are most of these that aren't on AO3 still on LJ? I really enjoyed what is om AO3 and would love to read the rest if possible :)
Oh, thank you very much! The old fics I listed in the post are all up at AO3:
Left to Follow, the "what if Darcy cheated LOL PSYCH it's about his parents" fic, is here. (The discarded chapters are not on AO3. I originally posted them on Hyacinth Gardens, a long-defunct website, but the other chapters might still be up at fanfiction.net under Peradan.)
Sword and Sorcery, the fantasy AU vignettes, are here. (These are probably the worst on the writing level of all my old P&P fic, IMO.)
Catalyst, the "Darcy talks over the first proposal with his cousin—who tells him he was completely right" fic, is here.
Such Terms of Cordiality, the wild AU where Elizabeth and Darcy start their relationship with good first impressions at Ramsgate and also Lady Anne and Mr Bennet are worse than friends, they're exes, and Lady Anne is still alive and Jane doesn't fall in love with Bingley andandand is here.
Season of Courtship, the canon-compliant Darcy/Elizabeth engagement fic, is here.
The Widow, the post-P&P/MP Elizabeth/Tom Bertram fic, is here.
Incumbrance of Mystery, the crack murder mystery fic, is here.
Claims to Reputation, the epistolary fic about the two oldest Wickham children trying to leverage their Bennet connections, is here.
My livejournal account is still up, but I really can't encourage anyone to use lj at this point and I'm pretty sure that nearly everything I wrote there ended up at ff.net or AO3.
If we are talking all Austen men in general, it's Willoughby, hands down. Such a collection of selfishness, spite, self pity, and cold, hard use of others is difficult to find.
If we are talking heroes, sadly, it is Edmund. IMO, that is intentional in the novel -he has been handicapped by the way he has been raised. Shoutout to Roger Hamley from Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters, who is like the platonic version of all that Edmund could have been, and he's just amazing.
14. Favorite love confession from the books
Mr. Knightley's, hands down. I'm basic that way XD Darcy's is very vulnerable in its own way, Wentworth's is very romantic, but I adore the honesty and trust and understanding that goes into Mr Knightley's.
I'm looking for a fic I read quite a long time ago where Harry and Draco help Luna and Neville set up a fancy tea shop on Diagon Alley, and I THINK Neville's grandma and Narcissa bond over helping them sort out the dress code? There are also some misunderstandings over Harry misinterpreting Draco's offhand comments as being anti-Muggle, or something along those lines. Luna and Neville may or may not be dating but they live together in a flat full of plants and they have a special mug for each of their friends when they visit.
Thanks again!
We believe you are looking for Moldova's Magical Tea (32k, E) by @aibidil!
Don’t forget to bookmark, leave kudos and comments!
Also, I'd personally like to see Iskierka even more unhinged
16. Your favourite headcanon
oh boy now that's opening Pandora's Box isn't it? I have many many headcanons, all of which are beholden to my petty desires and flashes of fancy. Which is to say what is my favorite headcanon today may not be my favorite tomorrow. I think one I am particularly enjoying at the moment is that Regal Coppers lose their vibrant colors with age, while across the channel their counterparts the Grand Chevaliers shift from brown and grey to dusty pink and rose gold in their twilight years. Some Grand Chevaliers will even gain tints of lavender, lilac, or baby blue to their scales. So basically when the magnificent colors of a Regal begin to fade, the radiance of the Grand Chevalier is only just making itself seen.
27. What do you tell your friends when recommending Temeraire books to them?
Well, the only person who listened to Temeraire on my recommendation is my sister, and that was result of me talking about it to her non-stop for over a year. But idk, for someone else I guess I would say how it has an interesting take on dragon and human interaction and how the differs around the world. And idk say something about how cool it was the Laurence (who's already a good man at the start of it) has his own "redemption arc" into a better man. Or I might say how it's super fun and if you love dragons and want a good time go ahead and give His Majesty's Dragon a shot ahah.
Would love to hear about your modern AU concept as well, if you're happy to talk about it :)
*the modern P&P adaption that is, sorry if it wasn't clear
Now that my exams are over, I am! And it's predictably long and rambling, so there's a quick summation at the very end.
Anyway, the concept for me is driven by two different gripes with US modernizations of P&P.
The first thing I'm grumpy about is how, although Austen famously prioritizes the experiences and perspectives of her female characters over the male ones, queer US modernizations (whether fic or adaptation) seem to skew strongly towards queer male experience. Individually, that's okay, but as a trend ... I do find it aggravating that m/m predominates so much over f/f even with an author as preoccupied with female experience as Austen. Lesbian Darcy/bi Elizabeth rights!
My second issue is with the ... not universal, but not-that-unusual treatment of modern US American Darcy as conservative or at least old-fashioned in the context of 2022 (or 2015 or whatever—I think it's a bad take regardless, though particularly egregious now). This is generally a way of "updating" his snobbery, but ... the original character's positions are fairly progressive for his time and circumstances, if with a blind spot about socioeconomics, and his tastes are modern.
Funnily enough, that is probably the easiest thing to translate into a modern US setting despite many other cultural differences, because "fairly progressive with a blind spot about socioeconomics" is THE stereotype of US liberals and especially "coastal elites." And relatedly, I think the reluctance to update the direct political power of families like the Darcys and Fitzwilliams as ... direct political power is both an understandable avoidance of a minefield but also kind of toothless. The closest US analogue to a Whig earl in the House of Lords isn't some random businessman, it's a senator from a Democratic political dynasty.
Also, I dislike Pemberley-as-corporate-enterprise on general principle. I much prefer things like Darcy's open-to-the-public art collection to be represented by an art gallery rather than the visual equivalent of elevator music.
So. In the modern adaptation of my dreams, Elizabeth's family comes from a western red state, where they've managed to hang onto a small family farm thanks to the comparatively low cost of living—but that's rising thanks to rich people bringing up prices. Enter Bingley with his fortune in trade micro-chips or something (truly the nicest Silicon Valley bro to ever bro). The Darcy character is Bingley's college BFF, who is clearly wealthy because a) she exudes it, b) Bingley's sisters "mention" it, and c) she owns a good-sized house in Seattle and runs a prestigious art gallery there. Nobody realizes she's one of those Fitzwilliams until later, however.
The easiest way to convert Darcy's names to a modern US woman's is simply to swap them to Darcy Fitzwilliam. That said, I like to give Darcy a pretentious first name and amuse myself by calling modern f!Darcy Narcissa—both because of her arrogance and because Fitzwilliam is the only person who can call her "Narcy" and live.
I don't think the exact initial insult would make a lot of sense translated literally, but there definitely is one, and Elizabeth basically sees Narcissa as a cross between "rich artsy type with no concept of normal life" and "the Seattle chill given human form." Narcissa, meanwhile, is the sort of US liberal who holds genuinely progressive positions—some more so than Elizabeth, in fact—and thinks that The Community should do everything within their power for LGBT+ people in hostile environments, but also doesn't get why they don't just ... move.
There is also definitely a (male) Wickham whom Elizabeth is regrettably fooled by.
I think the tension between Mrs Bennet and Elizabeth is complicated by a few things. I definitely see Mrs Bennet as a pushy where-are-my-grandkids type, and as someone who can be fairly indifferent about her less-favored children's personal happiness but a total helicopter mom about their life/career decisions, which clashes badly with Elizabeth's easy-going but very independent personality. I also suspect that Mrs Bennet is a non-voter because, while she's not aggressively bigoted, she just doesn't care that much and insofar as she does, it's all about the parasocial relationships. Elizabeth can't ever talk to her about her life (or most things) without it becoming all about Mrs Bennet's feelings, so she doesn't bother.
Mr Bennet is pretty much his familiar self—he resents his wife and is openly contemptuous towards her (I imagine there's some reason that Mrs Bennet can't work or isn't about to). He's indifferent to his younger children, but fond of Jane, loves Elizabeth in his way, and has supported the last two through some tough spots. At the same time, he's never bothered to save enough to pay off the mortgage or put any of his children through college, so the girls' loans are a point of legitimate frustration for Mrs Bennet (though her spending is a significant part of the reason they couldn't do more, since "keeping up with the Joneses" isn't exactly a FAFSA income deduction category).
I have some other ideas, but those are the basic ones!
TL;DR—lesbian Darcy/Elizabeth with political undercurrents, but none of them are Republicans. The Darcy character in particular is a smart, socially progressive (but rich and out of touch) artsy Seattle lesbian from a Kennedy-style Democratic dynasty. Elizabeth, meanwhile, is chill and personable, bi, and very independent (to the dismay of her wannabe-helicopter mother).
@crossedwithblue asked me to ramble about Catherine Darcy from my Elizabeth/f!Darcy femslash fic and the biracial Darcy-Fitzwilliams in that fic. I am always glad to ramble about my fic, so!
In the fic, the main exposition about the Darcy-Fitzwilliam family history (thus far) comes from Wickham, always a dubious source, but he's mostly not lying outright. Catherine's grandfathers, Lord Harcourt and Sir James Darcy, were great friends who saw themselves as also great trailblazers because they were very into "the East Indies" in their way, and personally traveled to India (more specifically, to modern Kerala). The circumstances that led to them shocking their social sphere by bringing back a pair of beautiful and wealthy Indian women as their wives were never much talked about in the family, so Catherine herself only knows so much. Certainly, all concerned would have considered it a great impertinence for anyone (esp those outside the family) to actually ask about their motives.
Catherine does have the impression that her grandfathers both considered themselves quite noble for going through with the marriages, but that Sir James had a more realistic idea of the difficulties Lady Harcourt and Lady Darcy might encounter in their society. It's only an impression because she never knew him; Sir James died young, leaving Lady Darcy as a rich widow with one child, a very young son. Catherine did know Lady Darcy and was on good terms with her until she died, when Catherine was about eleven.
She has enough familiarity to guess that neither Lady Darcy nor Lady Harcourt were as much out of their depth as many others (incl Sir James) expected them to be. But it wasn't nothing, either. Lady Darcy was always isolated from most of those around her, even before the death of Sir James removed a fairly major buffer between her and the world in which she now lived. She came to trust very few people, and trusted no one so much as her cousin, Lady Harcourt, which only deepened the tie between the Darcy and Fitzwilliam families (already friendly + strong political allies).
Lady Darcy, Lady Harcourt, and Lord Harcourt were all active in forwarding a formalization of that tie through the marriage of young Mr Darcy and one of the Fitzwilliam daughters, Lady Anne. Mr Darcy and Lady Anne were on reasonably good terms as a couple (not a love match by any stretch of the imagination, but an okay one). After several years and a couple of miscarriages, they had one child that survived to christening—Catherine.
I think that Catherine's experiences have always been very polarized. She was the precious, overindulged only child of a powerful landowner for her first twelve years—but raised alongside the steward's son, her father's favorite, to the point that he's almost a surrogate brother (in her own perception, if not Wickham's). She's always conscious that a son would have been preferred to be the one who lived, ideally one like her charming, easy-going father rather than like she is herself. She's certainly aware of being visibly biracial in a deeply racist society. She's also very conscious of her position as a great heiress and the special darling only(-turned-eldest) child.
In a lot of ways, these combined experiences have hardened her pride. At heart, she really wants to be thought of, and treated as, superior for her intelligence, strength of character, and scrupulous high principles. But few people outside her family and her household care about whether she possesses any of those things. She's gotten used to deference because of her family's position and power and wealth, and because she personally is a great heiress (if less of one than she was initially raised to be). It's a substitute at best, but she quasi-buys into it.
After all, it's sort of akin to what she wants, enough that at some level, she accepts her stature as part of the proper order of things. But she also doesn't trust that kind of deference; she knows all too well that it often conceals (sometimes not very effectively) real disdain for her, ignorance, hopes of exploiting her, other ill feelings/motives, or some combination of these.
So she is pretty wary of her social world at this point and, although at some level, she would like to see things in a more idealistic way, she can't—she's too clever and she's seen too much of society to think all that well of it. On top of that, she's also repulsed by the idea of marriage, a feeling which she vaguely thought would pass in her adolescence but which just never did. For a long time, it was easier for her to believe it's because most people are just generally contemptible than that there was something different about her.
At the same time as her general disdain for most others was rising, she remained caring and well-intentioned at heart. When Georgiana came along, Catherine wasn't jealous or threatened, and she's never resented Georgiana for halving her own wealth or for their mother's death. She just loved her and she's always wanted to protect Georgiana from a world that has often seemed fundamentally antagonistic towards Catherine's values and sense of individual dignity.
When their father died, 23-y-o Catherine looked at 11-y-o Georgiana, and even with Colonel Fitzwilliam there as the legal guardian and the executor of the will and her own bff, part of her just felt like ... oh, it's up to me now. And that sense of responsibility as well as affection has never wavered. (She's not a wavering sort of person!)
It's also there in her comfortable camaraderie with Fitzwilliam, another one of her father's favorites, but whom she loves dearly (if very platonically!). They'll badger each other about this or that, but they are genuinely very close, in a more companionate way than either is with Georgiana, and there is not much (except marriage, lol) that they wouldn't do for each other. She's not as close to Fitzwilliam's two siblings, but still on quite good terms with them and would do a lot for them or even Anne.
As in canon, her sense of responsibility and decorum owed to "her own" extends beyond her relatives to her servants, tenants, and a good number of others within the reach of her influence. Mrs Reynolds loves her as much as canon Darcy, and Catherine (who has a sharp tongue when she lets herself) is just as careful as canon Darcy not to speak sharply to those under her direct power, or to be ungenerous or unkind.
This affects her attentive care for Georgiana, as well, since Georgiana will have her say once she comes of age, and in the likely case of Georgiana marrying, there'll be someone else in a position to interfere with Catherine's principled management of the Pemberley estates. She doesn't want Georgiana to feel undue pressure, but she is perfectly willing to intervene should someone Unworthy come on the scene.
So, short version: Catherine is genuinely haughty and she has a lot going on.
I'm sure you've said before but what's your dissertation on?
Trends and changes in early modern and (long) eighteenth-century literature dealing with a specific issue. It's niche enough that I don't want to say exactly.
