thoughts on lydia and storytelling, or why you should all go re-watch lydia's videos immediately
I've been hanging around the fringes of the LBD fandom for a while now without interacting too much, but last night I rewatched most of Lydia's arc (in her videos and in Lizzie’s). It turns out I have some things to say about why they're awesome. So I'm jumping into the fandom.
I started watching LBD the weekend after Darcy Day and fell in love with the show. Once I finished the marathon viewing, two new videos each week were not nearly enough, so I went back to watch Lydia's videos. I liked them. They were funny and different, and they introduced Mary, whose presence I was missing from Lizzie’s side of the story - but I wasn’t totally invested. I didn’t identify with Lydia’s over-the-top party girl side, and I didn’t have an existing attachment to her story or her perspective.
Because: Lizzie and Darcy’s story was already mine. I’m not saying I’ve lived a similar story (because God knows I have not), but Pride and Prejudice was the first “classic” that I read on my own, when I was 13 years old. It’s been a part of my identity for almost half of my life. I know the beats of the story, I know when to get excited, when to be apprehensive, and I know how it turns out. And conversely (as Kathleen Kelly says), “I’m always in agony over whether Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy are really going to get together!” It’s a wonderful mix of nostalgia and suspense that I know many of the LBD fans share, and this is a BIG part of why the show is so successful.
Taking that your audience knows inside out and making it new again – it’s a very powerful form of storytelling.
It turns out that this is part of why Lydia’s story arc is so incredible.
Translating two hundred year old characters to a modern context is not an easy task, and more importantly, it is NOT a precise one. I mean, this is an idea that’s been treaded over time and again in discussion of the show, but that’s for a good reason. It would have been SO easy to just make Lydia a total trainwreck without much depth and (as per speculation) have her marry Wickham in Vegas or do something illegal or overdose on drugs. These are completely valid translations of her story (if a little too easy to fix).
Instead, we got a compelling and heartbreaking story of a lonely girl and the slow crumbling of her smiling façade. (And how anyone can say that that story was not worth telling is so far beyond my comprehension.)
I rewatched Lydia's story partially in response to those people who said it wasn't even worth telling, and found that by the end, I disagreed with them even more, and I had gained a much bigger appreciation for and investment in her character. Here is just one of the big moments that really made me realize the finesse in the story-crafting.
This is the quote from George in Heartbreaker that makes Lydia believe he cares about her: “Why is that you make me feel like I’m more than just how other people see me?”
This is not something that George wants. George has a carefully crafted identity that he absolutely does not want anyone to see past - and I know a lot of this has been covered in the discussion of the particulars of his emotional abuse.
But here’s the thing that struck me as I rewatched this video: that is exactly what Lydia wants. She wants someone to see that she is more than the persona she presents, and there is nothing to make us feel more valuable than to think that we are capable of giving the thing we want most. We think that everyone else is fundamentally like us, so we think that the thing we most want is the thing EVERYONE most wants.
All of a sudden, I completely understood when MKW responded to people saying Lydia looked tired or beaten down in the latest videos by saying that she’s actually just comfortable – she feels safe and loved. She feels valued.
For the first time, I identified more with Lydia than with Lizzie (and in fact was a little pissed at Lizzie for inadvertently contributing to Lydia's loneliness and feelings of inadequacy), and I wished so badly for her that George was just a good guy who had fallen in love with her.
And the build up to this moment is so organic and gradual that I really did have to rewatch the story arc to understand exactly how much sense it made for Lydia to end up here. Honestly, in P&P, the moment that Lydia runs off with Wickham pretty much comes out of nowhere, except for the part where she likes guys a lot. I think because of this, I assumed Lydia's story wouldn't be important until the end, so I didn't pay much attention to the character undercurrents in her videos at first.
That was a mistake, and I am so glad I've gone back to understand Lydia's story AND to remind myself that the best story adaptations don't just adapt - they are new creations in their own right.
When I began writing this, I mostly just wanted to say MAD PROPS to Rachel Kiley and Mary Kate Wiles for creating this compelling story out of a side character who was, for the most part, a plot device in the novel. You two rock my socks off. No joke. Thanks for putting so much into this story, and I cannot wait to see where you take it next.
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