11:49 am - Introduction and fic rec Hi. I've been a member of this comm for a while, but haven't posted anything up until now. I love Leroux's novel, saw part of the 2004 movie (the flashback right after "Masquerade" scared me off), and listen to the movie soundtrack all the time. *dodges rotten fruit* Gerard Butler is by no means a good singer, but his voice kind of grew on me after a while.
Anyway, I present this fic I found while looking for Mary Sues on FF.net to you for your inspection. Enjoy it. Or don't. Whichever.
Title:A Deadly Obsession Author: Erik'sTrueAngel Genre: Horror Word Count: 43, 243 Rating: T Summary:COMPLETE! You envied her. You wished you were her. Emmy Sawyer would have done anything to become Christine Daae, but some things are best left unsaid. AU Modern Day tale. Slight EOC. [Dark Erik] Please R&R!
Pros: Dark and scary as fuck, satire of rabid phangirls, well-written Cons: Evil!Christine, slight Raoul bashing, a few grammar errors Current Location: Crawling out of the woodwork Current Mood:nervous
This one is very odd; the author has had an intriguing idea (what if Raoul were already married when he becomes patron of the Opera Populaire) and yet manages to use it to produce a story which is virtually a word-for-word rendition of the entire libretto of the original with no changes at all. Raoul's wife is present as viewpoint character in every single scene (even the ones between Christine and the Phantom), takes over random lines in many of the songs, including the Final Lair trio, and yet has absolutely no effect on the plot whatsoever, courtesy of a rapid divorce during the interval. It's not even particularly badly written -- it's just utterly pointless.
I've heard of fan-fiction which consists of nothing but a rewrite of the original source with a self-insert character tagging along without affecting a thing... but this writer has actually come up with a credible and potentially fascinating concept which ought to have a massive effect on the dynamics between the characters, and it's totally bizarre that she has used it simply as a vehicle for transcribing the lyrics.
Vicomte de Phantom
Even odder is that she has then done exactly the same thing for "Love never Dies", with an equal utter lack of impact on the plot -- apart from transcribing it with a relatively Raoul-friendly interpretation, and changing her narrator's name from Aurore to Auroe! Current Mood:confused
12:07 am - Fantomestein Hey, guys, this isn't wankable; what it is, though, is a really neat version of Leroux's POTO, where Erik is Frankenstein's creature. It's extremely well done; check it out!
11:00 pm - Meg shoots the Phantom This was actually intended as a semi-serious proposal as to how the action/lyrics of the "Love Never Dies" finale could be reworked (again) to produce an ending in which audience and composer get the requisite warm and fuzzy feelings about the Phantom while everyone else gets to patch their lives back together ...
It doesn't avoid one of the basic problems with the plot, which is that Christine gets handed over between one man and another without an apparent agency of her own in the matter, and it's sickeningly sentimental about the Phantom (who is portrayed as rather more noble, in my view, than is consistent with his character in the rest of the show), but both of those are the result of my attempt to come up with a version of the ending that is consistent with Andrew Lloyd Webber's apparent intentions for "Love Never Dies" and one that he might theoretically actually implement. I was slightly nervous about giving ALW a guest appearance in the final paragraphs, as it seems a little too much akin to Real Person Fiction and a little presumptuous to shoehorn a reaction onto someone, but there is a certain tradition of that in this fandom. (And at least I was civil about it!)
Redemption (something that is notably lacking in the current LND set-up...)
07:38 pm - Gee, There's Actually A Lot Of These So, obviously, I've been on a bit of a Nostalgia Chick/Chez Lindsay kick. And I'm gonna share allll the Phantomy goodness with you! :D
Here's another one: her Top Ten Songs About Sex. It's got two Phantomy entries, heh.
02:03 pm - Loose Canon: The Phantom of the Opera Yay, we did it! Lindsay Ellis (formerly the Nostalgia Chick) has done a two-part look at the various versions of the Phantom!
Part One:
Part Two:
I have to say, I pretty much agree with her take on them. :)
Because of recent nonsense online reviewers have been having with the Fair Use clause being ignored and reviews using copy-written material being yoinked, rather than actually using clips from the show, recently he's been recreating scenes of shows he's reviewed (including the new Star Wars, and Fury Road), so the review discusses it within the context of a pseudo-POTO with similar, but original songs etc.
Which to my mind actually makes the whole thing more awesome than his older styles of reviews. So check it out!
09:08 am - Quick! Vote Erik! So if you've been following the Nostalgia Chick, Lindsey Ellis, formerly of ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com, you'll know that recently she's been doing a series called "Loose Canon," wherein she examines all the various iterations of a character. It's pretty cool, and for October she will be doing a Universal movie monster. Her poll lists three options, and Erik is in second place, trailing behind Frankenstein's monster by only 54 votes, as of now.
Let's try and tip the scales; it will be fascinating to see her take on him!
This started off a few months ago as an ordinary badfic retelling the script of the musical -- or, more likely, the movie -- in limping prose (Raoul: "I would like to talk you to dinner" [sic]).
For some reason I glanced at the latest update, and discovered a particularly ripe crop of malapropisms and some extremely bad titillation that was just too much to resist. I did resist leaving a review on the story giving my opinion of this masterwork, since it would clearly fall on utterly tonedeaf ears...
Summary: This is the way I want Phantom of the Opera to happen. What if Christine and Erik had a secret relationship? What if Christine and Erik were lovers in secret? Will Raoul ever find out?
(Translation: the same plot as every other OOC teenage phanfic)
"Raoul stop your hurting me!" (Desist from your injuring of me!) Christine said as Raoul dragged her to the roof top. Christine screamed and clawed at his hand but he didn't let her go. (Because everyone knows that there is a mysterious character who kidnaps girls against their will in POTO, and it's... Raoul?) As Raoul dragged Christine to the roof top (did we mention that he dragged her to the roof top [sic]?) Madame Giry saw (through the intervening ten storeys of Opera House) that Raoul had taken Christine. She knew Erik would not like this. (Oh, the drama and tension!)
She waited in her office for him and before she could sit at her desk she saw Erik their (their what? Their bank-manager?) already. "Where's Christine?" She asked her but she had a worried look on her face. (Possibly because she was as confused as I was as to whom she was talking to) "Befriend could get her (I believe Erik already tried the befriending tactic -- it didn't work out too well :-p) Raoul took her." Erik's face grew with worry. (Soon it was so long that his chin touched the floor.) "Where did he take her?!" "It looked like he was taking her to the roof." The Erik left. ('Erik' is actually a title now? His Highness, the Erik of Phantom?)
*Wait, I've just worked out what is happening here; it's a cunningly inverted metatextual reference to the canon scene where Christine drags Raoul off to the roof by force because she's terrified that the Phantom will kill her... Oh. No, it's not. It's just badfic :-(*( Read more...Collapse )
03:31 pm - POTO Reference in "Haunted Mansion" Review So I'm watching the Nostalgia Critic's review of Disney's "The Haunted Mansion" when he suddenly compares the butler's impressive vibratto (played by Terence "Superman's General Zog" Stamp) to Michael Crawford's. So I thought I'd share it.
09:40 pm - Phantom of the Bijoux (The Meateater) Review Here it is folks, this one has been freaking years in the making, a movie that depressed me so much that I just had to take a break from watching it and working on it. Like - for years. This is abysmal. This might be the worst Phantom movie ever. It hurts! But on the plus side, the bad movies make for the best reviews, and this is a classic old school Phantom Review that I hope you will enjoy.
What do you get if you take a Phantom in a Cinema concept and fund the schlock almost entirely by meat related product placements? Why, The Meateater, of course!
This story was just too much fun to leave. Possibly my favourite snippet is the one where Christine proceeds to go into the shower and put her nightdress on... ;-p
04:50 am - Loves Secret [sic] I know nobody is doing these any more, but this fic I just stumbled across in the POTO movie section is hilarious...
To be absolutely fair, the author is French, so she is writing in her second language here. I'm not sure how much difference this makes, as the rules of punctuation are much the same in both languages for a start...
12:59 am - Cosi fan tutte - fanfic frustration I came across this fanfic https://www.fanfiction.net/s/2391034/1/Cosi-Fan-Tutte over on AO3 yesterday, and still can't believe the ending: I don't know what happened to the author. Maybe she just got bored and wanted the story over and done with... but she spends 18 or so chapters setting up a really dark modern-day psychotic Phantom assassin-for-hire, who regards Christine as his 'prey', who has a special set of rooms built into his house for keeping kidnapped 'guests' in (it's made obvious that Christine is not even his first victim), who murders Christine's father in order to cut her ties with home, who superglues a poster of Philippe's mutilated body to the ceiling above Raoul's bed(!) and murders Raoul in Meg's presence so that she has to watch him die -- slowly -- and who is described as having some kind of hypnotic power in his music that can cause Christine to believe she loves him in the moments when she hears it, only for her to wake up to appalled reality afterwards. Meg is warned by both Raoul and the Persian that Christine may no longer come willingly when they do manage to locate her. And then in the final chapters the author presents us with a Christine who runs happily up to Meg when she and the Persian finally track her down, and announces that she is in love with Erik, handing her a long goodbye letter for Raoul. And Meg BELIEVES her.
Why does Meg -- having gone through all this grief and horror to find and rescue Christine -- believe EVEN FOR ONE MOMENT that her friend is in her right mind at this moment, having been specifically WARNED that Erik does this to people? And why on earth does she take the letter for Raoul (what, and bury it in his grave?) without telling Christine that Erik has murdered him... AND her father? And then be bridesmaid at her wedding to Erik -- just because she doesn't want her to be unhappy?!!!
She ought to be moving heaven and earth to get Christine out of there if she is any kind of friend at all: but Christine just says "oh, I love him" and Meg totally fails to suspect anything fishy about this...
(Author's note: "if Erik thinks that someone needs to die in order to make either his, or especially, Christine's life better, then it's pretty much a done deal. The murder of Christine's father (the description of which I'm really quite proud of) therefore seems to me to be a very likely occurrence, especially if Erik thought him unworthy of Christine" -- and this makes him a sympathetic character HOW?)
I was waiting for the twist through the whole of the last two chapters, but there isn't one. A really well-written dark story suddenly goes fluffy and utterly unbelievable: Christine marries Erik and they have happy babies and no-one ever tells her the truth (and she never wakes up as I expected and realises that she is being hypnotised; apparently we are supposed to assume that she really does fall in love with him when they start frantically kissing halfway through chapter 18...)
Erik MURDERED HER FATHER. You do not marry the man who murdered your father AND ENJOYED DOING IT. We see more than enough of the inside of Erik's mind in this story to know that he is sick and twisted and very dangerous, and he shows not the slightest remorse for any of it. The author has created an Erik who is more criminal and psychotic than Leroux' original Phantom, and not given him even the slightest redemption: then she has simply awarded him Christine on auto-pilot because "I was getting tired of writing dark fiction". The result is an insult to the reader's suspension of disbelief -- and since the AO3 version doesn't have the self-justificatory end-notes, I literally couldn't believe what I'd just read. As I said, I was waiting for the dark twist right up to the epilogue... and it simply doesn't come. You're supposed to take it at face value.
"Cosi fan tutte" indeed... all too many fanfic authors, at any rate.
[Edit: yes, I know the fic is years old and the author long gone. It just -- hurts to see talent wasted, that's all.] Current Mood:infuriated
03:24 am - Did--Did They Just..? So by a slightly torturous 3AM route through the Internet I find myself watching a video of an Asian TV show where they're showing a chimp magic tricks, when suddenly, the music becomes strangely familiar...
"The Phantom of the Opera": The official theme of stabbing monkey trainers in the neck, I guess? XD
Yes, I know it's an ape not a monkey. "Monkey" is just inherently funnier. Current Mood:amused Current Music: POTO Main Theme, nach
And I have to admit that I get enormous private satisfaction to observe that the reviewer's analysis essentially concurs with everything I've been writing over the past year about Raoul and Christine's relationship in this production: what the show is trying to do versus the impression it actually ends up giving!
A nice parallel is drawn between Gustave's attention-seeking behaviour with Raoul and Meg's attempts with the Phantom, for example: but "Raoul's behavior is used as an example of his unworthiness to remain in his family, while the Phantom's will be excused because the person doing the attention-seeking is clearly asking too much."
"characters are 'in the wrong' not when they do things that are objectively wrong but when they oppose or inconvenience the Phantom, who is by virtue of being the protagonist completely exempt from any such moral judgment" -- which backfires by making the protagonist a far less complex and sympathetic character than was the intended result.
For a musical that is supposedly about the Phantom's woes, it contrives to make Raoul far more interesting, despite earnest attempts to destroy the character: "The obvious comparison [...] is with the Phantom, suggesting that Raoul has a pretty facade with nothing worthwhile beneath, while the Phantom has an ugly facade but is filled with important emotional depths, but ironically it is Raoul in this show who has demonstrated emotional depth and growth"
And apparently I'm not the only viewer who was left with the confused impression that Christine was actually attempting to choose Raoul in the revised Australian Version -- which of course makes it a completely different tragedy of misunderstandings! Current Mood:satisfied
08:15 pm - Exclusive Video Review of Anthony P Manns Phantom of the Opera (2014) Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I am very excited to present you a genuine Phantom Reviews exclusive. Anthony P Mann's independent movie movie isn't officially released on DVD until October 2014, but I can give you a world first, in-depth review of the movie right now!
The irony is that it wouldn't have come as such a slap in the face if it had been chapter 2: I'd already seen and discarded this story once, with its predictable opening chapter featuring a Christine who dreams of her noble Angel of Music after marrying an abusive and unfaithful drunk (otherwise known as Raoul de Chagny). The only minor difference from the standard plotline is that that they have a couple of months of happiness before Raoul arbitrarily mutates, and that Christine still claims to love him.
But for some reason or other I took a look at the latest instalment somewhere around chapter 20 and discovered a completely different plot going on: an anxious, tender Raoul nursing Christine with concern.
I've seen some weird Raouls, but I don't think I've ever seen a Raoul who mutilates Christine and then gets sprayed with arterial blood when cutting the throat of an innocent third party in the street, let alone one who does so after spending the entire story feeling unworthy and then joyously reconciling with his wife! Current Mood:shocked
09:43 pm - New Animated Phantom, Mark II Update on this project: not having managed to raise the full sum required to produce an animated feature film via crowdfunding, Iluzija Animation Studio are currently attempting the more limited goal of finding sufficient backers at least to start work on the script.
Currently they have attracted a grand total of 24 fans and need to see another 2,000AU$ in pledges before they actually receive any money at all -- so if anyone can promise $5 or so, it really would make a difference. (Enthusiasm among the general Phantom community for a Leroux-based story appears to be lukewarm, to say the least...)
They seem to be going right back to the book — the trailer includes glimpses of scenes like the Phantom menacing Raoul in bed, and the stupefied 'gas-men' behind the set — and the animation quality is much higher than that of the relatively faithful 1988 Phantom cartoon.
It's a proper, traditional hand-drawn 2D animation, not a computer-modelled swivelling blob attempt (the sketches shown are pretty impressive), and they seem to have the talent and the track-record behind it to pull the project off. The main problem is that doing this sort of thing without computer short-cuts takes a long time and costs a lot of money, they are still a very long way from target, and Kickstarter doesn't give you an awfully long time to meet the required funding level...
So if anyone has access to a platform with rather wider publicity than this one, it might be worth giving the project a bit of a push. (And also pledging a bit of money, of course, which I've done -- although without a great deal of expectation that I'm likely to be asked to pay up at the end of the month.) Current Mood:impressed
11:39 pm - Phantom Swimwear Catalogue? So this is very slightly odd. I am considering making a Victorian swimsuit, and so I went poking about online looking for some styles to copy (or possibly even just purchase if I could find the right one at the right price), and when I came upon this particularly pretty one, I opened the page to take a closer look. And there was an ad for "Love Never Dies"! A bit out of date, but fine, whatever, an interesting bit of overlap between a couple of my areas of interest--or so I thought, until I read the paragraph above it:
Look for our swimsuits in Andrew Lloyd Webber's new musical, "Love Never Dies". The principal characters of The Phantom of the Opera continue their stories in New York at Coney Island. Now on stage in London at the Adelphi Theatre.
While continuing my odyssey through the back archives of the group (and noting sadly the number of vanished faces and purged accounts... although it's possibly a good sign that many of the linked stories have disappeared off the face of fanfiction.net too, their authors having perhaps acquired some self-awareness), I was inspired to return to the spheres of confused Raoulfic with "Safe in His Arms".
(As before, I'm inserting my own paragraphing to save my sanity and your eyesight, although this chapter is a little better in that respect than the previous one...)
Note: this time round, for enhanced readability I'm going to ignore the [lack of] paragraphing in the original story and forcibly insert my own: for the restoration of any comic potential lost thereby, kindly imagine the entirety of the rest of the chapter to take place in just six (count 'em!) giant paragraphs of text...
11:20 pm - Well, that was awesome! Friends, I am posting this for a very specific moment, but please do watch the whole thing, as -- unlike so many things posted here (which is of course the point) -- it is absolutely worth your time.
The author is twelve years old. She is obsessed with the phantom of the opera, she really likes Love Never Dies, and she wants to be an opera singer when she grows up. Should I really be poking fun at her?
Well, I wrote better than this when I was seven... and I've got the evidence! Admittedly I didn't have any romance in my stories when I was seven: more a matter of steam engines, sailing ships and sword-fights...
I feel rather guilty about this, because the story came endorsed by various people I respect, my own over-elaborate construction isn't a million miles removed from that sort of thing, and the author claimed to be a would-be professional... but the style just makes me want to laugh.
Alas, one doesn't have to be a Raoul-basher to be inadvertently hilarious...
07:23 pm - Yay, new wank! Ok... I'm a long-time lurker, first time poster... My Summer classes ended today, hooray!! So I thought I'd celebrate with a little wanking. I've never done this before, so if it's not funny, don't be afraid to say ;p if it is, then I will do more :D
08:45 pm - "Take What Little I Diserve" [sic] Does anyone feel up to dealing with Take What Little I Diserve? Of course, it's possible it improves with experience later on... but from the opening paragraphs ("after a good few minuets", "surly he would choose to go back to France", "the beautiful curls that she holds on her head") it looks like a classic.
(Chapter Three features Raoul's three-in-a-bed four-in-a-bed antics, by the way... I'm not sure I can bear to read any further unwanked, so if anyone could de-fang this monster I for one would be grateful!) Current Mood:shocked
Specifically, I have to admit, it made me think of Gerik, who is a huge pussy. We've said it before and I'll say it again: The Sunburn of DOOOOOM is not worth hiding away in the basement forever. Honestly? When she unmasks him in PoNR? I doubt very much the audience would even be able to see it.
EDIT: Hahaha, it's even in France. In Paris. XD XD XD How did I not notice that the first time around? I didn't even clue in until I started going, "Yeah, I guess the French laws against head-coverings and things maybe aren't... Hold on... France?! Paris??"
This is too perfect. If it ends up that the guy's name is Erik then I *know* they're messing with us, ha ha ha.
I was in the local corner store earlier today, and happened to see today's edition of the local paper. Front page story: Local guy (who has been making low-budget movies that have been sold to Hollywood; he's a big fan of Hammer and Christopher Lee and not so much gore, which I find encouraging) is about to make another, and this time it's Phantom. Bonus: He's going back to the book for it.
The best part? He's filming a bunch of it here in Kingston, Ontario, in just a few months!! The worst part? In two weeks we're moving to Nova Scotia. *Facepalm*
It's only like three hours' drive from Toronto and I know we've got a few 'wankers there, so you guys should try and see if you can see them filming or be extras or something. He's playing the Phantom himself; Christine has not yet been cast. They're getting some publicity for it by doing a four-part miniseries reality show of the casting for her.
I will try and see if I can't get some pics of that hall in Queen's University before we leave, but that's gonna be tight, because most of next week we're gonna have movers in and out all day as we're leaving next Friday, and I need to prepare for that. But dammit, I am RIGHT HERE, and will do my best.
10:52 am - "A Tim Burton fever dream staged by Cirque du Soleil..." Well, after taking the piss out of the 2004 movie, nothing would do for a follow-up but taking on Love Never Dies! And here it is! There's ranting! There's raving! There's totally NSFW BAMS-ing!
Not a new one, having been written back in 2010, but I don't think I've seen it here before.
It's relevant because, yeah, any guesses who Number One is? And they barely even scratched the surface of his oddly familiar works.
To make it extra Phantomy, though, I share this with you as well. Give Inkspace credit for finding it and sharing it with me. [Big Picture (click to open/hide)]
I found this little Phantom of the Opera dude I had made a couple years ago along with some other dolls I had neglected to the basement.
So I put him on my Red Death hat and took a photo with instagram. He looks really happy about the whole thing.
10:32 am - "The Phantom crashes the party, dressed as Skeletor the Gay Blade..." So, you may or may not know that in my off-time I do a web series devoted to snarking on bad musicals. Well, I do. Which means the Phantom film was bound to turn up eventually on it. And wouldn't you know it, here it is!
(more than OK, since I've watched it three times this week. And I definitely think a copy of the soundtrack is in my future)
I know it was mentioned awhile back on another post, but the English version is now available (Canadians - it just got added to Netflix) and OMG is it ever adorable!
(And with just enough Phantom-y references that I can't believe it's a coincidence... although the Opera Garnier itself is sadly absent)
So if you haven't seen it yet - definitely worth checking out!
And anybody else want a "monster" of their very own now? And I shall hug him, and squeeze him, and call him "Francoeur" ;)
07:17 pm - DA Gallery Worth A Look So I've been doing a bunch of research for a 1880's dress I'm making (completely non-Phantom related) and did a Google of a certain kind of bustle-- and got a surprising number of Phantom pics in the first few results.
Well, of course, what kind of phan would I be if I didn't look to see what the hell Phantom stuff had to do with Canfield bustles, and it ends up what the two have in common is Opergeist.
Check out his dA page at http://opergeist.deviantart.com/; he not only does lovely and detailed Phantom art, but also interesting costuming takes on not only Phantom stuff, but a host of others you probably have some interest in too (going by my own experience of certain overlaps in fandoms).
It's definitely worth a look. Bonus: His Phantom is largely Leroux-based! :D
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