tumblr just made me happy

[elizabeth_hoot]

This is a thing that just happened!

Anonymous asked: Oh my gosh, yes. Why do filmmakers think that Darcy never smiled? He thinks Elizabeth's hilarious, and laughs with her (while she thinks he's laughing at her). WHY DOES NO ONE UNDERSTAND DARCY?

Bless you, anon. He smiles more than anyone except Elizabeth. He’s even smiling in his portrait, and

Comments

Re: uh, hi

[themonkeytwin]

As far as being purist goes, I figure I have the pure originals, and that frees me to enjoy works that play around with them. If a derivative piece works on its own merits, not just whatever goodwill it borrows from the original, that can be all it takes to make me happy. Basically, if you know what you're doing, I can roll with it. When it actually manages to interact intelligently or accurately with the source, that's when I actually get excited.

I forgot to mention it earlier, but one adaptation I thought managed to get a partial Darcy to its credit was Bride&Prejudice, where they manage to get some of the assured arrogance of him by virtue of making him American, which is interesting on a whole bunch of levels. (Or horrific, depending on personal views ;)) And yet even they played the fish-out-of-water card to soften his rough edges. Mind you, they softened pretty much everything to modernise it and fit it into a movie run-time.

I think keeping his lines and preoccupations as near to canon as they did when everyone else was updated seemed itself an odd misapprehension of his character, as if Darcy's period mannerisms and preoccupations are some essential feature of his character

Yeah, along with the intense awkwardness they gave him, that was a pretty WTF element. It's taken me a while to even get kind of comfortable with him as-is - like trying to figure out whether they actually thought this was an accurate adaptation of Darcy, or whether they just couldn't figure a better work-around than substituting uptightness for rudeness to update him to the contemporary social scene and still keep him a desireable romantic interest. I mean, the Georgiana (and Lydia/Wickham) sub-plot is the hardest to find a modern analogue for, and maybe their solutions for that made them feel like they had to go this way with Darcy? I haven't really thought it through enough to see if it's not possible to keep him credibly closer to canon!Darcy. I do feel like they're trying to keep something of his progressiveness in the way he designed and runs Pemberly Digital, but the whole newsie-hipster-old-fashioned thing is still a weird note, particularly for someone as rich and driven as he is.

I like Charlotte and Jane too! I love the way they've given Charlotte's pragmatism a fair airing. (I have to admit I also fell in love with their Fitz, a character I don't usually care too much about in the original.)

You are welcome for my support. Thanks for chatting with me. :)

(Oh, can I ask - who is that in your icon as Darcy? I don't recognize him. But I would totally support a Horowitz/Darcy ticket! Or at least the AU fic that detailed their triumphant campaign.)

Re: uh, hi

[elizabeth_hoot]

It's Orlando Seale from the Mormon P&P, ha. He's the one that physically resembles Darcy-in-my-head most closely.