How I wish Love Never Dies had gone

[betweensunandmoon]

Imagine, if you will, an alternate universe where Love Never Dies still exists, but isn't quite like we know it...

Erik, after making a name for himself in vaudeville, is still pining away for Christine, and wonders if he would be happy had she stayed with him. Cue ballad full of regret and longing. He's been training a young singer—a replacement Christine, you might say—on the grounds that she never ask him about his past or attempt to see his face. She's developed feelings for her mentor, though he doesn't seem to return them. He actually does, but has never acted on those feelings—because, after all, she's not Christine.

When Erik hears that the renowned opera singer Christine de Chagny is coming to New York to give a special performance for Hammerstein, he can't resist the opportunity to see her again. And when he sees Christine—successful, happily married, and a mother—it becomes clear to him that he could never have made her as happy as she is now, and that he made the right choice in letting her go all those years ago. Cue duet between Erik and Christine about the choices they made or something like that. He realizes he now faces a similar choice with his new apprentice. Said apprentice, having met the de Chagnys and learned the truth about Erik's past, must decide whether to stay with him or abandon him.

Does it still sound like bad fanfic? Yes, but it doesn't warp Raoul and the Girys out of character, strip Erik of everything that made him sympathetic in the original, or make Christine a cheater. Which is something, at least.

Comments

[igenlode]

I think the 'bad fanfic' feel comes from the idea that Erik has *another* apprentice whom he falls for *again* and *still* doesn't allow to see his face...
I like the idea that the Other Woman actually learns about Erik's past from Christine (who, in this scenario, is presumably relatively well-disposed towards him, since the last time she saw him he repented and let her go) But I don't think you've got enough material -- or conflict -- for more than one act here; it would be a short epilogue to "Phantom", reaffirming the finale, rather than an entire show.

And one of the things that I thought was very effective in the original (and which I imagine was among Lloyd Webber's major visions for LND, since he was prepared to consciously mangle the timeline in order to make it possible) was the vision of the Phantom reigning in Coney Island as King of the Freaks -- the one place where oddity becomes a potential asset rather than a liability. Yes, it puts him in a pretty invidious situation vis-a-vis Christine, because he is still wallowing in self-pity despite the fact that having 'gone legitimate' he now has it all: money, obedience, power, respect, crowds eager to flock to his door, an acknowledged outlet for his creativity. But that reversal, in which the Phantom now *is* the management and the Chagnys are the outsiders without recourse, is at least an ingenious place to take the story. Having him as a successful impresario who can make or break a girl's career according to whether he notices her or not is a more original development then having him lurking in the shadows to try to push forward another 'face' for his voice.
And as you know, I found that effectively reversing the positions of Raoul and the Phantom is a ploy that can hold considerable dramatic potential -- it's not inherently a bad idea, it just needs more context and justification than 'we want to pair Christine off with the Phantom, so we'll give Raoul an arbitrary character change so she can ditch him".

(It would probably have been a better idea *not* to use Meg, as I believe was the initial intention, before someone advised that the show needed to be tied back more closely to the original in order to bring in the fans, and to have her role taken by a fresh character with a backstory of her own. Although the idea of having Meg torn between her former friendship with Christine and her new professional rivalry -- this is her One Big Chance, and Christine is taking it from her without even being consciously aware that she is stealing the limelight yet again -- is a dimension that would be harder to replicate between two other characters.)

[betweensunandmoon]

I like the idea that the Other Woman actually learns about Erik's past from Christine (who, in this scenario, is presumably relatively well-disposed towards him, since the last time she saw him he repented and let her go) But I don't think you've got enough material -- or conflict -- for more than one act here; it would be a short epilogue to "Phantom", reaffirming the finale, rather than an entire show.

You're probably right. What do you suggest adding, then?

And one of the things that I thought was very effective in the original (and which I imagine was among Lloyd Webber's major visions for LND, since he was prepared to consciously mangle the timeline in order to make it possible) was the vision of the Phantom reigning in Coney Island as King of the Freaks -- the one place where oddity becomes a potential asset rather than a liability. Yes, it puts him in a pretty invidious situation vis-a-vis Christine, because he is still wallowing in self-pity despite the fact that having 'gone legitimate' he now has it all: money, obedience, power, respect, crowds eager to flock to his door, an acknowledged outlet for his creativity. But that reversal, in which the Phantom now *is* the management and the Chagnys are the outsiders without recourse, is at least an ingenious place to take the story.

It is a good idea, when you put it like that, but the way it was executed just made all the characters look bad. :( What would you have done with it?

[igenlode]

I don't think you've got enough material -- or conflict -- for more than one act here; it would be a short epilogue to "Phantom", reaffirming the finale, rather than an entire show.

You're probably right. What do you suggest adding, then?

If I knew that, I'd have an entire plot waiting to be written! Something I can really do without right now -- I've already got the "Christine" Stephen King crossover idea plus the ghost of a "Sunset Boulevard idea" (and I'm not sure I can even remember the gist of that one, except that it was four(?) separate scenes, one for each character, with the canon ending averted and everybody thinks they're doing the right thing for everybody else, but it turns out Norma simply kills herself instead).

But you've probably heard me say already that 'it takes the intersection of two ideas to make a plot'; it's a favourite fiction-writing dictum of mine. One idea gives you no more than an opening scenario -- a mistake that all too many fic-fiction writers make -- but, generally speaking, it needs to interact with another piece of canon divergence/background lore/unexpected activity in order to produce a complete story. It's the spark between the two that generates the content. (I don't remember most of mine, but for "The Daaé Case" it was 'Why doesn't Hammerstein try to find his missing soloist?' plus 'If the detective encounters Raoul getting drunk in the bar, the whole bet won't happen', with the consequences arising from the *second* idea which wouldn't have existed without the first.)

In this case, I think the putative story needs a B-plot of some kind. My immediate instinct would be to give the protegée some backstory, because that's the way I work -- some kind of existing connection or goal of her own, so that she doesn't just exist as a cipher on which the Phantom can play out his desires, but has her own goal or concerns which can conflict with his. Maybe she has a brother who needs her to do something her master wouldn't like (shades of Marguerite and Armand St-Just). Maybe she had an ambition to do something else with her life before her new mentor discovered her singing talent, and something happens to remind her of that. Maybe a possibility that she gave up on years ago reopens by chance when she runs across somebody she used to know who has gone up in the world (the starving seamstress who used to live upstairs in the tenement and take care of her when her mother was out at work turns out to have found success and become Madame Arbuti, a famous Fifth Avenue designer -- and she still remembers the little girl whose dream was to make beautiful creations out of jewel-bright fabrics).

Or maybe your B-plot comes from giving greater depth to Christine and Raoul, instead of just having them turn up all shiny and happy and successful. Nobody's life is ever as perfect and trouble-free as it seems to the envious outsider. They have children -- maybe one of them is crippled, or epileptic, or suffering from one of those convenient Victorian terminal ailments that cause the sufferer to decline beautifully, and the secret reason why they have come to New York, not of course made known to the public, is because Christine is desperate to see if an American specialist can help where the doctors at home have all failed?
Maybe they have problems back home that the Phantom knows nothing about (a misunderstanding that has laid the family open to blackmail? Raoul is worried about Christine becoming tired and irritable from trying to take on too many roles in one season, and she sees this as him being 'over-protective' and/or resenting her success? Arguing over an offer for a resident season abroad that will involve Christine leaving her family behind, as Raoul doesn't want to abandon his home?) Maybe they are facing an issue that the Phantom could actually potentially do something about (possibly by less-than-legal means) if he knew, and one or other of them doesn't want to tell him, either because Christine doesn't want to tempt him back into underhand ways or because Raoul doesn't want her indebted to him for anything of the sort?

So the Phantom is busy looking at their lives and thinking how perfect they are, and meanwhile they are worrying about trying to solve a completely different set of problems that have nothing to do with whether he might still be in love with Christine or not....

[igenlode]

It is a good idea, when you put it like that, but the way it was executed just made all the characters look bad. :( What would you have done with it?

That's not an entirely fair question, because you've already seen a lot of the things I've done with it ;-p
Admittedly, starting from the premise that you're obliged to accept the whole package, secret-Phantom-love-child and alcoholic depressed Raoul included...

Frankly, I don't have any trouble with having Erik still pining away; when you 'let someone go', however noble you are trying to be about it, it *doesn't* magically stop you from loving and craving them in your self-imposed exile, or make jealousy any less acute or painful at the thought of them disporting themselves in the arms of another. Especially if that's the only love you've ever had.
He hasn't promised not to think about her (least of all because twenty-first-century morality may in the future say that this is the mandatory 'healthy' and socially-approved obligation); he has promised himself not to pursue her or inflict himself any further upon her. I find it entirely likely that he goes on nursing that image in his heart, not exactly having a lot of other material in there with which to console himself -- and I don't find it improbable that ultimately he snaps and feels compelled to do something about it. But then I never had a great deal of emotion invested in the Phantom's redemption, so the idea that he fails to learn his lesson and just tries to do the same thing again didn't strike me as a distortion of the character.

(What *did* strike me as a distortion of the *story* was the idea that he could try to do the same thing again and have it magically work out this time around, especially when that is achieved by an unacknowledged retcon of the original.)


I don't think the spawn-of-Phantom plotline was necessary, since about the only thing it actually achieves is to provide a scene where the Phantom supposedly repents and sends Christine and Gustave away for the boy's own good -- which he then proceeds to forget all about within a matter of hours, not to mention promptly revealing the deadly secret he has begged her to keep hidden forever to the very last person she would presumably want to know about it...
(And, I suppose, it provides ALW's desired 'redemptive finale': see, there is someone who will accept and love him after all despite his face! But that's a bit of a hand-wave as well, given the child's horrified rejection of him moments earlier.)

I think you could perfectly well have the Phantom reacting to Gustave's existence simply on the grounds that he *is* Christine's son (an aspect which LND tends to overlook, to the degree that killing the son of the woman he supposedly loves doesn't become repugnant to him until he realises that the boy is his 'heir' rather than the obtrusive spawn of Christine's marriage). It's a Peter Pan situation; the boy is Christine's son and he shares her talent and her future promise, so as he can't have Wendy/Christine, why not take Jane/Gustave? (The fact that the fandom sees fit to get outraged over this on the grounds that such an desire makes it appear that he is interested in sodomising the boy -- "Yes! Yes!": oh, how dirty that sounds -- says more about them than it does about him.)

Likewise, I don't have any inherent objection to the idea that Christine and Raoul's marriage has, for whatever reason, come under strain, or that Raoul doesn't get on with his son; there are all sorts of potential reasons for that which don't involve Christine having been lusting after the Phantom for the last ten years. It actually makes for an effective dramatic arc to present the idea they are drawn closer together again and learn to value what they have after encountering an outside threat, let alone if it turns out to be a revival of the very conflict that originally brought them together -- and the irony that it takes the Phantom's intervention from entirely other motives to give Christine a truly happy family, the supposed happiness in itself that he envies her, is an appropriately bittersweet ending. (Even better from that perspective, of course, if he expires in the odour of sanctity in order to achieve this; so I'd probably elect to kill him off with a ruthless hand :-p)

I don't think you necessarily need to prostitute Meg, although I don't care enough about the character to make that an inherently objectionable element; or she can perfectly well do so for her own frustrated ambition -- plenty of women have slept their way to the top and hated it -- and blame that on him, rather than doing so in self-sacrifice for a Phantom she has no particular reason to love, given that he has robbed her of everything before the start of the show. She has enough reason to be jealous of Christine at that point for taking over her limelight and stealing all her master's attention at a moment that could be critical for her career (and she isn't getting any younger). Or you could put your own bruised and persecuted OC in to take the role, and I've see LND fanfic that does. It's very hard not to read it as self-insert or an Other Woman created to heal Erik's Wounded Soul from that Mean Christine, though :-(

(The problem being, I think, that all these fanfics are written, like LND, on the premise that the audience inherently loves and pities the Phantom, without needing any particular in-story reason to do so; it's just a given that we should automatically sympathise with him whatever he does. And I don't come in with that wave of prior commitment.)



Whatever else you say about LND as it currently stands, it does have those intersecting plot strands: the Phantom's desire for Christine, Meg's frustrated ambition, and the (unexplained) conflicts within the Chagny family, and those interact to generate a full two acts of story, however contrived. I think my one *major* problem with it is the blind assumption that Christine is, 'of course', in love with the Phantom, not least because her actions in the story as shown don't actually give that impression -- although rewriting it to make Christine unambiguously eager to dump the family she has made in order to shag the Phantom senseless wouldn't make me any happier with it :-P

So what I'd do with it is pretty much what I have done: keep the Erik who tries to get his heart's desire in entirely the wrong way (that's in character), keep the element of conflict between Christine and Raoul while developing the reasons behind it, keep Gustave's fascination/repulsion for 'the beauty underneath', and drop the element where Christine suddenly does a volte-face and melts into the Phantom's arms because his song is just so Beautiful (or make it explicit that she *is* under the old power of his music at the time, although I think it's harder to do that when he isn't singing and she is).

Let the Phantom try to regain his lost love, and end up by destroying the present success and prosperity that he has failed to value (why not put the idea of the fire from the Prologue back in as a culminating disaster? Or is that copying the film version too obviously?) That works for me as the sympathetic tragedy for the character that ALW was clearly trying to achieve.

Let Christine forgive him *yet again* (that's in character).

Let Raoul have his character arc, because to be frank he doesn't get much of one in POTO -- but I'd rather do something positive with it. Showing Raoul developing a better relationship with Gustave -- in parallel with the Phantom's desperately misguided attempts to seduce him 'to the dark side' without any real understanding of child psychology -- would be one direction to pursue, for example.