To be fair, I think it's more the case that in the musical her story about the Phantom is left implicit, as it were (she does sort of summarise what happened to her, but the audience have already seen it happen, whereas in the novel this is the big explanation of all the weirdness that has been puzzling the readers along with Raoul). So a long explanation scene is omitted for the sake of running time, and she just gives a few vague descriptions before they launch into "All I Ask of You", which from a musical point of view is the whole purpose of this scene (and the necessary trigger for the chandelier fall).
I read somewhere -- and remember being surprised at the time to learn -- that "All I Ask of You", *not* the title song, was apparently the first number that Lloyd Webber came up with for the show, and the one that he was going round showing people who were getting excited over it and saying it was going to be a hit. So Christine and Raoul's love was central to the "Phantom" concept from the very beginning...
Hertha is definitely 'the sensible one' -- and occasionally resents it ;-p
Having Raoul and Christine actually injured in the chandelier fall seemed like a promising idea -- but like so much else, it can't have any major plot repercussions, because all the scenes I've imagined for the story, including the climax, rely on events having played out more or less exactly as in canon previously :-(
It's not so much a question of staleness for the readers as of the fact that I've already done at least three 'parallel to canon' retellings: "If I Were Vicomte", where the whole gimmick is that Raoul not being a Vicomte doesn't help him in the least, "Christmas as it ought not to be", which gets around the issue by featuring three pre-canon Christmases and one post-canon, and "Blue Remembered Hills", where I was horribly constrained by the necessity of pre-ordained plot points and having to invent a B7 equivalent, rather than letting events play out according to the characters' actions -- and vowed never to do a 'retelling' again!
The other issue is that, while the fandom apparently loves the retelling trope, it seems to me that there are an *awful* lot of fanfics out there already in which a more 'sensible' female OC is inserted into the story in order to fix everything (or as a superior alternative to Christine for the Phantom's benefit) :-(
I thought Hertha seemed like an interesting concept at the start, too, which was why I set out to write it with such enthusiasm; I'm just not convinced how much potential it's actually got in practice, as opposed to the idea of its being a thrillingly angst-filled premise. I mean all you've really got is the viewpoint of an outsider looking on -- as opposed to the "The Daaé Case", where the outside observer's presence not only gives us a fresh perspective on the canon characters, but inherently derails the existing plot to produce a very different set of events.
no subject
I read somewhere -- and remember being surprised at the time to learn -- that "All I Ask of You", *not* the title song, was apparently the first number that Lloyd Webber came up with for the show, and the one that he was going round showing people who were getting excited over it and saying it was going to be a hit. So Christine and Raoul's love was central to the "Phantom" concept from the very beginning...
Hertha is definitely 'the sensible one' -- and occasionally resents it ;-p
Having Raoul and Christine actually injured in the chandelier fall seemed like a promising idea -- but like so much else, it can't have any major plot repercussions, because all the scenes I've imagined for the story, including the climax, rely on events having played out more or less exactly as in canon previously :-(
It's not so much a question of staleness for the readers as of the fact that I've already done at least three 'parallel to canon' retellings: "If I Were Vicomte", where the whole gimmick is that Raoul not being a Vicomte doesn't help him in the least, "Christmas as it ought not to be", which gets around the issue by featuring three pre-canon Christmases and one post-canon, and "Blue Remembered Hills", where I was horribly constrained by the necessity of pre-ordained plot points and having to invent a B7 equivalent, rather than letting events play out according to the characters' actions -- and vowed never to do a 'retelling' again!
The other issue is that, while the fandom apparently loves the retelling trope, it seems to me that there are an *awful* lot of fanfics out there already in which a more 'sensible' female OC is inserted into the story in order to fix everything (or as a superior alternative to Christine for the Phantom's benefit) :-(
I thought Hertha seemed like an interesting concept at the start, too, which was why I set out to write it with such enthusiasm; I'm just not convinced how much potential it's actually got in practice, as opposed to the idea of its being a thrillingly angst-filled premise. I mean all you've really got is the viewpoint of an outsider looking on -- as opposed to the "The Daaé Case", where the outside observer's presence not only gives us a fresh perspective on the canon characters, but inherently derails the existing plot to produce a very different set of events.