I'll admit, I had a little bit of a different reaction to the sex-tape arc, mostly because I didn't read it as being about Lydia so much as it is about Wickham being a horrible person.
I totally agree with you about a drug overdose or a heavy gambling debt would have had a larger tangible effect on the rest of the Bennets and would have been both IC and deeply traumatic for Lydia. But the thing about that is that those would have been things that Lydia did to herself. The publicized sex tape? The sadistic countdown? That's all on Wickham. The sex-tape is something cruel that happened to Lydia that someone else did to her. It's someone who she thought she could trust taking that trust and perverting it and violating her in a deeply personal way. That's not to say Lydia getting into trouble of her own accord wouldn't have been interesting, but it wouldn't have accomplished the same thing for the larger story (ex: bringing Wickham directly into conflict with the main cast).
AND if you're right about Darcy being the one to get the site taken down, that establishes him as a hero in contrast to Wickham, so it's a twofer. Although, I could just as easily have seen him anonymously stepping in to pay for medical treatment or paying off a heavy gambling debt.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timeasmymeasure
no subject
I totally agree with you about a drug overdose or a heavy gambling debt would have had a larger tangible effect on the rest of the Bennets and would have been both IC and deeply traumatic for Lydia. But the thing about that is that those would have been things that Lydia did to herself. The publicized sex tape? The sadistic countdown? That's all on Wickham. The sex-tape is something cruel that happened to Lydia that someone else did to her. It's someone who she thought she could trust taking that trust and perverting it and violating her in a deeply personal way. That's not to say Lydia getting into trouble of her own accord wouldn't have been interesting, but it wouldn't have accomplished the same thing for the larger story (ex: bringing Wickham directly into conflict with the main cast).
AND if you're right about Darcy being the one to get the site taken down, that establishes him as a hero in contrast to Wickham, so it's a twofer. Although, I could just as easily have seen him anonymously stepping in to pay for medical treatment or paying off a heavy gambling debt.