FANFIC MASTERPOST

Works in Progress

It's Hermione, Thanks

Collab with @king-geets

Read on: [AO3]

Rated M. - 2/6 chapters. - Genre: P with P, Humour.

Tags: Hogwarts 8th-Year, study partners, Enemies to lovers, friendships, medium burn, hormonal teenagers, P with P.

Projected Word Count: currently 11k from ~25k

Summary:

The plan was this: return to Hogwarts, aim for eight O.s, move on with life.

But when McGonagall summons Hermione, her co-head Justin along with the other seven and eighth-year prefects for an extraordinary meeting ahead of term, she just knows the other shoe’s about to drop. And indeed: on the eve of September 1st, Hermione finds herself working to fit Draco Malfoy into her schedule.

Between Ginny (who has her own schemes), Justin (whose actions becomes odder by the day), and Mandy (whom Hermione never thought of as an enemy before), will Hermione manage to retain her sanity, whilst restoring some sense of normality for once— despite Malfoy being around, day in, day out?

Update schedule: pure chaos, but I'm aiming for weekly-ish.

Snippets:

“I must say, Granger, I’m surprised.”

Draco lowered his voice; Hermione edged closer to hear what he had to say.

Keep reading

Oh, and by the way, that Supreme Court ruling is where that Harry Potter money goes.

been holding to this doodle for a while now

^what he said

“Yeah I’m packing heat.” (I open my trench coat, revealing a live weasel in a holster on my belt.)

adding in: @isthisselfcare <3

A Draco and Hermione Garden setting, inspired after reading Draco Malfoy and The Mortifying Ordeal of Being In Love

Cover reveal

The cover for The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy is out! Please join me in screaming about it!! The illustration is by nikitajobson (I've linked her Insta as she's no longer on tumblr). Nikita needs no introduction to Dramione fans, but LOOK AT WHAT SHE'S DONE HERE. They are magnificent. That border! Their faces!!

The cover was exclusively revealed by Cosmopolitan today (look mum I’m in Cosmo!!), including an excerpt of Chapter 1, if you care to have a look!

And here she is:

brigitteknightley.com

I can't wait for you to meet Aurienne (feelings-averse ice queen) and Osric (Literal Murderer to whom everyone else is an NPC) & come with me to explore an alternate, fin de siècle, decidedly un-united UK; thin places; Old English; the inherent eroticism of the forbidden; and Healer/Killer Dichotomies Which The Author Will Relentlessly Belabour. Fictional men may have been harmed in the making*

*They are down bad crying at the gym

For the past several years (and perhaps longer) in the P&P fandom I've seen a lot of people who want to rehabilitate Mrs. Bennet: like, sure, she's uncouth and seems greedy, but it's because she cares so much about her daughters' futures; her situation is actually really stressful and uncertain and she's powerless to change it and her husband makes fun of her, and so it's natural that it would cause her to be anxious all the time; maybe she doesn't have the intelligence or social awareness to understand that her behaviour is actually harming her daughters' prospects, but at least her heart is in the right place.

I'm usually not the type of person who argues that fandom is actually being too nice to a female character, but in this case I don't buy the counter-narrative (which I think is popular enough at this point to be fanon / a narrative in itself) about Mrs. Bennet.

For one thing, she was never really powerless in this situation. These people are rich even for gentry. Mr. Bennet's income was always good, at 2,000 pounds per annum (even though I can't believe he isn't neglecting some practices that could raise it higher). Mrs. Bennet had 4,000 pounds from her parents and a further 1,000 from Mr. Bennet. Invested in the 4 per cents (for example), this is 200 pounds per year in pin money that Mrs. Bennet could spend without touching the principle of her dowry, and without affecting Mr. Bennet's income. This is more than some people's entire yearly incomes.

The picture of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet that we get in P&P is not of people who are helpless against their circumstances, but of people who are extraordinarily neglectful. We're told that:

Mr. Bennet had very often wished, before this period of his life, that, instead of spending his whole income, he had laid by an annual sum, for the better provision of his children, and of his wife, if she survived him. [...] When first Mr. Bennet had married, economy was held to be perfectly useless; for, of course, they were to have a son. This son was to join in cutting off the entail, as soon as he should be of age, and the widow and younger children would by that means be provided for. Five daughters successively entered the world, but yet the son was to come; and Mrs. Bennet, for many years after Lydia’s birth, had been certain that he would. This event had at last been despaired of, but it was then too late to be saving. Mrs. Bennet had no turn for economy; and her husband’s love of independence had alone prevented their exceeding their income.

We also know that the "continual presents in money which passed to [Lydia] through her mother’s hands," plus her allowance and food, amount to about 90 pounds per year. Rather than saving up from the beginning in case the entail is not broken, rather than beginning to save once it's clear a son will not arrive, rather than making Jane's dowry the full 5,000 from her mother (which would be something) and saving up for the younger girls' dowries thereafter—which is what would be typical, and that's why Lady Catherine was so shocked that all the girls were out at once—Mrs. Bennet's housekeeping, dress, the girls' allowance, presents of money over and above their allowance, plus whatever Mr. Bennet is spending money on (and other expenses relating to servants, carriages, maintenance &c. which are unavoidable), add up to their entire income. The only reason why Mrs. Bennet doesn't overspend even that is that that's where Mr. Bennet puts his foot down.

Mrs. Bennet is actively harming her daughters' prospects, not even of marriage, but of living respectably if they don't marry, because she doesn't have the temperance not to spend all of the income that is allotted to her. It is the role of the woman in a marriage to take charge of the housekeeping, servants, cooking, furniture, and all expenses relating thereto (plus certain attentions to her tenants and any living in genteel poverty in the area, though presumably this will depend on her income and whether there's a parish church with a parson's wife who's doing some of these things). She's an adult who should be competent to manage these things in a reasoned way without needing to be dictated to.

It is supposed to be the role of the woman in a marriage to take charge of her daughters' education—and yet Mrs. Bennet did not hire a governess, and Elizabeth says that she didn't spend much time teaching her daughters anything (it's not clear to what degree she's educated herself). Granted, the girls did have masters—but, from the sounds of things, that was only if they requested them. No one was required to learn much of anything, which will probably further harm the marriage prospects of the girls who "chose to be idle."

I think the "point" of Mrs. Bennet is that she is one half of one type of bad marriage which the novel illustrates, in contrast with the Gardiners' marriage. These marriages are two possible models for the Bennet daughters to look to. At one point, Elizabeth's prospective marriage is explicitly compared to her parents', with her in the role of her father: Mr. Bennet says "My child, let me not have the grief of seeing you unable to respect your partner in life" (emphasis original).

We might wonder whether Elizabeth saw herself potentially in the role of her father, in a marriage that was very intellectually unequal, when she rejected Mr. Collins; or whether she also saw herself in the role of her mother, married to a man who insults and doesn't respect her, when she rejected Mr. Darcy. Ultimately, she accepts Mr. Darcy after she realises that he is nothing like her father; that he is diligent in attending to his responsibilities, and that he does evidently respect her mind.

This isn't me defending Mr. Bennet, who is also a bad parent and a bad spouse. I do, however, find it a little disturbing when people suggest that Mr. Bennet is at fault for not controlling or curtailing his wife. His wife is a grown woman. Surely we don't actually believe that a situation where a man is legally in complete control over his wife, merely because he is a man and she is a woman, is in any way natural, moral, or just? (This also goes for people who suggest that Mr. Bingley needs to get his sister 'in line' 😬😬😬.)

Mrs. Bennet should be competent to manage her household and her daughters. Given that she's not, yes, Mr. Bennet, according to Georgian and Victorian ideas of the role of a man in a marriage, "should" have stepped in and started dictating to her. But I don't really think that's what Austen is suggesting went wrong here. The models of good marriages we have—the Gardiners, the Bingleys and Darcys after their weddings—are all ones in which the women were basically sensible people to begin with. In the latter two cases, we are told of particular ways in which the men stand to benefit from some mental quality of their future spouse (Elizabeth's good humour and ease in company; Jane's steadiness and determination).

The ideal which some Georgians had of a husband's role being to shape his wife's intellect doesn't seem to be what's being advocated here. If Mr. Bennet made a mistake, it was in marrying a silly, selfish, ill-tempered woman to begin with, not in failing to browbeat her into submission once he found out that she was silly, selfish, and ill-tempered. The idea is that you should choose your spouse carefully. But that message doesn't work if Mrs. Bennet is just a woman in a difficult situation who has her heart in the right place.

I'm already seeing advice from people in the US to purchase queer books and other banned or "controversial" books on paper as a way to combat the wave of government censorship that is coming. While this is a good idea (it is! absolutely!), it's not accessible to everyone, and truly, we're not going to be able to consumerism our way out of this one.

If you can buy the books, do. Whether you can buy the books or not, borrow them from your library.

Borrow the paper versions. Borrow the ebook or audiobook versions. Request the titles you want that your library doesn't have. The more a title circulates or is requested, the better librarians are going to be able to defend keeping it if and when it's ever challenged.

Use libraries like @queerliblib too. The more members they have, the better they'll be able to fundraise.

Your community resources depend on you using them. Borrow the books before they go away.

InB4: Piracy is not the solution here. We're trying to keep community resources available, not make sure individual people can read individual books. Different problems.

The books are still available. Borrowing them from your library and returning them on time and in good condition will help keep them that way.

Naomi Native as Oshun by the Tog Father.

JAFF Trope Inversion Bingo

About

The JAFF Trope Inversion Bingo is a light-hearted fic-writing challenge for the Jane Austen fandom. Participants are challenged to write fics based on prompts that are inverted versions of popular Jane Austen fanfiction tropes.

How to participate

1. Use the bingo card generator to generate a bingo card. (Please copy or screenshot your card for safekeeping, as the generator will randomise a new set of prompts whenever the page is reloaded.)

2. Complete a bingo by filling three prompts from your card to create either a vertical, horizontal or diagonal line on the card. You can write a separate fic for each prompt or combine more than one prompt into the same fic.

3. Post your fic(s) wherever you usually post your fanfiction. AO3 users are encouraged to add their fics to the event collection, but you do not need an AO3 account to participate in the bingo.

4. Enjoy you bragging rights!

Schedule and deadlines

No schedule, no deadlines! The bingo card generator will remain up for the foreseeable future, and the AO3 collection will be open indefinitely. You can generate as many bingo cards as you want whenever you want and post your fics whenever you finish them.

FAQs and public bingo cards

Check out the info post on Dreamwidth.

This came to me in a vision

One of these is universally loved, the other divides Jane Austen fandom in half. But which is the better adaptation? It’s only fair, I think, that anybody attempting to answer this question should first declare their opinion on this topic, before going deeper. I, personally, think the 1995 BBC TV adaptation is better. When I first saw the 2005 movie, I confess, I was disappointed. Since then I viewed it several more time and I’ve warmed to it, since sadly I find any Pride and Prejudice better than no Pride and Prejudice. Yes, even if it includes zombies. 

Both adaptations follow the book in different degrees of accuracy. But it isn’t right to judge a film or series on the basis of accuracy. An adaptation must always be an interpretation, because when it is not, then though it might be accurate and rigidly faithful to the original text it might very well fall flat on the screen. That is what happened to the 1980 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, also produced by the BBC. In this version, the book is stuck to so strictly that it goes so far as quoting it for many excruciating minutes, and includes such breathtakingly awkward scenes as Elizabeth reading Darcy’s letter as he walks away from her for, like, five full minutes. 

Yes, it contains some scenes which are extraneous to the novel, but none that show any degree of interpretation of the original text, which means that the characters do not come off right either. Mr Bennet comes off as plain cruel, his wife as plain stupid, and Mr Darcy famously comes off stiff as a board. These characters might say the things they say in the novel, and act as they are said to in the novel, but the novel is so tongue-in-cheek, packed with irony and little revelations of Elizabeth’s misjudgements that playing it straight is silly to say the least. We know by the end that Elizabeth had got a lot of people very wrong in her estimation: Mr Bennet was a friend to her at the beginning of the novel, but showed himself to be irresponsible and careless in the extreme by the end of it. Mrs Bennet might be very silly indeed, but there is a desperation in her actions, which Elizabeth doesn’t quite appreciate until it ends in almost tragedy. And of course Mr Darcy isn’t as haughty, stiff and unfeeling as she imagines at first.

So, I think any adaptation must be an interpretation, even if it is an interpretation that is different from my own. After all, any Austen fan worth their salt will know that there are plot points and characters whose interpretation is hotly discussed and contested. To that, 200 years have brought a lot of social change, and people in the 21^st century see a lot of things differently from the people for whom the book was originally written. For example, Mrs Bennet was judged much harsher 200 years ago – in those times she’d been seen as an entirely negative character. Nowadays, we have more sympathy for her and feel more scorn towards Mr Bennet. And then, of course, every time you read Pride and Prejudice, a new thing will leap out at you, and you might read it quite differently as you grow older or become more intimately familiar with the text.

My favourite version, P&P95, is also an interpretation. It has famously got scenes in it that never occurred in the book, and some of them are firm favourites which have triggered great enthusiasm in female folk around the world. Yes, I am referring to the wet shirt scene. But in actual fact that scene comes in a line of others which are never in the book, such as Darcy bathing, or observing Elizabeth from his window, or being tortured in love while writing his letter, or fencing, or speaking with Bingley etc. 

In other words, this interpretation focuses way more on Darcy and is bent on giving us a fuller picture of our romantic hero. And as Austen gave us relatively little about him, the writers of the show had to invent him, and they went with a passionate man, who was strong, dutiful, responsible and fervently in love. It is appealing, yes, and it is a probable interpretation (we can gleam this much from hints in his speech or behaviour in the novel), but it is an interpretation nonetheless.

Another thing that isn’t quite clear cut in the book is Elizabeth’s attitude to Mr Darcy, especially in the first half of the novel. Does she purely hate him or is she secretly attracted to him? This interpretation goes with the latter reading. Jennifer Ehle expressed this in an interview, saying that Elizabeth must have always been attracted to him or else she wouldn’t have taken him on as a sparring partner.

The 2005 movie, then, must be an interpretation as well. It works under different constraints than the series, as it has far less time, and so things are much more condensed.

The interpretation they have gone for is firstly, that Mr Darcy is not proud and haughty but simply very shy. That he does not change for her sake but rather that she starts to understand him.

Secondly, unlike the series, which gives a fair amount of time to Darcy by himself, here the story is told from Elizabeth’s perspective. In that way it is actually closer to the book, as we are left to guess exactly what his feelings are and what he really is until he proposes and then until the end when he has done all those nice things for her. The movie is bookended with Keira Knightley’s Elizabeth - in the beginning she is in her own little world of nature and books, and in the end she is looking at Mr Darcy through the half-opened door. When Mr Darcy does something sudden and unexpected, the camera tells us this is so, by zooming out or catching her startled expression. The movie is Elizabeth’s story, through and through.

So, as I said, judging either as better or worse because of closeness to the novel is not a fair thing to do. One might prefer one interpretation to the other, or one might agree with one interpretation over the other, but they are both interpretations all the same.

Personally, I find the idea of a shy Mr Darcy not at all in agreement with what I imagined the character to be like. I always agreed with Colonel Fitzwilliam (and how can we not trust him? He knew the man all his life, after all) that Mr Darcy simply never troubled himself to be nice in company. I read him as an introvert – he’s not scared of other people, he just doesn’t like dealing with them, especially when he thinks he doesn’t have to, and as he was brought up rich and spoiled, he never learned that he should trouble himself a little so as not to disgust people to himself. We see from his interactions with his friends and family that everybody adores him, all women always agree with everything he says, and his friends refer to his superior opinion for advice. Other people trouble themselves to entertain him, so why should he go through any trouble? That is what makes Elizabeth special in his eyes, since she doesn’t defer to his superior opinions, freely laughs at him, mocks his lack of skill and wantonly disagrees with him for the pure sake of disagreement. So, I cannot imagine Mr Darcy being shy at all. And the Darcy in 1995 does appear closer to my own reading of the novel.

That being said, independently of the accuracy to the book, each adaptation has its own strengths and weaknesses.

The 1995 version’s strength is, to me, the undoubtedly strong chemistry between the leads. There is the fact that Davies sexed Pride and Prejudice up in this version, but Ehle/Firth are both not only excellent actors but also appear to have a natural sort of chemistry that allows for the interpretation to not appear cheap, but instead quite tense and I think it drives the plot through many hours.

 As it is so long it also allows for all the wonderful secondary characters to shine. And this, too, I think is important, as the novel has many, many, many characters and they make the novel so wonderful to read, and they give a polish to this interpretation. I cannot think of any casting choice that seems inappropriate. Even the much complained about casting of Jane, I cannot find fault with. Firstly, she looks almost exactly like the lady in the portrait that Jane Austen herself had decided looks like Jane Bennet. Secondly, she is very pretty and the actress is very good. And thirdly, Ehle shines through not because she is objectively more beautiful, but through her wit and vivacity and the strength of her charm and personality, which is exactly what happens in the book. Similarly, I really like this Bingley and his sisters. In many interpretations Bingley is a downright moron, which is not at all what he is in the novel. In this version he also gets an opportunity to be a little outraged by Darcy’s interference, which is awesome. Miss Bingley is a wonderful viper in this version, although I think in the novel she was much funnier – she does not lack a sense of humour, though she uses her powers for evil, rather than for good, like Elizabeth. I do not dislike the choice of Wickham though for some reason many adaptations go for a Wickham that does not look trustworthy to start with. I would not buy a car from that guy, if you know what I mean. Lady Catherine is great, and Anne too. It has a good Colonel Fitzwilliam, though in the novel he is supposed to be not handsome, whereas the guy they picked, unless there is something wrong with my eyes, seems perfectly good looking to me.

If I had to pick a weakness, I would say it is the omission of some scenes from the book. One of my favourite parts of the novel are the final chapters, when Elizabeth and Darcy speak to each other, this time with perfect understanding. Her wit is never better and his dry humour and love for her is never clearer. After all the tension when you worry that they may never find each other, it would be nice to see them be in agreement. It is nice to see their wedding, of course, but since you are already filming five hours’ worth of plot, why not five minutes of some sharp, sparkling Austen dialogue between our favourite hero and heroine? It is a minor, nit-picky complaint, perhaps, but considering the length of these scenes, I really do think they could have gone for it.

Also, though I think Colin Firth’s acting chops really elevated this adaptation and made it the huge hit that it was, he is a trifle old for the role. That’s not his fault, and he did his bloody best with the job he received, but he is obviously in his mid-30s and not in his twenties, where certain types of behaviours would have been more understandable. His youth and arrogance would have shone through, rather than a sort of hauteur and broodiness, which is what we ended up with.

The strengths of the 2005 movie, I think, are the beautiful scenery. We get some very pretty shots, and not just of nature, but also of some of the society too. It is true that this is a more gritty Pride and Prejudice, everything is less clean and polished, and that’s kind of cool, I think. My favourite scene is the Meryton Assembly, closely followed by the Netherfield ball. These scenes have, to me, in all other adaptions, come out stiff and stifled. These were parties, and they would have been lively, loud, sweaty affairs and not neatly choreographed dance practice lessons. They are very competently treated in the movie, in a way that makes it seem much more realistic and less stage-y than the BBC adaptations. 

The chemistry between some of the actors is pretty good too, especially, I think, the Bennet sisters. Miss Bingley is a good casting choice, I think, and she is funnier and prettier than Anna Chancellor, though she gets little screen time, which is understandable considering what that time is used for.

The main weaknesses, for me, are the portrayal of some of the characters. As I have mentioned before, it is an interpretation and exact accuracy is not necessary. But, there are things that simply change everything from what we know Austen meant. I already discussed Darcy, in this adaptation, but it is equally the case with Bingley, Charlotte Lucas, Mr Collins and Mr Bennet. 

Bingley, in this version, is a socially awkward moron, which, seriously, is the exact opposite of what he is supposed to be. 

The whole point about Bingley is that he is very good socially, that he is able to make easy conversation and that therefore everybody likes him instantly. He is also, as pointed out before, not a moron at all. He is an intelligent young man, but he is young and naïve. They changed him, I think, for the purposes of comedy, but to me they simply butchered the character and one wonders what Jane can possibly see in this half-wit other than his money (which we know is not what Jane liked about him in the novel), and what on earth a man as fastidious, intelligent and proud like Mr Darcy would be doing choosing him as a friend.

Charlotte Lucas is very well played by the actress, but terribly written. I take huge objection to the fact that they changed her original line from the novel, which said that she was never a romantic, to her claiming that not everyone can afford to be a romantic. In other words, in the movie she is a romantic, tragically reduced to relinquishing her romantic ideals for the practical solution of getting married. Unfortunately, that is very much as though they’d put a modern woman into those times, and is cutting Charlotte short too. She was practically minded and didn’t want a love affair. At the time it was very common for people to get married on the basis of their mutual fulfilment of needs other than romantic. That is the whole point of that line – she has no romantic aspirations, she is telling her friend, so there is no need to feel sorry for her or doubt her decision.

Mr Collins, too, for some reason appears to be actually infatuated with Elizabeth in this movie, which is not at all what he does in the novel, and takes away from the ridiculousness of the character. The reason we laugh at him is because he decides where his affections will lie from one minute to the next, depending on who is available and convenient, rather than letting his heart decide. His declarations of affections are therefore hilarious, his proposal is the pinnacle of ridiculousness and it is funny and we do not feel sorry for him when Elizabeth refuses him. 

I do feel sorry for Mr Collins in the movie, as Elizabeth not only refuses him quite violently, but also because she never takes him seriously as a suitor, like when he tries to spend time with her at the ball and gazes lovelorn-like at a flower.

Mr Bennet, in the film, is much less funny and much more loving and caring a father and especially husband, than in the novel. This feels like an odd choice, considering that it makes his decision to let Lydia go to Brighton entirely nonsensical. We know from the start of the novel and the 95 adaptation that he does not care about his family as he should because he refuses to visit Mr Bingley and therefore help his daughters make a good marriage. He also allows his daughter to be slighted at a ball by Mr Darcy, since he doesn’t even bother to attend to see to it that his family is treated properly, never checks his children or his wife when they make a spectacle of themselves at the various social events they attend, and other than calling his youngest daughters silly never troubles his mind over their doings in Meryton with the officers. In the movie he visits Mr Bingley instantly – in fact, he went there before his wife had to remind him. In the novel/P&P95 he rudely stops Mary from playing at the Netherfield ball, while in the movie he consoles her after she cries for being laughed at for her playing. He appears a caring father and husband. Such a one would never let careless flirt Lydia go to Brighton with all the officers! It makes no sense! I understand that you want to cut out a scene in which Mr Bennet refuses to go and see Mr Bingley, because of time, but then why add a scene where he consoles Mary?

All in all, then, I find the 95 version much closer to my own interpretation of the novel, and the choices made for the characters in spirit much truer to the original concept. I do not object to variations to the characters in principle, but when they obstruct coherency I do find them bothersome. That is unfortunately what happens in the movie, which is why it is a worse adaptation.