my au, let me show you it
So, I've signed up for AU Big Bang. And I got approved, which means that my plot bunny is AU enough. (I didn't really have any doubts.) And, if when I manage to finish it, there will be a picture. For my story. *wibbles* (It might suck, of course, but it might be, you know, SHINY.)
Well, as Agatha Christie so aptly observed, murder is really the culmination of plot threads a series of events, not the beginning of them. And by "murder," I mean the process by which one turns the Glorious Vision (your glorious vision-- muses need not apply), subject of a year's worth of brainstorming and chats and very strange dreams, into an actual . . . thing. A thing which may or may not suck, but will almost always fall far short of the vision, but it won't be anything at all if it's never written/drawn/whatever, so really it's a net gain.
(Christie meant "murder" when she said murder, but never mind. It makes sense if you think deeply about it. While drinking heavily and reading snapedom essays.)
Anyway! A year ago last December, I think, I happened to be rambling on about AUs and points of departure and all of that. I even came up with one (1) criterion by which to judge all AUs: All changes from the original must be a consequence of the point(s) of departure, though with a corollary (1b): All aspects compliant with the original must be unaffected by the point(s) of departure. Then I thought up an example to illustrate the point, something along the lines of:
Suppose you've got an idea for an AU. Like - I don't know - Darcy's a woman and Elizabeth's a man. Okay, cool premise, but you'll have to consider what follows from that. Longbourn will be entailed upon E, not Mr Collins. Much less urgency for Mrs Bennet and the girls (or less excuses, whichever interpretation you follow). Also, without Longbourn, Mr Collins is much less of a prize, materially speaking. Still decent, but not what he is in canon. Also, he'd almost certainly still go wife-shopping among his cousins - he'd consider Jane first, and then drop to the next - but the next wouldn't be Elizabeth, it'd be Mary. And canon explicitly says that Mary would have accepted him.
So, bizarre though it may seem, the Collins/Mary ship is a direct consequence of genderswapping Darcy and Elizabeth.
It was just meant to be an example of the kind of thing I was talking about, but then it ate my mind. Even in that off-the-cuff example, I had to call girl!Darcy something other than girl!Darcy, so I automatically started calling her Catherine. (Never give the plot bunnies names! It lets them into your SOUL. Trufax!) I didn't even really think about it - just, boy!Darcy gets the male!family name, so girl!Darcy would get one of the girl!family names.
And then I was working out ages (would they be the same age? that'd really be a change from canon, 'cause statistically boy!D is exactly within the norm for men of his background, but there was a different norm for women) and inheritances (C = mistress of Pemberley? co-heiress w/ G or more complicated?), and finally, relationships (canonically, Darcy and Charlotte approve of each other in a quiet, practical sort of way; heterosocial relationships were so romanticized and familized that nothing more would be possible - but if they were both women?).
But I had to work on SC, so I regretfully consigned it to chats and, um, maybe tiny vignettes on my computer. But mostly looking at pictures to try and find Catherine and Henry. Mostly I just decided that, you know, since the Austen sisters were Cassandra-Elizabeth and Jane, E might have been named for Austen's favourite sister, and as a boy he'd probably be named for the favourite brother-- Henry. Or, as some theories go, she was named for the female half of the Austens' most vivacious duo -- sister-cousin Eliza de Feuillide and, again, Henry.
Also, Austen's own boy!Elizabeth is pretty obviously Henry Tilney. And he's actually paired with a Catherine so it's OMG META!! And also, at the time, I was studying Henry V (Hal/Harry is my favourite Shakespearean character EVAR) and came to the proposal scene and suddenly thought of girl!Darcy and boy!Elizabeth reading it and more OMG META!! So, yeah -- Henry Bennet (Lizzy=Hal, Eliza=Harry) and Catherine Darcy.
I loved the idea, wouldn't write, brainstormed for several months to torment myself, put it back -- more or less-- on the shelf, and . . . and then, somebody (I suspect
tree ) linked me to this. The whole thing was awesome, but specifically the section on girl!Harry.
Because, see, it hit me that that was the potentially awesome thing about genderswapping Darcy and Elizabeth-- that is, in the original context, so that people would only be responding to the genderswap-- exploring the way they're defined by gender roles. In Sarah's example, a girl who looked exactly like Harry Potter, who behaved as Harry Potter does, for the same reasons, with the same qualities and background -- would not evoke the reactions that Harry does, because she would be a girl.
I noticed some of this going on even in modern genderswaps, wherein much more is altered -- particularly in the reactions to my favourite,
tulina 's "And This Is Your Opinion of Me." In particular, three reactions were highly noticeable: readers were much less eager to jump to the defence of girl!Darcy than modern (and Regency) Darcys, who almost invariably behave in much worse ways; they were much more sympathetic to girl!Collins; and they were much more prepared to fangirl boy!Elizabeth.
I've often felt that the Darcy-and-Elizabeth fandom has less to do with Darcy and Elizabeth, as the (highly complex) characters Austen wrote, than Darcy and Elizabeth, the ultimate personifications of romance's favourite stereotypes: the Brooding Hero and the Plucky Girl. But after Sarah's essay, I thought it could be fascinating to consider how much of both their original characterisation and reader-reaction is filtered through gender roles. And then, of course, how the characters might be affected -- in their original context -- by gender roles, without significantly altering their behaviour or their motivations.
So-- canon!Darcy is objectified pretty thoroughly objectified in-story; how much more, then, if he were a woman? And how would that same objectification look when directed towards a woman? Though I'm very much opposed to the kind of retool which just changes pronouns when appropriate, I think it's worthwhile (particularly when considering gender roles, even if you're not planning a genderswap) to take passages, change only the gender of the participants, and see if our impressions change at all. They certainly would in HP, but what about P&P? Well, take this:
"Does that gentleman know Miss Darcy?"
Henry coloured, and said, "A little."
"And do you not think her a very beautiful lady, sir?"
"Yes -- very beautiful."
Even that little, I think, has different implications than canon; for Elizabeth, a woman, to acknowledge Darcy's handsomeness can be read as fairly dispassionate; she isn't saying anything significant about her feelings for him, or even about Darcy's identity. It would be very difficult to read Henry's acknowledgment as remotely dispassionate; a woman's beauty (or lack of it) is tied to her very identity, so that when he says Catherine is beautiful, he's saying something about Catherine herself, and how he feels about her. (I can practically hear his throat drying up.)
Or even this:
At length, every idea seemed to fail her; and, after standing a few moments without saying a word, she suddenly recollected herself, and took leave.
The others [Mr and Mrs Gardiner] then joined him, and expressed their admiration of her [Miss Darcy's] figure.
... Mr Gardiner? *squick*
More obviously, You are the last woman in the world I could ever be prevailed upon to marry makes me want to hit him, and I haven't even written the scene yet. And I'm not even sure what I'd think of this, but the subtext is definitely different:
"And so, brother, I find from our uncle and aunt, that you have actually seen Pemberley."
He replied in the affirmative.
"I almost envy you the pleasure, and yet I believe it would be too much for me, or else I could take it in my way to Newcastle. And you saw the old housekeeper, I suppose? Poor Reynolds, she was always very fond of me. But of course she did not mention my name to you.''
"Yes, she did.''
"And what did she say?''
"That you were gone into the army, and she was afraid had -- not turned out well. At such a distance as that, you know, things are strangely misrepresented.''
"Certainly,'' he replied, biting his lips. Henry hoped he had silenced him; but he soon afterwards said,
"I was surprised to see Catherine in town last month. We passed each other several times. I wonder what she can be doing there.''
"Perhaps preparing for her marriage with Lord ----,'' said Henry. [Lady Catherine and Lady Anne shipped Catherine/the colonel's brother?] "It must be something particular, to take her there at this time of year.''
"Undoubtedly. Did you see her while you were at Lambton? I thought I understood from the Gardiners that you had.''
"Yes; she introduced us to her sister.''
"And do you like her?'' (Ew.)
"Very much.''
"I have heard, indeed, that she is uncommonly improved within this year or two. When I last saw her, she was not very promising. I am very glad you liked her. I hope she will turn out well.''
"I dare say she will; she has got over the most trying age.''
"Did you go by the village of Kympton?''
"I do not recollect that we did.''
"I mention it, because it is the living which I ought to have had. A most delightful place! -- Excellent Parsonage House! It would have suited me in every respect.''
"How should you have liked making sermons?''
"Exceedingly well. I should have considered it as part of my duty, and the exertion would soon have been nothing. One ought not to repine; -- but, to be sure, it would have been such a thing for me! The quiet, the retirement of such a life would have answered all my ideas of happiness! But it was not to be. Did you ever hear Catherine mention the circumstance, when you were in Kent?''
"I have heard from authority, which I thought as good, that it was left you conditionally only, and at the will of the present patroness.'' (yaygoodfemaleauthority!!)
"You have. Yes, there was something in that; I told you so from the first, you may remember.''
... huh.
So, anyway. Yeah. I outlined it for kicks, a few months ago, and now I've tracked down the P&P letters and am trying to build an alt!genderswapped!plot around them, and hoping for the best and maybe it'll actually do what I want it to and...
WAH.
Well, as Agatha Christie so aptly observed, murder is really the culmination of plot threads a series of events, not the beginning of them. And by "murder," I mean the process by which one turns the Glorious Vision (your glorious vision-- muses need not apply), subject of a year's worth of brainstorming and chats and very strange dreams, into an actual . . . thing. A thing which may or may not suck, but will almost always fall far short of the vision, but it won't be anything at all if it's never written/drawn/whatever, so really it's a net gain.
(Christie meant "murder" when she said murder, but never mind. It makes sense if you think deeply about it. While drinking heavily and reading snapedom essays.)
Anyway! A year ago last December, I think, I happened to be rambling on about AUs and points of departure and all of that. I even came up with one (1) criterion by which to judge all AUs: All changes from the original must be a consequence of the point(s) of departure, though with a corollary (1b): All aspects compliant with the original must be unaffected by the point(s) of departure. Then I thought up an example to illustrate the point, something along the lines of:
Suppose you've got an idea for an AU. Like - I don't know - Darcy's a woman and Elizabeth's a man. Okay, cool premise, but you'll have to consider what follows from that. Longbourn will be entailed upon E, not Mr Collins. Much less urgency for Mrs Bennet and the girls (or less excuses, whichever interpretation you follow). Also, without Longbourn, Mr Collins is much less of a prize, materially speaking. Still decent, but not what he is in canon. Also, he'd almost certainly still go wife-shopping among his cousins - he'd consider Jane first, and then drop to the next - but the next wouldn't be Elizabeth, it'd be Mary. And canon explicitly says that Mary would have accepted him.
So, bizarre though it may seem, the Collins/Mary ship is a direct consequence of genderswapping Darcy and Elizabeth.
It was just meant to be an example of the kind of thing I was talking about, but then it ate my mind. Even in that off-the-cuff example, I had to call girl!Darcy something other than girl!Darcy, so I automatically started calling her Catherine. (Never give the plot bunnies names! It lets them into your SOUL. Trufax!) I didn't even really think about it - just, boy!Darcy gets the male!family name, so girl!Darcy would get one of the girl!family names.
And then I was working out ages (would they be the same age? that'd really be a change from canon, 'cause statistically boy!D is exactly within the norm for men of his background, but there was a different norm for women) and inheritances (C = mistress of Pemberley? co-heiress w/ G or more complicated?), and finally, relationships (canonically, Darcy and Charlotte approve of each other in a quiet, practical sort of way; heterosocial relationships were so romanticized and familized that nothing more would be possible - but if they were both women?).
But I had to work on SC, so I regretfully consigned it to chats and, um, maybe tiny vignettes on my computer. But mostly looking at pictures to try and find Catherine and Henry. Mostly I just decided that, you know, since the Austen sisters were Cassandra-Elizabeth and Jane, E might have been named for Austen's favourite sister, and as a boy he'd probably be named for the favourite brother-- Henry. Or, as some theories go, she was named for the female half of the Austens' most vivacious duo -- sister-cousin Eliza de Feuillide and, again, Henry.
Also, Austen's own boy!Elizabeth is pretty obviously Henry Tilney. And he's actually paired with a Catherine so it's OMG META!! And also, at the time, I was studying Henry V (Hal/Harry is my favourite Shakespearean character EVAR) and came to the proposal scene and suddenly thought of girl!Darcy and boy!Elizabeth reading it and more OMG META!! So, yeah -- Henry Bennet (Lizzy=Hal, Eliza=Harry) and Catherine Darcy.
I loved the idea, wouldn't write, brainstormed for several months to torment myself, put it back -- more or less-- on the shelf, and . . . and then, somebody (I suspect
tree ) linked me to this. The whole thing was awesome, but specifically the section on girl!Harry.
Because, see, it hit me that that was the potentially awesome thing about genderswapping Darcy and Elizabeth-- that is, in the original context, so that people would only be responding to the genderswap-- exploring the way they're defined by gender roles. In Sarah's example, a girl who looked exactly like Harry Potter, who behaved as Harry Potter does, for the same reasons, with the same qualities and background -- would not evoke the reactions that Harry does, because she would be a girl.
I noticed some of this going on even in modern genderswaps, wherein much more is altered -- particularly in the reactions to my favourite,
tulina 's "And This Is Your Opinion of Me." In particular, three reactions were highly noticeable: readers were much less eager to jump to the defence of girl!Darcy than modern (and Regency) Darcys, who almost invariably behave in much worse ways; they were much more sympathetic to girl!Collins; and they were much more prepared to fangirl boy!Elizabeth.
I've often felt that the Darcy-and-Elizabeth fandom has less to do with Darcy and Elizabeth, as the (highly complex) characters Austen wrote, than Darcy and Elizabeth, the ultimate personifications of romance's favourite stereotypes: the Brooding Hero and the Plucky Girl. But after Sarah's essay, I thought it could be fascinating to consider how much of both their original characterisation and reader-reaction is filtered through gender roles. And then, of course, how the characters might be affected -- in their original context -- by gender roles, without significantly altering their behaviour or their motivations.
So-- canon!Darcy is objectified pretty thoroughly objectified in-story; how much more, then, if he were a woman? And how would that same objectification look when directed towards a woman? Though I'm very much opposed to the kind of retool which just changes pronouns when appropriate, I think it's worthwhile (particularly when considering gender roles, even if you're not planning a genderswap) to take passages, change only the gender of the participants, and see if our impressions change at all. They certainly would in HP, but what about P&P? Well, take this:
"Does that gentleman know Miss Darcy?"
Henry coloured, and said, "A little."
"And do you not think her a very beautiful lady, sir?"
"Yes -- very beautiful."
Even that little, I think, has different implications than canon; for Elizabeth, a woman, to acknowledge Darcy's handsomeness can be read as fairly dispassionate; she isn't saying anything significant about her feelings for him, or even about Darcy's identity. It would be very difficult to read Henry's acknowledgment as remotely dispassionate; a woman's beauty (or lack of it) is tied to her very identity, so that when he says Catherine is beautiful, he's saying something about Catherine herself, and how he feels about her. (I can practically hear his throat drying up.)
Or even this:
At length, every idea seemed to fail her; and, after standing a few moments without saying a word, she suddenly recollected herself, and took leave.
The others [Mr and Mrs Gardiner] then joined him, and expressed their admiration of her [Miss Darcy's] figure.
... Mr Gardiner? *squick*
More obviously, You are the last woman in the world I could ever be prevailed upon to marry makes me want to hit him, and I haven't even written the scene yet. And I'm not even sure what I'd think of this, but the subtext is definitely different:
"And so, brother, I find from our uncle and aunt, that you have actually seen Pemberley."
He replied in the affirmative.
"I almost envy you the pleasure, and yet I believe it would be too much for me, or else I could take it in my way to Newcastle. And you saw the old housekeeper, I suppose? Poor Reynolds, she was always very fond of me. But of course she did not mention my name to you.''
"Yes, she did.''
"And what did she say?''
"That you were gone into the army, and she was afraid had -- not turned out well. At such a distance as that, you know, things are strangely misrepresented.''
"Certainly,'' he replied, biting his lips. Henry hoped he had silenced him; but he soon afterwards said,
"I was surprised to see Catherine in town last month. We passed each other several times. I wonder what she can be doing there.''
"Perhaps preparing for her marriage with Lord ----,'' said Henry. [Lady Catherine and Lady Anne shipped Catherine/the colonel's brother?] "It must be something particular, to take her there at this time of year.''
"Undoubtedly. Did you see her while you were at Lambton? I thought I understood from the Gardiners that you had.''
"Yes; she introduced us to her sister.''
"And do you like her?'' (Ew.)
"Very much.''
"I have heard, indeed, that she is uncommonly improved within this year or two. When I last saw her, she was not very promising. I am very glad you liked her. I hope she will turn out well.''
"I dare say she will; she has got over the most trying age.''
"Did you go by the village of Kympton?''
"I do not recollect that we did.''
"I mention it, because it is the living which I ought to have had. A most delightful place! -- Excellent Parsonage House! It would have suited me in every respect.''
"How should you have liked making sermons?''
"Exceedingly well. I should have considered it as part of my duty, and the exertion would soon have been nothing. One ought not to repine; -- but, to be sure, it would have been such a thing for me! The quiet, the retirement of such a life would have answered all my ideas of happiness! But it was not to be. Did you ever hear Catherine mention the circumstance, when you were in Kent?''
"I have heard from authority, which I thought as good, that it was left you conditionally only, and at the will of the present patroness.'' (yaygoodfemaleauthority!!)
"You have. Yes, there was something in that; I told you so from the first, you may remember.''
... huh.
So, anyway. Yeah. I outlined it for kicks, a few months ago, and now I've tracked down the P&P letters and am trying to build an alt!genderswapped!plot around them, and hoping for the best and maybe it'll actually do what I want it to and...
WAH.