Tumblr crosspost (15 July 2019)

[anghraine]

The other unpopular opinion meme responses!


An anon asked for:

Pride and Prejudice fanfiction?

I said:

Haha, I have so many. Let’s go … hm.

In Regency/Georgian versions: I think Darcy and Fitzwilliam’s relationship gets … not ignored, but kind of reduced to a generic friendly relatives thing. I really wish there was more fic with Darcy and Fitzwilliam that was about Darcy and Fitzwilliam and their “constant intimacy,” or which at least partly foregrounded it, rather than Darcy/Elizabeth or Fitzwilliam/Elizabeth with some Darcy and Fitzwilliam background wallpaper.

In modern versions: I think a massive corporation makes a pretty bad analogue for Pemberley.

An anon asked for:

Jane Austen's novels

I said:

Overall? Hmm, my most unpopular opinion is probably that I think Mansfield Park is her best novel in terms of vision and execution, although P&P obviously engages me the most.

An anon asked for:

Tatooine? Or anything in general that’s been bothering you recently

I said:

I’m not sure I have any unpopular opinions about Tatooine, tbh! My interest in Tatooine is pretty sharply restricted to the Skywalkers.

Thinking of general annoyance … okay. There are posts that keep showing up on my dash about how Tolkien canon is just so ambiguous and complicated and impossible, no one can make sense of what canon means with Tolkien, blah blah blah. And I just—don’t think it’s that complicated.

It is pretty complicated, absolutely. There’s not a unified canon apart from LOTR/tH. But, for one, LOTR does exist as a coherent work in an established final state, and those posts tend to treat it as just one more component of general chaos (yeah, no). For another, they bring in things that Tolkien didn’t even write, and it’s like—yeah, it’s going to be messy if you’re trying to square the Narn with Battle of the Five Armies. But there is no earthly reason to do that as far as Tolkien canon is concerned.

And I don’t think people are seriously trying to do that. I think it’s more of this Tumblr culture where most people won’t say “eh, I’m not really a canon purist” or go full-throttle for transformative fandom, they always have to make canonicity either mandatory or impossible. So every fandom is like “see! the creator validates me!” or “ALL IS CHAOS, NO ONE COULD MAKE SENSE OF THIS” all the goddamned time, and ultimately, the Tolkien fandom takes seem like another part of that to me.

(#i'm a high octane canon purist and i'm still just ... please #you don't have to stick to canon if you don't want to #you don't need validation from the powers that be #go forth and transform what you want! be free!)

Comments

[elperian]

In modern versions: I think a massive corporation makes a pretty bad analogue for Pemberley.

What do you think WOULD be a good analogue?

[anghraine]

It would depend on the scenario, honestly. That's part of what bothers me about the Pemberley-as-megacorp thing—it's generally treated as a sort of default equivalent of an 18th century English estate, not contingent on the particulars of the AU.

But I really liked my friend tulina's version, where Pemberley was a small bookshop (Elizabeth only knows him as an obnoxious BNF up to that point). I vaaaaguely remember liking a version, or at least concept, years ago, where it was a high school (Darcy was the principal). It could be a congressional district, or a dance studio, or a book, or ... so many things!

I'm not looking for particularly exact analogues. The main thing, for me, is that Pemberley is overwhelmingly about a) revealing Darcy's virtue/sense through his conduct and aesthetic tastes, and b) revealing Darcy's overall character by standing in for him symbolically. Anything that convincingly serves both of those functions is fine by me, wealth or no wealth. But IMO massive corporations are unconvincing or worse on both fronts.

[elperian]

Speaking of books and bookshops, the LBD version (which is the only example with a corporation that I know of) is basically crossed with your friend's example to produce You've Got Mail, so at least Nora Ephron has also had thoughts along that line.

In the context of your comments, I'd say a corporation would still work for me; a massive corporation? Maybe not, but the econ framework of a firm in theory and practice actually does line up with the Pemberley estate and duties of the original novel; it's certainly not left-field to me. Most of it comes down to the execution (and honestly, understanding of what a firm looks like from the inside vs outside). LBD completely failed to represent a family corporation or a start-up, or remember that the stock market exists and a publicly traded company like their version of Pemberley might be hit with a fire sale of the company shares in the context of how they did the Wickham-Lydia storyline!

...which is where I wrote my AU where Pemberley tanks shortly after and Darcy goes to work with Lizzie at her new start-up and they build something new together but my (not small) list of criticisms of LBD probably still has nothing on yours.