Lady Rosesong is utterly shameless.

[betweensunandmoon]

It started when I read this comment by prying_pandora:

I think someone has obviously read Charming the Prince by Teresa Medeiros. Tsk tsk. Teresa did a good job with this plot. This author does not.

My curiosity was piqued, so I did a little Googling and...wow. Just wow.

Yes, folks, we can now add plagiarism to Tapestry of Deceit's list of offenses! Just in case you needed any more reasons to hate it!

Comments

[igenlode]

Some of these quotes do sound remarkably similar in flavour...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1718210003

To be honest, I don't see that rewriting your favourite 'mediæval romance' using the names of the Phantom characters is any worse than rewriting the plot of the original Phantom novel but setting it in modern America/New Orleans/eighteenth-century London, or writing a version of "The Corpse Bride" where Erik is the corpse husband, or trying to shoehorn Christine and Erik into the "Snow White" plot (now there's a really incompetent fic...)

[betweensunandmoon]

I have no problem with changing the setting or putting your own spin on an idea, but I've read the sporkings of Lady Rosesong's other fics over on Phanwank and she doesn't try to put fresh twists on anything, she just rehashes other stories with PotO characters without stopping to ask herself whether that would actually make sense. And I really, really, really hate how she treats Raoul and Carlotta, especially Carlotta.

trying to shoehorn Christine and Erik into the "Snow White" plot (now there's a really incompetent fic...)

...do I want to know?

[igenlode]

I gather that Raoul actually comes quite well out of this fic, in that he ends up dying heroically in defense of Christine and/or Erik (I didn't quite get which) and earning the mighty Erik's respect :-p

Basically badfic authors need a hate figure, because badfic doesn't understand shades of grey (other than where the more dubious actions of their preferred romantic lead are concerned, which can always be written off by some convoluted moral contortion (see "Love Never Dies")). So the authors select a character to perform this role -- much as children at school select from among their number to choose who will be the designated pariah who is inherently mockable for anything whatever that he does -- and then have the selected character persecute their heroes in order to establish which side the readership is supposed to cheer for. This doesn't necessarily have to have anything to do with the character's canon attributes, any more than the outcast child is actually 'thick' or 'ugly' or 'gay' -- the hate-characteristics can be arbitrarily assigned by consensus. So Raoul is a fop obsessed with cleaning products or Carlotta is a tonedeaf harridan booed by the public... all in the name of creating a villain for the sake of the plot.

...do I want to know?
Let's just say that the "Snow White" fic is the magnum opus of one of the more dedicated reviewers on the POTO section of fanfiction.net. She means well, but she always comes across as being about twelve in her comments, and the story is on the same level.

[betweensunandmoon]

I gather that Raoul actually comes quite well out of this fic, in that he ends up dying heroically in defense of Christine and/or Erik (I didn't quite get which) and earning the mighty Erik's respect :-p

That's good. Heroic death is always better than being made into a villain.

So Raoul is a fop obsessed with cleaning products or Carlotta is a tonedeaf harridan booed by the public... all in the name of creating a villain for the sake of the plot.

I find that very sad for some reason. And I'm rather touched that you took the time to write such a beautiful explanation for me. Thank you.

Let's just say that the "Snow White" fic is the magnum opus of one of the more dedicated reviewers on the POTO section of fanfiction.net. She means well, but she always comes across as being about twelve in her comments, and the story is on the same level.

Now I'm curious. Link, please?

[igenlode]

he ends up dying heroically in defense of Christine and/or Erik (I didn't quite get which)

It gets mentioned in the story's reviews, which I was checking to find out just how many pages of "update plz" it had... (and I have a tendency to stop skimming when Raoul's name catches my eye ;-)
Chapter 43

The seven-thousand-word Christine-as-Snow-White fic with 110 reviews: Mirror, Mirror

[betweensunandmoon]

At first I was going to say, "Thank you for the Christine-as-Snow-white link, milord/milady/whatever you are! I haven't laughed so hard at a badfic in ages!"

Then I read the author's profile. I now need brain bleach. (I'm bisexual. Reading that stuff was pretty upsetting, among other things.)

The really scary thing? She's not twelve. She's twenty-four. She is five years older than I am.

Ponder that.

[igenlode]

If you're looking for badfic, the contest entry Think Of Me is much worse: it's full of PoV tags, italic flashbacks ( followed by "Christine gasped as the flashback ended"... ouch!), teenage Christine, canon contradiction (of course when Christine said "Look, your future bride!" she wasn't talking about marriage...), people screaming "NOOOOOOOO" (only with far more Os than that), pidgin French ("'Je t'aime aussi, Mon Ange,' the brunette sighed contentedly"), Christine and Erik calling each other 'My Angel', characters referred to as "the blonde", "the masked man" etc., completely out-of-character Raoul proudly advertised as "FOP-BASHING!" -- and it doesn't even have anything to do with Christmas, as required by the (very lax) conditions of the contest.

It's almost a parody of classic badfic circa 2004, except that, while the writing is simplistic, it's not actually full of howlers.

The age thing -- well, she's mentally disabled. She even says so in the "Snow White" fic, but it's hard to miss after you've seen her around for a while. So one has to make an infinite number of allowances in that particular direction.