Anghraine

An anon said:

One of my biggest issues with 1995 P&P is that both Darcy and Elizabeth look too old. David Rintoul's Darcy was definitely too robotic for my tastes but I definitely got "young and fashionable" vibes from him.

I replied:

It’s not one of my biggest, in that there are a lot of other things that bother me more, but it does bug me, can’t lie. Just about everyone seems 5-10 years older than they should.

It definitely contrasts with the 2005 and 1980, where IIRC the ages are kind of all over the place, so some are spot-on or nearly so, and others are wayyyy off. If I recall correctly, the 1995 is more consistent but also almost always ‘off’ in that 5-10 year range.

I know this seems trivial to some people, but I think the ages do matter to their backgrounds and developments and general characterizations. Not just the young ones, either—Mrs Bennet would be barely middle-aged and Mrs Gardiner is almost certainly in her 30s. That affects the impression they give (to the audience and to the other characters) and their own experiences and personalities and dynamics with other people.

And I do think that Garvie and Knightley come across as early 20-somethings where other Elizabeths have a certain … hm, air of maturity about them that doesn’t fully work for me. Meanwhile, Darcy is literally introduced as a “young man,” is still in his 20s, and (like Elizabeth) has a character arc that rests on brand! new! experiences! And I think that the adaptations generally are—not interested in getting that across with him. But the 1995 is especially uninterested in that aspect IMO, so generally speaking, I’m with you there.

(I also agree that Rintoul is too far on the robotic end, but does come across as fashionable! It’s an interesting choice, because at first, Darcy seems to simultaneously resent ‘the world’ [i.e. the fashionable world] while also being judgy about people not being part of it. He’s not a fop by any means, but he is part of a certain world, and the ways in which he doesn’t fit aren’t visible, sometimes even to him.)

An anon said:

Darcy loving the Gardiners and becoming BFFs with them is one of the best and most underrated aspects of P&P. I'd love to see a fic where they visit Meryton before the ball and Elizabeth's shocked that Darcy actually gets along with them, once he realises they're nothing like Mrs B.

I replied:

It really is one of my favorite parts, and where I see the most actual change in Darcy’s beliefs. And that very fic concept has rolled around in my head for YEARS.

I think Darcy would be slower to warm to them than in canon because of his preconceptions at that point, but that he pretty consistently is able to adjust his initial opinions of people to account for new data. He doesn’t question the underlying worldview until really shocked out of it, but he can adapt on an individual basis—as with his friendship with Bingley, say. He’s certainly perceptive enough to see that the Gardiners are very different from Mrs Bennet, and I think could make a mental ‘adjustment’ there; they’re special, like Bingley.

Alternately, it’s possible that their profound difference from his assumptions about what they’d be like could startle him enough that it begins the (in the AU) gradual process of him reconsidering his basic preconceptions and not just his application of those preconceptions to particular people. I think which happens would depend on the strength of his impression of them and the course of their relationship and so forth, but either could happen.

Either way, I do agree that he would soon come away with a positive impression of them and conduct himself agreeably enough towards them, which I also agree would be pretty !!?!???!? to Elizabeth in itself. On top of that, the stark contrast between his behavior towards the Gardiners and e.g. Mr and Mrs Bennet would make it clear that some level of personal disapproval is at work there, not just general elitism, which is harder to take (as we see in her response to the letter, his opinion of them does trouble her—I think in part because she fundamentally agrees with it and has tried not to think about it). And I don’t think Darcy at that point (maybe any point) would be inclined to hide his preference for the Gardiners, so it would just be very apparent and strain her assumptions about him.

Whether that would extend to straining her general reliance on assumptions about people, once she’s realized that she wasn’t quite right about him, is a more complicated matter, as with the “Alternately…” for Darcy above. But it’s possible that this all results in slower and less painful but no less profound epiphanies for both.

I’ve thought of both very specific and general scenarios for all this, so … maybe someday I’ll get to one of them.

Tagged: #i didn't get into what the gardiners think of him and wickham in the au #or how wickham figures at all #but that's also part of it in my head

An anon asked:

How old do you think mrs. gardiner is? could she be as young as mr. darcy

I replied:

She could be, though I think early- to mid-thirties is more probable.

The only direct statement about her age, as far as I recall, is that she’s “several years” younger than her sisters-in-law, Mrs Bennet and Mrs Phillips. Mrs Bennet can’t really be under about 40. While “several” is pretty vague and you can interpret it as you will, IMO you have to stretch it pretty far to encompass an age gap of at least 12 years and quite possibly more.

We do know that Mrs Gardiner was unmarried some 10 or 12 years earlier, when she lived in Lambton. Her oldest child is 8. So, if you want to skew younger, let’s say she married Mr Gardiner 9-10 years earlier (though canonically it could just as easily be 11-12). IIRC, historical research suggests that women of the gentry typically married at around 24, while those from the more middling classes tended to marry later. If she was, say, 25 when she married, that would make her 34-5, which I think fits pretty well with her being several years younger than an around 40-y-o Mrs Bennet. 

Hey everyone! It's nearly 11 PM on January 31st and I'm sick, but I threw words on the page until I had something to show for it for challenge #11 specifically:

In your own space, create a fanwork. Now, a fanwork is anything that you, a fan, creates. Fic, icons, and filling sparkly requests from your fellow snowflakes’ wishlists absolutely fit the bill. But really, your creation can be anything! Draw something, paint something, compose an ode to your current favorite movie. Whittle something to represent your fandom from a bit of driftwood or model it in clay and matchsticks or legos! Whip up a song about your favorite trope or concoct an interpretive dance number for your OTP. Bake some cupcakes and decorate them in homage to your favorite TV show or author. The possibilities are endless. Whatever means of self-expression tickles your fancy right now, embrace it! But most of all - have fun!

I thought of doing something simpler or easier but ... no, instead I word vomited the entire prologue to the Commander Elizabeth Bennet P&P/Mass Effect AU into a GoogleDoc. It's largely unedited but here it is!

Prologue

Elizabeth Bennet knew what people called her behind her back, whether they were Alliance or not.

The butcher of Torfan.

They didn’t understand. Nobody did, really, not even Captain Gardiner, who’d defended her to the tribunal, or Major Massey, who’d ordered her to take Torfan at any cost and been honorably discharged later.

Elizabeth was resigned to that. When she could do something about a problem, she acted; when she couldn’t, she let it go. And she couldn’t do anything about the past.

Least of all when she didn’t regret it.

---

Mira Gardiner was a failure.

A failure with a case full of medals, to be sure. She’d served the Alliance—served humanity—for decades, and the Alliance had rewarded her with a stream of commendations and promotions. Nobody talked about her lost chance to do more for their species. Not in her hearing, anyway. Even she hadn’t really thought about it in years. No point in wasting time recollecting the details when there was work to be done.

The more amorphous sense of failure, though: that lingered. Especially on the Normandy.

( Read more... )

So I started half-a-dozen scraps of things!

Here's some early canon-compliant Darcy:


Here's a bit about my headcanon for Elros's wife, early on:
Here's some Mass Effect!Shepard!Elizabeth:

( Read more... )

I posted the next chapter of Love, Pride & Delicacy at AO3 here. I wanted to cover the [redacted] and [redacted], but that nearly wraps up the main Hertfordshire section, so we should get to Kent and the Catherines next chapter.

/fingers crossed

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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The other line re: the Gardiners and Darcy’s appearance that I find unreasonably hilarious:

“I have heard much of your master’s fine person,” said Mrs Gardiner

In context, she’s just making polite conversation with Mrs Reynolds, and “everyone says your employer is really attractive” is what goes for polite conversation with an elderly housekeeper.

But if she’s not straight-up lying, then … okay. Back in Hertfordshire, Mrs Gardiner had to strain to remember anything that anyone had said about Darcy prior to that point, so she almost certainly hadn’t heard about Darcy’s appearance before then. She would have heard it from people in Hertfordshire, who nearly all intensely dislike Darcy and (care of Wickham) think he’s a horrible person. So apparently there are these people around Meryton just talking about how terrible yet good-looking Darcy is, well after he left town. It’s like:

Completely random person: So, Mr Bingley had this proud friend with him who turned out to be kind of evil … but super attractive? He was so tall and had this really nice shape to his mouth and—

Mrs Gardiner, who Did Not Ask: uh

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I reblogged this post:


<3

tagged: #reblogging for today's ramble tbh #the gardiners are so important and so sidelined in discussion

There are a lot of funny moments in P&P, but personally, it’s hard to think of any surpassing one that is probably not even intended to be funny:


So. Elizabeth is wandering around Darcy’s own property, receiving uncomfortable revelations about him, and almost the last time they met was when she refused his proposal of marriage (and it went down from there), and then suddenly he’s right there and they have the most awkward conversation conceivable, and then her uncle and aunt are going on about what a great body he has.

I mean, everything about this is utterly delightful.

#mr gardiner and mrs gardiner chatting about how hot darcy is while elizabeth is too overwhelmed to even notice is everything #the adaptations really drop the ball on the sheer comedic value of this moment imo #the pemberley scenes are GOLD