#bc i am a great older sibling or mentor figure i think

[triviareads]

I am intrigued by pride and protest as an adaptation of pride and prejudice because I am a big Austen fan but I rarely see modern versions of Austen done well. They always make it enemies to lovers with a big misunderstanding in the middle (the proposal scene) and think that makes it pride and prejudice.

I can confirm it's a GREAT adaptation and I had a lot of fun reading it. I think the best modern Austen adaptations don't exactly stick to the plot points and progression of the novel— they can't because like, society has changed since the regency era lol, and shouldn't, imo— but they still get the same messages across.

For example, Nikki Payne wrote Pride and Protest with explicit sex in it, but she did NOT wait until the very end to give us sex scenes (if she'd followed the beats of the book exactly, she probably would have waited); she had Liza and Dorsey hook up once during the Rosings arc. And ultimately it works because when Dorsey delivers his "proposal" (not a marriage proposal; more of a live-in girlfriend situation) to Liza, Dorsey is all "I thought what we had means something" just like Darcy did in the og proposal, except he's not just working off of what he saw as Liza being amenable to his proposal (like the og), he's literally had sex with Liza, but that doesn't stop him from disrespecting her family and offering her a proposal she sees as degrading (the vibes were very "you'll be my kept woman" but like.... more classily delivered), just like in the original.

What the book does get right is that there is never any dramatic enemies-to-lovers arc (because remember, P&P is not actually enemies to lovers); Dorsey and Liza are on opposite sides of the gentrification situation occurring in Liza's DC neighborhood but their interpersonal dealings are more nuanced and you still see that thing where Dorsey fundamentally misunderstands the signals Liza is giving (which.... to be fair are a little more mixed here because they do act on their physical attraction beforehand) while Liza is initially uninterested in pursuing anything further with Dorsey until they each set aside their assumptions about each other and get to know the other person better.

The funny thing is, because I'm such a contrarian, I'm always sad when Emma adaptations don't lean into the weirdness (and possible hotness... if done well and if Knightley's character is changed a little bc he comes across as a fusty man in the book lol; or alternatively, just pull a Clueless and give us ex-step-siblings!) of Emma falling for her friend/mentor/father-ish (because god knows how much Mr. Woodhouse actually parented) figure who is approximately 17 years older and has known her since birth. Instead, a lot of Emma-inspired romances I've reviewed of late (Never Met a Duke Like You by Amalie Howard, Match Me If You Can by Swati Hegde) lean solely into the friends-to-lovers aspect of it and make the Knightley of the story the same age as Emma.

[whats-ahead]

End’s Ahead

Hey everyone! It’s been awhile since we last update here! 

The next update post we were going to make was on how we finally cracked the code on Len and the whole reason on how he was not working was the fact that he was always suppose to be close to his dad but Adele was always closer to his dad than him so we were  scrapped Len AND Gale and made them into two entirely different characters, swapping their roles.

Having Roman, Brendan’s son, be Adele’s mentor figure who’s a bit older. Pokemon ranger who gets sent into the distortion world that everyone needs to go save. Adele is close with the Birch’s and since Roman is older it’s not that she was competing for Brendan’s attention and was more of an unofficial younger sibling. 

Matchi, Wally’s nibling (genderfluid) he got custody of (intentionally Io parallels). Coordinator, Adele’s best friend. Fit the slot Len used to fit. And we worked everything out, we had to scrap Larentia entirely, change Ber’s trainer class, and so much other plot stuff but it doesn’t matter. 

Because neither of us really care for having pokeani fankids.

For some this might seem it’s coming out of no where but honestly for me, I feel it’s been a long time coming. We haven’t really cared about the anime in years. I think you can tell because the only anime ships we have really only fit in gen 4 and before. Even then, the only anime ships we ever actually really liked we used on this were Ash & May and Dawn & Gary. Everything else was just checking off a checklist.

Like ‘oh we need a Misty Kid, let’s make Bridge’ ‘We need a Cilan kid, we’ll make Eclair’. It wasn’t actually because we cared about the ships those kids are attached to.

But we liked the kids we had and we liked making them so we didn’t really see the point in changing anything. I stand by that a lot of these kids mean so much to me. We’ve had them for over 7 years (they’ve been a thing longer than this blog has been) I wouldn’t trade them for the world.

As some of you know I recently (without Craig) made some game verse kids and it made me realize that I actually like having fankids for the sake of them being fankids. Which I know sounds self explanatory, that’s what it should be. I like thinking about them with their parents, how that effects them. How they act when they’re little all the good stuff. Their relationship with their parents is a key factor of part of the reason I like the game verse kids. I could take away the parental relationship with literally all of the kids on this blog and still feel the exact same amount them.

So that’s exactly what I pitched to Craig what we do. Take all of the kids we like/want to keep around, redesign them, and make them ocs. And it’s been great! We’ve only done Adele, Jean, Axel and Ike so far but honestly, it makes me feel so much more excited to work on this stuff than I have been in years. 

We’re no longer restricted to the anime canon neither of us really care about, we can make as many or as little characters as we want. Characters don’t need to make “sense” to be in certain places in certain times because they’re ocs and we decide everything. It’s great.

As for this blog, I plan to keep it up for archive purposes but don’t plan on updating it. I am taking a few adult designs for my game verse if it works out but some will be lost in time (sadly Submas Hilbert Hilda does not work in my game verse which is the worst that is the worst thing about the blog going down in my opinion).

If anyone’s curious about the current version of the kids I’m likely only going to post them on my art twitter. We might change names for everyone we want to talk it (except Axel it still fits him) but if see me tweeting them under any name (with more to be added later but not on this account) they’re probably kids from here)

In order left to Right Top Bottom: Ike, Matchi (who no we didn’t redesign bc they only existed for a week before we started this), Axel, Jean, Adele