The Lizzie Bennet Diaries

I'm convinced. Hank Green is a genius. 

When Hank first announced his side-project, a modern adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice as a YouTube video blog, my first reaction was, "Oh, that's cute." Loyal nerdfighter that I am, I subscribed to Lizzie Bennet's fictional YouTube channel and occasionally took six or seven minutes out of my week to watch Ashley Clements as Lizzie rant about her silly parents, her sister, her grad school, and this jerk she met at a wedding called William Darcy. 

It was fun. It was cool. It was new. And it soon became a fully-fledged fandom, with all the trappings of yet another collective obsession belonging to thousands and thousands of bored internet-lurkers. People like me -- young, outspoken, and always looking for something new. 

Now, I'm not as intense of an internetter as some. I'm afraid of twitter and tumblr, and I'm only slowly acclimating to such big forces of the virtual world as Reddit and Imgur. But I follow YouTube religiously. I Facebook. I even Pinterest from time to time, and obviously I have a blog. So I'm not ignorant of these things. Maybe just a little late to the party, but I'm getting there. 

Still, this project, LBD, took me by surprise. As the story progressed, I became more and more engrossed, and so did the rest of the internet. The geniuses behind the project branched out into other areas, giving their characters fictitious twitters and tumblr accounts, facebook pages, company websites and email addresses. Other characters began to vlog, including Lydia, Charlotte, and Darcy's sister. These actors took on alternate identities almost as real as their own, in the virtual world at least. Now you could be browsing around on Pinterest and come across some of Jane Bennet's fashion pictures or Lydia Bennet's not-so-sound partying advice. 

It's all amazingly three-dimensional, a story experience unlike anything the world has ever seen, to be overly dramatic. The extremely broad fan-base experiences the misadventures of the Bennet sisters in real-time, in real-life detail. And yes, there are some campy bits, like the fake demonstrations of "Pemberly Digital's new video-chatting technology" that are obviously contrived, but the scope of the project is so huge that things like that are added bonuses rather than unconvincing plot complicators. 

I fully expect to see more of these in the future, a whole new genre of internet storytelling. And I welcome it, giving life to these old stories, making them relevant to young people today who may love or hate them. This is the future! Huzzah! 

Anyway, go watch them if you haven't already. Start from the beginning. 

www.lizziebennet.com

It's All About the Blackbird.

Here is possibly the coolest poem ever, by Wallace Stevens, America's mid-century Insurance Executive/poet. I could spend hours discussing this piece, and did today, in my English class.

I promise the poems will stop soon--we're moving on to our drama unit next week. But really, what did you expect?

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

                    I 

Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

                   II 

I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

                  III 

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

                  IV

A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

                    V 

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

                    VI

Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

                    VII 

O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

                    VIII 

I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

                    IX 

When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

                    X 

At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

                    XI 

He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

                    XII 

The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

                    XIII 

It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

Wallace Stevens