It’s time to face some hard truths.

Let’s Be Real: We’re not Elizabeth. If we’re anybody in this saga, we’re dark-clad Mary, who thinks conversation is better than balls. You know what, Mary? Conversation IS a better way to get to know people and we get you, we totally get you.

Let’s Be Real: Maybe we’re also the dad? Wry and detached and lazy and as far as we can tell vaguely drunk?

Let’s Be Real: We’d say yes to Collins.

Let’s Be Real: Waiting for us to walk that one back? Wait eternal. Just as we in 2015 will accept less-than-stimulating employment in order to avoid leeching off our parents like so many nineteenth-century medicinal leeches, our doppelgängers of yore would swallow our scruples and start negotiating. Separate halves of the house, minimal small talk, lists of five aristocrats we’re each allowed to bang.

Let’s Be Real: Doesn’t it seem like Mary’s into Collins? They’d be a good couple.

Let’s Be Real: We’d bone Wickham.

Let’s Be Real: In Bridget Jones’s Diary, she gets to have sex with the Wickham guy and the Darcy guy. Our times are objectively better than old times.

Let’s Be Real: The past was wretched.

Let’s Be Real: If Darcy wasn’t hot, would he really be that much more charming than Collins? He talks less, true. But he talks too less, interrupted with weird outbursts of aggressive oversharing. If he looked like Collins but kept his exact personality we’d be like, mmm really busy with my embroidery bye.

Let’s Be Real: No we’d be like, hello marriage of convenience! And accept his proposal the first time.

Let’s Be Real: Darcy is humorless. What do you even talk about with Darcy? I feel like we’d get super bored with him. “Darcy, what do you think of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ new book?” “No.” Or, “Darcy, who would win in a fight between a goat and a swan?” “You have less money than I do.”

Let’s Be Real: The hero of this story is Charlotte.

Lets Be Real: Darcy is too rich. #redistributionofwealth

Let’s Be Real: The Collins house? More my speed. Modest and manageable. Get it, Charlotte.

Let’s Be Real: The guy who plays Collins is a delightful actor. We should imdb him.

Let’s Be Real: We won’t.

Let’s Be Real: Since it didn’t work out with Collins, maybe Mary could hook up with that emo-looking chick Judi Dench’s character is related to? With the glasses? She’s kinda cute, all emo with those glasses.

Let’s Be Real: This story is oddly hostile toward female introverts and male extroverts.

Let’s Be Real: I keep saying “story,” but I mean “movie.” The 2005 one. The short one. I’ve read the book, yeah, fine, but this is just where we are now, moving on.

Let’s Be Real: Mr. Bennett is addicted to opiates.

Let’s Be Real: We don’t understand the mechanisms of old-school British patriarchy. What’s this deal with Georgiana’s inheritance? I thought girls couldn’t inherit stuff? And that was the whole urgent issue with the Bennet sisters? Can they inherit money but not property? Out in the literate world, we’ll pretend like we’re familiar with the specific historical context. We are not. We should Wikipedia this.

Let’s Be Real: Nah.

Let’s Be Real: Bingley is a dolt. He’s a fancy pincushion with the pins arranged in a smiley face. Despite his claims, we’re not convinced he can read. We would still marry him.

Let’s Be Real: We would marry literally any man in this movie because otherwise we’d starve.

Let’s Be Real: Reality has no time for pride or prejudice. Real life is about hunger and compromise, and we are clear-eyed realists who do what needs to be done. In this case what we would do is any and all of these men.