concept (I say this lovingly / the call is coming from inside the house): P&P fanfic BINGO
- Darcy falls off a horse
- Darcy gets wet
- amnesia
- "I didn't even look at you / would have said Helen of Troy wasn't handsome enough to tempt me"
- "Darce", "William" / "Will", "Georgie", "Fitz"
- Elizabeth is attracted to Darcy despite not liking him
- Darcy does manual labour
- "compromise"
- Character references "propriety" in dialogue
- Darcy carries an injured / unconscious Elizabeth to the door of Longbourn house
- Darcy sees the outline of Elizabeth's legs through her skirt and gets all in a tizzy
- "X and Y" title
- "This is a first chapter preview: the full story has been pulled for publication"
- Library sex
- Someone punches Wickham
- Someone buys Wickham's debts and threatens him with prison
- Darcy told Colonel Fitzwilliam than he wasn't allowed to kill Wickham
- Wickham is transported
- Matchmaking Georgiana
- Anne de Bourgh transforms completely when not in the presence of her mother
- Bingley threatens to send Caroline to (non-canonical) relatives in Scarborough
- Mary is described as ignored / neglected
- Kidnapping (attempted or successful)
- Darcy is teaching Bingley how to manage an estate
- Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam are at Rosings specifically to help Lady Catherine with some kind of estate business
- Elizabeth's hair is naturally curly, specifically in a wild / unmanageable / disobedient way
- Relatedly: hair pins are good for nothing. They just fall out all over the place
- Elizabeth always takes a walk before breakfast
- Accidental nighttime library encounter
- Colonel Fitzwilliam IS handsome
- Colonel Fitzwilliam obtains a surprise fortune and marries someone poor
- Mr Bennet falls seriously ill, is badly injured and/or dies
- Elizabeth was or still is a tomboy
- Related to that last: Elizabeth climbs a tree, or used to climb trees
- Mr. and Mrs. Bennet are Frances (Fanny) and Thomas; the Gardiners and Madeleine and Edward; Colonel Fitzwilliam is Richard
- Colonel Fitzwilliam learns that Darcy is in love and teases him about it
- Darcy tells Bingley he needs to get Caroline under control because he's the man of the house
- Bingley threatens to cut off Caroline's pin money
- Dialogue or other wording from canon assigned to a different character or situation
- Alternate love interest for Elizabeth or Darcy revealed to be incompatible because they're too agreeable / not argumentative enough
- Elizabeth and Darcy play chess
- Elizabeth and her sisters all share one ladies' maid
- Mr. Collins is fat. It's completely uncritically stated that this makes him unattractive, disgusting, lazy, immoral, &c.
- India = "exotic spices," shawls, and other "Oriental" goods; the "savages" and Africans displayed at exhibitions or in human zoos are described; again all of this is completely uncritical
- Mr. Gardiner's business is in buying and selling the produce of imperialist plunder (ditto)
I say these ones unlovingly
- Colonel Fitzwilliam presses a hand to his chest and says "You wound me!"
- Someone says "Go to it, man!" to a man planning on proposing to a woman
- Jane Bennet has blonde hair and blue eyes
- Orange Caroline™
- Jane is actually not nice at all
- Elizabeth is really small and petite
- Epilogue with Babies Ever After
1-2-3-4-5 fanfic stats tag game
Picked up from @bad-at-names-and-faces
Rules: Give us the links to your fic with the most hits, second most kudos, third most comments, fourth most bookmarks, fifth most words, and fic with the least words.
Most hits: A Timely Intervention (P&P)
Second-most kudos: Also A Timely Intervention
Third-most comments: A Knightly Rescue (Emma)
Fourth-most bookmarks: Blossoming Affection (P&P)
Fifth-most words: Blast from the past, The Family Business (Stand Still Stay Silent)
Fic with the least words: Another oldie, this time in Finnish – Minne on siskoni mennyt? (Stand Still Stay Silent)
Tagging (no pressure, though!) @wurzelbertzwerg, @charminglygrouped, @storytilly, @sansigma and anyone else who’d like to play.
Two statements about characters can and should co-exist: Pride and Prejudice edition
Mr Bennet has a close relationship with Elizabeth and provides amusing observations on the folly of human nature BUT he is a terrible husband and father who consistently neglects the women who rely on him for absolutely everything; Elizabeth and Jane turned out so well in spite of him, not because of him.
Mrs Bennet's behaviour is understandable given the era in which she lived and the subsequent pressure she was under to get her daughters married well, which wasn't entirely for vanity reasons given that Longbourn was entailed BUT she was still fundamentally vain, ridiculous and rude; such pressure, even combined with an absent husband, still does not make her behaviour justifiable, nor her a sympathetic character, as she enabled Lydia (whose subsequent elopement with Wickham almost ruined the family) for far too long.
Mr Collins is unfairly portrayed as a middle-aged sycophant in most adaptations, rather than the young clergyman who sucks up to his patroness in pursuit of a more lucrative living that he was BUT he is still a ridiculous character who you are not meant to feel sympathy for when Elizabeth rejects him; he is rude, hypocritical and thinks of himself far too highly considering how vapid he actually is.
Caroline Bingley is often too harshly judged as a 'pick-me,' even though her relentless pursuit of Darcy is understandable given his wealth & status and how important it was for women to make a good marriage BUT she was still rude, vain and treated Jane terribly; plus she was a hypocritical snob, given the manner in which she looked down upon the Bennet family's relations despite the Bingleys' own background in trade.
Elizabeth is incredibly witty, courageous and endearing and instantly likeable which makes Darcy's slight of her at the Meryton assembly all the more of an affront to us as readers BUT, while it explains her dislike of him, she is no means perfect herself; she had far too much misplaced pride in her ability to successfully read others' characters and consequently ignored positive accounts of Darcy in favour of believing the deceitful Wickham, given her prejudice against the former.
Mr Darcy was harshly judged by Elizabeth, even though there are many more sympathetic elements to his character than immediately meet the eye BUT he was not shy or innocent; he was always a haughty rich man who had never been told no, thought far too highly of himself and, ultimately, thoroughly deserved to be rebuked and subsequently made to reform his character.
Leaving Holes
Your story is 50% reader. It’s that mixture of reader and writer that makes the magic.
Which means your story needs to have holes for the reader to fill in. You need that negative space for the puzzle pieces to fit.
I’m not talking about plot holes, I’m talking about giving one sentence the power of two. A book that means what it says is a mediocre book. A book that means more than what it says is a great book.
Don’t over-develop your characters, having them analyze every feeling, or spelling out what every character in a scene is thinking. Don’t follow up a powerful line with an explanation with what makes that line powerful.
Let your words imply as much as they state.
concept (I say this lovingly / the call is coming from inside the house): P&P fanfic BINGO
- Darcy falls off a horse
- Darcy gets wet
- amnesia
- "I didn't even look at you / would have said Helen of Troy wasn't handsome enough to tempt me"
- "Darce", "William" / "Will", "Georgie", "Fitz"
- Elizabeth is attracted to Darcy despite not liking him
- Darcy does manual labour
- "compromise"
- Character references "propriety" in dialogue
- Darcy carries an injured / unconscious Elizabeth to the door of Longbourn house
- Darcy sees the outline of Elizabeth's legs through her skirt and gets all in a tizzy
- "X and Y" title
- "This is a first chapter preview: the full story has been pulled for publication"
- Library sex
- Someone punches Wickham
- Someone buys Wickham's debts and threatens him with prison
- Darcy told Colonel Fitzwilliam than he wasn't allowed to kill Wickham
- Wickham is transported
- Matchmaking Georgiana
- Anne de Bourgh transforms completely when not in the presence of her mother
- Bingley threatens to send Caroline to (non-canonical) relatives in Scarborough
- Mary is described as ignored / neglected
- Kidnapping (attempted or successful)
- Darcy is teaching Bingley how to manage an estate
- Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam are at Rosings specifically to help Lady Catherine with some kind of estate business
- Elizabeth's hair is naturally curly, specifically in a wild / unmanageable / disobedient way
- Relatedly: hair pins are good for nothing. They just fall out all over the place
- Elizabeth always takes a walk before breakfast
- Accidental nighttime library encounter
- Colonel Fitzwilliam IS handsome
- Colonel Fitzwilliam obtains a surprise fortune and marries someone poor
- Mr Bennet falls seriously ill, is badly injured and/or dies
- Elizabeth was or still is a tomboy
concept (I say this lovingly / the call is coming from inside the house): P&P fanfic BINGO
- Darcy falls off a horse
- Darcy gets wet
- amnesia
- "I didn't even look at you / would have said Helen of Troy wasn't handsome enough to tempt me"
- "Darce", "William" / "Will", "Georgie", "Fitz"
- Elizabeth is attracted to Darcy despite not liking him
- Darcy does manual labour
- "compromise"
- Character references "propriety" in dialogue
- Darcy carries an injured / unconscious Elizabeth to the door of Longbourn house
- Darcy sees the outline of Elizabeth's legs through her skirt and gets all in a tizzy
- "X and Y" title
- "This is a first chapter preview: the full story has been pulled for publication"
- Library sex
- Someone punches Wickham
- Someone buys Wickham's debts and threatens him with prison
- Darcy told Colonel Fitzwilliam than he wasn't allowed to kill Wickham
- Wickham is transported
- Matchmaking Georgiana
- Anne de Bourgh transforms completely when not in the presence of her mother
- Bingley threatens to send Caroline to (non-canonical) relatives in Scarborough
- Mary is described as ignored / neglected
- Kidnapping (attempted or successful)
- Darcy is teaching Bingley how to manage an estate
Modern day John Thorpe starts talking about how AI can do all that now when Catherine asks him if he reads novels
suolakurkkutulehdus asked:
Please do give us numbers 6 and 7 for the fic rec game! :D (P&P fandom)
jupitersmegrim answered:
♥️♥️♥️ thank you for asking these ♥️♥️♥️
6 A fic that kept me on the edge of my seat
OHHHH. Any of @linmeiwei ’s really, but Mr Darcy and the Murder at Rosings checked alllll of my boxes! (No smut either, you’ll be shocked to learn, given my preferences, lol.)
7 A fic that taught me something new
Surprisingly, Abigail Reynolds’s Mr Darcy’s Journey taught me about (or even the existence of) the Sheffield riots of 1812, which are a central event in the labour struggles of the Luddite movement (and the government’s brutal suppression of their protests) in the 1810s. That added yet another horrible layer to the early capitalist fashion industry:
ALTIt’s not a story, however, I would recommend without a caveat (esp not since it involves spending money). But if you’re curious, I can lend you my copy.
[ All the Qs from the fic rec list | My previous responses ]
suolakurkkutulehdus asked:
Fic rec ask game, Pride and Prejudice, any pairing: 2, 4, 8, 9? :)
jupitersmegrim answered:
Oh! Thanks for the ask! I don’t know why I perceived your fic rec game as author-centric, but as I did, this was a nice surprise! Before I go harass eveyone I vaguely know with my own Qs, let me get into yours real quick!
I’m a pretty boring reader as far as pairings go, so this is mainly Darcy/Elizabeth. To make it worse, I also mainly consume smut, so I had to dig deep to make this in any way interesting or diverse lmao
2 A fic that made me laugh
I’m pretty sure you know I ADORED your A Most Shocking Thing. It’s a perennial reread because it never fails to make me smile.
4 A fic that’s really hot
You’ve already mentioned @charminglygrouped , so I’ll go for my other fave, A Wanton Woman by Ellen. It’s the only fic I know of hers that’s still online available without having to access the wayback machine. It blew my mind when I first read it because it beautifully managed to bridge the gap between staying true to character, the time period, and also fulfilling the brief, pórn.
8. A fic that deserves more love
I’m just such a slut for poly fics, and since Hakima already recced my absolute fave Darcy/Elizabeth/Col. Fitzwilliam, I’m going to plug my second fave, The Very Picture of Domestic Bliss by SarRansom.
Also—Scenes of Dissipation. Like, come on.
👏🏽 WHERE 👏🏽 ARE 👏🏽 THE 👏🏽 KUDOS 👏🏽
9 A fic that’s popular for a reason.
I find this a particularly difficult question because—due to demand avoidance perhaps—I can never quite get myself to agree with the kudos to quality (imo) ratio.
This goes two ways. The fic might have an amazing amount of kudos, but since another fic (I find inferior) has more kudos, I believe that fic does not in fact have enough kudos.
Or:
The fic may be amazing, and I might have enjoyed myself immensely, but if it happens to have more kudos than another fic i (in that moment) prefer, I get weird about it.
It is—i am—stupid.
Which is a roundabout way of saying: I don’t think I have any!