What do Mr. Darcy’s friends (not to mention Georgiana, or Lizzie, now that they are married) call him?
For very obvious reasons, the alluringly haughty hero of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is referred to almost exclusively as “Mr. Darcy.” It is only obsessive fans and a few English teachers who remember that Austen did, in fact, give him a first name. Apparently, his parents chose to pass down Mrs. Darcy’s maiden name as their only son’s given name. What a fun way to reach some sort of compromise in the Why the Smeg Are Women Expected to Change Their Names dilemma, even if it isn’t necessarily the best compromise*?
Unfortunately for the boy, his mother’s maiden name was Fitzwilliam, so he was saddled with a long, clumsy name that does not immediately lend itself to nicknames. I suppose the “Fitz” bit could be dropped to leave “William,” which has many very common nicknames. Will is relatively normal, though it certainly isn’t a name that immediately springs to mind when I consider Darcy. I find the idea of Darcy being called Billy or Willie very humourous, but I somehow doubt that would have ever happened.
The small part of me that is able to continue being ironic and absurd while thinking about Colin Firth wants Bingley to call him Fitzy. I also have a fun time picturing Pemberly about 25 years after the end of P&P. In this scene, Lizzie would be standing at the bottom of a huge staircase yelling upwards in a voice that is only slightly less irritating than her mothers, saying, “Bill, get down here and pick your cravat up off the floor in the west parlour! Jane and Charlie will be here any minute now!”** I have no particularly humourous mental images of what Georgiana calls him (or what he calls her, for that matter…). If you have any inspired ideas, I’d love to hear them.
* I am fully aware of the fact that it had more to do with reminding the world that their son had connections on his mother’s side rather than any desire to sock it to patriarchy. Just humour me.
** Again, I realize that this is completely anachronistic. I’m not an idiot, I’m just naturally silly and running on very little sleep.
This pondering contains mild spoilers for the 3rd season of Battlestar Galactica, and is rated PG-13 for sexual content.
Battlestar Galactica has never been a show to shy away from physical relationships. We’ve seen intense make-out scenes, heavy petting, sex, Cylon sex, freaky old people-on-Cylon sex, and, lately, freaky Cylon-on-slimy-(probably) human-on-Cylon sex.
So why is the Tyrol/Cally relationship so...calm?
Not that I want to see any more steamy sex scenes, but why do those two get left out of the sex-scene party? I suppose it’s to make their relationship look more mature and stable…even though it really is severely twisted. I mean, I really liked her way back in the first season (remember when she bit that guy’s ear off?) But then she went all creepy-stalker and shot Boomer for him, and that pretty much killed my respect for her. And then – just to spice up their relationship, I guess – Tyrol beat the stuffing out of her. But she apparently didn’t care, and we skipped directly from her forgiving him out of the corner of her bloody, pulverized mouth to her carrying his child. What the phrack?
I thought for a short time that the reason the sexxiest interaction we’ve seen between the Tyrols is a little hair stroking was because neither of them are exactly “hott” in the conventional sense (even though I think Tyrol is precious in a Samwise Gamgee sort of way, and I know at least one male fan who thinks Cally is reasonably attractive). After all, most of the sex scenes have been between people like Apollo and Starbuck, or Gaius and Six…or Gaius and Six and Deanna.
But then, the season opened with all of that lovely Ellen Tigh-on-Al—I mean, Brother Cavil—action [shudder] And way back in the very beginning of the series, we were getting fairly regular doses of Tyrol and Boomer’s tryst, so I have to assume they don’t object to showing Aaron Douglas ogling more than the Eye of Jupiter (and that’s another thing… Every other mythological reference on the show thus far has been Greek, so why isn’t it the Eye of Zeus? But I digress).
Let it never be said that I want to see Tyrol and Cally getting it on. I don’t have any particular fondness for sex scenes, nor do I care much for Cally ever since she turned out to be a psycho. Still, I can’t help but feel that I might like her more if the couple were allowed to show their affection for each other once in a while. Just a little Billy/D-esque cuddling is all I’m asking for here...
…though we all saw how that worked out.
I’m not still bitter.
