You may have noticed that 'not earlier' is my default time of replying; I tend to rotate and do different jobs in batches, and I don't spend my entire life writing reviews on fanfiction.net, or dealing with Dreamwidth either...
The fangirls presumably don't identify with LND!Raoul because he brought his problems on himself, whereas Erik couldn't help being born deformed. Why do you think you don't identify with the Phantom?
If I am instinctively on the (narratively hopeless) side of Louis Chamalis in "Barbary Coast", Handsome Williams in "Way of the Strong" or Alexander Sebastian in "Notorious", then why wouldn't I be campaigning here for the 'villain' to get the girl? Why am I not at once on the side of the tortured dark character who hates the world that has always hated him? .... part of the poignancy which the Phantom does hold for me is that he fits the trope of the morally compromised character (like Tracy Belmanoir in "The Black Moth" or the unhappy Comte de Brencourt in D.K.Broster's "The Yellow Poppy") whose obsessive love for a woman he cannot hope to win could either save or damn him. .... The fact that for all her kind heart the lady doesn't return his feelings is what makes the situation tragic -- undermine that, and you undermine its effectiveness.
(Mind you, that didn't stop me writing fanfic in which Handsome Williams ends up on the run with Nora instead of mistakenly sacrificing himself... but then she *does* love him. She just thinks he looks like someone else -- poor Dan who loves her himself but who has never exchanged two words with her -- and once she has worked out which features belong to which voice I doubt she's likely to be swayed by appearance. Being blind anyway!)
I'm really not sure why I don't identify with the Phantom, though; it would be very difficult for me now because I've been exposed to so much pro-Phantom-at-all-costs fan-fiction which has understandably jaundiced me on the character, but I never did, even before I had any especial interest in Raoul other than as a plot mechanic (which, in the context of the musical, he basically is :-p) I think part of my problem is that he isn't really a character; we never get to see his inner life separate from Christine, and the closest we get to seeing his inner life at all is in his ravings after she takes his mask. We don't get to see his life going well, going badly or doing anything at all other than where it intersects with Christine -- he is a force that acts on her. If we only ever saw Tracy Belmanoir in the moments when he was actually interacting duplicitously with the heroine, I don't think he would be a very well-rounded character; it's because we see him off-guard and cynical in a state of half-war, half-affection with his friends and family (relationships of which she knows nothing at all) that he becomes an entertaining and not entirely unsympathetic anti-hero rather than just the arbitrary villain of the piece. (The fact that he is clearly head and shoulders the most intelligent character in the book doesn't hurt, either :-p)
I think another part of my problem empathizing with the Phantom is that he is bonkers. I mean seriously peals-of-insane-laughter bonkers, and he shows no guilt or even comprehension that what he is doing is wrong. It's not wilful defiance of society but just a giant dose of self-pity, which isn't an attractive trait; LND-Raoul is ridden by guilt over his own conduct, not by 'oh, my wife is so unfair to me and doesn't appreciate all that I do for her...
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branchandroot
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Date: 2018-12-26 05:51 am (UTC)The fangirls presumably don't identify with LND!Raoul because he brought his problems on himself, whereas Erik couldn't help being born deformed. Why do you think you don't identify with the Phantom?
I've presumably pointed you at my original LND musings already: https://igenlode.dreamwidth.org/24649.html
(Mind you, that didn't stop me writing fanfic in which Handsome Williams ends up on the run with Nora instead of mistakenly sacrificing himself... but then she *does* love him. She just thinks he looks like someone else -- poor Dan who loves her himself but who has never exchanged two words with her -- and once she has worked out which features belong to which voice I doubt she's likely to be swayed by appearance. Being blind anyway!)
I'm really not sure why I don't identify with the Phantom, though; it would be very difficult for me now because I've been exposed to so much pro-Phantom-at-all-costs fan-fiction which has understandably jaundiced me on the character, but I never did, even before I had any especial interest in Raoul other than as a plot mechanic (which, in the context of the musical, he basically is :-p)
I think part of my problem is that he isn't really a character; we never get to see his inner life separate from Christine, and the closest we get to seeing his inner life at all is in his ravings after she takes his mask. We don't get to see his life going well, going badly or doing anything at all other than where it intersects with Christine -- he is a force that acts on her. If we only ever saw Tracy Belmanoir in the moments when he was actually interacting duplicitously with the heroine, I don't think he would be a very well-rounded character; it's because we see him off-guard and cynical in a state of half-war, half-affection with his friends and family (relationships of which she knows nothing at all) that he becomes an entertaining and not entirely unsympathetic anti-hero rather than just the arbitrary villain of the piece.
(The fact that he is clearly head and shoulders the most intelligent character in the book doesn't hurt, either :-p)
I think another part of my problem empathizing with the Phantom is that he is bonkers. I mean seriously peals-of-insane-laughter bonkers, and he shows no guilt or even comprehension that what he is doing is wrong. It's not wilful defiance of society but just a giant dose of self-pity, which isn't an attractive trait; LND-Raoul is ridden by guilt over his own conduct, not by 'oh, my wife is so unfair to me and doesn't appreciate all that I do for her...