my latest fandom

[deird1]

There are many things that impress me about The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, but at the moment, one of the main ones is how well they adapted 19th century situations to fit the 21st century.


Like Mr Collins' proposal turning into a business offer - because, after all, the financial aspect of the whole thing is the important bit. It's less "Will you love and cherish me forever?" and more "Will you accept the job of My Wife in my new firm called Our Marriage?"

And then there's Wickham's various exploits.

Eloping with Georgiana has turned into moving in with Gigi, which... fits.

And Lydia. Oh Lydia. While I was aware that her running away with Wickham was totally shocking and an absolute reputation ruiner, they really have captured the perfect way of depicting that. Old Lydia got seduced and had a man sleep with her without marrying her, thus ruining her reputation; new Lydia was seduced (not my favourite term, but he convinced her he was in love with her so she'd sleep with him - it applies) and had a man put a sex tape of her on the net. Which... yeah. That would utterly destroy her reputation. Completely.


Currently, I am fascinated in a meta-ish kind of way. In a non-meta-ish way, I just want to hug Lydia, kill Wickham, and have all the feels.


Last night this show made me cry. Which, well, I've always loved Pride and Prejudice, but I never realised it could actually DO that.

Comments

[velvetwhip]

Sounds great, actually.

[zeborah]

It *so* is. It really lends itself to new ways of looking at the text, partly because it's made Lydia et al into very very strong characters in their own right and so you get all these points of views. And partly the comment threads where some people who've never read the book are shipping Lydia/Wickham, and some are shipping them despite having read the book, and some are pointing out classic signs of emotional abuse omg, and then sometimes (when it won't spoil the story) the characters will respond to the fans.

(Another thing about the sex tape thing is how (though Lizzie hasn't mentioned this because like a good sister she's - albeit a bit belatedly - focused on her sister) you can see how this threatens the reputation of the rest of the family too: surely hard to be taken seriously in media / media studies if your sister gets known for porn.)

[deird1]

Yeah, what zeborah said.

[lliira]

I run in circles in which it would in no way hurt the reputation of a woman if a sex tape of her was put on the internet. If it was put up without her permission, it would utterly ruin the reputation of the person who put it up. Kim Kardashian's entire family got a career out of her sex tape, so... I dunno.

What seems to destroy a woman's reputation most these days is if she is raped by someone she knows and does not keep quiet about it.