Phantom Thoughts pt. 45

[zellephantom]

 Sorry about that unintentional hiatus- I got busy with classes, had some mental health stuff come up, was watching other Phantom adaptations instead of this, aand oh yeah! I got my hands on the Coward translation, so I've been reading that instead and wow, does de Mattos cut things out. It does have some weird quirks, like making Madame Giry cockney, translating Carlotta's croak as 'skaark', and according to fdelopera's blog (found here: https://fdelopera.tumblr.com/phantom-translations ) the annotations are supposedly not very good, but I don't know enough about the historical context to speak about that.

But since de Mattos is the only one in the public domain, I must make do with that in order to go as in depth as I'd like.

{"I beg your pardon. The envelope which M. le Directeur gave me was the one which I slipped into M. le Directeur's pocket," explained Mme. Giry. "The one which I took to the ghost's box was another envelope, just like it, which the ghost gave me beforehand and which I hid up my sleeve."

So saying, Mme. Giry took from her sleeve an envelope ready prepared and similarly addressed to that containing the twenty-thousand francs. The managers took it from her. They examined it and saw that it was fastened with seals stamped with their own managerial seal. They opened it. It contained twenty Bank of St. Farce notes like those which had so much astounded them the month before.

"How simple!" said Richard.

"How simple!" repeated Moncharmin. And he continued with his eyes fixed upon Mme. Giry, as though trying to hypnotize her.}

One might say Erik has many tricks up his sleeve... and also Madame Giry's sleeve, apparently XD 

{"Then would you mind giving us a specimen of your little talents? Here is the envelope. Act as though we knew nothing."

"As you please, gentlemen."

Mme. Giry took the envelope with the twenty notes inside it and made for the door. She was on the point of going out when the two managers rushed at her:

"Oh, no! Oh, no! We're not going to be 'done' a second time! Once bitten, twice shy!"

"I beg your pardon, gentlemen," said the old woman, in self-excuse, "you told me to act as though you knew nothing ... Well, if you knew nothing, I should go away with your envelope!"}

Poor Madame Giry- she's just trying to do what they asked her!

{"I am to slip it into your pocket when you least expect it, sir. You know that I always take a little turn behind the scenes, in the course of the evening, and I often go with my daughter to the ballet-foyer, which I am entitled to do, as her mother; I bring her her shoes, when the ballet is about to begin ... in fact, I come and go as I please ... The subscribers come and go too... So do you, sir ... There are lots of people about ... I go behind you and slip the envelope into the tail-pocket of your dress-coat ... There's no witchcraft about that!"

"No witchcraft!" growled Richard, rolling his eyes like Jupiter Tonans. "No witchcraft! Why, I've just caught you in a lie, you old witch!"}

She's right- it is just sleight of hand. But the managers seem determined to be upset with her. I don't get why the Jupiter Tonans epithet is specifically referenced here instead of just Jupiter, and reading the Wikipedia article doesn't provide much enlightenment. Is it just supposed to mean his voice is thundering? What about the rolling eyes thing?

{"Yes, that's true, I remember now! The under-secretary went behind the scenes. He asked for me. I went down to the ballet-foyer for a moment. I was on the foyer steps ... The under-secretary and his chief clerk were in the foyer itself. I suddenly turned around ... you had passed behind me, Mme. Giry ... You seemed to push against me ... Oh, I can see you still, I can see you still!"}

Of course you can see her still- she's right in front of you! (Yes, I know he's referring to the memory of her bumping into him, but the wording just struck me as funny.)

{"Yes, that's it, sir, that's it. I had just finished my little business. That pocket of yours, sir, is very handy!"}

I was going to make a joke about modern women's clothing not having adequate pockets, but then I remembered that Madame Giry most likely would have had adequate pockets given the time period. 
 

{Mme. Giry passed, rubbed up against M. Richard, got rid of her twenty-thousand francs in the manager's coat-tail pocket and disappeared ... Or rather she was conjured away. In accordance with the instructions received from Moncharmin a few minutes earlier, Mercier took the good lady to the acting-manager's office and turned the key on her, thus making it impossible for her to communicate with her ghost.}

Conjured away? Are they implying that the Phantom had something to do with her disappearance, or just that (since she has practice) she's good at slipping away and blending into a crowd? 

I get why they had to lock her in FOR SCIENCE, but I still feel bad for her, stuck in an office until the managers decide they've figured out what happened. Also if they really think there's a real ghost, aren't they aware that ghosts are known for walking through walls? And if they think it's just a weird guy, why would they not also assume that said guy might also know how to pick locks in order to further his Phantom-y deeds??

{Meanwhile, M. Richard was bending and bowing and scraping and walking backward, just as if he had that high and mighty minister, the under-secretary for fine arts, before him. Only, though these marks of politeness would have created no astonishment if the under-secretary of state had really been in front of M. Richard, they caused an easily comprehensible amazement to the spectators of this very natural but quite inexplicable scene when M. Richard had no body in front of him.

M. Richard bowed ... to nobody; bent his back ... before nobody; and walked backward ... before nobody ... And, a few steps behind him, M. Moncharmin did the same thing that he was doing in addition to pushing away M. Remy and begging M. de La Borderie, the ambassador, and the manager of the Credit Central "not to touch M. le Directeur."}

Aaaand they're losing their minds... Wonderful.

{"Perhaps it was the ambassador ... or the manager of the Credit Central ... or Remy."}

Not Remy, the rat who learned how to cook! It couldn't possibly be him! Just taste his ratatouille- could a guilty rat make something that good?? (It would be funny if secretary Remy was only good at his job because there was a rat inside his hat controlling him, though.)

{"I am sure that nobody has touched me ... You had now better keep at some distance from me and watch me till I come to door of the office: it is better not to arouse suspicion and we can see anything that happens."}

If you're trying not to arouse suspicion, you're doing a terrible job of it.

{"But, in that case," exclaimed Richard, "they will never steal our twenty-thousand francs!"

"I should hope not, indeed!" declared Moncharmin.

"Then what we are doing is absurd!"}
 

Finally, a moment of self-awareness... XD Makes me think of "This is ridiculous, what am I doing here, I'm in the wrong story!" from Into the Woods.

{"Look here, I'm thinking of this, I'M THINKING OF WHAT I MIGHT THINK if, like last time, after my spending the evening alone with you, you brought me home and if, at the moment of parting, I perceived that twenty-thousand francs had disappeared from my coat-pocket ... like last time."

"And what might you think?" asked Moncharmin, crimson with rage.

"I might think that, as you hadn't left me by a foot's breadth and as, by your own wish, you were the only one to approach me, like last time, I might think that, if that twenty-thousand francs was no longer in my pocket, it stood a very good chance of being in yours!"}

I'm thinking that I might think that this is an entirely unproductive endeavor, and a business partnership like theirs should really be based on trust.

{And that was the moment when Moncharmin opened the door on the passage and shouted:

"A safety-pin! ... somebody give me a safety-pin!"

And we also know how, at the same moment, Remy, who had no safety-pin, was received by Moncharmin, while a boy procured the pin so eagerly longed for. And what happened was this: Moncharmin first locked the door again. Then he knelt down behind Richard's back.}

Moncharmin, you realize that people are going to think something embarrassing happened to one of you, don't you?

{"A little patience, Richard," said Moncharmin. "We have only a few minutes to wait ... The clock will soon strike twelve. Last time, we left at the last stroke of twelve."}

Just remember to take both of your shoes with you when you leave and thank your fairy godmother for the opportunity!

Comments

[igenlode]

I don't think that mention of a harp ever registered with me! Evidently some kind of lap harp rather than a concert instrument, given the phrasing and context...
Erik clearly is multi-talented; he is not only a great singer and apparently an inspired teacher of music (not something that necessarily follows at all from an ability to *perform* it), but he is capable of performing to a high level on both the violin and the organ, which require utterly different skills and training, and evidently on the harp as well, albeit that's an easier instrument. Just being a virtuoso organ player is enough for most people, given that it involves doing everything a pianist does but across multiple keyboards and without access to a sustain pedal, *plus* simultaneously performing music with your two feet (by touch alone) *plus* managing all the different stops as and when you can snatch a free moment...

I can hardly stand to read Cockney accents written out.

Oh, if he's done one of those dreadful 'phonetic' accents then I entirely withdraw my tentative endorsement :-p
Cockney accents tend to be doubly painful when done by Americans, because they ignore the normal accepted (by English-speakers) spelling conventions that indicate Cockney, and attempt to write it as pure phonetics but using American vowels, which makes the result not only unrecognisable but also unpronounceable. It's the visual equivalent of trying to read the labels on dinosaur exhibits at the museum ("An-kie-loh-SORE-us"), or Russian lyrics as transliterated by a Central European publisher (believe me, Cyrillic is *much* more accessible).

The Big Finish "Phantom" isn't an audiobook, but a dramatisation, using the fascinating choice of having Madame Giry (busy munching away on her sweets) as the inquisitive narrator, as opposed to, say, Leroux; to start off with I was perplexed as to why on earth they'd chosen a woman to read the part, since the opening narrative is similar to the prologue of the novel, and I naturally assumed the character describing evidence and investigations was intended to be the author. But it's not. The whole thing is arranged as a radioplay, and surprisingly succinctly, thanks to major reordering of Leroux's narrative structure (for example, the Persian explains Erik's backstory to Raoul on their way to rescue Christine, instead of deliberately leaving him -- and hence the listener -- in the dark!)

I did appreciate having John Betjeman's "Summoned by Bells" read to me on audio-cassette, where the pacing turns out to work much better and be far more engaging than reading it on the page, where it was rather dull -- blank verse probably really does need to be heard out loud, particularly in large quantities. But I don't normally listen to audiobooks, because as you say they take an incredibly long time to cover the same amount of material. The main exception is the BBC radio readings, e.g. "Book at Bedtime", which are normally split into fifteen-minute or half-hour episodes and spread across a series of broadcasts; the main trouble with *that* is that I rarely manage to catch all the episodes, so end up hearing a chapter of one novel here and another novel there by randomly turning on the radio.

"Phantom of the Opera" recordings seem to run about nine and a half hours, which I think is probably full-length translation rather than de Mattos; the Big Finish play is only about an hour, I think, as a lot of the running-time turns out to be cast interviews afterwards. That's the difference between telling a story through dialogue (and, to be fair, consciously condensing it into an allocated timeslot, i.e. the length of one CD) and narrating it with editorial description.

Gaston Leroux is actually Raoul, who is immortal and stole the identity of a dead journalist, and the novel he wrote is basically self-insert fanfic of how he wished the story went, and the only person who knows this earth-shattering truth is the actor Lon Chaney. It makes a bit more sense in context, but not much.

Well, I suppose it does explain why Christine vanishes and is never heard of again except via hearsay -- if that's Raoul's *preferred* self-insert version, though, one has to wonder just how much more embarrassing and ineffective his real efforts could have been! (If I wanted to be the hero of the story, I wouldn't choose to have it come out that particular way...)

if you have any recommendations for videos and/or scripts of obscure stage adaptations of Phantom, or just strange heavily Christian adaptations in general, I'd love to hear about them!

The whole 'Christian' literature phenomenon basically doesn't exist outside the USA, or at least doesn't register with society at large.
(I keep seeing books being lauded as 'clean' when they're just... normal.)

I don't go looking for Phantom adaptations, I'm afraid; I happened to come across this one as a 'lockdown reading' recommendation, and it was praised by non-fans -- Big Finish usually have a good reputation -- so I listened to it when I had hand-work to do that required visual concentration. I always used to listen to things while doing Meccano :-p

As always, your insight into the text is valuable and makes the things that confuse me make so much more sense.

I'm glad you enjoy it; I tend to worry that my tendency to go uninvitedly intellectual and start researching at people simply frightens them off and/or comes across as self-aggrandizement. (They generally go very quiet afterwards...)

articles on the Web that claim women were discriminated against because 'they had to undress to access their pockets'
I hadn't come across that 'feminist' analysis

I hadn't come across it either until I started looking for images of women's pockets on the Web, whereupon a whole lot of bloggers popped up preaching about the patriarchy :-(
(Seriously -- do they think that anyone in practice would carry their possessions in a bag with no means of access? But I suppose it's no worse than the time-honoured practice of keeping things up knicker legs.)

I find the managers to be rather dull, and their comedic antics a bit frustrating and halting the momentum of the plot since Christine is currently missing and Raoul is frantically searching for her.

I can see what Leroux is trying to do; it's the time-honoured technique of leaving the A plot on a cliffhanger while you go back and resume the B plot (remember that "Phantom" is a mystery/thriller, *not* a 'love triangle', and the author doesn't necessarily consider Raoul's woes any more important than the Phantom's financial sleight of hand -- compare the subplot in "The Count of Monte Cristo", where the Count spends a lot of time and ingenuity in hacking the semaphore network to manipulate the stock market). And bits of it, like the revelation of how the original theft was worked, and the scene of the money vanishing by no discernible means upon the stroke of midnight (which incidentally gives an idea of just how late Opera performances used to run in the 19th century!) are actually quite effective. It's just that in practice we really *aren't* all that emotionally engaged in whether Moncharmin and Richard are going to lose 20,000F or not, whereas Christine's mounting terror has been heavily foreshadowed throughout the previous chapters.


From the mention of Rhodopis and Ye Xian I take it that you have been referring to Wikipedia :-P
It seems to me someone is reaching rather desperately for precedent there - 'wicked stepmother' is a frequent trope in folk stories (thanks to high maternal mortality), as is 'poor girl marries into the nobility', and 'woman's sandal is dropped on king' is a pretty tenuous connection.
The basic form of the story as we know it seems to stem from Perrault, although I don't suppose he necessarily invented it personally...

[zellephantom]

I know very well from recent experience in college that skill in something does not necessarily equate to being able to teach it well... (I'm so glad I dropped that class.)

We don't really get to see how Erik instructs (other than ALW's "Sing, my Angel of Music! SING!!" which isn't really teaching at all), so I wonder what he'd be like as a teacher, especially given what we see of his typical temperament, though maybe he was able to keep that under wraps while playing the "Angel" role.

Yeah, I hadn't realized just how complicated playing the organ is until I saw Sideways' video "Why Pipe Organs Sound Scary" (link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT934eTbmuY ) and my estimation of Erik's skills increased significantly after that. ALW Phantom is briefly referenced in the video, but unfortunately, he draws upon the notion from the 2004 movie that Erik had been planning to go after Christine since she was a child :P

I don't remember off the top of my head if Coward did a phonetic accent or not, but your comparison to dinosaur pronunciation labels was spot on. I distinctly remember puzzling over those names as a dinosaur-obsessed child. To someone who actually lives in England, I'd imagine that poorly rendered Cockney by Americans engenders the same cringing reaction in you as poorly rendered Southern American accents do for me. (No, My Little Pony fanfic authors not from the South, you do not have to substitute 'Ah' and 'Ah've' for 'I' and 'I've' to convey that Applejack has a thick Southern drawl. Even people I know who have a thick Southern drawl do not sound like that. And 'y'all' is used too much and often incorrectly. I promise you, we do actually use the word you in conversation, and much more often than you'd think.)

Having Madame Giry as the narrator does sound like a fascinating choice, and that reordering sounds like a very interesting move!

Yes, in that play, there's a big deal made out of Raoul-as-Leroux saying that the version of the story he's telling is the 'true' story that he's been covering up all these years, and his version of the events is mostly fairly similar to Leroux with a dash of ALW influence for all of Act 1 and then goes wildly off the rails and much worse than Leroux in terms of emotional turmoil and bodycount. The 'actual' version of events as proposed by this play in regards to the ending that Raoul-as-Leroux changed is that while Christine was kissing Erik on the forehead, Raoul bursts into the room with his gun (there's no torture chamber in this version) and points it at Erik while yelling for Christine to get away. Erik lunges at Raoul, and they grapple with each other for control of the gun, but during this brawl, just as Christine is trying to tell them to stop fighting, the gun accidentally goes off and she gets shot and dies in Raoul's arms. Several minutes later, as Raoul is away burying Christine, Erik abruptly collapses in front of the Persian and says that he's dying, which he then does after the heartwrenching line “I have faced my whole life alone. I will welcome death the same way.”. Raoul is traumatized by the deaths of Philippe (yes, Philippe is in this version, and I really liked how their brotherly relationship was portrayed), Erik, and especially Christine, but he does go on the voyage to the Arctic and spends the next decades of his life traveling the world, until he takes up the identity of Leroux after he discovers that he cannot die or be killed because of Christine's love protecting him, for some reason. So, yes, his real efforts to save Christine were even more ineffective and led to a tragic outcome for her.

The weirdest aspect is that Raoul-as-Leroux has developed a retroactive fondness for Erik (even though the last time he saw Erik, he thought that Erik was going to blow everyone up if Christine didn't marry him), saying that why he wrote his novel the way he did was to give Raoul and Christine “the happy ending I think Erik would have wanted them to have”. He also seems to have retroactively decided that Christine loved Erik more than him and that the story was a love story between E/C all along, even though the story he just presented skewed much more R/C than E/C, and it very much seemed that while Christine held some affection for the Phantom and there were E/C moments, Christine ultimately would've chosen Raoul if she had lived.

If it wasn't for the weird Leroux-is-actually-Raoul twist, I'd say that this Raoul is actually a very good portrayal, being naturally likable and endearingly protective of Christine, while still having flaws and overcoming them. It takes a lot to get me to naturally root for R/C over E/C, but this play somehow managed to get me to do just that.

Overall, the Kyle Walker Phantom play was such a bizarre mixed bag of good, bad, and weird- for example, for most of the play Carlotta is significantly crueler to Christine specifically and seems very two-dimensional, but after the croaking incident (in which she permanently loses the ability to sing) she makes a believable about-face and realizes that she was being petty and jealous but there are more important things in life, and that Christine was just as much of an unwilling subject to forces beyond their control as she was, and then wishes her luck on her performance and advises her to be careful. But then there's stuff like 'Erik was bought as a child to be a playmate for the little sultana, and he was secretly in love with her but she rejected him because of his face and he killed her', 'Erik can naturally use ventriloquism to basically control other people, and he used that ability to try and make his mother love him but accidentally killed her in the process', and the aforementioned Leroux-is-Raoul twist.

Oh, okay! Growing up in the heavily Christian subculture of the Southern US has made me somewhat overestimate the prevalence of Christian cultural things I think of as normal, I've found. Weird low-budget adaptations of things that shoehorn Christian messages in but fundamentally misunderstand or distort the meaning of the source material in order to do so must be one of them. In that environment, I've found that clean as a recommendation serves as a shorthand for 'it's okay for me to buy/borrow this book and read it- I don't need to examine it closely beforehand to figure out if there's sexual content or swearing in it'. People in that environment tend to assume that clean isn't normal, and thus take great pains to point it out!

Yes, I certainly learn a lot from your comments. I think sometimes people are afraid of being corrected (or at least people around my age, who grew up with an increasing barrage of standardized tests and sometimes develop an unhealthy tendency to view everything as a test, hence the popularity of the "Me (to myself): This is great. I’m going to get a good grade in therapy, something that is both normal to want and possible to achieve," meme) or get scared off by someone knowing or taking the time to find out something that they don't know and worry that the other person, by correcting them, is saying that they're ignorant or a bad person because they happened to get something wrong. Or they're just intimidated by the level of analysis and don't feel equipped to try and engage with it themselves on that level. And sometimes they're just not interested in research, even when it's presented in front of them without them having to put in any effort to find it for themselves. As for me, I'm happy that other people are so interested in a thing that they are willing to do a deep dive on the minutia of it, and even happier when they present their findings to me so I get to learn new things that I might not have had the time, patience, or ability to uncover on my own.

Oh, I'm afraid I was referring to Wikipedia- I knew that I had read somewhere a while ago (probably sometime during my tumblr days, although there was also a widely circulated article from Vox saying much the same thing) about much older versions of Cinderella, and I briefly checked Wikipedia in order to refresh my memory. Now that you've brought that up, it does seem like retroactive pattern recognition where there isn't a great deal of basis for it.

[igenlode]

We don't really get to see how Erik instructs (other than ALW's "Sing, my Angel of Music! SING!!" which isn't really teaching at all), so I wonder what he'd be like as a teacher, especially given what we see of his typical temperament, though maybe he was able to keep that under wraps while playing the "Angel" role.

Christine mentions a little about his teaching in "Apollo's Lyre" (yet another long passage omitted by de Mattos, I observe!); she suggests that he knew the simple techniques her father had taught her and at what point in that teaching her father had died -- this is never explained by Leroux, given that so far as we know Erik had never had any genuine contact with the family. Nor does he explain how Daaé senior, a talented violinist, knew anything about voice training for a young girl ;-p

Presumably the idea is that Erik is ignoring all the advanced instruction one assumes she received at the Conservatoire, and taking her back to basics in order to 'fix' the problems with her voice. She observes that "my lower register was naturally quite weak, my upper register rather too bright and my middle range lacked clarity", thus suggesting that Leroux actually had rather more technical knowledge of singing than the average fanfic writer -- though if so, I'm puzzled by Carlotta's supposedly awe-inspiring range of "two octaves", which is perfectly normal and indeed unremarkable.

For a trained vocalist, that is; the average human range is about nine or ten notes maximum, and consequently almost all popular or folk music happens to fall within this limit! *Three* octaves -- say, F below middle C to F above high C -- would be surprising, and two and a half somewhat noteworthy, at least in a woman; my own father, a natural bass, could sing from the 'oktavist' range up into a falsetto that could reach high into soprano territory, although he only used that for demonstrating choral parts when conducting mixed groups of singers and would never have attempted to perform music in public with a voice forced into cartoon comedy effect.

Above all, Erik apparently taught Christine how to develop her chest voice (hence producing a more powerful sound, as opposed to the 'choirboy' purity of an untrained soprano; Sarah Brightman as versus Emmy Rossum, for instance :-p)

Having Madame Giry as the narrator does sound like a fascinating choice, and that reordering sounds like a very interesting move!

I really ought to listen to that production again (always a good sign as a reaction!) and make a note of some of the more interesting choices that struck me so that I could do a 'proper' review of it.
Unfortunately postponing reviews until they can be done properly tends to lead to their not happening at all :-(



If it wasn't for the weird Leroux-is-actually-Raoul twist, I'd say that this Raoul is actually a very good portrayal, being naturally likable and endearingly protective of Christine, while still having flaws and overcoming them. It takes a lot to get me to naturally root for R/C over E/C, but this play somehow managed to get me to do just that.

From your description it actually sounds quite appealing as an alternate version... and much easier to stage, assuming this is actually a play, than all that torture chamber mirror business -- which considered in the light of torture, never really seemed to live up to its billing anyway :-p
I mean, the sole form of torment consists of making people believe that they are crawling for miles through a never-ending maze, but from the description the actual room is quite small, so you wouldn't be able to go more than a few paces in any direction before hitting into a very solid mirror (at which point I don't think the illusion would survive the close-up). And a torture that consists of no more than waiting until the designated victim co-operates and kills *himself* isn't half as scary as the Persian originally makes out; I mean, what happens if the victim simply shuts his eyes instead? At that point you might as well lock him in a cell and wait for him to die of thirst.



Interestingly, when I originally saw the 2004 movie -- knowing the musical highlights but not the plot in advance -- thanks to the doom and gloom of the prologue, accompanied by the constant cemetery flashbacks, I assumed that Christine was destined to become a tragic victim at the end of the story, and was very surprised when the eventual 'reveal' was that she had escaped, lived happily ever after, and merely died at a ripe old age in the bosom of her family! I don't think Lloyd Webber realised the implications of having the story so heavily framed by scenes of a grieving lover from the perspective of an audience without prior knowledge -- or else it didn't occur to him that anyone *would* be watching without prior knowledge.

The weirdest aspect is that Raoul-as-Leroux has developed a retroactive fondness for Erik (even though the last time he saw Erik, he thought that Erik was going to blow everyone up if Christine didn't marry him), saying that why he wrote his novel the way he did was to give Raoul and Christine “the happy ending I think Erik would have wanted them to have”.

So he thinks that Erik would have preferred to see Christine happy with Raoul rather than dead? I'm not sure that's consistent with the original characterization, where Erik would rather see Christine (and everyone else) dead rather than have her reject him ;-p
But then I don't think Erik would have wanted to survive a dead-by-accident Christine anyway... and the touch that it is the protection of Christine's love that results in Raoul's immortality (albeit that's ultimately a mixed blessing, I imagine) appeals to me.


He also seems to have retroactively decided that Christine loved Erik more than him and that the story was a love story between E/C all along, even though the story he just presented skewed much more R/C than E/C, and it very much seemed that while Christine held some affection for the Phantom and there were E/C moments, Christine ultimately would've chosen Raoul if she had lived.

I've seen that several times in fanfics as well (not to mention "Love Never Dies"!)
I think it happens when the author takes E/C so utterly for granted, regarding it as an absolute given part of the story, that she omits to provide any actual indication of it between the characters -- and then you suddenly get to the end, and after chapter after chapter of Erik terrifying Christine and zero chemistry between them, an epilogue pops up in which they are suddenly all lovey-dovey, because 'everyone knows' that is how the story is supposed to conclude.

I'm reminded of a particularly jawdropping example where a modern-AU Erik engages in stunts like murdering Philippe, sneaking into Raoul's apartment and pinning a poster-sized photo of his brother's agonised body on the ceiling above his bed, kidnapping Christine (of course), while Raoul and Meg try to track her down and rescue her, and eventually murdering Raoul too. And then in the final chapter Christine and Meg are finally reunited, and she announces sunnily that she is going to marry Erik -- which the reader naturally assumes to be evidence of brainwashing -- as a result of which Meg decides not to tell her of Raoul's horrific death because it might spoil this marriage.

*WHAT*??? What sort of friend are you? Do you really think she's never going to find out? Do you really think a marriage that can only take place if the bride doesn't learn that her husband has sadistically murdered her friend to stop him from rescuing her is a good idea? Do you really think *anyone* marrying this version of Erik is a good idea?

I wonder just how many readers were able to swallow it as a happy ending simply on the grounds that it was E/C 'as always' -- after what had come before, I could have swallowed a general bloodbath (it was a pretty dark fic, as you may have gathered!), but not Meg stumbling out as the sole survivor and then taking Christine's claims of love at face value. I mean, even if she didn't immediately jump to the conclusion that Christine was speaking under duress (which would seem a much more likely explanation), no sane human being would consider it more important to protect her friend's current delusions than to protect her future wellbeing. It was just a complete 'I can't believe she did that' moment -- I suppose the author had written herself into a corner and didn't know how to come up with any plausible way to achieve the ending she wanted.


I've found that clean as a recommendation serves as a shorthand for 'it's okay for me to buy/borrow this book and read it- I don't need to examine it closely beforehand to figure out if there's sexual content or swearing in it'.

Well, the books I read tend intrinsically not to have sex or swearing in them (which is why my own fiction tends not to -- I grew up on methods of storytelling that used other means to create tension). But that wasn't for religious reasons!

Oh, I'm afraid I was referring to Wikipedia- I knew that I had read somewhere a while ago (probably sometime during my tumblr days, although there was also a widely circulated article from Vox saying much the same thing) about much older versions of Cinderella, and I briefly checked Wikipedia in order to refresh my memory. Now that you've brought that up, it does seem like retroactive pattern recognition where there isn't a great deal of basis for it.

I recognised the allusion because I'd just checked Wikipedia myself to see if it was really Perrault I was thinking of ;-p
But most of those stories cited (the Micmac legends, for instance) seem to me about as closely related to Cinderella as "Beauty and the Beast" is to "Phantom" -- really, the only relationship between those two is 'ugly man holds girl prisoner' (and, I suppose, lets her go temporarily and threatens to die of a broken heart if he loses her!) You can't claim that "Phantom" originates from "Beauty and the Beast" simply because Erik is ugly.