Scratchy neck

[igenlode]

I finally (after sleeping for nearly a week in a pair of pyjamas with a three-inch rent across the shoulder that are clearly beyond repair -- another one bites the dust) got round to solving the problem of the scratchy pyjamas by applying a long rhomboid of bias tape over the edge of the collar seam. I'm not sure how well (with hindsight) the hand-tacked stitches will survive going through the washing machine, but for the moment it seems to have done the job.

I washed my very heavy guest sheet (which was originally intended to be an under-sheet/mattress insulator with a normal lightweight cotton one on top of it) and put it out hopefully to dry, but when wet it would have dragged the washing line down by several feet and possibly snapped it altogther, so I balanced about half of its weight on top of the little folding clothes airer placed at a suitable distance from the line so that the whole thing could be stretched out rather than having to be folded over to fit. Of course the airer overbalanced while I was out and left a good dose of mud and black soot on the edge of the still-damp sheet where it ended up on the ground...

I did my best to spot-wash the relevant areas again by hand while keeping the rest of it fairly dry, then put the whole thing back for another spin in the washing machine. It is now hanging indoors over the banisters, as rain is forecast for tomorrow. (It does still *smell* like a sheet that has been hanging outdoors for 24 hours, even if it didn't finish drying :-)

I seem to have acquired a new fan on fanfiction.net :-)
She said she had come across my stories via the good-quality reviews I had written on other things she was reading (thus is virtue rewarded... and thus is it demonstrated that my very low level of interest *from* the fandom is at least in part a consequence of my very low level of engagement *with* the fandom these days) and is now working my way through my back catalogue and leaving some reviews.

She also describes herself as an E/C shipper, and Raoul as one of her least favourite characters, so... apparently my stories haven't put her off?

Comments

[meibruges]

Well, if anything, acquiring a Christine/Erik fan as a reader to your Christine/Raoul stories only proves the quality of your writing. :) I'd take that as a big, fat compliment. It's quite rare that someone writes fanfic so well that they manage to pull readers into engaging with ships and characters and fandoms that they were previously not interested in. :)

[igenlode]

Yes, it's the ultimate accolade ;-)

(Well, the ultimate accolade is "I never liked Raoul before, but...", which has occasionally been known to happen!)

I do have to remember in my replies to be circumspect about my views on the fandom's desperate quest to ship Christine and Erik together by default and at any cost, however :-p
(I think it's the 'by default' that really takes me aback; E/C isn't the crack-ship that it ought to be, given canon, but is assumed to be the rightful state of affairs. One that the author just somehow accidentally managed to get wrong...)

[watervole]

I find a really well written story will pull me in regardless of the pairing.

[igenlode]

I find a really well written story will pull me in regardless of the pairing.

I'm afraid that isn't the case for me; I'm not capable of that level of disinterested detachment, and there are a high proportion of fandom 'ships' that I simply don't want to read, irrespective of writing quality. (It doesn't help, I think, that so much of fandom *has* always been dedicated to the purpose of pairing up canon protagonists like marrying off a family of dolls, or else -- certainly in the "Phantom of the Opera" and "Pirates of the Caribbean" fandoms -- of creating the Ideal Woman to romance a fan-favourite character. It means that achieving the 'ship' tends to take over from the original plot and become the author's prime purpose.)

But I do not want to read, to take some fan-favourite examples, Blake/Avon, Valjean/Javert, Elsa/Anna, Ewen Cameron/Captain Windham or Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy, whoever is writing them. And I'd rather not see the psychostrategist Carnell paired off with anybody either :-p

It's not, oddly enough, that I seem to be against all non-canon pairings; I was quite happy with the crossover concept of Dorothea Callum having a wartime romance with Peter Wimsey's nephew, for instance. And obviously in the cases where it's a crossover and I don't know the other characters at all, I don't have any particular feelings either way. (Though I did feel that, having seen Arsinoe de Blassenville hook up Loghain from "Dragon Age" very successfully with one Female Noble Origin player character, I would in the whole have preferred to see him maintain a combative relationship with her second, quite different, Female Noble Origin character that *didn't* involve pairing them off sexually again -- and that was with a character whose canon universe I've never even experienced!)

But a lot of fanfic pairings feel to me like transgressing the original concept of the work, or at least my original concept of it -- Phantom/Christine being one of those, because the fact that he is desperately and murderously in love with a woman who *doesn't* and never can reciprocate that sentiment, however sorry she may be for him (as in the case of Valentine de Trélan and the Comte de Brencourt) is pretty much central to the character dynamic. So rewriting it in order to force her into his arms doesn't feel like a happy ending -- it feels, I suppose, like a violation :-(