I still contend the best Pride and Prejudice is the 1995 version, and current watching only confirms this, but--it's actually not all Colin Firth. It' not even mostly Colin Firth, though IMHO no Darcy has matched him.

It's Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth, who is absolutely my favorite Elizabeth. Specifically, because of how incredibly expressive her face is.

Elizabeth Bennet is kind, generous, affectionate, and sarcastic as fuck, which she inherited from her creator, as Austen spends two thirds of every novel deadpanning like its going out of style both textually and metatextually.

Sadly, most Austen movies tend to err on the side of earnestness (and depressingly, readers do too, which is how we get the insane Knightly Is a Pedophile), but Ehle spends a lot of time offsetting it with weaponized expressiveness.

(This may or may not be a paean to Ehle's eyebrow action when talking to Darby, Lady Catherine, Mr. Collins, the way her mouth twitches when someone is being ridiculous, the half-beat she pauses when before answering when someone is being a dick, and her gleeful weaponizing of the rules of civility. I don't think anyone ever has ever conveyed 'fuck you so very much' with an eyebrow.)

I also vote for this being the best Lydia; the actress looks and acts like a ditzy, spoiled sixteen year old gloriously.

However: there's the problem of Jane Bennet.

The thing is, I don't think it's the actress herself so much as the problem of Jane Bennet's entire character being the ideal Regency gentlewoman: quiet, sedate, well-bred, kind, earnest as fuck. She actually does follow the book Jane, and that characterization works fine in text, but when you take it to the visual medium, you're sharing the screen with Elizabeth and Mr. Bennet's sarcasm and mockery, Mrs. Bennet's pseudodrama, Lydia Bennet's melodrama, Darcy's mandrama, Bingley's overwhelming perkiness, and Mr. Collins mortifyingly earnest smugness (and that's just the people who share a screen with her; Catherine de Borough eats scenery almost as well as Mrs. Bennet).

To put it succinctly: Jane Bennet is boring. And the thing is, she's pretty much supposed to be.

Most of more engaging Jane Bennets had actresses who made her much more animated, which yes is more interesting to watch, but is also just not Jane Bennet. Jane is quiet, sedate, not one to show her feelings, reserved: when Darcy the Repressed is commenting on someone being Too Reserved, that's like, wow. And Elizabeth acknowledges that as true (as does Charlotte early on). That's a fairly important characteristic, since that sets up a major plot point.

The 1995 version also benefits from being five hours long, granted. Like, a lot. And not just to capture all the major and minor plotlines; if you're an Austen fan, you're aware how a two hour Austen movie butchers Austen's humor and slaughters every joke before it gets a chance to gasp the punchline.

Note: I'm about to engage in a Mansfield Park re-reading and once again be baffled how different it is from literally everything else Austen wrote. I mean, I would take the argument that it shares some characteristics with Sense and Sensibility, but only very superficially. There is no goddamn way it exists in the same Regency universe as Pride and Prejudice or Emma or Persuasion (and oh God not Northanger Abbey).

And I say this as someone who loves the book and has at one time or another loved and hated every character in it by turn depending on my mood during re-reading (I can write a condemnation and defense of every single character except Mrs. Norris who I always hate). Honestly, it's the one I re-read the most because there's so much in it, which makes no sense since there's actually only one real major plot (yes, there are a lot of subplots, but they all literally are offshoots of the major plot).

(Last read, I was eighty percent sure the ending was supposed to convey the good luck of the Crawfords in escaping matrimony with anyone in that family. I continue not to get how anyone, anywhere, ever, would be attracted to Edmund Bertram. He has no sense of humor. Sure, neither did Fanny, but as he was her primary influence growing up, she never really had a chance. With Crawford, I don't say she expressed the possibility of having one, but the potential was definitely there.)

Currently watching iconic Darcy Swims! scene from Pride and Prejudice. There is still nothing funnier than imagining the period of time between bravely running away in his wet breeches and running after her in an excess of really fast dignity. Mostly it was probably his manservant desperately trying to make sure he wore clothes that matched and didn't sprint down with his pants undone.

The more I watch, the more convinced I am that had Lydia not intervened with her--adventures, Elizabeth would not have made it out of Derbyshire unengaged, possibly not even unmarried.

This entire review is brought about by Linda Berdoll's novels, which are fanfic of this version of Pride and Prejudice in so many ways. So. Many. Ways.

When I recommended them before, I hadnt' finished re-reading and forgot that the books, though uniformly of the light hearted melodramatic variety (that I love), there are some parts that are not that at all.

Warning for triggering content below: specifically, the death of a child and sexual assault. If you have these particular ones and plan to read the books, please consider the below, as the rest of the books are far lighter and more humorous, so it might come as a shock.

( spoilers for all three Berdoll novels )

Right, after finishing all three, more generally.

( three novels of intrigue! )

Also, these are a romp. A rompy-romp.

This one is by the same person who wrote Jane Fairfax that drove me so absolutely nuts. Just a warning. I think the review is under this tag.

I've finally worked out the problems I've always had with Joan Aiken's Jane Austen sequels. She gets language right, she gets atmosphere, she has setting nailed, and she does some interesting things with the characters that occasionally does not make me cry vexedly. But she utterly, utterly lacks a sense of humor. Like it was surgically removed.

Austen's wit, both subtle and not so much, is entirely lost on Aiken, and I mean entirely. Mansfield Revisited is honestly the best of the lot she's written due to the fact it's very short, so she has minimal time for her lack of any rudimentary sense of humor to really start irritating me.

(Note: I still contend Emma's friendship with Harriet was a comedy and was intended to be one; there was just too much wrong with it, and I'm not even speaking of differences in class. From start to finish, it was combination girl crush, comedy of errors, and something very much nineteenth century Three Stooges meets Murphy's Law. When Harriet falls for Knightly, you only wonder how on earth Emma didn't see that coming.)

But nevermind. Mansfield Revisited or, how to make something so short seem to last so very, very, very, very long.

( spoilers, if you haven't read the book )

So after setting svmadelyn free in The Republic of Pemberley, I suspected that it would not be the last I heard of Jane Austen fanfic. Further, I have been accosted with such gems of fanficcal giddiness that I cannot even describe.

A conversation now is not complete without a quote that is almost guaranteed to make me twitch for poor Jane, who probably had no idea that one day, a host of fangirls would variate the eternal love of Elizabeth and Darcy in ways that would make both author and characters blush exceeding.

I'm still waiting for Prostitute!Elizabeth and Whoremaster!Darcy living on the wild streets of Drury Lane. I hope.

But that does lead to my last book purchases, which is kind of half-embarrassing, half-amusing, where wandering through the A-B section, I picked up Linda Berdoll's Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife and Darcy and Elizabeth: Days and Nights at Pemberley.

( the word of the day is *bawdy* )

Next up, Sebastian. From Anne Bishop, I have learned more about male castration than I ever wished to know. I am curious what she will do with an incubus who is bored with sex. For an author whose first three books were rife with sexual politics, sensuality, and lust, there was precious little actual sex. No, really, think back on the trilogy--how many times did anyone actually get naked and sweaty? Penises were around a lot, but not so much what they were used for other than torture of a male, which has to say something, though I'm not sure what. I'm wondering what she can make of an incubus. Reminds me of LKH's Narcissus in Chains, where two hundred pages of foreplay managed to produce barely one good sexual encounter, except Anne is, you know, *a better writer* and her Mary Sue is at least supposed to be one by virtue of how she was created, which was a novel way to go about it and still keeps the books at the top of my rotation for re-reading.

Um, yeah, stopping now. I'm kind of on a post Darcy and Elizabeth high. That was *fun*.

My zen can be found in Pride and Prejudice.

I went on a minor shopping spree on Amazon, and I was saving this for my days off, but--ohh. Mr. Darcy. *Swimming*. In his trousers and shirt, even! No boots! No coat and hat! No cravat. That is totally the Regency equivalent of naked with leather straps and a whip, you know?

It's weird how your standards of sexy go through a time warp in five hours of viewing a movie where no one makes physical contact with the opposite sex. Unless they are married. Or Mr. Collins. Whose very existence explains why this rule should be enforced draconically.

Okay, I'm a little punchy. I have to work four hours Ssturday, too, and just thinking about it makes me need another shot with my DVD player.

( swimming! really! )