professional authors write badfic, too

[seldear]

On a whim, I bought The Independance Of Miss Mary Bennett by Colleen McCullough (of Thorn Birds fame)

It's set seventeen years after the events of Pride And Prejudice, and...well, to put it nicely, the characterisation is shot.

It's fanfic - but not just fanfic, it's badfic.

The characters as they were in P&P are barely recognisable, caricatures of themselves, twisted beyond all recognition. Seventeen years changes people, yes; but this feels less like the changes of seventeen years, adding maturity and world experience to characters, and more like someone got huffy that Mary Bennett was passed over in favour of her sisters and set out to write a fanfic that not only put Mary into the fore, but which twisted and tore down everyone else that P&P lionized.

I read the first three chapters, and I don't want to read any more. Meh.

Comments

[havocthecat]

Oh, ew. Dare I ask how it accomplished such awfulness?

[seldearslj.livejournal.com]

Elizabeth is missish, with none of the humour or spirit that marked her out in P&P, and her marriage seems to have gone much the way of Mr. and Mrs. Bennett's: a divide between them, and he's unimpressed with her, while she's both clingy towards him and carefully distant.

Darcy is cold and uncaring, his marriage to Elizabeth has produced one son who's more interested in literature than hunting and four daughters and he resents the bookishness of his son and the fact that he has so many daughters.

There's none of the affection - or even the respect between them that existed at the start of their marriage.

Lydia's blowsy (not entirely unexpected) although her words suggest less artful stupidity in her original beguilement of her mother than outright cunning and manipulation.

Kitty's a society widow; married a middle-aged man who died and left her wealthy. Ironically, out of all the characterisations, this one is the most acceptable, if only because Kitty was a footnote in the story when compared with her sisters.

Jane's as 'barefoot and pregnant' as a well-born lady can be: twelve children, five of whom were stillborn or miscarried. Her marriage seems to hold affection, even if Bingley doesn't seem to realise he's wearing his wife out with children. And she's overemotional. Upon news of her mother's death, she's "unable to talk" because of her tender sensibilities.

Mary Bennett stayed with her mother after their father died, the spinster aunt. The book opens with her mother's death and a regathering of the Bennett sisters for her funeral before she breaks out into the world.

The author effectively Sues her: a perpetual case of acne from her youth was cleared up through an apothecary, and she is now equal to Elizabeth in looks - although considerably less well-dressed. Her original schoolmarmish ways have matured into sense and taste and "bluestocking" thoughts.

Yes, seventeen years have passed; some things are bound to change. On the other hand, overturning just about everything that was implied at the end of Austen's book is a bit more "adjustment" than this reader wants. It feels perilously like a Suethor work.

[holdouttrout.livejournal.com]

Oh, lord. That is... just not right. At all.

Where's Annerb? She'd talk this over with you. *looks at calendar*

[wojelah.livejournal.com]

Oh god, yes it is. There's a few others out there that are equally horrid.

Yeurgh. :-p

[seldearslj.livejournal.com]

The worst thing? I bought the damn book rather than borrowing it from the library.

UGH.

Got any idea whether the Pemberley fanfic novel is any good?

[skandrae.livejournal.com]

I had glanced at it in the bookstore the other day, but decided to hold off until my student loan came in. I guess that's $30 I won't be spending...