thinking about alignment and my faves

The classic D&D alignments can be silly and reductive ... but they're also genuinely useful in some ways? Like, if I say "Darcy has Lawful Good energy, but is actually Neutral Good," you don't have to agree, but it gets across what I mean to people at all familiar with alignment without a long explanation. "I think some people see Cassian as X Neutral, but I think he's Lawful Good all the way through" is comprehensible in a concise way. So is "I think Leia is trying to stifle herself into living a Lawful Good life, but at heart is Neutral Good." I think that's also true of Éowyn, btw, while Jyn comes at it from the other side: living a Chaotic life, but also Neutral Good at her core (certainly not Chaotic Neutral or True Neutral).

And of course, the divisions aren't hard lines. I think Luke is probably not far from the Lawful/Neutral boundary, though still on the Neutral Good side, whereas Anakin has some of that Neutral or even Chaotic energy, but is ultimately Lawful Good -> Lawful Evil -> Lawful Good. 

(I am also Very Offended by bad alignment assignments, like the gifset that assigned Darcy to Lawful Neutral. WTF, seriously.)

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In response to this post, heckofabecca said:

hhhahhah <3 <3 <3 oh my gosh they are adorbs

I replied:

They arrrre

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I reblogged a post about the weirdness of gradually growing older than your favourite characters, and added:

#me with darcy!!!

[ETA 3/7/2022: This is still really weird for me ... like, Darcy and Elizabeth could easily have had multiple children who could read by the time he was my current age. o_O]

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Speaking of passages in P&P that encapsulate character, this one very much represents early Elizabeth to me:

Mr Darcy smiled; but Elizabeth thought she could perceive that he was rather offended, and therefore checked her laugh.

All that unambiguously happens is that Darcy smiles and Elizabeth opts not to laugh. But Elizabeth’s interpretation is laced with so many qualifications that I think we’re pretty much invited to question it. It’s possible that she’s right! But it is also entirely possible from this description that she’s misinterpreting his smile (one of many, as she’ll recall much later) and projecting her expectations onto him. I’m inclined to go with the latter, in part because IMO the construction of the passage throws her conclusion into doubt, and in part because it fits her character arc.

However, what her judgment actually leads her to do is not to further attack Darcy, but to courteously refrain from doing so even though she dislikes him. I think that people don’t always appreciate the extent of Elizabeth’s everyday courtesy, and how intensely she prizes courtesy in others. And while she gets it mixed up with flattery in others’ behaviour towards her, she herself is no flatterer (as she points out at the end!), just a very polite and considerate person.

That’s why lack of consideration is the core of her problem with Darcy, and why a) Mrs Reynolds’s account of his usual behaviour and b) his altered behaviour wrt Elizabeth/the Gardiners specifically weigh so much with her.

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An anon asked:

Which adaptation of Pride and Prejudice is your most favourite?

I replied:

The 1979/1980 P&P with Elizabeth Garvie and David Rintoul! It has its issues, but I love Garvie and really like a lot of its choices.

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I still think about Donald Greene’s article about how the (maybe) Tory-aligned Bennet-Gardiners force the Whig-coded Darcy-Fitzwilliams to take them seriously, and … the underlying concept is so interesting!

but, also:

1) there’s no suggestion that Elizabeth cares about her family’s politics, whatever they may be, or that they bear on her choices and perspectives; additionally, she’s often positioned as out of sync with most of her family and it’s implied that she and Jane have been strongly influenced by their frequent visits to the Gardiners, whose politics we also know nothing about

(otoh, Darcy’s combination of elitism and progressivism is super stereotypically Whig, not to mention his name)

2) even if you see the Bennets as Tory-aligned, Darcy is in no way assimilated into their world and its politics; there’s no indication that he ever likes Mr Bennet; it’s Elizabeth who is longing for Pemberley by the end; and the final emphasis is on the tight connection between her, her powerful landlord of a husband, and her mercantile relations.

It would, of course, be odd to say it’s the other way around and the Darcy-Fitzwilliams force Elizabeth to take them seriously (lol Lady Catherine), because the dynamics of the novel are very much more complex than that. But it is certainly Elizabeth who is actively eager to enter Darcy’s world while Darcy is at all points uneasy with hers. If Darcy and Elizabeth are politically active as a couple, it is vastly more likely for Elizabeth to become a Whig hostess than Darcy a Tory sympathizer.

(And in my headcanon, that’s exactly what happens!)

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In response to this post, jubaah said:

I LOVE THIS…. ELIZABEEEEETH

I replied:

haha, amazing, right?

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Generally speaking, I prefer to keep my fics to some direct relationship with canon—retellings, what-ifs, “canon except my ship happens,” close fusions, 1-2 (and only 1-2) characters are genderbent, actually canon-compliant, etc etc. I have some that are pretty far out there, but I end up losing interest when they wander too far off, since it’s just original fic at that point and I have original fic.

Buuuuut

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Sometimes I think about Wickham’s stalkery pursuit of Georgiana, and Darcy’s perspective on it:

She was then but fifteen, which must be her excuse; and after stating her imprudence, I am happy to add that I owed the knowledge of it to herself. I joined them unexpectedly a day or two before the intended elopement, and then Georgiana, unable to support the idea of grieving and offending a brother whom she almost looked up to as a father, acknowledged the whole to me. You may imagine what I felt and how I acted. Regard for my sister’s credit and feelings prevented any public exposure; but I wrote to Mr Wickham

And Darcy’s response to Lydia’s “elopement”:

He saw Wickham, and afterwards insisted on seeing Lydia. His first object with her, he acknowledged, had been to persuade her to quit her present disgraceful situation, and return to her friends as soon as they could be prevailed on to receive her, offering his assistance as far as it would go. But he found Lydia absolutely resolved on remaining where she was. She cared for none of her friends; she wanted no help of his; she would not hear of leaving Wickham; she was sure they should be married some time or other, and it did not much signify when. Since such were her feelings, it only remained, he thought, to secure and expedite a marriage.

Even though the situations are not exactly the same, and (as we see here) Lydia and Georgiana are very different, I think it’s interesting that Darcy’s first impulse is basically the same: to get them out of the situation without marriage and with minimized consequences. He still thinks the situations are bad—just that neither should be shackled to Wickham for life because of a poor choice at 15/16.

(I also think it’s interesting that he says that he was able to help Georgiana because of Georgiana’s decision—a level of initiative he emphasizes but which most takes on her ignore.)

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