for Les Anges dans nos Campagnes2/6/2020 c1 
39Riene
This is a delight, and I am sorry I did not read it until now! Their relationship seems properly tempestuous, and Erik reacts exactly as he should. Bless Christine for her patience and understanding. Those shouted words were perfect, and struck him so forcefully. Even though Erik can't quite make himself apologize he showed her his acceptance.
There are spots here where it feels like a sequel to another story-you do mention the Leroux-but I'd like to have just a little more of the events between then and now-why did they marry? Is he working? Does she still sing? What of Raoul? And then some follow up to tie ends neatly-does she have the child and how is the baby? Does Erik eventually get his act together?
I really liked the descriptions of the first tree ornaments (though I'm not certain how many trees were a "thing" at this time in France), and I liked the symbolism of the angel at the end, and the references to him acting once again as an architect.
Congrats on posting your first phic! It's always a scary experience. Keep writing!
39RieneThis is a delight, and I am sorry I did not read it until now! Their relationship seems properly tempestuous, and Erik reacts exactly as he should. Bless Christine for her patience and understanding. Those shouted words were perfect, and struck him so forcefully. Even though Erik can't quite make himself apologize he showed her his acceptance.
There are spots here where it feels like a sequel to another story-you do mention the Leroux-but I'd like to have just a little more of the events between then and now-why did they marry? Is he working? Does she still sing? What of Raoul? And then some follow up to tie ends neatly-does she have the child and how is the baby? Does Erik eventually get his act together?
I really liked the descriptions of the first tree ornaments (though I'm not certain how many trees were a "thing" at this time in France), and I liked the symbolism of the angel at the end, and the references to him acting once again as an architect.
Congrats on posting your first phic! It's always a scary experience. Keep writing!
12/29/2019 c1 54Igenlode Wordsmith
Critique as requested:
"his special magnifying glasses" - this sounds as if it's implying that spectacles for reading were a novel invention; in the late 19th century they had been around for literally hundreds of years.
The "old hip injury" is a reference back to the parent work, I take it...
"This could mean only one thing" - even assuming that this is the sun setting on Christmas Eve, which has yet to be established, surely not even Erik can assume that trees are not cut or carted until sundown of the last day on which they can be sold? And if it doesn't mean that, then I don't understand how the colour of the sky comes into it at all...
From a punctuation point of view, I'd say that you should avoid if at all possible having *two* colons in a single sentence; in this case I'd simply switch the first occurrence for an ordinary full stop. Is "cartered off" a typo for "carted off"?
Poetically-described sunset, though ;-)
"The servants' boy, now a strapping lad of nineteen" - again, I'm assuming this is a reference to something outside the scope of the story, but the 'now' sounds as if it ought to refer back to something else in this fic, preferably earlier, potentially later, and so far as I can see there are no other references to the servants or their 'boy' anywhere. Under the circumstances I'd be tempted to rephrase it to something that doesn't raise implicit questions - that plural possessive is unusual enough to have the reader potentially stopping in mid-flow to wonder if you're misplacing an apostrophe :-(
The only thing that matters from the perspective of this paragraph is that Christine has a strapping nineteen-year-old in her (implied their) employ, whom she has taken with her to carry home a Christmas tree. His parentage and his past before he was nineteen are effectively distractions at this point.
(You could say that the most significant implication of the paragraph is that Christine is strongly implied to be cohabiting with Erik and that it is thus a radical rewriting of canon, but frankly in this fandom the readers are likely to take an E/C outcome as the default way of things and not even notice...)
I like the mental hitch over the distinction between "his first Christmas" and "the first Christmas he had somehow been party to". I'm guessing that this section definitely *is* a reference back to the 'parent fiction' - presumably this is Erik thinking over the events of that novel - but here it works.
"She had insisted that he should stay with her" - what, literally? (They're both in her flat.) Or figuratively, which was my first interpretation in this context (she has refused to let him slink away or die)?
It's not at all clear why Christine has agreed to marry Erik - apparently as part of her abyss-wrestling mission, although it seems an uncalled-for personal sacrifice - but again, an fandom audience probably isn't going to question what to them seems a natural duty on the part of any self-respecting Christine, and since this is being written from Erik's own perspective, he of course has no idea what can have prompted such a miracle.
"months of his recovery" - again, presumably, unspoken backstory. Though it's not clear whether this refers to the 'old hip injury' or to his return to the human race...
"Their combined income had kept them warm, properly fed and clothed - certainly better than she could have done on her own" - so Christine was inadequate to the task of supporting herself pre-Erik? :-(
(On re-reading, I think this was probably intended to mean that Christine could not have afforded to support *Erik* as well as herself on her single income, but it comes across uncomfortably as Erik congratulating himself that without his generosity she would be starving and in rags...)
"The decorations box had made its first appearance. It held a peculiar set of ribbons, wooden figurines and salt paste shapes painted in red and white. He could tell that the colours were vibrant, once. Now, the assemblage looked somewhat shabby" - the tense in "he could tell" feels wrong to me. I know it can be clumsy to keep putting everything into the pluperfect past, but here I think there's a real ambiguity between what Erik thought on first seeing the decorations (when they were already old) and their current condition (when they are presumably even older). And the use of 'now' to mean (I think) 'over twenty years ago' compounds the effect - especially when we're back in past perfect for "She had baked" at the start of the next sentence.
"the last few weeks of her mourning" - my first thought was 'but her father is already dead'. On rereading I think this must be referring to the unmentioned demise of Madame Valerius (freeing Christine up to go and live with Erik!), but here I think something as large as the death of your last living family member really can't be pushed into "implicit backstory" territory: if you're going to hit the reader with something as big - to the characters - as that, we at least need to be told what Christine is in mourning *for*.
They are both using the term "fragment of the True Cross". Is Christine supposed to be echoing Erik's description earlier (with the implication that he teased her with it explicitly, which seems a bit OOC?) It comes across more as an inadvertent repetition on the author's part.
But I like the echo between the way he had envisioned Christine's reaction to the shawl but had *not* envisioned receiving a pair of cufflinks from her as a gift.
"They occupied the two upper floors of a modest townhouse" - although it later appears they own the entire house, including the ground-floor premises; I'm not sure about the phrasing here, which would normally imply that they are renting rooms while someone or several other someones occupy the other floor(s).
"The way she loved him now startled and enraptured him in equal measure" - again, my reaction was a jolting 'where did that come from?', whereas the fandom will presumably take it for granted that of *course* any Christine married to any Erik will end up adoring him...
I'm afraid that from other fanfics I immediately jumped to the conclusion that Christine's "terrifying, inconceivable, disastrous news" was a pregnancy :-P What else does Erik ever fly into a panic about?
Although planning to drown himself to escape the prospect of producing a deformed baby seemed an odd reaction, so I wondered a little. But then it becomes evident that what he is actually seeking to escape is the spectre of his own behaviour towards Christine on hearing the news.
"He should have apologised, wanted to even" - this reads as "should have wanted to", which isn't what you meant; better to insert "had wanted to, even" in order to clarify, I think.
I'm amused by Erik's offering to euthanise the baby as a solution (preferably even if it isn't visibly deformed). And at his reflexive concern for her vocal chords ;-)
"I am not your mother" - is this supposed to imply that Erik's mother wanted him killed at birth?
(It doesn't really work for me as a heart-rending outcry, because it's a phrase more usually yelled at a husband by someone telling him she isn't going to pick up after him any more, but I can accept this as an anachronistic association on my part...)
"as sharp and precious as a fragment of the True Cross" - at this point the repetition is presumably deliberate, but because the *character* isn't acknowledging that he keeps coming up with the same comparison, it comes over as the author having an unfortunately limited palette of similes for 'really precious thing' :-(
I think you need to say "yet another fragment precious as the True Cross" or something - if you keep using the same analogy and apparently not noticing, it just sounds really awkward.
I was wondering why his idea for telling her about the new house involved going to the shops so urgently (presumably he had the architectural paper in the house already, and the plans at least partially drawn up). It transpires later that he must have rushed out to purchase the china angel, but, as above with the sunset, that doesn't seem to relate to the idea that is subsequently revealed - his actual inspiration is to label one of the rooms as a nursery.
"The drawing room" - I assumed that was one of their (poky, dark) upstairs living rooms. Using it for the shop space downstairs is seriously misleading, given the normal meaning of the term - a bit like referring to a basement with a swimming bath in it as "the bath room"!
"One more fragment of the True Cross for her collection" - OK, that works, in the context of his original use of the phrase to refer to tree ornaments (as he's just given her another one), but as I was saying, the other, more metaphorical insertions of the phrase weren't working for me as I went along :-(
I think I can see now what you were trying to do with it, but I feel it needs to be handled some other way; not least, they need to be mutually conscious of the fact that it keeps cropping up.
And you've introduced a big retrospective hole to the beginning of this story; you've talked about the nineteen-year-old servant who is carrying the Christmas tree, but what became of the child to whom she is about to give birth at the end, presumably also now nineteen years old or so? Why isn't their son helping to carry the tree, or their daughter going with her to help choose it? It's one thing to be deliberately misleading, but another - in a story as short as this - to leave out massively significant facts seemingly by accident; obviously you don't want offspring visibly present to spoil your later surprise, but I feel there needs to be some indication of their existence with hindsight, or the story doesn't join up.
54Igenlode WordsmithCritique as requested:
"his special magnifying glasses" - this sounds as if it's implying that spectacles for reading were a novel invention; in the late 19th century they had been around for literally hundreds of years.
The "old hip injury" is a reference back to the parent work, I take it...
"This could mean only one thing" - even assuming that this is the sun setting on Christmas Eve, which has yet to be established, surely not even Erik can assume that trees are not cut or carted until sundown of the last day on which they can be sold? And if it doesn't mean that, then I don't understand how the colour of the sky comes into it at all...
From a punctuation point of view, I'd say that you should avoid if at all possible having *two* colons in a single sentence; in this case I'd simply switch the first occurrence for an ordinary full stop. Is "cartered off" a typo for "carted off"?
Poetically-described sunset, though ;-)
"The servants' boy, now a strapping lad of nineteen" - again, I'm assuming this is a reference to something outside the scope of the story, but the 'now' sounds as if it ought to refer back to something else in this fic, preferably earlier, potentially later, and so far as I can see there are no other references to the servants or their 'boy' anywhere. Under the circumstances I'd be tempted to rephrase it to something that doesn't raise implicit questions - that plural possessive is unusual enough to have the reader potentially stopping in mid-flow to wonder if you're misplacing an apostrophe :-(
The only thing that matters from the perspective of this paragraph is that Christine has a strapping nineteen-year-old in her (implied their) employ, whom she has taken with her to carry home a Christmas tree. His parentage and his past before he was nineteen are effectively distractions at this point.
(You could say that the most significant implication of the paragraph is that Christine is strongly implied to be cohabiting with Erik and that it is thus a radical rewriting of canon, but frankly in this fandom the readers are likely to take an E/C outcome as the default way of things and not even notice...)
I like the mental hitch over the distinction between "his first Christmas" and "the first Christmas he had somehow been party to". I'm guessing that this section definitely *is* a reference back to the 'parent fiction' - presumably this is Erik thinking over the events of that novel - but here it works.
"She had insisted that he should stay with her" - what, literally? (They're both in her flat.) Or figuratively, which was my first interpretation in this context (she has refused to let him slink away or die)?
It's not at all clear why Christine has agreed to marry Erik - apparently as part of her abyss-wrestling mission, although it seems an uncalled-for personal sacrifice - but again, an fandom audience probably isn't going to question what to them seems a natural duty on the part of any self-respecting Christine, and since this is being written from Erik's own perspective, he of course has no idea what can have prompted such a miracle.
"months of his recovery" - again, presumably, unspoken backstory. Though it's not clear whether this refers to the 'old hip injury' or to his return to the human race...
"Their combined income had kept them warm, properly fed and clothed - certainly better than she could have done on her own" - so Christine was inadequate to the task of supporting herself pre-Erik? :-(
(On re-reading, I think this was probably intended to mean that Christine could not have afforded to support *Erik* as well as herself on her single income, but it comes across uncomfortably as Erik congratulating himself that without his generosity she would be starving and in rags...)
"The decorations box had made its first appearance. It held a peculiar set of ribbons, wooden figurines and salt paste shapes painted in red and white. He could tell that the colours were vibrant, once. Now, the assemblage looked somewhat shabby" - the tense in "he could tell" feels wrong to me. I know it can be clumsy to keep putting everything into the pluperfect past, but here I think there's a real ambiguity between what Erik thought on first seeing the decorations (when they were already old) and their current condition (when they are presumably even older). And the use of 'now' to mean (I think) 'over twenty years ago' compounds the effect - especially when we're back in past perfect for "She had baked" at the start of the next sentence.
"the last few weeks of her mourning" - my first thought was 'but her father is already dead'. On rereading I think this must be referring to the unmentioned demise of Madame Valerius (freeing Christine up to go and live with Erik!), but here I think something as large as the death of your last living family member really can't be pushed into "implicit backstory" territory: if you're going to hit the reader with something as big - to the characters - as that, we at least need to be told what Christine is in mourning *for*.
They are both using the term "fragment of the True Cross". Is Christine supposed to be echoing Erik's description earlier (with the implication that he teased her with it explicitly, which seems a bit OOC?) It comes across more as an inadvertent repetition on the author's part.
But I like the echo between the way he had envisioned Christine's reaction to the shawl but had *not* envisioned receiving a pair of cufflinks from her as a gift.
"They occupied the two upper floors of a modest townhouse" - although it later appears they own the entire house, including the ground-floor premises; I'm not sure about the phrasing here, which would normally imply that they are renting rooms while someone or several other someones occupy the other floor(s).
"The way she loved him now startled and enraptured him in equal measure" - again, my reaction was a jolting 'where did that come from?', whereas the fandom will presumably take it for granted that of *course* any Christine married to any Erik will end up adoring him...
I'm afraid that from other fanfics I immediately jumped to the conclusion that Christine's "terrifying, inconceivable, disastrous news" was a pregnancy :-P What else does Erik ever fly into a panic about?
Although planning to drown himself to escape the prospect of producing a deformed baby seemed an odd reaction, so I wondered a little. But then it becomes evident that what he is actually seeking to escape is the spectre of his own behaviour towards Christine on hearing the news.
"He should have apologised, wanted to even" - this reads as "should have wanted to", which isn't what you meant; better to insert "had wanted to, even" in order to clarify, I think.
I'm amused by Erik's offering to euthanise the baby as a solution (preferably even if it isn't visibly deformed). And at his reflexive concern for her vocal chords ;-)
"I am not your mother" - is this supposed to imply that Erik's mother wanted him killed at birth?
(It doesn't really work for me as a heart-rending outcry, because it's a phrase more usually yelled at a husband by someone telling him she isn't going to pick up after him any more, but I can accept this as an anachronistic association on my part...)
"as sharp and precious as a fragment of the True Cross" - at this point the repetition is presumably deliberate, but because the *character* isn't acknowledging that he keeps coming up with the same comparison, it comes over as the author having an unfortunately limited palette of similes for 'really precious thing' :-(
I think you need to say "yet another fragment precious as the True Cross" or something - if you keep using the same analogy and apparently not noticing, it just sounds really awkward.
I was wondering why his idea for telling her about the new house involved going to the shops so urgently (presumably he had the architectural paper in the house already, and the plans at least partially drawn up). It transpires later that he must have rushed out to purchase the china angel, but, as above with the sunset, that doesn't seem to relate to the idea that is subsequently revealed - his actual inspiration is to label one of the rooms as a nursery.
"The drawing room" - I assumed that was one of their (poky, dark) upstairs living rooms. Using it for the shop space downstairs is seriously misleading, given the normal meaning of the term - a bit like referring to a basement with a swimming bath in it as "the bath room"!
"One more fragment of the True Cross for her collection" - OK, that works, in the context of his original use of the phrase to refer to tree ornaments (as he's just given her another one), but as I was saying, the other, more metaphorical insertions of the phrase weren't working for me as I went along :-(
I think I can see now what you were trying to do with it, but I feel it needs to be handled some other way; not least, they need to be mutually conscious of the fact that it keeps cropping up.
And you've introduced a big retrospective hole to the beginning of this story; you've talked about the nineteen-year-old servant who is carrying the Christmas tree, but what became of the child to whom she is about to give birth at the end, presumably also now nineteen years old or so? Why isn't their son helping to carry the tree, or their daughter going with her to help choose it? It's one thing to be deliberately misleading, but another - in a story as short as this - to leave out massively significant facts seemingly by accident; obviously you don't want offspring visibly present to spoil your later surprise, but I feel there needs to be some indication of their existence with hindsight, or the story doesn't join up.
12/23/2019 c1 31Not A Ghost3
Oh my goodness! How sweet! I loved Erik’s overdramatics when Christine told him she was pregnant. Overall enjoyed it a lot! And yay on your first published phic! Woo! Hope to see more from this verse in the future!
Thanks for entering!
31Not A Ghost3Oh my goodness! How sweet! I loved Erik’s overdramatics when Christine told him she was pregnant. Overall enjoyed it a lot! And yay on your first published phic! Woo! Hope to see more from this verse in the future!
Thanks for entering!