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igenlodeAfter my recent throwaway comment (à propos Christine's hostile reaction after Raoul's renunciation letter) to the effect that if Raoul had taken Gustave then a lot of tragedy all round would have been avoided, I ended up -- somewhat to my disbelief/dismay -- getting more LND plot nibbles...
I'd have to be careful, because this is actually a plotline I've seen done in fan-fiction, albeit in a somewhat different vein. (Raoul flees with Gustave after Christine is shot, but Christine miraculously survives and (of course) sets up a happy home with the Phantom who generously adopts Raoul's baby which she happens to be carrying at the time -- the only thing lacking being Gustave, who spends the rest of the epic-length story finding his own way to America and eventually reuniting with his real parents, Raoul having meanwhile been driven to suicide in the belief that his son is dead in a house fire -- courtesy of the Phantom. (A death that the story in question still hasn't addressed, forty-plus chapters further on, for all its Phantom/Gustave angst...))
In my case, the necessary 'second idea' for plot intersection was the concept that Raoul might have written a different letter (another possibility I've touched on in the past; there was so much he could have said in that letter and didn't, either for reasons of plot convenience, running-time, or -- if you want to be generous -- honourable reasons). What if he had told her about the bet, and given that as the reason why he was leaving: "not because I lost the bet, for I would have fought for you to my last dying breath, but for the wrong I did you in ever making it at all")
And/or a little vision of Raoul and Gustave together in a hire-carriage on their way to the docks, with Raoul saying that Christine hates him now -- Gustave insisting that of course she doesn't -- Raoul saying grimly that she will once she reads that letter.
Part of the problem I have with this as a story concept is that, most unusually, I'm not sure what order things would need to be shown in. Do we open with Christine reading the letter as a canon starting-point? Do we open with the carriage ride? Or do we frame the whole thing in flashback and open with my other idea for the plot, that Christine comes back to Raoul's house seven years later, in 1914, with the news that the Phantom has died (some kind of injury trauma linked to that massive protruding brain ;-p)
Then we have Act II, which is Christine and Raoul's anguished dance around each other in the light of all that has gone between. Shame -- social stigma (has he divorced her? I don't think the Phantom married her, but she has been living with him and performing for him very publically in America under her maiden name) -- hurt feelings on both sides. Another part of my problem is that Raoul can't make up his mind whether he is the aggrieved party or not; he resents her for her adultery and assumed emotional betrayal in the years preceding, yet, as she points out, it was actually he who left her -- abandoned her penniless in America and explicitly pushed her into the Phantom's arms with that final message, without giving her the slightest say in the matter.
Another piece of irony: Raoul wins back another fortune while gambling on the boat back to France. ("Lucky at cards, unlucky in love"; one last coup when he no longer cares. What happens to the original owner of the fortune? Suicide? Something shocks Raoul out of any further desire to play...)
Contrary to my original comment, I don't see an easy or a happy ending for this, I'm afraid. Christine isn't going to be able to come easily back into Raoul's life, even if she is appealing to him for help not as his wife but as his oldest friend; he has spent seven years in walling her off emotionally (he hasn't had any affairs, even if he felt morally free to do so; it has taken everything he has just to survive). What is Gustave's attitude to both parents by this point, and how much does he remember?
(It occurs to me as I write that this situation is actually a parallel to all the POTO fan-fiction stories depicting a repentant Christine seeking out her 'Angel' after the end of her marriage to Raoul, either after the convenient death of the latter or, more commonly, after his transfiguration into an abusive monster!)
The other thing that needs to be dealt with -- again, possibly not chronologically -- is the confrontation between Raoul and the Phantom, who will stop the vehicle before they leave Coney Island. (Again, how does the timing for this work out? When does Christine discover Gustave 'missing' so that the Phantom can set out? Does Raoul get the boy away from Meg or is this an AU where she doesn't take him until after Christine's song has started? And London or Australian version?)
Raoul has every right legally to keep the boy whom he acknowledges as his son -- no court in France or America would allow an adulterous mother to expose her child to her corrupting influence, let alone in such a place as Coney Island. The bet was over Christine; nothing was said about Gustave being included in the bargain. ("You leave alone", though...?) But the Phantom could simply kill Raoul there and then, take the boy, and frankly no-one would particularly care -- the French Embassy aren't going to start an international incident if the bankrupt Vicomte de Chagny and his son go to New York and disappear.
How much argument can actually take place in front of Gustave, anyway? Is he asleep? Chloroformed as a prelude to kidnap? No, because his reaction is the only thing that is likely to sway the Phantom's mind into letting them go: "are you going to kill me in front of his eyes?" Gustave of course clings to the father he knows and not to the man from whom he has already fled screaming and who has attacked their carriage; the only plausible angle of escape is to get the Phantom back into "swear to me that he must never, never know" mode. I still find it hard to see how he's going to face Christine with the explanation that she's the only one he really cares about, so he let their son go, happy in the knowledge that he simply exists somewhere... and if I don't find the idea credible, the pro-Phantom readers certainly aren't going to.
And what exactly has Raoul told Gustave? Presumably, initially at least, that his mother will be coming later -- that she has to stay and sing (for this performance? For a few more weeks?) since the boy is naturally going to want to know why Christine isn't coming with them and the truth is practically impossible to explain anyway, let alone being unlikely to help get Gustave to co-operate. So what is Gustave's reaction to whatever details the Phantom reveals? I'm really not sure this confrontation works with Gustave present (the same trouble I had with Christine and Raoul's intended heart-to-heart on the pier in "All the Rules Rearranged", which ended up with them going off to a lodging-house instead so that they could talk after Gustave was asleep). And yet he's got to be present, both for reasons of practical plausibility and so that his intervention can swing the day...
This sort of thing is why I'm not feeling too happy about this idea as a story :-(
Ending: I had a vague thought that Raoul was going to get unexpectedly run over in the street or something in order to curtail the situation tragically, but if we take the Great War into account -- always a problem with LND-future stories -- then we can simply kill him off in that :-( And it puts an additional strain into their meeting; Raoul has a seventeen-year-old son and is about to go off to war himself. The old wounds of his personal relationship with Christine are really not something he has time for right now.
I had a hazy image of Gustave and Christine -- who have tensions of their own -- meeting and reuniting over the news of the death. And the idea of a second letter works well; something that Raoul prepared before going on active service, to be sent to Christine in the event of his demise. The story would then be called something like "The Two Letters", with the eponymous letters bracketing the action.
Hmm, I've got a lot of material on this, but I'm really not sure it's writable :-(
War notes: pre-1914, conscription was mandatory at twenty-one and all those up to the age of 45 who had completed military service were called up by 1915 after heavy losses early in the war.
1914 uniform: red képis, blue coats and red trousers. By late spring 1915, replaced by bleu horizon uniform. One field kitchen per 200 men. Tinned meat ration known as singe, bread, salt fish. Daily ration of crude red wine (pinard). Troops expected to carry clothing, bedding, food and wine, equipment and ammunition (40kg pack). French trenches suffered disproportionately from poor hygiene (peasant soldiers?) Little organised leave; high casualty rates among officers (50% of pre-war officers dead by 1916).
Major mutiny at Verdun in April 1917 when men refused to continue repeated waves of disastrous offence (French military slogans "L'attaque à l'outrance", "L'audace, encore l'audace, toujours l'audace", "L'élan vital").
pioupiou -- nickname for a common soldier ("Tommy").
Uniforms: http://www.151ril.com/content/gear/1914
20% of the male population were casualties during the war, 7% killed.
I'd have to be careful, because this is actually a plotline I've seen done in fan-fiction, albeit in a somewhat different vein. (Raoul flees with Gustave after Christine is shot, but Christine miraculously survives and (of course) sets up a happy home with the Phantom who generously adopts Raoul's baby which she happens to be carrying at the time -- the only thing lacking being Gustave, who spends the rest of the epic-length story finding his own way to America and eventually reuniting with his real parents, Raoul having meanwhile been driven to suicide in the belief that his son is dead in a house fire -- courtesy of the Phantom. (A death that the story in question still hasn't addressed, forty-plus chapters further on, for all its Phantom/Gustave angst...))
In my case, the necessary 'second idea' for plot intersection was the concept that Raoul might have written a different letter (another possibility I've touched on in the past; there was so much he could have said in that letter and didn't, either for reasons of plot convenience, running-time, or -- if you want to be generous -- honourable reasons). What if he had told her about the bet, and given that as the reason why he was leaving: "not because I lost the bet, for I would have fought for you to my last dying breath, but for the wrong I did you in ever making it at all")
And/or a little vision of Raoul and Gustave together in a hire-carriage on their way to the docks, with Raoul saying that Christine hates him now -- Gustave insisting that of course she doesn't -- Raoul saying grimly that she will once she reads that letter.
Part of the problem I have with this as a story concept is that, most unusually, I'm not sure what order things would need to be shown in. Do we open with Christine reading the letter as a canon starting-point? Do we open with the carriage ride? Or do we frame the whole thing in flashback and open with my other idea for the plot, that Christine comes back to Raoul's house seven years later, in 1914, with the news that the Phantom has died (some kind of injury trauma linked to that massive protruding brain ;-p)
Then we have Act II, which is Christine and Raoul's anguished dance around each other in the light of all that has gone between. Shame -- social stigma (has he divorced her? I don't think the Phantom married her, but she has been living with him and performing for him very publically in America under her maiden name) -- hurt feelings on both sides. Another part of my problem is that Raoul can't make up his mind whether he is the aggrieved party or not; he resents her for her adultery and assumed emotional betrayal in the years preceding, yet, as she points out, it was actually he who left her -- abandoned her penniless in America and explicitly pushed her into the Phantom's arms with that final message, without giving her the slightest say in the matter.
Another piece of irony: Raoul wins back another fortune while gambling on the boat back to France. ("Lucky at cards, unlucky in love"; one last coup when he no longer cares. What happens to the original owner of the fortune? Suicide? Something shocks Raoul out of any further desire to play...)
Contrary to my original comment, I don't see an easy or a happy ending for this, I'm afraid. Christine isn't going to be able to come easily back into Raoul's life, even if she is appealing to him for help not as his wife but as his oldest friend; he has spent seven years in walling her off emotionally (he hasn't had any affairs, even if he felt morally free to do so; it has taken everything he has just to survive). What is Gustave's attitude to both parents by this point, and how much does he remember?
(It occurs to me as I write that this situation is actually a parallel to all the POTO fan-fiction stories depicting a repentant Christine seeking out her 'Angel' after the end of her marriage to Raoul, either after the convenient death of the latter or, more commonly, after his transfiguration into an abusive monster!)
The other thing that needs to be dealt with -- again, possibly not chronologically -- is the confrontation between Raoul and the Phantom, who will stop the vehicle before they leave Coney Island. (Again, how does the timing for this work out? When does Christine discover Gustave 'missing' so that the Phantom can set out? Does Raoul get the boy away from Meg or is this an AU where she doesn't take him until after Christine's song has started? And London or Australian version?)
Raoul has every right legally to keep the boy whom he acknowledges as his son -- no court in France or America would allow an adulterous mother to expose her child to her corrupting influence, let alone in such a place as Coney Island. The bet was over Christine; nothing was said about Gustave being included in the bargain. ("You leave alone", though...?) But the Phantom could simply kill Raoul there and then, take the boy, and frankly no-one would particularly care -- the French Embassy aren't going to start an international incident if the bankrupt Vicomte de Chagny and his son go to New York and disappear.
How much argument can actually take place in front of Gustave, anyway? Is he asleep? Chloroformed as a prelude to kidnap? No, because his reaction is the only thing that is likely to sway the Phantom's mind into letting them go: "are you going to kill me in front of his eyes?" Gustave of course clings to the father he knows and not to the man from whom he has already fled screaming and who has attacked their carriage; the only plausible angle of escape is to get the Phantom back into "swear to me that he must never, never know" mode. I still find it hard to see how he's going to face Christine with the explanation that she's the only one he really cares about, so he let their son go, happy in the knowledge that he simply exists somewhere... and if I don't find the idea credible, the pro-Phantom readers certainly aren't going to.
And what exactly has Raoul told Gustave? Presumably, initially at least, that his mother will be coming later -- that she has to stay and sing (for this performance? For a few more weeks?) since the boy is naturally going to want to know why Christine isn't coming with them and the truth is practically impossible to explain anyway, let alone being unlikely to help get Gustave to co-operate. So what is Gustave's reaction to whatever details the Phantom reveals? I'm really not sure this confrontation works with Gustave present (the same trouble I had with Christine and Raoul's intended heart-to-heart on the pier in "All the Rules Rearranged", which ended up with them going off to a lodging-house instead so that they could talk after Gustave was asleep). And yet he's got to be present, both for reasons of practical plausibility and so that his intervention can swing the day...
This sort of thing is why I'm not feeling too happy about this idea as a story :-(
Ending: I had a vague thought that Raoul was going to get unexpectedly run over in the street or something in order to curtail the situation tragically, but if we take the Great War into account -- always a problem with LND-future stories -- then we can simply kill him off in that :-( And it puts an additional strain into their meeting; Raoul has a seventeen-year-old son and is about to go off to war himself. The old wounds of his personal relationship with Christine are really not something he has time for right now.
I had a hazy image of Gustave and Christine -- who have tensions of their own -- meeting and reuniting over the news of the death. And the idea of a second letter works well; something that Raoul prepared before going on active service, to be sent to Christine in the event of his demise. The story would then be called something like "The Two Letters", with the eponymous letters bracketing the action.
Hmm, I've got a lot of material on this, but I'm really not sure it's writable :-(
War notes: pre-1914, conscription was mandatory at twenty-one and all those up to the age of 45 who had completed military service were called up by 1915 after heavy losses early in the war.
1914 uniform: red képis, blue coats and red trousers. By late spring 1915, replaced by bleu horizon uniform. One field kitchen per 200 men. Tinned meat ration known as singe, bread, salt fish. Daily ration of crude red wine (pinard). Troops expected to carry clothing, bedding, food and wine, equipment and ammunition (40kg pack). French trenches suffered disproportionately from poor hygiene (peasant soldiers?) Little organised leave; high casualty rates among officers (50% of pre-war officers dead by 1916).
Major mutiny at Verdun in April 1917 when men refused to continue repeated waves of disastrous offence (French military slogans "L'attaque à l'outrance", "L'audace, encore l'audace, toujours l'audace", "L'élan vital").
pioupiou -- nickname for a common soldier ("Tommy").
Uniforms: http://www.151ril.com/content/gear/1914
20% of the male population were casualties during the war, 7% killed.
