#but yeah if i'm charge darcy is going to be a lesbian lol

[anghraine]

if you had totally free reign for one movie, how would you adapt p&p? total authenticity or any updates? some kind of combination?

A combination, for sure.

Honestly, there are two concepts in my head—one a period piece and one modern. But if I had total control over just one, I would have to go with the period version. My adaptation would be pretty close to this wish-fulfillment P&P I laid out a year and a half ago, except in my Dream P&P Adaptation of Ultimate Destiny, Darcy is a lesbian, Elizabeth is bi, and the casting is ... not carelessly color-blind, but very much more diverse than is usual for Austen adaptations without existing in a Bridgerton la-la-land.

Some highlights of stuff from the link, for those who don't want to read through it all:

It's set in the mid- to late-1790s, when P&P was first drafted.

The actors are age-appropriate: 20-somethings playing 20-something characters, 30-somethings for the Gardiners, etc.

Elizabeth is slender and dark-eyed, Jane is noticeably more beautiful and plump.

Miss Darcy smiles! Repeatedly, and not tight, faint smiles, but something Elizabeth could credibly recognize in a portrait painted five years earlier.

The scene where Elizabeth gets annoyed at people for interrupting her Darcy angst by wanting coffee is definitely included.

Mrs Bennet is neither a shrieking caricature nor actually reasonable; we feel Mr Bennet's charm without shrinking from his fundamental failure(s).

Lady Catherine is also not a total caricature, but has a lot of force of personality and is somewhere between 50 and 60.

Pemberley should be grand and idyllic but not ornate—a very clear step up from Longbourn and Netherfield, but not a palace.

We’d get some of the moments when Miss Darcy talks affectionately of Georgiana, as Elizabeth remembers in the book.

Justice for Elizabeth’s parasol and watch!

Miss Darcy is often ill at ease, but neither shy nor brooding. She is fully dressed at all times.

We feel the pathos of Charlotte's situation without downplaying what agency she has.

As you might guess, the plot would be as close to the novel as the basic premise allows.

[anghraine]

For the ship ask game, Elizabeth/Darcy

Sadly, the long post that got eaten was my original response to this. It had a lot in it, but I'll do my best to remember it.

So! Elizabeth/Darcy is the queen of ships, the terror of the seas, the—yeah, I ship it.

1- What made you ship it?

I don't remember! I was only eleven. I think I considered Mary/Darcy briefly for some reason, but (properly) discarded it. I do remember that I really wanted Elizabeth/Darcy to happen from quite early (I thought Wickham was obviously lying), and partly because of that and partly because of missing things on my first read, I was genuinely surprised that Elizabeth refused him! I thought she'd accept because of her family's situation etc, and then they'd have to deal with their conflicts in marriage.

(This isn't an unusual fic plot, and I myself wrote a fic that was meant to lead to Elizabeth and Darcy having to deal with their issues as a married couple—though I never got to the marriage part—so maybe not quite as batshit as it seems in retrospect, lol.)

2- What are your favorite things about this ship?

There's a lot that I love, obviously. I love the youthful energy of their dynamic, even when it leads to mistakes. They really feel like peers. I love the sense of balance between them. It doesn't rely on everything about their thoughts, feelings, and actions being individually equivalent or even always similar, yet these individual things add up to put them on a par intellectually and morally in a way that is actually pretty unusual for Austen.

I love that they're both clever and truly ethical with a bit of an edge that makes both of them impressive, and both of them very compelling characters in general and together. Yet when they fall in love with each other, they're both rather silly about it.

Despite being borderline ace (and lesbian!) myself, I also enjoy the sexual charge between them. I think that, despite the restraint of Austen's style, it's pretty glaring, especially in the last third or so of the book.

Oh, and I love something that I don't always with other ships. They end up with pretty much everything they could conceivably want out of life, we're assured of their eternal gratitude for their marriage (this is the final line, in fact), they get ... it all. It's not all that common for me to encounter a ship treated so generously by its author, without it feeling forced or saccharine.

But it doesn't feel that way at all (for me). I think there's a reason that it's such a juggernaut in the fandom and people are often so ??? about alternate pairings. You can feel the favor of the narrative itself for them, the way it's so fundamental to the fabric of the narrative that nearly everything in it serves to further the Elizabeth/Darcy plot in some way, yet in a way that makes the novel feel rich and engaging rather than shallow. And at the same time, they have it all! They're smart and hot and good and in love and happy and will never have to worry about money or anything worse than minor inconveniences from extended family, they're going to continue to grow as people, they're—it's so nice and so satisfying in a way that's actually really hard to execute well and it's done so well here.

3- Is there an unpopular opinion you have on this ship?

Many, lol. Despite their immense popularity, I think in some ways that the ship is kind of a victim of it, because there are these inescapable pop culture osmosis ideas of them that just strike me as either reductive or simply wrong. I don't think Darcy is a brooding sexy alpha male romance hero or that Elizabeth is a feisty individualist woman ahead of her time.

I think they're both very much of their time, actually! Darcy is not old-fashioned for the time and Elizabeth is not ahistorically unique. In fact, I would like to see depictions leaning into them as products of their time rather than away (I know of a few, but it's not common in the way I'm thinking, esp given my preference for the 1790s setting).