Phantom Thoughts pt. 39- The Grand Return

[zellephantom]

It's been a while, hasn't it? Hopefully, I'll be able to actually finish commenting on this book someday... Let's see, I believe we were last at Apollo's Lyre...

{"No, no, he is working, I tell you, at his Don Juan Triumphant and not thinking of us."

"You're so sure of that you keep on looking behind you!"}

Christine's hypervigilance here is honestly relatable. Is it reaching too much to headcanon her with PTSD? (Iiii kind of don't care and will probably just do it anyway.) And, yet again, Raoul is taking the potential danger of the Phantom much less seriously, as opposed to Christine, who sometimes overestimates the threat he presents, but you can't really blame her for that (different canon, but reminds me of the ALW musical's "And if he has to kill a thousand men / The Phantom of the Opera will kill / and kill again!").

{"Hadn't we better meet outside the Opera?"

"Never, till we go away for good! It would bring us bad luck, if I did not keep my word. I promised him to see you only here."}

I don't think it's 'bad luck' as in tripping while walking down the sidewalk- it sounds more like 'deliberate misfortune that will be brought down upon you' as in chandeliers falling, scorpions and grasshoppers, et cetera.

{"It's a good thing for me that he allowed you even that. Do you know," said Raoul bitterly, "that it was very plucky of you to let us play at being engaged?"

"Why, my dear, he knows all about it! He said, 'I trust you, Christine. M. de Chagny is in love with you and is going abroad. Before he goes, I want him to be as happy as I am.' Are people so unhappy when they love?"}

'I want him to be as happy as I am'- *sarcasm* And you're very well known for being happy, aren't you, Erik? So happy that just getting kissed on the forehead is enough for you to taste all the happiness the world can offer and then die. (Spoilers for a book over a hundred years old, I guess?) Poor, unhappy Erik, indeed.

But it's at least good that he trusts her that much and isn't overcome with murder-y jealousy towards Raoul. (Yet.) It seems that being in unrequited love with Christine has made both these men very unhappy- but how does this attention make Christine feel? It doesn't seem like her feelings are really the focus or really matter as much when there's men expounding on how their love for her makes them feel all the unhappy, tumultuous feels.

{"No. He gave me his word not to be behind the walls of my dressing-room again and I believe Erik's word. This room and my bedroom on the lake are for me, exclusively, and not to be approached by him."}

They trust each other! Even after all of this, they trust each other! (Not enough to go outside the Opera House, but still.)

{"It is dangerous, dear, for the glass might carry me off again; and, instead of running away, I should be obliged to go to the end of the secret passage to the lake and there call Erik."}

'The glass might carry me off again' is such a poetic turn of phrase, though it raises many questions about the logistics of the process, especially when Erik isn't there to facilitate her journey through the underworld.

{"Erik will hear me wherever I call him. He told me so. He is a very curious genius. You must not think, Raoul, that he is simply a man who amuses himself by living underground. He does things that no other man could do; he knows things which nobody in the world knows."

"Take care, Christine, you are making a ghost of him again!"

"No, he is not a ghost; he is a man of Heaven and earth, that is all."}

I mean, he does kind of amuse himself by living underground and messing with the managers? But, yeah, he doesn't just live underground for the fun of it. 

I just really love this whole exchange?? Christine calling Raoul dear is very endearing, and then you've got things like E & C trusting each other's word which ignites a tiny spark in my shipper heart, plus 'Erik will hear me wherever I call him' (I keep wanting to type 'whenever', b/c that just makes more sense in my head.). I don't know what to make of the 'man of Heaven and earth' thing- maybe my brain is just tired from studying for finals, but I've just never understood the implications of what it means, other than the obvious 'he's not a ghost but can do incredible things'.

{"A man of Heaven and earth ... that is all! ... A nice way to speak of him! ... And are you still resolved to run away from him?"

"Yes, to-morrow."

"To-morrow, you will have no resolve left!"

"Then, Raoul, you must run away with me in spite of myself; is that understood?"}

Christine thinks kidnapping is romantic #confirmed (jk I'm kidding)

Also, wow, Leroux and/or de Mattos, you think there's enough ellipses in that dialogue??

{Christine opened a box, took out an enormous key and showed it to Raoul.

"What's that?" he asked.

"The key of the gate to the underground passage in the Rue Scribe."}

This gets so much funnier if you imagine the key as one of those ridiculously huge ceremonial 'key to the city' things XD

{"Oh heavens!" she cried. "Erik! Erik! Have pity on me!"

"Hold your tongue!" said Raoul. "You told me he could hear you!"

But the singer's attitude became more and more inexplicable.}

I think it's less 'inexplicable' and more 'probably on the verge of having a panic attack'.

{"The ring ... the gold ring he gave me."

"Oh, so Erik gave you that ring!"}

Is this really the time for that, Raoul?? Put aside your jealousy for one minute and help Christine out.

{He put out his lamp and felt a need to insult Erik in the dark. Thrice over, he shouted:

"Humbug! ... Humbug! ... Humbug!"}

Okay, I find this really adorable for some reason?? Like Raoul trying to be all tough and insult his rival but the best thing he can come up with is 'humbug', and probably not even an Ebenezer Scrooge caliber humbug at that??

Comments

[igenlode]

Oddly enough, as I may have mentioned, it was "Love Never Dies" that got me a lot more interested in Raoul as a character, whereas previously I just took him for granted ('oh, he's the one Christine's in love with'). Partly it was that he was *so obviously* being bashed for the sequel-- in that he was being presented as clearly beyond the pale for behaving in what seemed a pretty understandable manner -- and partly that he was the only one to whom the script seemed to be giving an actual character arc (and then it just did a 180 and threw it all away, at which point my jaw dropped with a sensation of 'hang on, this is not where the story was going'). And partly, I suspect in retrospect, because the character's predicament appealed to the same things in me that the Phantom's 'outcast' status did for a lot of people in POTO -- by unintentionally switching the roles of Raoul and Phantom, ALW ended up writing a plot that was Raoul's tragedy, as POTO was the Phantom's, and I could identify with that.

So I ended up with the same crusading feeling on behalf of Raoul that drove a lot of people to write fanfic demonstrating how badly treated the Phantom had been and how horribly he suffered from self-loathing, etc. etc. Only unlike the POTO writers, I didn't feel able simply to ignore the awkward bits of canon that I didn't like ;-p

(In fact I managed to come up with at least four different continuity-compliant explanations, in the background to various plots, as to why Raoul has apparently had a personality transplant, which makes it even less impressive that ALW seemingly couldn't be bothered to create even *one*!)

I have frequently seen the take that his whole 'There is no Phantom of the Opera / What you heard was a dream and nothing more' thing was an attempt as gaslighting

The funny thing being that Raoul, in the musical, *knows very well* that there is someone running around calling himself 'The Phantom of the Opera' -- he has even received a signed letter from him. He heard him with his own ears only a few minutes earlier, as did everyone in the audience.
So presumably, like Leroux-Raoul, what he is trying to convince Christine of is not that the Phantom does not exist, but that *he is not a ghost*; he does not hold the supernatural powers with which her fear is trying to endow him, and above all she cannot allow him to hold dominion over her mind.

(I wrote a story featuring ALW-Raoul's perspective on that scene, as well... he did not believe in ghosts. In particular, not ghosts that laid claim to such very tangible possessions as an opera box or twenty thousand francs in cash...)

I guess it's just one of those things where people like their particular idea of canon that they have in their head better than the actual canon, especially if their canon easily fits with popular fandom interpretations and headcanons.

I don't know if it's the case for all fandoms, but I get the impression that the POTO fandom has always existed more within its own 'fanon' world than the original material -- that there is a sort of shared meta-ideal constructed of everyone's favourite 'wouldn't it be nice if' fantasies about the characters, where Christine isn't afraid of the Phantom and the Phantom is just a big misunderstood softie and Raoul is a distant intrusion into their unquestioned domestic bliss, to the degree that stories can be (and traditionally mainly were) unhesitatingly set in this AU without any need for explanation.
I still remember the jolt of disbelief with which I encountered this cosy nook, as an adult who'd heard the hit songs from the show but never grown up with 'the fandom' -- which had gradually, by a process of Chinese Whispers, evolved a long way distant from the source material which was at that time still fresh to me.

I personally can't stand Love Never Dies, and no amount of rewrites or fanfic could change that.
All the Rules Rearranged has always seemed quite popular (*cough, cough* ;-)

Wait- you wrote Don Juan Rehearsed? I'd read it a long time ago when searching for some good Christine and Piangi friendship fic before we'd ever interacted! I just re-read it and wow, it's so well-written with an excellent mix of humor and character and heartwarming moments with a tinge of foreboding at the end! I didn't notice until you mentioned it that you'd written another fic with Piangi, and reading it was such a fun treat! (Also, I love depictions of Piangi and Carlotta where the admiration and praise isn't just Piangi's one-sided adoration of Carlotta.)

https://youtu.be/M5Wu8OgKEI0?t=75

C'est moi! C'est moi, I'm forced to admit.
'Tis I, I humbly reply.
That mortal who
These marvels can do,
C'est moi, c'est moi, 'tis I.

<big grin>

*Is* there any Christine and Piangi friendship fic? It's certainly not a subgenre I'm aware of -- there's very little featuring Piangi at all. (I actually submitted a character request to the site admins asking for him to be added to the fanfiction.net character list so that I could tag him for that story, but they never did, and I assumed it was because he doesn't actually appear in the book -- despite the fact that the 'Book' fandom contains subdivisions of 'Musical' and AU, and is in fact mainly musical and/or movie-based. So I ended up posting the story under the Movie heading, where it doesn't actually belong in terms of continuity, simply so that I could tag poor Piangi.)

I have to admit that my own characterisation was heavily influenced by stefanie_bean's version of Piangi and Carlotta, which fleshes both characters out a lot (I did have fun writing all the fat-references from the point of view of someone who takes his own figure for granted ;-p)

And -- as with Comte Philippe, after writing a scene from his perspective, and Meg Giry after I'd tried to write a chapter of LND from hers -- once I'd had the experience of looking at the story from the view of what *he* knew and believed, as opposed to what the audience was supposed to know and encouraged to believe, I found myself a lot more interested in and sympathetic for the character, and ended up writing the second story where he gets to save the day :-D

(In that story, he actually *is* streetwise enough to know what the appropriate response is if someone grabs you from behind and tries to garotte you -- rather than struggling to get free, allow yourself to fall backwards heavily, releasing the pressure on your throat and unbalancing your assailant. The Phantom, expecting easy prey, was completely unprepared and very much disgruntled, so he doesn't credit the idea that Piangi just might have won that encounter on his own merits...)

[zellephantom]

That is unusual- though everyone is mischaracterized to some extent in LND, Raoul certainly gets the short end of the stick (worse than even poor Meg! and Christine, who faces much retconning and serves as a beautiful prize to be fought over until she dies), but I can see how it would lead to such a realization! Personally, I never got anything out of my one watch of LND other than a feeling that the costumes were beautiful but wasted on such a production, a similar feeling towards Anna O'Byrne, who was clearly doing the best she could with the material she had, and that, while I hated the premise of Devil Take the Hindmost, the tune and the idea of a Raoul-Phantom confrontation song was neat.

Really, the only thing I unequivocally liked about LND was Raoul's line "He's not Mephistopheles!" because it referenced Faust and, at that point, I would have rather been watching Magical Mister Mistofelees from Cats than Love Never Dies XD

FOUR? I'm amazed at your ability to attempt to make sense out of such a mess.

Yep, it's a shallow take based on a misunderstanding- "This Phantom is a fable." doesn't mean that Raoul thinks there isn't a guy running around dropping chandeliers and sending threatening yet witty letters, but rather that said guy isn't some supernatural force.

That does seem to be a somewhat accurate summation of the phandom, and some other fandoms I've been in, too (Miraculous Ladybug, some factions of the Harry Potter fandom that have made Epilogue, What Epilogue? such a popular tag). Erik's level of misunderstood softieness tends to vary, and I have noticed a recent trend toward his actions being excused less and less, and there often being AUs where he either isn't a murderer or only murdered terrible people.

I admit, I do enjoy some of these works where it's a softer world overall and E/C ends up together without it being abusive or Erik doing some of the terrible things he did in canon, and where Raoul doesn't really figure much into the story (either he's the token skeptic regarding their relationship, he's a distant childhood friend, or in Modern AUs, which I do have a particular weakness for, they went out on a few dates or were in a relationship but it didn't work out- I wish he'd be included more even if he isn't a romantic interest, but sadly that isn't often the case in fics), but I prefer when they're thoughtful and deal with Christine as a character with her own wants and desires instead of as a vessel for wish fulfillment who instantly falls in love with Erik, and recognize that a relationship with Erik is not easy, and that he has a lot of psychological issues he needs to work out and that being with Christine doesn't 'fix' him, but inspires him to be a better person, and their relationship has natural ups and downs and challenges. (And if that means I have to deal with the annoyingly common fixture of best friend and resident shipper Meg, then so be it. I like Meg, but her almost universally accepted fanon depiction bugs me.)

I don't think that these stories are better than canon, or that the book or the musical would have been better if E/C was endgame- I'm not interested in them getting together post-canon, and I think she was right to leave with Raoul. But it's interesting to explore stories that follow some of the same plot beats as canon but then diverge drastically because the setting is different (whether due to historical looseness or a modern AU), Erik is less violent, their relationship is not abusive, Christine is actually in love with him, et cetera.

If you're really invested in a certain fandom, I think it's well worth putting in the intellectual effort to explore and unpack the source material and gain a deeper understanding of it, and to construct three-dimensional characters and thoughtful plots in your works, but I also think it's valid and shouldn't be looked down upon to be a 'fandom magpie' and take all the shiny bits you like and find intriguing while ignoring or downplaying the parts you don't. (In a sort of "I recognize that [canon] has made a decision, but given that it's a stupid decision, I've elected to ignore it." way, though Phantom is not one of the fandoms I approach that way, because canon is actually decently written, unlike Miraculous Ladybug and some of the later seasons of MLP.) Fandom is, ultimately, something we all do for fun, and it can be *so frustrating* to see people engage with canon on a shallow level or misinterpret it, but I just have to accept that not everyone is super invested or interested in examining things intellectually and try not to be gatekeeper-y about it, and besides, there are just some times when you want to enjoy fluffy fics in peace without writing an essay to justify it.

I understand that it seems bizarre to outsiders, but it helps to know that pretty much all (reasonable) E/C shippers are well aware of the unhealthiness of the relationship in canon, but still see seeds of potential in their interactions and dynamic and want to explore what might have happened if things had gone differently. It can be exhausting to ship something considered to be problematic and have people tell you you're a bad person for shipping something or that you're automatically promoting abusive relationships because you ship X (both of which have happened to me before), and sometimes you just want to write your fics and headcanons in peace without having to constantly provide a disclaimer regarding the circumstances in which you envision said relationship taking place. (Sorry if I got a bit ranty and please know that I wasn't directing my frustration at you- I'm just someone who is tired and too vividly remembers the height of the discourse against Reylo in which Reylo shippers were accused of "glorifying abuse", among other things, just for shipping Reylo.)

Oh, a challenge! I still don't think I will ever like the entire inherent premise of LND, but it is satisfying to know that a rewrite exists where the climax makes sense, everybody lives, and they all actually TALK to each other and Christine finds out about the bet, and where it is actually acknowledged that CHRISTINE and her father both had musical talent that could have easily passed on to Gustave. And, as usual, your prose is impeccable and a joy to read, with notable lines like "Mercy begrudged, and hence genuine. It was the easy gifts that were to be feared.", "Did they think — Gustave and Christine — in their tight little world of let's-pretend-Papa's-himself-again, that he didn't know what his folly had done to their lives, or see how strained his wife's smile had become as she promised all three of them that things would be different tomorrow... and tomorrow, and tomorrow?", and "You're bruised and overlooked, but even if he can't see it you've got talent of your own — bright, funny, engaging... you make the world a happier place for hundreds of people, and God knows that's more than most of us can say.".

I'm not sure if there really is much of any Piangi and Christine fic, hence why I was looking for it XD (If I found any others worth noting, I don't remember- this was around 2017-2018, and my memory of day to day events is spotty enough, so trying to recall specific fanfictions I read several years ago...)

Ah, so there is a trick to escaping the Punjab lasso other than 'keep your hand at the level of your eyes'!

[igenlode]

Well, it's certainly not normal to come out of LND as a fan of Raoul :-D

I didn't actually *watch* it at that point, which may have influenced my reactions. As with "Phantom", I first made its acquaintance via a 'highlights' compilation; in my case it was actually a newspaper cover disc freebie which gave no information beyond the track names, meaning that I had no idea even which characters were singing which number where it wasn't obvious from the lyrics. (The only case where I actually got it wrong was "Once Upon Another Time", which I interpreted as a Raoul/Christine duet about the high hopes with which they'd entered their marriage and regret for their current estrangement; similarly, I was under the impression for years that Raoul's POTO outcry of "Forgive me -- I did it all for you" was an interjection by the Phantom at that point, since the vocal qualities of the two performers are actually very similar, and the Phantom is the one who needs to apologise!)

I didn't actually know much about "Love Never Dies" at that stage, bar a general impression that it was the 'Phantom' sequel that had flopped, to widespread disappointment (in fact, just about everything ALW wrote after 'Phantom' would flop to one degree or another, though we didn't know that then). I had always been vaguely curious about those 'lost' Lloyd Webber musicals and had never heard any of the songs from that one at all, so I purloined the CD from the waste-bin and out it on. The very first track was the 'Coney Island Waltz' -- in the original recording a beautiful, lushly-orchestrated and sinister melody, which was really not improved by the subsequent decision to add lyrics -- and it wasn't just an interesting curiosity. It was an absolute classic: recognisably Lloyd Webber at the top of his powers, and yet entirely distinct from anything he'd done before.

And just about every other track that followed -- I no longer have that CD and don't have a record of which half-dozen were included -- was equally good in terms of melody. The plot, so far as I could gather it from the lyrics, was something of a shock: the Phantom is living in a turn-of-the-century freak-show, Raoul is angry and unhappy and neglecting his wife, and Christine has apparently conceived the Phantom's child, though she still steadfastly rejects him. But then I did enough exploration on the Internet to discover that the show was centred around the ret-con premise that Christine has been secretly in love with the Phantom all along, and my subconscious (which at that stage held no particular banner for Raoul) recoiled, somewhat to my confusion. Why am I not at once on the side of the tortured dark character who hates the world that has always hated him?


My curiosity was, however, ultimately sufficiently piqued for me to obtain a cheap copy of the full original-cast recording (which were being sold off all over the place at the time; I got a sealed CD for 99p plus P&P), and the rest was history. There was a considerable period during which I knew the plot and score of "Love Never Dies" in far more detail than the original "Phantom of the Opera", since I only had a vague general-knowledge 'greatest hits' acquaintance with that. For a long time I'd certainly written more LND fan-fiction.

I did eventually acquire a copy of the Sarah Brightman POTO recording -- which is not complete, but which includes a full libretto listing the sections omitted for length -- but not until long after I'd acquired a non-de-Mattos translation of the original novel, and it was years after that before I witnessed the blocking in my one live performance of the musical. And I didn't *see* the filmed (and heavily revised) stage production of LND until a long time after someone sent me MP3s of the alternative soundtrack.

This didn't strike me as odd, because the vast majority of the musicals/operettas that I 'know', I know only from the blurb on the back of the record, the sections of plot that are covered by the actual lyrics and the significant dialogue cues in the score leading into them. I've never seen productions of them and intuit the plots mainly from the musical numbers -- fortunately finales tend to have music!

FOUR? I'm amazed at your ability to attempt to make sense out of such a mess.

Let's see, there was a Raoul who started gambling as a way of chasing the same 'high' that Christine got from performing (I could never... find the same thrill, no matter what the stakes. No matter how high the loss... It doesn’t matter, you know, after a while: win or lose. You put your life on the line, double, redouble — anything to feel alive again, to feel that rush. And when you wake... to see what you have become... you plunge deeper each night to forget). There was the very young Raoul who was rooked by hardened gamesters (we didn’t speak of the source of those debts; the select clubs where the stakes were too high, and the older men whose profession it was to prey on the pride of youths desperate to prove their manhood and too ashamed to admit they’d been drawn in beyond their means. He’d been a pigeon ripe for the plucking. One more throw, one more spin of the wheel, Vicomte, and the luck will change... Only it hadn’t. He’d been played for a fool; but some things were too hard to admit, even when the demands started coming nearer and nearer home) and the one who was simply reckless (Just as he’d plunged at Monte Carlo, when Spezzioni sat there cool and mocking behind the bank, and asked — insinuated — if the Vicomte was sure, quite sure. He’d never been more sure of anything in that moment than the need to prove the man wrong, wife and home and sanity all cast aside).

The Raoul who was alienated by jealousy of a young wife's devotion to her baby (perhaps if he had been able to show his own heart to Christine in front of the boy, Gustave’s birth need not have come between them as it had. And perhaps they could have found more comfort in each other in the bad times) and the Raoul who was told, in good Victorian fashion, that he must withdraw from his wife's bed in order not to risk her life by further pregnancies... but alienated her by feeling unable to mention *why*. The Raoul who got himself bankrupted by careless promises to back a friend whose investments went ruinously wrong, and tried to recoup continuing losses by gambling (Since then nothing he touched had gone right.[ ...] Finally he’d gone South to gamble at high odds; won back enough to make a difference and staked his winnings on the table at double or quits. He’d lost the stake, lost his head, and plunged them deeper into debt than they’d ever been before). The Raoul who ends up with severe self-esteem issues as a result of having to be rescued from his own rescue attempt (and expresses them in English with a strong French accent :-p I began to take risks, to put my life to the hazard, and to play at cards for stakes we could not afford. At least in that world I could hope to win and be strong, to bring home the victory and throw it, as you say, in the face of my unhappy wife. And when my losses grew too great... there at last was something she could not brush away with a forgiving smile).

And the Raoul who goes to Monte Carlo with friends and finds it initially a source of reconciliation with the exclusive Christine-and-Gustave unit at home (Christine back in Paris seemed somehow closer to him than Christine near at hand but holding him remote; he forgot his unhappiness, remembered only that he loved her, and sent home a string of cheerful tongue-in-cheek letters poking fun at the sights of the town[...]On the final evening, amid shared hilarity, Raoul staked his pocket-watch against the pearl necklet of Rodolphe’s pretty partner at the tables, won, and carried off the trinket in his pocket to present to Christine on their return home. But it was the shy, sunburnt smile that went with it that sent Christine headlong into his arms).

Quite a lot of varied attempts at characterisation :-p
ALW, meanwhile, didn't even bother to try -- he just went for the 'oh, Raoul must be an abusive drunken gambler' trope rife among fangirls circa 2004 when they needed a reason to have the Phantom 'rescue' Christine from her inconvenient marital decisions :-(

Erik's level of misunderstood softieness tends to vary, and I have noticed a recent trend toward his actions being excused less and less, and there often being AUs where he either isn't a murderer or only murdered terrible people.

I have to say I find the AUs where everyone Erik kills gets demonized to be particularly hard to take :-(
It's bad enough when they invent random rapist 'thugs' so they can have him save the day by killing people, but when he is depicted as killing off Philippe, or Buquet, or Raoul, or the OC female protagonist's rival romantic interest, and the writer blithely chooses to paint them as being really, really wicked characters in order to make the Phantom's actions into heroic glory, then that not only annoys me, it feels really childish. You don't paint your favourite character in more favourable colours by painting everyone else blacker than black.

There have always been AUs where poor harmless misunderstood canon Erik never hurt a fly -- I'm not sure that goes with his actions being excused less and less...

But yes, I think there is a recent trend towards complete AUs where he is just a teacher or a lonely pianist or revolutionary or photographer and doesn't have a criminal past at all.

Modern AUs where Raoul is in the background (or even the foreground) as someone Christine casually dumped or who conveniently doesn't love her are a particular bugbear of mine, I'm afraid -- the only level on which E/C works for me is the one where a Raoul-figure never existed at all. (Although with the modern fashion of kink, I've seen a few threesomes where an R/C couple adopt poor sad Erik, which I can sort of swallow...)

I like Meg, but her almost universally accepted fanon depiction bugs me.)

The trouble with Meg is that, like Philippe, she tends to get regarded as a 'spare' piece of canon who can be repurposed for whatever character the author needs to slap her name onto. (In fact, ALW basically did pretty much the same in creating his 'Meg Giry' in the first place -- he took an incredibly minor character from Leroux and gave her name to an unrelated 'best friend' who has about as much plot significance as Piangi, and seems to exist for much the same function; filling in the ensemble numbers :-()

Phantom is not one of the fandoms I approach that way, because canon is actually decently written, unlike Miraculous Ladybug and some of the later seasons of MLP

I think that's probably more a question of the canon's being a single-author self-contained story/creation (whether Lloyd Webber or Leroux), rather than an ongoing series; internal consistency may not have been Leroux's strongest point, but at least the whole thing was written over a fairly short period. In a multi-year series like "Blake's 7" you get characters being written out because actors get job offers elsewhere, guest scripts from writers who want to push their own line (perhaps the most bizarre is the one where the ruthless (and female) Supreme Commander suddenly discovers that all she wants is a Real Man to slap her around), and in one case an actress who spent several episodes delivering lines originally written for a different regular character...

it can be *so frustrating* to see people engage with canon on a shallow level or misinterpret it, but I just have to accept that not everyone is super invested or interested in examining things intellectually and try not to be gatekeeper-y about it, and besides, there are just some times when you want to enjoy fluffy fics in peace without writing an essay to justify it.

For my part I really can't avoid being intellectual about things. I mean, I'm quite happy to say 'well, realistically, this was probably just a canon mistake that got overlooked and there's no point in super-analysing it', but I just can't do the 'ignore all the awkward bits' or 'mix and match the fluffiest moments between canons irrespective of continuity'. (Just as I can't do the LND stories that say 'I don't like Raoul being a drunk because I don't see the POTO character ever being that way, so I'm going to write a version where he and Christine are happily married the way I think it ought to have been' -- it's too easy to do anything you like that way.)

Fan-fiction where Harry Potter is having Christmas with his loving (and unrecognisable from canon) wife Pansy Parkinson, their three children, and Luna Lovegood with a stripper's pole -- to take a recent example -- is for me basically so far removed from the original as to be simply amateur prose with copyright character labels stuck on it for marketing purposes. (And I predate the era where students were all taught 'not to judge'; I grew up admiring the intellectual school of "Gaudy Night", which ultimately comes down in favour of academic integrity over personal feelings! 'Discrimination' was supposed to be a *good* thing...)

It can be exhausting to ship something considered to be problematic and have people tell you you're a bad person for shipping something or that you're automatically promoting abusive relationships because you ship X

Conversely, I think a big part of this sort of problem is people being taught (by peer pressure) that moral judgements trump creativity or anything else, and that 'problematic' or 'toxic' narratives should be purged. For most of human history, we have thrilled to stories about tormented protagonists behaving badly and the sufferings of the innocent; I'm currently reading Stendhal's "Le Rouge et Le Noir" (in translation) and disliking the protagonist, mainly because the author keeps telling me how noble his spirit is while depicting him acting like a swine. But I dread to think what 'cancel culture' would make of the book.

I still don't think I will ever like the entire inherent premise of LND, but it is satisfying to know that a rewrite exists where the climax makes sense, everybody lives, and they all actually TALK to each other

One of the big issues with LND is that Lloyd Webber's E/C romance relies on killing Christine off before the consequences can backfire -- it can't allow her to learn the truth. (And another one is that it appears to have severe problems distinguishing between what the characters know at any given point and what the audience knows; the last time Christine saw the Phantom, he had just made a heartfelt repentant promise that she could go free after singing one last song. And as far as she is concerned, *that* is presumably what she is expecting to happen after her performance...)

"You're bruised and overlooked, but even if he can't see it you've got talent of your own "

"You feel broken, you feel bruised...you've been ignored and pushed aside"
I had fun rewriting the Phantom's lyrics (complete with the disastrous conclusion 'like Christine') to fit Raoul: 'give me my son, Meg' is an obvious replacement for 'give me the gun, Meg'. "Give me the hurt and the pain and the gun" becomes "give me the gun, and your trust, and a chance"...

My stories are all normally based around the intersection of two ideas; in this case, it was the idea that a defeated Raoul can talk down Meg where a triumphant Erik fails -- the scene takes on a very different perspective -- plus the crackfic concept that *Raoul* was theoretically the only person who might have been in a position to attest definitely to Gustave's paternity (which does explain Erik the Masterful Virgin rather better than canon :-p)