aeternamente:

fu-thelizziebennetdiaries:

After watching John Green’s video about how and why we read, reblog this assignment and talk about why you watch LBD.  Remember, this is more than just a personal expression – this is a communication, trying to share your ideas and start conversations with others about the narrative.  (In other words, please don’t merely respond with, “Because of the FEELS.”)

Reblogging at the last possible moment because… I’ve been procrastinating, and now I’m procrastinating on working on next week’s conference presentation (EEP!) by writing LBD meta. (What is wrong with me?)

I watch LBD for a lot of reasons… and I’ll try to get to most of them.

I am a 20-something with a Master’s degree and I have no frickin’ clue where my life is going. So Lizzie’s fears are my fears, and sometimes, she articulates them in a way that just hits me in the gut. Lizzie’s situation is really getting to be a common one in our culture, and I suspect that this is what draws a lot of over-educated, under-employed young adults to the series. We get Lizzie and where she’s coming from. She’s one of us.

I love Pride and Prejudice and I think LBD is a pretty awesome modern adaptation of it. There are aspects of LBD that I think handle the original material better than any adaptation I’ve seen so far. For instance, some people are put off by Lizzie’s abrasiveness earlier in the series (particularly in and around the Netherfield arc), but to me, it’s a pretty accurate modern update of how her personality would have come off to others in her culture/time period. Elizabeth seems all polite to us now, but she said and did some things that would have put people around her on edge. And I still can’t get over the brilliance of turning Collins’s proposal into a job offer. It works on so many levels. And Darcy. LBD has (IMHO) the best Darcy of any adaptation.

I’m also intrigued by many of the ways LBD departs from P&P. I guess you can call the Collins job offer a departure, but I put that more in the category of finding a good modern equivalent of what that proposal really was for Elizabeth and for Charlotte. But I’m intrigued by the things that really aren’t equivalent to the book, like the expanded role of Charlotte, the new takes on Lydia and Georgiana (Gigi), the continued appearances of Fitz (which, I was pleased to learn, were mostly the result of our fandom’s love of the character). Heading into the climax and denouement, we are facing the consequences of some of the most radical departures from the original.

Lydia is aware of how terrible her situation really is, and unlike in the book, it seems her relationship with Wickham is over (thank goodness). What does that mean for her future? Gigi knows what happened to Lydia, whereas in the book, it’s implied that she has been kept ignorant. She wants to help, and how will that play out? I think that, whatever happens, we’re looking at a very different sequence of events from what happened in the book, in fact, I think we’re bordering on AU, and what does that mean for the effectiveness of the adaptation? I have no clue! But I’m really interested in finding out!

But aside from it being an adaptation, I just enjoy it as its own narrative. A part of me is just along for the ride of being so immersed in a story that’s happening in real time. I can imagine what Lizzie and Darcy and Gigi and Fitz and all of the other characters are doing right now. As we speak. This is a totally new storytelling experience for me, and I love it.

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/42672765507.

This entry was posted by jbc on Saturday, February 9th, 2013 at 8:52 am and is filed under Tumblr. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.