Ramblings of a Two-decade Phantom of the Opera Fan Girl
Massive Spoilers on Love Never Dies
Scroll Down for ranting and rambling as only a lifetime fangirl can!
Warnings for the fact I spoil everything!
- Did you castrate my Phantom? Seriously? He didn't kill anyone in this story. He didn't even threaten to kill anyone, or talk about having killed people before. He was nothing nearly as manipulative or malevolent as his self in the prior showing. And, even among the freaks who worked for him, no one appears to fear him.
Hello. Mrs. Giri of PotO very self-preservedly feared the Phantom even when she was loyal to him. He's all heart broken and fixated....and his characterization ends there? He was more than both of those, with them, last time. I want my blood shed and big fire and things which I should be assure by the Phantom being in this piece.
You erased, without so much as a nod, the opposing part in the dual nature of the singular most potent figure of my baby girlhood fantasies.
- I'm not sure I can even get into the topic of Mrs. Giri. She. This. Brain swapping alien would have looked more this part. Bitter and angry and greedy and feeling the Phantom owed her and/or Meg. I can't even put these traits beside herself of the previous musical. I'm sorry. Just no. And no. And no.
I'm sorry the woman in the first one wouldn't have wanted to be noticed long enough singularly to get whatever due the Phantom would feel someone owed from him.She'd already obviously been in cahoots/underling/cohort/etc with him a long time when we see them in Paris Opera House. (At least as long as Christine's been practicing as a ballerina/chorus girl post her father's death, and a few years before that more likely.)
Ten more years does not strike me as breaking her into this person, or making her be all bitterly self-righteous at the crazy, selfish, megalomaniac, genius she's shielding . Which also makes it hard for me to even care about her one-eighty again on the pier at the end. I'm so disconnected from her at the beginning that I'm just baffled of her by the end. Also. That she's doing that to her daughter. Uh. Right. Cuz that's in character.
- I was amazed at how vilified it could make Raoul in the space of 'Christine's Disembark' and 'What A Dreadful Town' and if it wasn't for 'Why Does She Love Me?' I would have been convinced they sucked out his brain and put an alien in his place, too. Not that all the traits Webber ascribed weren't normal for Lords of the time, both as men of town, husbands and fathers -- or that his characterization in PoTO is very thickly anything beyond "young, pretty, idealistic, lordling from Christine's past.' But still.
As a tick note, I don't think the person I've grown to see as being Raoul in PotO would ever have claimed even drunk, even lightly, especially to Meg Giri of all people, that he ever bested the Phantom. The only person in the whole of canon (both canon actual, and canon historical allusions made in it) who managed that was Christine. With a kiss.
-- I'm not sure I can touch that magical "once upon another time" and it's 'Moonless Night' without just wincing. That's--well, it's not exactly rewriting but it's surely sour and awkward and harder to believe than anything. And one can predict Gustave right from the moment of being told they slept together once upon a time, the night before her wedding, exactly ten years ago.
I want to say bad fanficers know better, but they don't. This whole part smacks of bad fanfic and midday soap opera writing.
- Let us also look at Meg. Why, oh, why, is a Meg who should be at least twenty-six or twenty-eight-ish fixated on the Phantom like he is her father? Or the object of her affection who can't see she exists? Logically, she's known of him for at least fifteen or twenty years, if not how deep her mother was in until the end of PotO.
I can not fault the situation twist really in the end. The Phantom was alluded to have done a million worse things in the first musical and its actual history and alluded previous parts, though that fact we're supposed to assume he didn't know this time -- that's just stupid and out of character. That her mom was selling her out to people does not smack of correct character for her mother. And that Meg was doing it.
This entire twist from it's first inception at the end of "Only For You," the whole of the paralleled whoring or fixating, just reads like it's from someone else entirely. I can not see it bothering him that much though either -- especially if, as we are led to believe, that he spent his first year in America in a cage, living off his deformity first, too. I just can't see him giving a damn then. Or really at all. (Except about Christine. Which is coherent and constant in his character in both musicals, at least.)
Von voyage, Meg, your whole character got screwed in these waters.
But then so did everyone else's.
Except Christine. Who simply simpers and begs for forgiveness, sings on stage and then dies on a pier. She has about as much autonomy in this musical as she did in the last. I am uncertain what the whole point of this was. I saw the point in PotO. I lived and loved it the entire seventeen years I trained as a soprano, and it is still my very favorite musical, one of my most tried and true childhood stories. This was just....I don't even know what it was.
Laughable?
We start at an unhappily ever after, and end at the same thing.
Without any real purpose in the middle and a lot less good singing.
I will possibly have more to make faces at later. I need to go buy fruits and vegetables for now.
Scroll Down for ranting and rambling as only a lifetime fangirl can!
Warnings for the fact I spoil everything!
- Did you castrate my Phantom? Seriously? He didn't kill anyone in this story. He didn't even threaten to kill anyone, or talk about having killed people before. He was nothing nearly as manipulative or malevolent as his self in the prior showing. And, even among the freaks who worked for him, no one appears to fear him.
Hello. Mrs. Giri of PotO very self-preservedly feared the Phantom even when she was loyal to him. He's all heart broken and fixated....and his characterization ends there? He was more than both of those, with them, last time. I want my blood shed and big fire and things which I should be assure by the Phantom being in this piece.
You erased, without so much as a nod, the opposing part in the dual nature of the singular most potent figure of my baby girlhood fantasies.
- I'm not sure I can even get into the topic of Mrs. Giri. She. This. Brain swapping alien would have looked more this part. Bitter and angry and greedy and feeling the Phantom owed her and/or Meg. I can't even put these traits beside herself of the previous musical. I'm sorry. Just no. And no. And no.
I'm sorry the woman in the first one wouldn't have wanted to be noticed long enough singularly to get whatever due the Phantom would feel someone owed from him.She'd already obviously been in cahoots/underling/cohort/etc with him a long time when we see them in Paris Opera House. (At least as long as Christine's been practicing as a ballerina/chorus girl post her father's death, and a few years before that more likely.)
Ten more years does not strike me as breaking her into this person, or making her be all bitterly self-righteous at the crazy, selfish, megalomaniac, genius she's shielding . Which also makes it hard for me to even care about her one-eighty again on the pier at the end. I'm so disconnected from her at the beginning that I'm just baffled of her by the end. Also. That she's doing that to her daughter. Uh. Right. Cuz that's in character.
- I was amazed at how vilified it could make Raoul in the space of 'Christine's Disembark' and 'What A Dreadful Town' and if it wasn't for 'Why Does She Love Me?' I would have been convinced they sucked out his brain and put an alien in his place, too. Not that all the traits Webber ascribed weren't normal for Lords of the time, both as men of town, husbands and fathers -- or that his characterization in PoTO is very thickly anything beyond "young, pretty, idealistic, lordling from Christine's past.' But still.
As a tick note, I don't think the person I've grown to see as being Raoul in PotO would ever have claimed even drunk, even lightly, especially to Meg Giri of all people, that he ever bested the Phantom. The only person in the whole of canon (both canon actual, and canon historical allusions made in it) who managed that was Christine. With a kiss.
-- I'm not sure I can touch that magical "once upon another time" and it's 'Moonless Night' without just wincing. That's--well, it's not exactly rewriting but it's surely sour and awkward and harder to believe than anything. And one can predict Gustave right from the moment of being told they slept together once upon a time, the night before her wedding, exactly ten years ago.
I want to say bad fanficers know better, but they don't. This whole part smacks of bad fanfic and midday soap opera writing.
- Let us also look at Meg. Why, oh, why, is a Meg who should be at least twenty-six or twenty-eight-ish fixated on the Phantom like he is her father? Or the object of her affection who can't see she exists? Logically, she's known of him for at least fifteen or twenty years, if not how deep her mother was in until the end of PotO.
I can not fault the situation twist really in the end. The Phantom was alluded to have done a million worse things in the first musical and its actual history and alluded previous parts, though that fact we're supposed to assume he didn't know this time -- that's just stupid and out of character. That her mom was selling her out to people does not smack of correct character for her mother. And that Meg was doing it.
This entire twist from it's first inception at the end of "Only For You," the whole of the paralleled whoring or fixating, just reads like it's from someone else entirely. I can not see it bothering him that much though either -- especially if, as we are led to believe, that he spent his first year in America in a cage, living off his deformity first, too. I just can't see him giving a damn then. Or really at all. (Except about Christine. Which is coherent and constant in his character in both musicals, at least.)
Von voyage, Meg, your whole character got screwed in these waters.
But then so did everyone else's.
Except Christine. Who simply simpers and begs for forgiveness, sings on stage and then dies on a pier. She has about as much autonomy in this musical as she did in the last. I am uncertain what the whole point of this was. I saw the point in PotO. I lived and loved it the entire seventeen years I trained as a soprano, and it is still my very favorite musical, one of my most tried and true childhood stories. This was just....I don't even know what it was.
Laughable?
We start at an unhappily ever after, and end at the same thing.
Without any real purpose in the middle and a lot less good singing.
I will possibly have more to make faces at later. I need to go buy fruits and vegetables for now.