all the air it pushes mix with the free stream. This means it is not transferring much momentum with the outside and thus the thrust drops somewhat. Since the state is so very unsteady, the indications are torque or MP jumps, eratic behavior, pitching and rolling, and the like. On incipient vrs, just lower the nose, increase power to max (do not droop the rotor) and it will walk out.
I will dig up a great graphic simulation of vrs on a rotor and post it. You can see the downwash get slowed as it enters the free stream below the rotor, and as the rod is increased, you can see the vortex reenter the rotor and form a beautiful ring.