A/N: This is a crossover of sorts between APH and the Lizzie Bennet Diaries…which in of itself is an adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. All of this story is ripped word-for-word from Bernie Su and Kate Rorick's The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet and any associated YouTube videos or twitter posts created by them…all I did was switch names and add a few sentences here and there to make the story centered around the characters from Hetalia (which also don't belong to me, btw!) Enjoy!

Maddie Kirkland = nyo!Canada

Ling Wang = nyo!Hong Kong

Michelle Bonnefoy = Seychelles

Alicia Kirkland = nyo!America

Dr. Bella Maes = Belgium

The Maddie Kirkland Diaries

Introduction Arc Chapter 1 April 7-April 13 Saturday April 7, 2012: Private Diary Entry 1

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

My mom gave me that quote on a T-shirt.

That's really where I got the idea. Well, that and the previous four years of undergrad and two years of grad school, studying Mass Communications with a focus on New Media. Now, almost in my last year of graduate school, in between trying to figure out how I am going to turn my forthcoming degree into a profession and manage to have a life while paying off my mountain of student loans, my mother gave me a T-shirt which, to her mind, will solve all my (read: her) worries.

Worse yet, she tried to make me wear it. To school.

Curious how my mother would make a 24-year old who has been dressing herself for technically decades wear a certain article of clothing? Then you don't know my mother. Or her underhanded nature. I'd managed to keep the shirt buried in a drawer since Christmas, but then there was a hostile laundry takeover. That's all I'll say.

Luckily, I managed to avoid this sartorial horror by keeping my gym bag in my study cubicle, letting me change from my offensive yet clean shirt into an inoffensive yet smelly oversized tee. It was really a rock/hard place situation.

The only person who saw me in the offending T-shirt with this random quote (by the way, I hope they were being sarcastic) was my cubicle mate and fellow grad student Ling Wang.

"Hostile laundry takeover?" she asked knowingly.

Did I mention that we are also best friends?

I didn't think anything of the shirt until later in the day, when Ling and I were leading the Communications 101 discussion group. Somehow the conversation turned from cross platform promotion on social media platforms and their relative efficacy to how to reach different generations via mass communications.

As discussion continued, Ling said the following:

"Well, the difficulty with reaching different generations via any platform has always been within the message itself."

"Err…care to elaborate?" I said, hoping she had something up her sleeve to steer the discussion back to the curriculum.

"Well, take that T-shirt your mom gave you, for example." I was very glad at this point that I was not wearing the shirt, as it would have invited thirty 18-year-old freshmen to stare at my boobs.

After paraphrasing it's message to the class, she continued. "Your mother-and consequentially, many of her generation-have an entirely different mindset about what your future should be. And therefore communication with them is hindered by more than just the platform –it's the message itself.

In other words, my plan for my future happiness involves a lot of hard work and ingenuity; Mom's plan for my future happiness includes my marrying a rich guy. And apparently, every rich single guy out there is just dying to take on the job.

Later, I was talking to Dr. Maes, and I mentioned the T-shirt to her and what Ling had said in class. Dr. Maes laughed, and thought it was a deep well of conflict.

Yes, a 'deep well of conflict' is an excellent way to describe interactions with my mother.

"Perhaps exploring whether disparate messages and platforms can coexist, in the same way disparate people exist in the same house, should be part of your end-of-term project," Dr. Maes mused.

Ah yes. The dreaded end-of-term project for Dr. Maes' Hyper-Mediation in New Media class. It was meant to be a large multimedia project, and I'd been having trouble coming up with an idea. On top of that, Dr. Maes was also my faculty advisor -meaning she'd been prodding me for weeks to also define what my thesis would be, and what I'd spend all of next year on.

One overwhelmingly large project at a time, I'd begged her. And I went home to ponder the possibilities of the shorter but sooner end-of-term project.

While at home, I listened to my mother harass my long-suffering father because someone bought the big house in Vecchio (a new McMansion community, with the biggest house on the hill taking the name of the whole development as its own) and that someone is supposedly male, rich, and single.

And my mom has called dibs.

Not for herself, of course, but for me or for my sisters, Alicia and Michelle. Any one of use would do; she's not particular. Really, depending on his net worth, she'd probably be willing to do a two-for-one type deal. Or three.

That made my mind up. The fact that my mother had so little concept as to who her daughters were and what society we currently live in that she was ready to doll us up and trot us out like debutantes at our first ball for a stranger just because he was rich… The fact that she was so desperate to meet this stranger that she was nagging my father -on those occasions he's home from the office earlier than dark-to go pay a call on the new neighbours like he's the local welcoming committee…The fact that she has absolutely no clue what it is I do or what I'm studying, just telling people that I "like to talk…maybe she will end up on morning television!"…

Well…perhaps there is a way to show the world the disparate 'messages' I've been forced to listen to for far too long. And use a new media platform to do it.

So, that's what I decided to do for Dr. Maes' class. I will attempt to explain my mother and my life to the world at large Via New Media.

After some discussion with Ling, I've come up with a few rules and stylistic choices that I think will work.

It seems obvious, but I've decided to do a video blog. Me talking to a camera. It's straightforward. I don't feel like I will be capable of capturing the moments of veracity necessary for a documentary, given that I have no money to pay a crew and I have to spend half my time in class, anyway. I'm a fan of the various YouTuber's who do videos of this style, so it can't be too hard, right?

Of course, consistency is key. We decided to post videos on YouTube twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays, without exception. Even when I have nothing to talk about, these videos will go up. Part of the project is mining that 'deep well' and becoming a consistent content creator.

"But what will I talk about?" I asked Ling, as we broke down the idea.

"You've never been short on things to say," Ling reminded me.

"But just me on camera for five minutes?" I said. "Nothing happening? I could recount things that happened, but that's boring, too."

"Well, make it not boring," Ling said. "When you're recounting events-re-enact them. With costumes."

"Costumes?" I asked. Dr. Maes had been going over this theory in her class this past week. "You mean, dress up like my mom and dad talking about the rich single guy who moved into Vecchio?"

"Why not?"

Why not indeed? So -I've stolen Dad's sweater vest and an old sun hat of Mom's, and I'm brushing off my French accent to impersonate my mother. Any pertinent interactions that have occurred previous to my filming will be re-enacted in this way with what I'm calling Costume Theatre.

I'll try to present interactions as fairly as possible, but I know I will also be presenting them from my point of view. However, I will not allow the colouring that comes from my perspective to affect the veracity of the content.

In other words, I'm not making this stuff up. Everything I put online will have actually happened. We're here to tell the truth, after all.

Obviously, I'll also need to present documentations for the project. A record of my impressions of the act of making a long-form vlog and how the platform services the message. And a venting of my occasional frustration. I guess the fact that I've been keeping a diary my entire life will finally result in more than carpal tunnel syndrome!

That's really it. I'm sure I'll have more rules as I go along, but for now, it's time to see if I can make a video. The school has loaned me a camera, I have digital storage chips lined up on my desk, and Ling has been roped into- err, I mean, volunteered to assist me with filming and editing.

So, here we go- let's make a vlog!