Phantom fanfic pet peeves

[igenlode]

Why do people write 'Messieur' instead of 'Monsieur'?

Why do they have absolutely no idea about how titles work in English, let alone in French? (Hint: they're geographical. You can't be 'Duke Wellesley' -- or even 'Sir Drinkwater'.)

Why does Raoul always live in 'Chagny Manor', when the French don't have manor houses, the house described is never anything like a manor, and manors are also geographical rather than having family names tacked on the front?

Why do they keep inserting inappropriate modern slang into the characters' mouths alongside laborious attempts to prove how 'period-accurate' their social attitudes are? (NB: 19th-century French characters did not think of themselves as 'Victorian' -- why would they care about the English Queen? -- and they certainly didn't walk around monologuing about oppressive 'Victorian' beliefs and clothing; they saw themselves as modern and in general more enlightened than anything that had come before them. Nobody in the 1960s talked about 'Sixties attitudes', for example -- they talked about 'modern attitudes', whether with disapproval or satisfaction.)

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I suspect the answer to most of these is that the authors all copy each other in a game of Chinese whispers, just as they all crib the same bad sex motifs because they don't have any experience in that department either... but what exactly is the point of those unbearably cutesy titles all in lower case? Are they supposed to represent some kind of hashtag communication, or just a postmodern attitude to punctuation?

Comments

[betweensunandmoon]

Why do people write 'Messieur' instead of 'Monsieur'?

Probably because they hear "Why so silent, good messieurs?" and think "Messieur" is the singular. :P

"Sir Drinkwater" made me giggle. :D

Why does Raoul always live in 'Chagny Manor', when the French don't have manor houses, the house described is never anything like a manor, and manors are also geographical rather than having family names tacked on the front?

I didn't know that. Do the French have an equivalent of manors?

I can understand why someone over here would assume that daily life in the 19th century was the same all over Europe as it was in England, but that's still no excuse for not doing any research.

As for the lowercase titles, I guess some people don't realize that what's acceptable on social media isn't necessarily appropriate on fanfiction websites.

[igenlode]

Probably because they hear "Why so silent, good messieurs?" and think "Messieur" is the singular. :P

I wondered about that -- I mean, I don't see where else it can come from, because it's not common in written French at all (normally written "MM." in my experience, just as we rarely write out "Missus" for "Mrs") -- but surely they hear the managers addressing one another as "Monsieur André" and "Monsieur Firmin" at the masquerade? Or, if they only pay attention to the Phantom's pronouncements, surely the Final Lair ("Monsieur, I bid you welcome...") is more iconic?

And I actually critiqued a would-be commercial script that used "Messier" consistently throughout, which so far as I know is something they must just have made up themselves :-p

If you speak French at all, it ought to be obvious that 'mon' is the singular ('my') and 'mes' is the plural form -- hence mesdames et messieurs (and mesdemoiselles). Sieur and demoiselle are mediæval honorifics that the average French schoolchild probably doesn't know about outside that context (La Salle, who discovered Missippi, was actually the Sieur de La Salle; his surname was apparently Cavelier), and thus the polite forms of address were in origin simply 'my overlord' (mon sieur) and 'my liege lady' (ma dame) -- just as the Frenchman still addresses his commanding officer as mon capitaine or mon colonel. But once you know about the constitutent parts, it should be pretty easy for anyone who has even a smattering of the most elementary 'Franglais' (which is most people in the UK; I gather the USA favours Spanish) to remember that you can't use 'mes' to refer to a single individual.


The French do have manors, of course -- I was overstating my case there. (I imagine the French manoir is where we get the word from, thanks to the Norman Conquest.) But the people who write about 'Changy Manor' [sic] are clearly not picturing a fortified country farmhouse with a communal hall and an upper solar (e.g. https://www.prestigeproperty.co.uk/french-manoir-for-sale-182/) but are picturing something more along the lines of Versailles or Woburn Abbey.
And no manor, by its very nature, can ever be situated on a street in Paris....

I believe this particular trope may originate in the US Marvel Universe, where Batman apparently lives in "Wayne Manor" in Gotham City.


As for the lowercase titles, I guess some people don't realize that what's acceptable on social media isn't necessarily appropriate on fanfiction websites.

I'm not the best at titles myself; I tend to resort to the timeworn favourite of a well-known quotation or else a phrase describing the work. But I don't understand how 'titles' like "you, me, a single tear" or "we are so small beside the stars" or "and find your home where the lily lies" are supposed to work in the first place.
Unless they are quotations from some e.e.cummings-style writer, I suppose. Maybe all this stems from the fashion for social media micropoetry?

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Another constant pet peeve: "my parents both passed when I was five" -- no, they didn't, not unless they were travelling in opposite directions :-p They died, or they were taken to Heaven, or they are no more, or they are deceased, or they met their Maker, or she lost them, or they passed on or passed away. On old tombstones they are often said to have "fallen asleep", which always makes me cringe. But "they passed" is an American neologism that I've heard only in the past twenty years or so, and it jars as badly as "train station".

[cosette_giry]

This is a bit of an old post but I can bring a few comments here (as a French person lol).

So, a manor is basically the "intermediary" thing between a farm and a castle (château), and it's pretty much only used in Brittany and Normandy - which makes sense, with the Norman conquest and everything. Depending on the region, you'll have terms like gentilhommière (as in "gentilhomme", or gentleman), château, or bastide being used much more often.

To be fair, the distinction between a manoir or a château is more or less clear more often than not, but given that what should be the ancestral town/fiefdom of the Chagny family is in Burgundy, that means it would be a château rather than a manor - and there is actually a Château de Chagny there.

(Funnily enough, during the 18th century, it seems like the actual Chagnys were barons and not comtes, and that their family name was not Chagny, but Clermont-Montaison, Chagny being just the title. They also emigrated in 1792 and never came back to their lands, so... if you want to give Raoul and Philippe some family backstory, you could say their grandfather became a comte during the Restoration period under Louis XVIII.)

[betweensunandmoon]

But once you know about the constitutent parts, it should be pretty easy for anyone who has even a smattering of the most elementary 'Franglais' (which is most people in the UK; I gather the USA favours Spanish) to remember that you can't use 'mes' to refer to a single individual.

That's correct, probably because so many native Spanish-speakers live here. I'm not sure how many schools teach French. I had the choice of either French or Spanish in school, but I didn't go to a typical school.

I believe this particular trope may originate in the US Marvel Universe, where Batman apparently lives in "Wayne Manor" in Gotham City.

Batman is a DC character, not a Marvel character, and that is virtually all I know about Batman. :P

But I don't understand how 'titles' like "you, me, a single tear" or "we are so small beside the stars" or "and find your home where the lily lies" are supposed to work in the first place.

Those sound like song lyrics to me. Of course, song lyrics don't make sense as titles unless your readers know the songs.

But "they passed" is an American neologism that I've heard only in the past twenty years or so, and it jars as badly as "train station".

I've never heard "they passed," just "they passed away." What do you call train stations over there?

[igenlode]

probably because so many native Spanish-speakers live here. I'm not sure how many schools teach French.

Makes sense - your immediate neighbours speak Spanish, just as ours speak French...

But I don't understand how 'titles' like "you, me, a single tear" or "we are so small beside the stars" or "and find your home where the lily lies" are supposed to work in the first place.

Those sound like song lyrics to me. Of course, song lyrics don't make sense as titles unless your readers know the songs.

That's an interesting suggestion - I wonder if they are lyrics that I don't recognise?
I came across a classic collection of such lower-case titles being used on blog posts on Dreamwidth the other day, but I doubt I can locate it -- it was a set of links I didn't click on, appearing on the second or third reading page of a friend of a friend that I've never seen before and will probably never see again.
(Wasted a lot of time going back through my browser history and re-clicking on links that looked vaguely plausible, while getting frustrated by bloggers who don't use cut tags and hence have only a handful of posts per page... no, can't find it. Although a lot of people do seem to use either (a) random phrases as blog titles but without the lower-case (e.g. "Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand" or "And the rooks and the crows and the seagulls will come flocking after me", which may possibly have been related to the article content if you recognised the context of the original line, if such it was) or else use lower-case blog titles, such as "why I am not human" or "the unbearable badness of programmers" -- I'm sure those were not the specific ones I was looking at, though.)

I've never heard "they passed," just "they passed away."

Even more interesting; maybe it's a regional thing. I had the impression that it had become completely ubiquitous in fanfic of late, and was even creeping into 'professional' printed material such as newspapers and magazines.
From a very rough search on AO3:
happiness, maybe, for the first time since he can remember, since his father passed
matt and adore used to be best friends, that was before adore's father passed





(Also -- no, Raoul, you cannot accuse Christine of 'acting out' when she panics about ghosts, any more than you can accuse her of not 'moving on' when she grieves for a lost love. Neither of those phrases or concepts are period-appropriate...)

What do you call train stations over there?

They've always been called 'railway stations' -- until recently.

[igenlode]

I came across a classic collection of such lower-case titles being used on blog posts on Dreamwidth the other day, but I doubt I can locate it -- it was a set of links I didn't click on, appearing on the second or third reading page of a friend of a friend that I've never seen before and will probably never see again.

Found it again (coincidentally, as a result of pursuing the same reading-page process)
https://archiveofourown.org/users/topaz/pseuds/topaz

[watervole]

With you totally on historical fashion. Our heroine would have been out shopping for a new corset, wanting a really modish one, and explaining how useful it was in supporting the back muscles, etc.

[igenlode]

To be honest I think she probably simply wouldn't be thinking about it -- unless she was leaning over a railing and the edge of the boning was digging into her uncomfortably, or something. We don't go round thinking about how constructive our shoes are compared to bare feet, although someone who has never worn shoes might well find his thinking totally dominated by the unaccustomed sensation. I can still remember how long it took me to get used to wearing short socks (where the elastic sits halfway up the swell of the calf) as versus long ones, where the cuff sits snugly in the narrower section just below the knee; I had the constant feeling that there was nothing keeping my socks up, whereas long socks simply can't fall down unless the ribbing gets very stretched indeed.


For an opera singer like Christine, the support of something to push against in front might be something of which she was conscious -- modern singers comment on the advantage of the bodices in 'period' costumes in that respect, and I've found that a firm belt has a similar effect; you can actively brace the diaphragm (or at least the stomach muscles) against it, as it were. On the other hand, male singers managed perfectly well without any such assistance (well, most of them!), so it's obviously not that essential.

But most of the time I think the heroine wouldn't be explaining anything, because a presumed audience of contemporaries would already know. It's the old problem of the info-dump in historical fiction: how do you tell the reader things that the narrator takes for granted?
I've just been reading Mary Renault's "Fire From Heaven", and it's not until several scenes in when some foreigners (Persian envoys) arrive, and the protagonist observes their alien legs encased in 'tubes' of cloth, that it dawns upon the reader that all the native Greek characters have presumably been bare-legged all along (and bare-arsed under their tunics no doubt!)

[erimia]

"Victorian France" gives me war flashbacks of so many fics and discussions. I always wonder if this is supposed to take place in some alternate history universe where the British Empire managed to turn France into its colony. :D

The lowercase titles indeed seem to be mostly taken from song lyrics. I don't know why they are lowercase, but they usually give me strange anxiety - they look so oddly detached. The use of lowercase reminds me of avant-garde poetry, but I have no idea how such influence would make it into fanfiction and why others didn't, if so.

[igenlode]

You get lowercase author names, as well, which really does feel like a throwback to the avant-garde (who are now terribly dated, of course :-p)

Weirdly, this one credits her main title to a line of poetry, but it's the only part that actually is capitalised!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/29694894/navigate

Speaking as someone who disappeared down the rabbit-hole of French mourning customs not so very long ago, I did wonder if 'how much I researched into 19th century mourning conventions and dress' refers, yet again, to 'Victorian' customs ;-p
(What do Americans call that era at home, I wonder? Or do they still date their liberated history by the reign of the Queen-Empress?)

[betweensunandmoon]

According to Wikipedia, if you're referring to the latter half of the 19th century, we have the Civil War Era (1850-1865), the Reconstruction Era (1865-1877), the Gilded Age (1877-1895), and the Progressive Era (1896-1916).

I've heard "19th century" or "Victorian" more often than any of those, though. :P

[igenlode]

The "Gilded Age" would be the "Belle Époque" of Raoul and Christine's adulthood ;-)
(Although in France it goes on up to the Great War... and of course nobody would have called it that at the time. Eras only get seen in retrospect.)

[cosette_giry]

I'll be honest - the year where POTO takes place (1881) doesn't take place in a time that's particularly... interesting from a historical standpoint, at least for me? Not that nothing is happening - public elementary schools become free and secular (schools belonging to the clergy become private) and freedom of press becomes protected by law, but it's not really stuff that will directly affect POTO nor is it really relevant to include it in fanfic. There's the Great Exposition of 1889, Eiffel Tower and all, but that's obviously much later, and the Belle Époque starts in earnest in 1896. I guess it's kind of convenient for the story to take place in 1881 like the musical does, since nothing happens that would directly affect the plot... unlike the movie happening in 1870 :P

I also admit I know very little about how French nobility fared after the fall of the Second Empire - I managed to find this article (in French) that goes into detail about it and how the bourgeoisie got mixed up with the nobility class: https://www.cairn.info/revue-histoire-economie-et-societe-2011-1-page-85.htm

Or if I ever write a fic with exhaustive historical research about Christine and Raoul post-POTO... I might just take the easy path and have them emigrate to England, since I know A LOT more about Gilded Age American heiresses marrying English Lords :P

[zellephantom]

Well, speaking as someone who only just now realized that the plural was spelled messieurs and not monsieurs, I have a few guesses...

My first speculation would be that it might be an overcorrection from the American tendency to (if you're unfamiliar with French) look at the word monsieur and think it's pronounced "mon-sewer" whereas messieur looks, to someone who only speaks English, much closer to how monsieur sounds when spoken.

I think it just chalks up to unfamiliarity and a lack of research- messieurs and monsieur are both used in Phantom in different contexts, and someone listening could very well assume that they're synonyms and not realize that one is exclusively plural and the other is singular.

The same could be said for manor- just assuming that it means a big house where a noble family lives, named after their last name without doing any further research.

Oh, I think the lowercase titles thing is both a symptom of the 'talking in tags' phenomenon on tumblr and copied from the phenomenon of song lyrics/lines from poems being used in all lowercase as fanfic titles. As a result of this, any vaguely poetic sequence of words 'rendered in all lowercase (like this)' is supposed to be seen as ~ artistic ~, more dramatic, and just a touch pretentious. It's an aesthetic choice made because it supposedly looks cooler, for some reason.

Your examples like "we are so small beside the stars" fit the trend for titles so well that I had to look up whether they were real fic titles or not! ("and find your home where the lily lies" sounds a lot like a title for a fanfiction centered on Severus Snape.)

[igenlode]

messieur looks, to someone who only speaks English, much closer to how monsieur sounds when spoken

That makes a lot of sense!

Your examples like "we are so small beside the stars" fit the trend for titles so well that I had to look up whether they were real fic titles or not!

I'm flattered! I didn't want to quote any real ones in case I inadvertently ended up insulting someone (well, more than I was doing already by complaining about the titles...), so I tried to come up with a few of my own. I have to admit I didn't actually check to see that something I'd made up *wasn't* an existing title -- but the chances are against it, right? ;-D

That particular style of 'free verse' is all too easy to parody, though. Which is one reason why I have very limited respect for free verse; I can't literally write it standing on my head, but that's only because I've never been able to stand on my head...

so the summer began to run out
beneath the sloping shoulders of the moon
and the breath of the city's tears
wept under my window at night
like the shudders of love
in our empty sheets

(That was a 'poem' that I purely and simply made up as I went along, in about forty seconds flat; it really is that meaningless and trivial an exercise.)