YMMV / The Lizzie Bennet Diaries

• Adorkable:
  • Darcy. Socially awkward, bowtie-wearing, intelligent, and slightly pompous, mixed with absolutely terrible attempts at flirting with Lizzie. Highlights include attempting to impress her with his speaker-setting-up-skills, and fake-texting when he sees her coming towards him. His portrayal in this series stuck a cord among millenial hipsters who adore his interests and awkwardness.
  • Ricky Collins. Lizzie cannot stand him, but his pompous antics come off as rather funny and cute, since he has good intentions and is quite enthusiastic about Lizzie's work. In the Emma Approved revival, he still has no social intelligence but his friendly eagerness is stronger than ever. He's massively popular among fans, thanks to his actor's dorky charisma.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Lizzie: A manipulative vlogger who retorts to Slut-Shaming against her little sister, publishes everyone's private life on the internet and judges everyone harshly or a Stepford Snarker who needs to snark on the internet to bear the fact that her mother is a misogynist, that most of her neighbors are snobs or materialists and that her financial situation and future are uncertain, and who snaps out of anger that her sisters's lives are going completely out of control, because they are preparing themselves to live as someone's trophy wife instead of trying to be individuals like she is?
  • Lydia: Egotist and talented Drama Queen who manipulates everyone and annoys her sisters or neglected young girl desperately trying to reach to everyone while trying to make her great talent recognized?
  • Caroline Lee: A mean and haughty girl who Charlotte and Lizzie criticized realistically for joining William Darcy in his crusade against the world... or a naive and brutally honest spoiled girl who at least is not a Hypocrite about how she likes money, becomes the pawn of two manipulative vloggers and has a crush on a childhood friend which people find annoying because she sees right through his behavior? (This got less popular after her appearances on Emma Approved, where she's needlessly cruel to Harriet at every turn.)
  • There are some who say you could make a case for Ricky being gay and closeted. Whether they think his Girlfriend in Canada is just a cover or if she's real but just, you know, not a she, depends on the viewer.
• Broken Base:
  • Ricky Collins.
    Commentator n° 1: Oh My God, this guy is too much. Lizzy, run from that guy, run fast... (...) I totally get you, I can't stand guys like that.
    Commentator n° 2: Mr. Collins is so geekily adorable :) "it would excite me greatly if I could see your analytics" Oh me! Oh my! Precious!
  • Episode 42 divided fans into two groups: those who sympathised with Charlotte, and others who took Lizzie's side.
  • The same thing happened again in episode 73, but with Lizzie and Lydia this time. "Team Lizzie" members tended to be elder sisters who have had similar experiences and/or readers of the original book; "Team Lydia" was mainly made up of younger sisters and they often hadn't read P&P (and therefore were less likely to know the Foregone Conclusion and hadn't encountered the more annoying version of Lydia).
  • Episode 87 divided the fanbase between "Team Lizzie" and "Team Lydia" again. On the one hand, Lydia is claimed to have had public sexual contact with a boy whose name she couldn't remember at Carter's. The same Lydia who always wanted money and fame and was mesmerized by George Wickham. On the other hand, it could be argued that Lizzie treated Lydia horribly. She leaves her job shadowing gig with the express purpose of going home to berate Lydia without bothering to find out Lydia's side of the story. Which it turns out Lydia didn't even know about the website so it became a real awful moment
  • The entire "Lydia and Wickham" arc fits as many fans were not happy at how the arc played out, Lizzie's remarks to Lydia, or even using idea of using the sex tape in lieu of Lydia eloping with Wickham.
• Crack Ship: Lizzie Bennet/Caroline Lee, Charlotte Lu/Caroline Lee, Lydia Bennet/Ricky Collins
  • There is a George Wickham/Caroline Lee fanfic, it is actually pretty non-cracky though it was canon-balled by later episodes.
  • In a lot of the later Lydia Bennet videos and during the sex tape arc a lot of the commenters said that they ship George Wickham/a pool of hungry sharks or George Wickham's face/William Darcy's fist.
  • Lydia/Literally-Anyone-But-Wickham is universally beloved.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Darcy is often posited to be somewhere on the Autism spectrum.
• Double Standard: Releasing the sex tape would ruin Lydia's reputation and even eventual career, not Wickham's. Probably Truth in Television. The website doesn't even have George's name on it.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Lydia, of all characters. As far as the original novel go, she has no fans whatsoever. In the webseries, she was adored. She's such a fanbase darling, then after she becomes The Woobie in the later episodes, the rewatching fans will point out and criticize every instance od Lizzie verbally sniping at Lydia (Lydia's sniping at Lizzie gets nowhere near of that attention).
  • In Lydia's spin-off, Mary seems to receive a comparable treatment.
  • Charlotte has a huge fanbase. Bernie Su, one of the head writers of the show, calls it "The YAY CHARLOTTE effect."
  • Maria Lu was well-like in her spin-off. She's a cutie and such an adorable fangirl. However, there were also voices heard that she's quite unnecessary and that her story-line didn't have any deep meaning.
  • Lydia's cat, The Kitty Bennet has over 3600 followers. The Internet does run solely on cute cats.
  • Fitz has appeared for just one episode and immediately became a fan favourite. In the novel, he shows up just once as Darcy's friend. Here he ships Darcy and Lizzie. Male match-maker? That is rare in fictionland.
  • Gigi's not-nearly-as-subtle-as-she-thinks approach to shipping made her nearly universally loved by the fandom, though some fans miss gentle, sweet and timid Miss Darcy of the book.
• Fan Nickname:
  • George Wickham, aka, Dickham. Of course, the people who created the nickname could hardly be called fans of Wickham.
  • "Newsie" and "Darcybot" are both very frequently used as affectionate nicknames for Darcy in the comments. Fitz's comment about Darcy being an "agoraphobic lobster" is popular, as well.
• Fanon:
  • Many commenters speculate that Lydia slept with Hank to get to Vid Con. (Specifically, she winked at the camera after saying she "had friends in high places.") Later she got her own video blog, which makes you wonder...
  • It's also commonly speculated that Darcy killed Wickham after buying out the company that owned the sex tape with him and Lydia. Of course, this is mostly just joking, mixed with a bit of wishful thinking. (Especially given what an infuriating Karma Houdini Wickham is.)
• Fountain of Memes:
  • Lots of LBD-related gifs are centered on Lydia's moments.
  • William Darcy (or rather, the girls' interpretation of him) provokes this very, very often. Charlotte!Caroline's "fake-texting" and Jane!Darcy's "it's super-important" was particularly well-liked.
• Growing the Beard:
  • Averted for lots of fans who liked the series, their ideas and general tone right from the scratch.
  • Episode 15, "Lizzie Bennet is In Denial," is the show's first step into a larger world. It's not only the first episode without the main character on camera (and one of only three that does this overall), it also gives Jane and Charlotte a chance to draw real attention to the fact that she's an Unreliable Narrator. Plus, "It's super-important."
  • Between episode 20 and episode 27, for many viewers.
  • The Drama Bomb of Episode 42 really demonstrated the creators' willingness to pull no punches. Career versus studies? Money issues? — Yes, please.
• Harsher in Hindsight: In episode 69, Lydia claimed that she is "an excellent judge of character, unlike Lizzie". This was before she started dating George Wickham.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Lizzie cooing over her new phone became this after Ashley Clements showed up in ads for Gazelle, a company dealing in used phones and electronics.
  • An adaptation of a Regency-era romance novel, with a notably diversified cast? Are we talking about The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, or Bridgerton?
• Love to Hate: George Wickham became universally loathed when he started appearing on Lydia's videos.
• Misaimed Fandom: There seems to be a portion of the fandom that thinks Lydia and George are sweet together.
• Moral Event Horizon: Just in case you had any delusions about George being a Jerk with a Heart of Gold... on the video in which Lydia announces to the world how much she loves him, Wickham posted a link to a website that allows you to preorder the Lydia Bennet sex tape. Which releases on Valentine's Day.
  • Fridge Horror: Which makes you think, what if he had attempted to do something similar to Gigi had Darcy had not found out about them in time? It could have been Gigi.
• Narm: Mary Kate Wiles is arguably one of the best actresses in this show, but her reaction to the revelation that Wickham's going to publish their sex tape in Episode 85 is so overtly dramatic, that may come out as just plain funny to some.
• One True Pairing:
  • Comments on Episode 28 include declaring Jane and Bing as the OTP.
  • An alarming number ship Charlotte and Ricky. A few may be emigrants from the novel fandom, where Mr. Collins' proposal did involve getting down on one knee. It doesn't help that Charlotte only calls him Mr. Collins, and gets flustered and is unable to reply when Maria Lu asks her why she doesn't call him by his first name like everyone else.
  • In-universe: Gigi sees Lizzie and Darcy as her OTP.
• Pandering to the Base: Starting after episode 43, with the introduction of Maria Lu and George Wickham, and happily, it isn't going to stop soon!
• Portmanteau Couple Name:
  • Fans have embraced "Dizzie" (Darcy/Lizzie).
  • "Lyckham" for Lydia/Wickham pairing.
  • In universe, Lizzie calls Jane/Bing "Jing".
• She Really Can Act:
  • Lizzie (Ashley Clements) and Charlotte (Julia Cho) were never considered bad actors but they both really shone in Episode 41.
  • Mary Kate Wiles was always considered an awesome actress, but the abuse storyline and the way she and Wes Anderhold handled it gave them a new kind of credibility as actors and characters for the fandom and was praised countless times.
• The Woobie:
  • Jane. It was hard to watch such a sweet young woman being heart-broken. Episode 48.
  • Gigi Darcy. Wickham treated her appallingly. They lived together for a while, but he was just with her for her money/flat/free food etc.
  • Lydia, particularly after she starts dating Wickham.

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