Fandom Overview: The Lizzie Bennet Diaries
The series
The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is, simply put, a new media adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice that positions our heroes as grad students and entrepreneurs in modern-day California, dealing with contemporary challenges like graduating on time as well as issues of romance. You don’t need any familiarity with the original story to appreciate LBD, although the tongue-in-cheek references to Regency society and to other adaptations (“that chubby Zellweger movie”) are gold.
The series’ premise is that Lizzie Bennet, a 24-year-old grad student studying mass communications, begins a video blog with her best friend Charlotte as part of her studies. Lizzie’s sisters, Jane and Lydia, jump in regularly, and the story expands to include various love interests, friends, and whatever you want to categorize Caroline as.
What makes this adaptation stand out from others isn’t just the format-though getting the story from a medley of YouTube channels and Twitter feeds is pretty neat. It’s that the story isn’t just about the second-eldest Bennet sister and the enigmatic Mr. Darcy overcoming their prejudices and falling in love. It’s also a story about a trio of sisters (Mary becomes a cousin and Kitty is an actual cat) growing up together and apart, and about two best friends doing the same. The focus on female relationships in this series is refreshing and real, and though the romances play out front and center, the characters are still committed to their other relationships.
The series also makes certain characters that were little-seen or generally irritating into real characters, with personalities and interests and motivations (and Twitter accounts) of their own. Lydia is a particular triumph. (The same cannot be said of Mr. Collins, I’m afraid, but I think that’s sort of the point.)
The series’ diversity-deliberate but barely remarked-upon in-universe-is also worth noting. The Bingley siblings here are Bing and Caroline Lee, the Lucas sisters become the Lus, and Colonel Fitzwilliam becomes Fitz Williams, who sports a mean Afro and schemes with "Gigi D" to get Lizzie and Darcy together.
For a story where just about everyone watching knows the big plot points-including the ending-already, LBD managed the extraordinary feat of making viewers salivate for the next episode by creating real and heartfelt emotions, instead of just relying on famous dialogue or a well-tread story.
Wikipedia has a great breakdown of the characters, including cast information and basic differences from their Austen counterparts, so I won’t rewrite all that here, but I will say that the cast is stellar, and no matter how many times you’ve seen the BBC miniseries or the 2005 movie, or even read the book, you’ll discover each of these people anew.
And yes, this Darcy lives up to his Firth-y predecessors.
The fandom
LBD has amassed a pretty impressive fandom-largely Tumblr-based-for a web series that’s only been around for a year. You can explore a multitude of gifs, reaction posts, and other fandom at the various Tumblr tags. There’s unfortunately just one LiveJournal community that I could find-the-lbd-and it’s not especially populated, but AO3 is of course an excellent source for all your fanfiction needs. (FanFiction.net also has a ton of LBD fics under the Pride and Prejudice category, but, as ever, browse that site at your own risk.)
Some of the best places to play in this fandom are actually the official outlets, in large part because there are so many of them. The official website has been partially hacked but is worth a peek; there’s also the official Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr pages and the character’s various social media pages as well. Lizzie is on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and of course YouTube, and most of the other characters use at least some combination of those sites. The cast and creative teams are also very active online and responsive to audience questions, reactions, and FEELS.
The series concluded just last week, so this seemed like the perfect time for a month of recs! Enjoy!