If it worked for Austen...

( today's icons )

A new story on Notebook: Cutthroat Badminton. Features pirates!

Because I forgot to post it last time, Oscarblog 2006!

And, because it is the most FREAKING AWESOME AND HILARIOUS THING EVER, the brand new trailer for the movie Snakes on a Plane. It's about snakes. On a plane. And Samuel L. Jackson. For serious, you have to see this. It singlehandedly improved my day and kept me laughing for about twenty minutes.
ETA: A link that might work.

The opening night of The Tempest is tonight; I'm not even in it, and I'm pretty nervous. If everything goes right (which, last night, it did not), it will be really awesome. I'm backstage doing odd jobs, mostly. Also, Nathan is supposedly here, right now, on this campus. I have yet to see him, but hope to, at least to tour him the theater tomorrow.

Dear Everyone,
Please stop giving me sequels to Pride and Prejudice to read. I think I've had about enough for a while. Not that I don't enjoy them, but I think that if I read another one it's going to seriously mess with my head and maybe make me bitter. I'm getting closer and closer to deciding to write my own, just because. I wanna show y'all how it's done. (Just kidding; I'd probably suck just as much as the next person.)

What happened was that a friend of mine saw me reading Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife (Over and Over Again, In Every Room of the House) in Old English class. She was all, "Oh! You have to read Mr. Darcy's Daughters! I'll let you borrow it!" So I did. And I liked it. It was very cute. It's actually pretty much the opposite of MDTAW because there is (almost) no sexing, and Mr. and Mrs. Darcy, despite what the title may lead you to believe, are not even in it, except to write some letters. My review of it is going to be more of a recap, so if you don't want to know what happens, don't read on.

This is an interesting breed of fanfic. Only minor characters from the original work are used, and are often out of character to suit the plot. The main characters are all OCs, which means you have to work harder to get me to care about them. This author was semi-successful. I'm not sure whether the fact that the plot was that of P&P recycled helped or hindered this. Georgiana and the Bingleys are barely even mentioned, which seems odd.

The book is about the Darcys' daughters. One would never expect the Darcys to have such daughters as these. First of all, they all have silly names, like Letitia. She's the oldest, and I nicknamed her Mary Jane, because she's really just a combination of those two characters from P&P. The youngest is Alethea, who I actually liked. Before her are the twins, Georgina and Belle, who are both Kitty-Lydia. Our heroine is Camilla or, as I like to call her, Lizzy 2. The Darcys have gone to Constantinople (WTF, I know) on a "diplomatic mission." To me, this always recalls Star Wars, so I have fun images of Darcy and Lizzy lightsabring battle droids. Anyway, the Daughters are staying with Colonel Fitzwilliam and his young wife in London. Only Colonel Fitzwilliam is no longer a Colonel and has turned into Darth Fitzwilliam who doesn't like girls to have fun or think or act independently. Because it's not like he ever had a thing for Lizzy or anything, geez. The Gardiners, who flicker in and out of character, have somehow gotten very rich and they have a bratty daughter named Sophie. Sophie is engaged to a man named Wytton, who we'll call Darcyesque. He has a best friend we'll call Fitzley, because he's a bit like Fitzwillim (good Fitzwilliam) and Bingley.
 
Anyway, Lizzy 2 falls for a man whose real name is Sir Sidney, but we'll call him Gay Wickham because he's like Wickham except that he's gay. Around about three chapters in I was like, "I think this dude's gay," but it took Lizzy 2 half the book to figure it out. She was most vexed, especially since he had proposed to her so that he could get married and have an heir, and she had to break it off. Woe. So then she starts to spend more and more time with Darcyesque, because it seems like Sophie doesn't really want to marry Darcyesque and doesn't want to be alone with him. Lydia shows up, only Wickham is dead and she's remarried and is for some reason also very rich. The twins fall under her influence. Bitchley (also married) appears, too, and is the most in character of anyone returning from P&P. 

The Daughters' reputations go through some ups and downs, but finally it all comes to a head at this one big party. First Mary Jane runs into her not-so-dead-as-previously-supposed ex-fiancee and has the gall to actually have a reaction, causing tongues to wag. Then it turns out Alethea has been dressing up as a boy and playing flute with the band, but nobody but Lizzy 2 and Darcyesque find out about that. Then Lizzy 2 goes looking for Kitty Belle and Lydina and finds Lydina sexing some married guy in a back room. Kitty Belle has been shamelessly flirting with everything male that moves all night. And Bitchley and the Bitchley stepson have been circulating rumors (for no reason other than 'cause they're mean) that Lizzy 2 is making a play for Sophie's fiancee, Darcyesque. Darcyesque is very helpful all night, and finally Lizzy 2 realizes that she's in love with him becuase they're both dorks who want to travel everywhere and read and be awesome together. He agrees, but he is engaged to Sophie. 

Then Lydina elopes with the married guy and Lizzy 2 and Mr. Gardiner (who is experienced in this area) and Darcyesque all go to France to get her. They find her knocked up and unashamed and actually married, because this married guy was not so married as previously supposed. So they all head back to England only to find that Kitty Belle has run off to elope with someone, only it turns out that she didn't really. But while they think she did, they can't figure out who it is because she flirts with everything male that moves. In a note she says that it is Captain Deus Ex Machina. Sophie hears about this a flies into a rage because it turns out she loves Captain Machina, who conveniently shows up and reveals that he did not run off with Kitty Belle at all. Kitty Belle actually ran off with some guy named Mr. Roper, but he just took her to meet the parents. The Gardiners give Sophie the go-ahead to marry Captain Machina instead, so Darcyesque asks Lizzy 2 to marry him, and she accepts. Mary Jane gets engaged to Some Guy, I Think His Name Was Barcombe. Lizzy 2 and Darcyesque marry and traipse off to Constantinople to blast droids with the Darcys. The end.

I have to go to Tempest now!