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ricardienneI've been reading Pamela Aidan's Pride and Prejudice fanfic trilogy: "Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman." It wouldn't be very interesting to claim that the characters are all flat, the extra plotty-bits are really pathetic, and the whole thing is Not Even Worthy of Being Called Not As Good as the Original. But with all of that understood, here are 10 annoying things.
10. Church. It turned out to be possible to classify characters into good and bad based on whether or not they could easily locate their prayer-books. Or whether they enjoyed singing hymns. Religious sentiments/habits in the period is all very well, but combined with the overly large subplot about Georgiana getting born again, there was way too much, and not in an interesting way.
9. Squabs. Okay, I get it: carriages are upholstered with them. It was not necessary to mention them every time anyone got into a carriage. I started to wonder whether characters were sent on journeys solely so that they could "lean back against the squabs." Also, "steaming brew"? I believe the technical term is "tea".
8. The Shakespeare-quoting valet. P.G. Wodehouse could pull it off (and Jeeves, not perhaps coincidentally, quotes from a broader range of literature); I'm not sure anyone else can; Pamela Aidan couldn't. Also, I don't know that much about Shakespeare/literary breadth in the 1790-1820 period, but wouldn't an educated man be more familiar with Virgil and Horace? I don't like my ancients being snubbed, even for Shakespeare.
7. Best friend turns out to be secret agent. (No, not Bingly, although Bingly as a secret agent who is brilliant at infiltrating Napoleon's chain of command, but compensates for a Machiavellan secret agent career by trusting everyone who seems like a normal, decent person would be pretty cool.) This is mainly a complaint about the attempted relevance/politicy-ness of the extra plot material. There are worse even worse things about it.
6. Scenes lifted straight from BBC miniseries. I am quite fond, on the whole, of that miniseries, and yes, Colin Firth does make a nice Darcy, but appropriating their not-that-well-chosen interpolations just isn't that classy.
5. Blatant stupidity. So you want to find a wife? Would you do so by staying in London for The Season, attending balls and musicales, or would you do it by attending a small house party in the middle of nowhere with people you don't even know well. The only thing that would have made this acceptable would have been to make it cross over into Jane Eyre, and have Austen's characters hang out at Thornfield Manor with the Ingrams and Mr. Rochester.
4. Subplots involving cravat-tying for attempted humor. There isn't much else to say about that, except NO!
3. The obsessions with Elizabeth's embroidery threads. To the point of absconding them and nervously stroking them every few minutes. (Once might have been cute, 50 times was a bit weird.)
2. Celtic black magic and Irish heritage. This is the other half of the extra plot material. There are sacrifices by the new moon, and Wild Irish Revenge, and for some reasons, everyone takes it very seriously. To which I say: Get your PanCeltiness out of my Jane Austen!
1. Lack of re-conjunction with the original. The scenes that came out of Jane Austen didn't make much sense in light of the characterization. After two and a half books of dedicated Darcy POV, his proposal to Elizabeth still seemed to come out of the blue.
10. Church. It turned out to be possible to classify characters into good and bad based on whether or not they could easily locate their prayer-books. Or whether they enjoyed singing hymns. Religious sentiments/habits in the period is all very well, but combined with the overly large subplot about Georgiana getting born again, there was way too much, and not in an interesting way.
9. Squabs. Okay, I get it: carriages are upholstered with them. It was not necessary to mention them every time anyone got into a carriage. I started to wonder whether characters were sent on journeys solely so that they could "lean back against the squabs." Also, "steaming brew"? I believe the technical term is "tea".
8. The Shakespeare-quoting valet. P.G. Wodehouse could pull it off (and Jeeves, not perhaps coincidentally, quotes from a broader range of literature); I'm not sure anyone else can; Pamela Aidan couldn't. Also, I don't know that much about Shakespeare/literary breadth in the 1790-1820 period, but wouldn't an educated man be more familiar with Virgil and Horace? I don't like my ancients being snubbed, even for Shakespeare.
7. Best friend turns out to be secret agent. (No, not Bingly, although Bingly as a secret agent who is brilliant at infiltrating Napoleon's chain of command, but compensates for a Machiavellan secret agent career by trusting everyone who seems like a normal, decent person would be pretty cool.) This is mainly a complaint about the attempted relevance/politicy-ness of the extra plot material. There are worse even worse things about it.
6. Scenes lifted straight from BBC miniseries. I am quite fond, on the whole, of that miniseries, and yes, Colin Firth does make a nice Darcy, but appropriating their not-that-well-chosen interpolations just isn't that classy.
5. Blatant stupidity. So you want to find a wife? Would you do so by staying in London for The Season, attending balls and musicales, or would you do it by attending a small house party in the middle of nowhere with people you don't even know well. The only thing that would have made this acceptable would have been to make it cross over into Jane Eyre, and have Austen's characters hang out at Thornfield Manor with the Ingrams and Mr. Rochester.
4. Subplots involving cravat-tying for attempted humor. There isn't much else to say about that, except NO!
3. The obsessions with Elizabeth's embroidery threads. To the point of absconding them and nervously stroking them every few minutes. (Once might have been cute, 50 times was a bit weird.)
2. Celtic black magic and Irish heritage. This is the other half of the extra plot material. There are sacrifices by the new moon, and Wild Irish Revenge, and for some reasons, everyone takes it very seriously. To which I say: Get your PanCeltiness out of my Jane Austen!
1. Lack of re-conjunction with the original. The scenes that came out of Jane Austen didn't make much sense in light of the characterization. After two and a half books of dedicated Darcy POV, his proposal to Elizabeth still seemed to come out of the blue.
