This needs to be the climax to the whole story and hit like a hammer, and after quite a lot of tweaking I'm still not sure that it does. (Or that the thought-process behind Hertha's final conclusion is clear, which is something that was worrying me when I originally wrote this section, over a year ago -- I see that I have just been through exactly the same process of trying to fit more explanation into the ending of the chapter and then taking it all out again because it wasn't working!)

This is the scene that I was envisaging from the start as the main point of the story, and it's just got to work...

Chapter 14 — “Tell Him How You Feel”

It was from Christine Daaé that I heard the true story of what happened that night — Christine Daaé, bedraggled and defiant in the great salon at the Hôtel Chagny, and still wearing the remains of the white dress into which the Ghost had forced her in a mockery of marriage. She had both hands braced on the back of the couch on which Raoul lay; the doctor had been, and gone, and left behind a sedative draught which she had refused to take, just as she had mutely shaken her head at the offer of more seemly clothing. But the Vicomte, his principal patient, had submitted in exhaustion to the doctor’s ministrations, and had now succumbed to a deep and most merciful slumber in front of a roaring fire in the salon, while his own bedchamber was being prepared. ( Read more... )

Compiled from all the various character/plot discussions I've had on "Philippe Takes a Hand" (a sizeable number!)

( Being a mistress versus being a wife )

( The reputation of opera singers )

( Why don't they simply elope? )

( Sexual issues )

( Continuity )

( Marriage )

( Adult life together )

( Raoul and Philippe )

( Eustacie )

( Fandom reception )

Current Mood: accomplished

Having an all-female graveyard scene definitely changes the dynamic here (and forces Christine to take a more active part)...

Chapter 11 — “You Betrayed Me”

It was, as I’d suspected, not “La Reine de Navarre” but the Ghost’s self-proclaimed opera “Don Juan Triumphant” that was under rehearsal. It was strange and monstrously difficult to sing, Christine explained, and hazarded a hesitant opinion that it was “no doubt very clever”, from which I was able to draw my own conclusions.

( Read more... )

Chapter 9 of Hertha was possibly the least successful to date, having been posted for weeks on both fanfiction.net and AO3 and garnering a grand total of zero reviews on either :-( (Either my 'regular reviewers' didn't like the chapter, or else they were away -- I am fairly certain that the FFnet reviewer hasn't even read it, because her country wasn't showing up at all in the stats, and the sample size is so small that I can usually identify individual non-Americans...)

However despite the lack of incentive I did finish typing up and tweaking Chapter 10, in which Hertha ends up giving Christine a lift to her father's grave; I had some trouble splitting these scenes, so we've got half a chapter here and then the rest of the graveyard adventure in the next chapter.

Chapter 10 — “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again”

I had grumbled over the chill and discomforts of Beauvais. It was hard to admit, even to myself, that my father’s familiar apartments on the Place Clignot-les-Pins seemed to have grown narrow and dark and constricted after the space and luxury I’d grown used to in the Hôtel Chagny as a Vicomte’s wife. Father was glad to see me, and grateful for the company, but there was a constraint between us that had not been there before, and my thickening body was only yet another reminder that I was no longer the girl who’d left this house for her wedding over a year ago.

The childhood books that had once held comfort were battered now and more shabby than I’d remembered, torn pages a sharp reminder of how Rudi and I had once squabbled over their possession. The French novels I’d been reading at nineteen, when I’d thought myself so sophisticated, had lost their glamour and revealed themselves as shallow and foolish or cynical by turns. My bedroom had not changed since last I lived here —though I shared it now, as I’d suspected, with an overflow of boxes from my father’s study that he’d failed to find space for elsewhere— but it felt as if it had belonged to someone else entirely.

( Read more... )

I have decided to standardise -- three years after initially worrying about it! -- on 'Miss Daaé' rather than Mademoiselle Daaé for Christine, save for those occasions when she is addressed simply as 'mademoiselle'. Perhaps not entirely logical in conjunction with the various other usages of titles (Monsieur, Madame, monsieur le Marquis), but it was the variant that sounded better in context. I can always alter it the other way if essential.

(Noting the change here for my own future reference!)

( Chapter 26 )

Five- and six-thousand-word chapters are definitely not a good idea, from the point of view of getting them typed and proofread... Here at last is the Masquerade that should have been posted weeks ago.

( Hertha's costume mask )

Chapter 8 — “Why So Silent, Good Messieurs?”

The great foyer of the Opera Populaire was filled with bright silks and fantastical costumes, as if some exotic stage production had spilled out from the auditorium and taken over the building with a cast of thousands. Masked figures were to be found gossiping in alcoves or pausing to exchange greetings on the grand staircase, and aging devils in tights and red horns danced together with angels whose wired wings were bobbing across plump shoulders beneath their haloes of gold foil. A Julius Caesar with a lopsided laurel wreath was conducting a flirtation with a demure Diana, who was fending off his attempts to lift her mask with reproving taps from the silver bow and quiver she bore. Waiters circulated amid the throng, and the orchestra ensconced in a corner behind red velvet ropes could be seen to refresh themselves from time to time in a less decorous fashion from brown bottles.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: tired

Just over six thousand words, in the end -- almost exactly the same as Chapter 4. I haven't made any attempt to unwind the *two* flashback/framing device set-ups in this chapter, although I did try to make it a bit more clear when we finally caught up to the present again. I think the only 'present-day' passage in the entire chapter is the brief one between the return to "she had felt afraid to show her face in the street" and the section following "as I observed to Raoul in the early hours of that evening" -- the course of the actual conversation with Madame Firmin, and only that :-(

Chapter 7 — “It Will Be At Midsummer”

It was months before I set foot again in the Opera Populaire. Indeed, there was gossip abroad that the opera would never reopen; that the cost of repairs would be too great, and audiences would never return to the scene of a disaster so widely reported in such lurid terms. Raoul had tried to keep the illustrations in the papers from me, but I had seen them: images of screaming women holding aloft their infants, and dying men at one another’s throats. It was all fanciful, so far as I could tell — certainly there had been no babes in arms, nor any other women that I had seen amid the crowd in the pit, where the crush in ordinary times was unsuitable for skirts, and where the panic had been at its worst — but to my knowledge at least three people had died, and the reality of it had been nightmarish enough. The outcry against the management was immense, and poor Madame Firmin confided to me that she had felt compelled to retire to the country to avoid the opprobrium.

( Read more... )

Finally, chapter 6. (There have been a total of 27 hits since I posted chapter 5, although I don't know how many of those actually got as far as the new chapter).

I *am* pleased with the 'Music of the Night' paragraph... (darkness that sang with a thousand voices like the stars).

Chapter 6 — “He’ll Stop at Nothing”

The story came out of Christine first hesitantly, under Raoul’s incisive questioning, and then in a stumbling rush. Some of it I did not learn until much later; at some things of which she would not speak I only ever guessed.

Perhaps she herself did not know the depths of her heart, or shrank to lay them open. I never asked her — though I often wondered, in the months afterwards — if she had suspected that every word she let slip that night would go straight to the ears of the one who had perpetrated upon her the deception she described, and who would regard her appeal for help as an unforgivable betrayal.

Christine did not tell us everything. But what she did say was enough to bring down disaster upon the Opera House and upon those of us present on that roof, herself most of all.

( Read more... )

Unusually I ended up deleting several sentences from this chapter altogether rather than editing them, because I decided they were just unnecessary -- I remember thinking that the subtext in the chapter was very clever at the time, but it may have been a little too clever for its own good, because after a year or so's delay I can no longer remember myself exactly what all the characters were supposed to be assuming respectively about what was going on :-(

I note that Meg somehow turns up in the corps de ballet after the quick scene change despite supposedly being dressed for a walk-on part (did she execute an incredibly quick change into block shoes and tutu?) -- I suspect that's left over from the movie, where Meg is in the cast but *not*, so far as I remember, in the Act 3 ballet, and possibly I ought to change either the one reference or the other... The trouble is that I'm reluctant to lose either, which is simply authorial laziness!

[Edit: time for some more cuts, I think, to make credible Hertha's momentary assumption that Christine is talking about Raoul when she says 'he' will never let her go -- and to omit the whole paragraph about Raoul looking relieved to have their embrace interrupted. We've already got Hertha saying that he basically looked trapped rather than guilty, and it makes more sense of her assumption that Christine is running away from her as a result.

Edit: no, we need something in there, or it makes no sense that Hertha accepts his protective behaviour at the end of the chapter without feeling betrayed by it.]

Chapter 5 — “An Accident... Simply an Accident”

It was another opening night. Another glittering, chattering crowd, with the orchestra playing a well-worn warhorse of an overture: Albrizzio’s “Il Muto” had been a staple feature at opera houses across Europe for over eighty years, since the days when Italian opera reigned supreme. The new management was playing it safe in their choice of programme, and to judge by the packed house tonight it had been a prudent decision. ( Read more... )

Current Mood: anxious

I finally (delayed by typing two longish chapters of Arctic Raoul, and by the fact that it takes a depressingly long time to sit and listen to six thousand words being read out to you in computer tones -- it turns out that during my manual count I managed to pass the 4000 mark *twice*...) finished editing the next chapter of Hertha. Meanwhile someone unsubscribed from the story on AO3...

Chapter 4 — “She Won’t Thank You For It”

Befriending Christine Daaé was like trying to tame a wild creature, all wide eyes and nervous limbs. I remembered, ruefully, how she had laughed with Raoul; set myself to pay a call or two upon her and draw her out.

Her father had been an accomplished concert violinist who’d performed his own virtuoso compositions before the crowned heads of Europe, and played by request for no fewer than three Emperors: Franz Josef in Vienna, the distant Russian Czar, and Napoleon III who had called himself Emperor of France. But that was a long time ago now, while Christine, of an age with Raoul and myself, had clearly been the daughter of his declining years. The favour of kings was proverbially fickle, and I did not suppose old Daaé’s savings had amounted to much by the time he died.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: depressed

I think I've worked out a reasonable backstory for Christine in the context of Hertha's story. (Confusingly, I started rereading Stephen King's "Christine", which of course puts the name into a rather different context!)
( whooping-cough )

Meanwhile we've acquired another OC and some backstory for Christine's parents; ( Lisotte )

I got another five minutes' access to fanfiction.net for some reason (I tried it yet again and it just happened to work for once), and was able to 'evacuate' the reviews for four more of my stories -- and then go back and delete the Critics United spam on the local files once access was cut off again! I never attempted to delete the hundreds of spam reviews from the actual site, but since it's trivially easy simply to snip the text out of the files I don't see any point in retaining it for my reference here...
Sixteen stories done -- out of forty-six.

(And I discovered that it has been so long now that fanfiction.net has logged me out, not entirely to my surprise -- but I should think the chances of my being able to log in again are pretty much zero, so I'm no longer likely to get access to my traffic stats or past PMs, for example.)
( feedback on AO3 versus fanfiction.net )

Current Mood: tired

Based on my activities of the last couple of days, my instinct is clearly to keep tweaking and re-shading chapter 2 to try to fit it into this one, rather than to edit what I've written here, so I may as well publish it as it stands... ( Problems with chapter 2 )

It occurs to me at the last minute that I'm not only going to need a story title, I'm also going to need a chapter title if I publish the first chapter before finishing the rest! However, thanks to the way fanfiction.net displays its navigation, any separate title for the first chapter doesn't really show up until a second and subsequent chapter exists to be differentiated from it, so I can more or less get away with leaving brainstorming for chapter titles until the story is complete, as usual. (Or even the decision on whether to have chapter titles or not; I didn't use them for the drabble-fic, after all.)

[2022: slight edit to first line to establish the first-person protagonist right from the start]

An Outsider and a Foreigner

Raoul was bound to recognise Christine when once he heard her sing. But things have changed... for both of them.

The Opera House was [as] full tonight [as I'd ever seen it, and as magnificent]. Light blazed back from the hanging lustres of the great chandelier and the glitter of tiaras and bracelets in the crowd below, and slid around the golden curves of statues and rounded white throats as girls leaned from their seats in the boxes, or waved up from beside duennas as they took their place in the stalls. Rich swags of plasterwork bedecked walls and pilasters, and gowns bore draped silks and flounces tumbling over ornate brocade. Uniforms were everywhere and decorations glistened on the breasts of dignitaries. Gold chains stretched across expansive waistcoats, and amid the heat of crowded bodies and of gaslight foreheads were surreptitiously mopped. Up on the stage, the heavy red velvet of the curtains remained firmly closed, but the orchestra continued to saw doggedly away at the overture, all but inaudible amid the buzz of conversation.

I suspected Raoul was one of the few people even likely to be listening. ( Read more... )

All right, I finally got round to watching the 2004 "Phantom of the Opera" movie, and...ouch. ( Read more... )

Current Mood: pessimistic

I have finally finished typing up "The Writing on the Wall". So here, to celebrate ~~(and completely un-corrected, so everything up to and including the summary is subject to change)~~, is the first half of what came out as a two-chapter story.

The Writing on the Wall

Chained and alone in the cells of the Communards, Raoul reaches into the past for a final act of defiance.

Ch1: Imprisonment

Raoul choked on blackness, gulped again for air he could not find, and knew in some fast-shrinking core of awareness that this was the end. The battering waters, the iron tree, his own drowning struggles had all become — in one final mercy — very distant. He was twenty years old. He could not die...

Christine. A lightning-bolt of memory through the dark, in one last agonized convulsion. And then the flicker was swallowed, and went out.

( Read more... )

Right, I've *finally* finished rewriting the first half of Plot Point Fifteen; Stefan and Raoul are both far less seriously injured by Erik than was previously implied (in particular, Raoul still has full use of his previously-wounded arm as and when it suits me), nobody fires a gun, I've gone back to the old plot where the two of them are in a Male Conspiracy to keep Christine out of danger instead of having her kept occupied by trying to resuscitate Stefan, and as a last-minute decision Erik *does* assault Raoul after all, but only very briefly, so I don't have to worry about keeping it quiet. ( Read more... )

At least I'm finally writing *new* material, which is an inexpressible relief. I can actually feel the ideas bubbling up and chaining on to the anticipated plot in advance, which is precisely how it's supposed to work, instead of desperately trying to hack out stale stuff.

The rewritten version is an improvement, though. It gets rid of the plot elements I was increasingly unhappy about and gets back to the originally intended feel of the scene -- there were a few character moments I'm a little sorry to lose, but they weren't worth the plot machinations required to lead to them.

(Plot Point Fifteen is practically worthy of a tag of its own by this point...)

( Deleted scenes )

Current Mood: relieved

Finished uploading the full drabble-fic. It really needs a better summary, since this one isn't going to draw in anyone save those who read all new uploaded POTO stories (probably most of the surviving readers in that fandom, I suspect; posting levels seem to gave gone down in the last couple of years) or those who are prepared to read anything with my name on it...

Part of the problem was that the opening chapter was designed to be deliberately ambiguous (which creates naming problems further on!) and therefore when uploading the initial section I didn't want to give too much away. But you have to give people some reason to read.

Coming back

A life in vignettes.

She grew up in a little town in Sweden a long way from the sea, and there was never any thought in her mind that she might leave. And for all her love of music, how could she guess that it would weave through every sorrow and joy in the long years to come?

Yet it would take her far from the steep wooden houses and streets of her birth, through the great cities of Europe and even out to Brittany's desolate shores. And in the end, memories and love would bring her back to the simpler music of home.

~o~

( chapters 2–11 )

Due to time constraints (I only started this about three days before the deadline!) I ended up uploading the drabbles in four chunks, which certainly produced some interesting traffic stats. With hindsight I suspect it would have been better to upload each fresh set as a single chapter -- especially as they have no identifying titles -- since fanfiction.net doesn't allow the reader to jump to the last unread chapter but only to the latest. And again, the reason why I didn't was that I wanted that first chapter to stand on its own with no 'giveaways' that it wasn't Christine...

( viewing patterns )

I think I've got the timing problem with Plot Point Fifteen more or less sorted out by having Christine dealing with the wounded man (since Stefan is now actually injured by the Punjab cord, instead of its being a near miss) while Raoul has his initial talk with Erik. She can hear what is going on but Erik, having collapsed after the expenditure of strength in that final reflex attack, isn't aware of her presence. If Erik ends up dangling over the edge of the bed, that provides a motive for Raoul to take hold of his legs at some point...

Still worried about this scene. I need to get on to the dialogue, I need to do it well, and it has to be plausible. I'm not all that happy with the 'travelling' chapters (unsurprisingly), but I can get away with a slight sag there if there's a blistering finale.

Still working my way through plot point 12 -- Philippe is a little less inclined to consent instantly than I assumed he would be, but he and Christine both currently seem to be regarding Raoul as an impulsive junior in need of protection, which is at least common ground, even if not quite the character dynamic I was going for.
(And after all, the last Philippe heard of this proposed match was when Raoul was sobbing into his shoulder back in plot point 2 -- in December 2017, eek! -- so he is entitled to ask Christine for reassurance that she doesn't intend to ditch his little brother again :-p)

I was going through my Christine/Erik chapters ( Read more... )And despite the labour those chapters cost me (although nothing like the trouble I would have with subsequent ones!) they look pretty good now, reading back over them a year or so later.

I've had hits on every single story on my fanfiction.net profile for a third month running. No idea how long this streak is likely to last -- it happened early again this month -- but while it does it's not worth noting all the statistics individually :-p

Current Mood: cheerful

The fact that Raoul and Christine don't actually know that Philippe still believes him dead (not having opened the telegram dispatched from Paris in the last chapter, nor indeed any post for weeks) means that this chapter, being told from Christine's point of view, has ended up with a rather different slant so far from the one I was expecting. For her the anticipated tension is all about the coming confrontation with the Comte and getting his consent for their marriage, and the focus is very much on her arrival for the first time at the chateau as Raoul's intended bride. It's getting distinctly historical-romance-ish at the moment; "The Vicomte of the Opera" strikes again :-D

Meanwhile, having started the chapter on the train from Paris (all that railway research did come in after all), I still haven't managed to reach the second sentence of Plot Point 12...

What I hadn't considered is that Raoul has to arrive and traverse most of the house without realising that everyone in it presumes him dead; the fact that he is still bearded and wearing the travelling clothes he acquired from a Norwegian seaman in Tromso proved unexpectedly useful, since Christine can put down any consternation that appears in their wake, as Raoul rushes her off to see Philippe, as being due to the household simply not recognising him and taking him for an intruder! (The beard also means that it's credible that the vast majority of the servants haven't recognised him in passing as the 'drowned' younger brother, and therefore aren't reacting with screams and horror :-p)

Current Mood: sleepy

Missing scenes from F de L'Opera's Tumblr posts cut and pasted here (so that I can link to them from the original post!)
( Raoul's proposal )
( Sorelli and the Count and Christine )

Current Mood: exhausted

Summary post of all the surviving material on my long-pending "Double Agents de Chagny" WW2 AU story, prompted by betweensunandmoon:

(extracts from an email conversation - with text emoticons :-p)

17 Sep 2013
I am seriously tempted by Pika-la-cynique's throwaway suggestion of a Paris-based Second World War version "featuring the Double Agents de Chagny playing collaborateurs and hosting champagne parties for the Nazi top brass, while secretly in touch with the Phantom, explosives expert and leader of the underground sabotage movement, reluctant allies for La Cause..."

Well, 'tempted' isn't the word. The possibilities are there all right, but I simply don't know enough about the setting (and more importantly [eyes] its mythology: not what *really* happened, but the heroic tropes) to write it. I can't use a supply of gangster/pirate movie references, swashbuckler conventions, background stage experience, basic social mores or re-reading of the source material (because, being AU, there *isn't* any) to provide standard plot themes for Occupied France, and don't know enough about daily life under those conditions to sketch in the background. But tantalisingly, I know just enough to have vague ideas of the potential ("Scarlet Pimpernel" meets "Colditz")... and to realise that, given the possibly explosive effects of fiddling with a sore point in someone else's history, it would need an awful lot of research! ( first thoughts )

( Research on Occupation-era Paris )

( initial suggestions for the story )

( Raoul's backstory )

( Christine and the Phantom in cabaret )

( Philippe's death )

7 Jan 2019
The other bit I remember that doesn't seem to be mentioned here anywhere is that (as hinted above) it was actually a shot-down English airman being smuggled in the bed of the lorry, they take him back to the flat for the night, he gets Christine's luxurious marital bedroom, and Christine and Raoul end up in Raoul's single bed in the dressing-room together :-p

Current Mood: exhausted

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Chapter 14 — “Tell Him How You Feel”

Chapter 11 — “You Betrayed Me”

Chapter 10 — “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again”

Chapter 8 — “Why So Silent, Good Messieurs?”

Chapter 7 — “It Will Be At Midsummer”

Chapter 6 — “He’ll Stop at Nothing”

Chapter 5 — “An Accident... Simply an Accident”

Chapter 4 — “She Won’t Thank You For It”

An Outsider and a Foreigner

The Writing on the Wall

Ch1: Imprisonment

Coming back

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