The Phantom of Manhattan

[phantomgirl110]

I agree so, so much. I mean, this really is just like really awful fanfiction.

One of the worst things about it is that now all the writers of actual really awful fanfiction - as in, the kind that's posted at FanFiction.Net and the like - are going to feel like they've been right all this time. Can't you hear it now? "See, Raoul is a stupid drunk and Christine really does love Erik most, Andrew Lloyd Webber said so!"

[phantomphreak4life]

Oh jeez, I didnt even think of that...
UGHH, STUPID PHANGIRLS!!!!!

[Opera Angel]

My theory is that Christine really did love them both, but it wasn't the same love..The way she felt about Erik wasn't the same way she felt about Raoul... that alone should tell you why she left and married Raoul...
THE END!

[phantomphreak4life]

News! I have reviews for the next 3 chapters [with a little surprise ]!
But....I wont be able to post them until Sunday afternoon because I'm going to Vermont with some friends to go skiing until then.
So in the mean time I would recommend reading the last review or two so it's fresh in your mind. You all are going to love this (hate really but love the making fun of it part).

[phantomphreak4life]

Chapter 10
The Exultation of Erik Muhlheim
Setting: Rooftop Terrace, E.M Tower, Manhattan, November 29, 1906
POV: Erik

From a rooftop where Erik is watching Christine's arrival, he sees his beloved for the first time in years. He slips into the crowd and gives his cloak to Cholly Bloom (the wannabe gangster reporter who thinks he's from Brooklyn) so he can lay it out for her to walk over. Let's put Christine even higher on her pedestal, Forsyth!!! "She was as beautiful as ever: the tiny waist, the tumbling hair tucked beneath her Cossack hat, the face and smile to break a block of granite clean in two."

A great rage comes over Erik. Rage...his only friend. But wait, I though music and darkness were his only friends?
Erik questions his choice to bring Christine here. Was he right to reopen the wounds from so many years ago? "And yet I thought, foolish, stupid wretch, that she could even love me just a little, after what had happened between us in that hour of madness while the avenging mob came down to lynch me." Ohhh, so Christine is a dumb bitch now?!?!
But of course it's the letter from Mme. Giry that justifies this crazy idea. Should he be thankful that she revealed this life changing information or angry that she kept it from him for so long? Erik knows he'll most likely be rejected again but...
At this point we are forced to reread the letter again! This book is so repetitive my head is spinning.

Erik is frightened of Christine denying him again but on the ironic side of things..."you can spit on me, defile me; jeer at me, revile me; but nothing you can do will hurt me now. Through the filth and through the rain, through the tears and through the pain, my life's not been in vain; I have a son."

Does Evanescence know that Forsyth is jacking their lyrics? Seriously, what's up with the random emo quote? What poem/song did Forsyth take it from? Rhyming doesnt make your book any better, ya jerk.

[Opera Angel]

I'm already confused... this book has no sense or logic...how they could make this into an understandable musical just makes my mind reel...I hope that USA makes sure this atrocious story never sees the light of day...THERE IS NO SEQUEL YOU IDIOTS remember the play took place in future times reliving the past...

[phantomphreak4life]

That's a really good point you bring up, Opera Angel. I never even thought of it until now. The story is technically a flashback so does that mean that the sequel will eventually end up with Raoul at the Opera House Auction?

[Opera Angel]

That would be hard especially Christine died with the last name "DeChagny" (or course the tombstone should have said viscountess instead of countess)
But it said loving wife and mother...so she married Raoul and had children..but that was in France she never came to America..and Erik was supposedly still in France as well and left a rose on her tombstone to show he still loved her...the end...

Since nothing else happened except Christine and Raoul getting married and then Erik disappearing or died possibly...why continue the story?

[phantomphreak4life]

Okay, so here’s the surprise…
Instead of reviewing this next chapter I’ve decided to let you all review it. Since this is a Meg forum I thought this would be the most appropriate chapter to do this with (plus it was short lol). Here is chapter 11, typed word-for-word.



Chapter 11
The Private Diary of Meg Giry
Setting: Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, Manhattan, November 29, 1906
POV: Meg Giry

Dear Diary,
At last I am able to sit down in peace and confide to you my inner thoughts and worries, for its now the small hours of the morning and everyone is abed. Pierre is fast asleep, quiet as a lamb, for I peeped in ten minutes ago. Father Joe I can hear snoring away in his cot next to where I am sitting and even the thick walls of this hotel do not deny his farm-boy snorts. And Madame is at last asleep also with a cachet to help her find rest. For in twelve years I have never seen her so distressed.
It all had to do with that toy monkey that some anonymous donor sent to Pierre here in the suite. There was a reporter here also, very nice and helpful (and who flirted with his eyes at me), but that was not what upset Madame so badly. It was the toy monkey.
When she had heard it play its second tune--the sounds of which came straight through the open door into the boudoir where I was brushing her hair--she because like one possessed. She insisted on finding out from where it came, and when the reporter, M. Bloom, had traced it and arranged a visit, she insisted that she be left alone. I had to ask the young man to leave, and get Pierre protesting into bed.
After that, I found her at her dressing table, staring at the mirror but making no attempt to complete her toilette. So I canceled dinner in the restaurant with Mr. Hammerstein also.
Only when we were alone could I ask her what was going on. For this journey to New York, which started so well and saw such a fine reception at the quay earlier in the day, had turned to something dark and sinister.
Of course, I too recognized the strange monkey doll and the haunting tune it played, and it brought back a tidal wave of frightening memories. Thirteen years...that was what she kept repeating as we talked, and truly it has been thirteen years since those strange events that culminated in the terrible descent to the lowest and darkest cellar beneath the Paris Opera. But though I was there that night, and have tried to question Madame since, she has always kept her silence and I never did learn the details of the relationship between her and the frightening figure we chorus girls used to refer to simply as the Phantom.
Until this night when at last she told me more. Thirteen years ago as she was involved in a truly remarkable scandal at the Paris Opera when she was abducted right from the center of the stage during the performance of a new opera, Don Juan Triumphant, which has never been repeated since.
I was myself in the corps de ballet that night, though I was not onstage at the moment the lights fused out and she disappeared. Her abductor carried her from the stage down to the deepest cellars of the Opera, where she has later rescued by the gendarmes and the rest of the cast, headed by the commissaire de police who happened to be in the audience.
I was there too, trembling with fear as we all came down with burning torches, through cellar after cellar until we reached the lowest catacomb by the underground lake. We expected to find at last the dreaded Phantom but all we and the gendarmes found was Madame, alone and shaking like a leaf, and later Raoul de Chagny who had come ahead of us and seen the Phantom face-to-face.
There was a chair, with a cloak thrown over it, and we thought the monster might be hiding underneath. But no. Just a monkey toy, with cymbals and a musical bow inside. The police took it away as evidence and I never saw such a one again, until this night.
That was the time she was being daily courted by the young Vicomte Raoul de Chagny and all the girls were so envious of her. Had it not been for her beautiful nature she might well have invited hostility too, for her looks, her sudden leap to stardom and the love of the most eligible bachelor in Paris. But no one hated her; we all loved her and were delighted to see her restored to us. But though we became closer over the years, she never mentioned what happened to her in the hours that she was missing, and her only explanation was that "Raoul rescued me." So what was the significance of the toy monkey?
This night I knew better than to ask her directly, so I fussed about and brought her a little food, which she refused to eat. When I had persuaded her to take her sleeping draught she became drowsy and let slip for the first time a few details of those bizarre events.
She told me there had been another man, a strange elusive creature who frightened, fascinated, overawed and helped her, but who had an obsessional love for her that she could no repay. Even as a chorus girl I had heard tales of a strange phantom who haunted the lower cellars of the Opera and had amazing powers, being able to come and go unseen and inflict his will on the management by threats of retribution if they did not obey him. The man and his legend frightened us all, but I never knew he loved my mistress of today in such a manner. I asked about the monkey that played a haunting tune.
She said she had only seen such a creature once before, and I am sure that it must have been during those hours in the cellars with the monster, the same one I myself found on the empty chair.
As the sleep came over her, she kept repeating that "he" must be back: alive and close, moving behind the scenes as ever, a terrifying genius of a man, as fearsomely ugly as her Raoul was handsome, the one she had rejected and who had now lured her to New York to confront her again.
I will do everything I can to protect her, for she is my friend as well as my employer and she is good and kind. But now I am frightened, for there is something or someone out there in the night and I fear for all of us: for me, for Father Joe, for Pierre and most of all her, Madame.
The last thing she said to me before she slipped away into sleep was that for the sake of Pierre and of Raoul she must find the strength to refuse him again, for she is convinced that soon he will at last appear and demand her again. I pray that she has that strength and I pray that these next ten days will hurry past so that we may all return safely to the security of Paris and away from this place of monkeys that play long-ago tunes and the unseen presence of the Phantom.

[phantomballerina]

This is horrible! Why would Meg call Christine Madame, even if she is her employer, they were best friends for practically their entire lives !!!! I don't even want to think about the rest of this 'novel'. I will never understand how anyone could've ever thought that it was actually a good idea to publish this mess!

[phantomphreak4life]

It's a messed up world, phantomballerina....Leroux is probably turning over in his grave.
BTW - I like your username!

[phantomluver4ever1]

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ok so i know wikapedia isn't the most reliable source but you must read what it says under the plot about Meg for the sequal to Phantom!!!!!!!!!! here is what it says exactly:

The character of Meg has also been changed. In the original musical and later film adaptation, she is described as being curious and somewhat naive. The latest casting call sees a Meg now in her twenties, `charming` with an element of `sexiness` about her. According to the casting call, Meg has accompanied her mother, Madame Giry, to New York and is now a "Coney Island fairground star".

maybe bigger role than any of us expected??? if u want to read more heres the link:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom:_Once_Upon_Another_Time

[phantomphreak4life]

Hm, sounds like a stripper to me.

[Opera Angel]

Ugh that would be awful...and who ever said Christine was by herself in the lair? she left with Raoul if my memory serves me right...no one ever saw them again until Raoul returned much later to the opera house in the play adaptation sans Christine(But she was deceased)

[phantomgirl110]

Here's the official description of Meg's role in the sequel, from a casting notice:

Caucasian woman, mid - late 20s. Madame Giry’s daughter and a Coney Island fairground star. Gothic, mystical, unusual, sweet, charming, fun; has a broken baby-doll vulnerability, edge, sexiness, and a heart of steel. Strong mezzo soprano singing voice. A spunky voice, preferably with a raspy quality, up to top F sharp (top line, treble clef). Must be able to belt as well as sing with a lyrical ability when in balladic mode.

Another article says that she is "now famous as bathing beauty the Ooh La La girl".

Oy.