will it be possible (depending on how you play it ofc) to have a more equal relationship with The Voice?
My immediate instinct was to say no outright seeing as this is a gothic horror/romance, but on reflection I do think it’s a very nuanced situation. I guess it comes down to what you view as an equal relationship.
This ended up very long, probably way longer than it needed to be lol, so long answer below the cut, but a slightly shorter answer is that at the end of the day, there is as equal chance for an ending with the Voice as there is the other ROs should you want it, and while the vast majority of the story is a pretty toxic relationship, by that ending point it’ll be made clear that the two of you are in a place to have a more equal relationship, or to work on having one, moving forward.
If you’re asking if there’s a point where there’s the Voice can grow to respect Daaé more (or even just resorts to less emotional manipulation), the answer is yes but only really at the very end of the story.
If you’re asking whether or not the general power dynamic shifts onto more equal footing, that’s a bit more complex and one of the things I’m looking forward to exploring. The Voice is pretty much always going to have a level of unequal power over the MC in this story, but there are certainly areas of life and ways that the MC has an unequal amount of power over the Voice (whether or not the MC manages to recognise that). This is no different than the vast majority of real life relationships, it’s just that this is a genre where imbalances in power are pushed to their most extreme and will be felt more strongly.
And to some extent that sort of thing will depend on your MC! After all, this is the 1880s and therefore heavily gendered and misogynistic - that power dynamic is going to naturally feel marginally less unequal for male MCs just by nature of their gender, for example. Or you may choose to play an MC with a higher level of grief and a personality that’s more susceptible to emotional manipulation, which naturally is going to affect how that power dynamic feels. There is going to be the chance for an MC to be more manipulative (for lack of better word, though manipulative has slightly more negative connotations than I really mean) as a means of dealing with the Voice, but it’s more a survival mechanism than an actual levelling of the playing field.
I was wondering about the timeline of the MC's past: how old they are/when they were born, when their mother passed away, when their father passed away, when they moved from Sweden to France/Paris, when they first met R/how long they were friends for, when the “Angel” first spoke to them?
Sure! Answer’s below the cut. While there are some fixed details, the rest I prefer to leave up to the player. All of this is info that’ll be dropped either in the story eventually or in future side stories. I absolutely refuse to give a specific year that the story is taking place - it’s just some unspecified year in the early 1880s.
Daaé’s age is roughly in their twenties, no younger than 21, probably no older than 28, but I’m not gonna get more specific than that. Still young enough to be at the start of their opera career and that at their father’s death, which they’ve still yet to emotionally recover from, they were young enough to require a new legal guardian.
Mama Daaé dying is what prompts Daaé and Papa Daaé to leave their rural hometown near Uppsala and move in with the Valériuses in Gothenburg, where they lived for not quite a full year before the four of them moved to Perros-Guirac (a town on the coast of Brittany). This all occurred around the age range of 3-6, all while Daaé is very young but giving players leeway to decide how much their Daaé remembers their mother and Sweden, and to what extent they’re affected by that.
Around age 17-18, Daaé moved from Perros-Guirac to Paris with Professor and Madame Valérius, and entered the Conservatoire de Paris (a music conservatory) pretty much immediately after the death of their father (we’re talking those three things happening within the span of a few months - yes, Daaé should have/would have been in mourning when entering the Conservatoire, that’s a detail that’ll come up in story). Professor Valérius died at some point during Daaé’s time at the Conservatoire, which Daaé attended for roughly 3-4 years.
Daaé has been at the opera since they finished studying at the Conservatoire. They graduated around turning 21 and immediately secured a contract in the opera chorus - it’s possible for different MCs to have been struggling in the chorus for years or to have only been there for a few months.
The start of the story occurs in late January, and the Angel/Voice has been teaching them since late November, probably first noticed them and gradually built up approaching them over the course of a week or two.
As for R…R is simultaneously in their early twenties and roughly the same age as Daaé (so if your Daaé is closer to their late twenties, R would be around 24; however there’s room to headcanon a Daaé that’s younger than R, or exactly the same age, or older by only a year or two, etc). Daaé and R first met around age 7-10ish. R’s family spent their summers in Perros until Daaé was around 13-14, at which point they stopped being able to see each other but remained in touch very regularly via letter. R visited Daaé when Daaé was 16, and that’s the last they saw each other for reasons that will be explained - how much Daaé and R communicated by letter after this point is a choice you’ll get, but even if your Daaé chose to stay in touch there are external factors that prevent writing each other as frequently as before. As of the start of the story, it has been a minimum of at least six months since Daaé has last heard from R.
i am so interested in this IF! i just read the demo (which is beautiful, by the way. i'm very picky about what i read and Le Fantôme hits all my marks) it's a crime there aren't more asks. so i'm obviously remedying that!!! what is the first thing the ROs notice about Daaé (i guess other than their voice? or what about it, specifically, drew them in?)
R: This one is actually going to get answered slightly more in the story, but R's loved Daaé since you were children (whether or not that's romantic love is up to you). One of the things that made you such good friends was a mutual love of fairytales as kids, and in your first meeting R got to play the hero a bit and thus forever onwards thought of themselves as Daaé's knight in shining armour. Since they were sort of approaching that age where the adults around them were expecting them to start to grow out of playing make believe, it was especially meaningful to R that Daaé never mocked that little fantasy and sometimes in fact encouraged it (doubly so for fem!R for whom the idea of playing a knight would have been a significant break from expected gender norms).
Daroga: This one is going to definitely be answered in the story, but the gist of it is the fact that Daaé's an immigrant. It's not the most noticeable thing (Daaé's mostly lived in France and doesn't have an accent), but there's definitely a sense of a social barrier that is one of the things prevents Daaé from really developing strong connections with any individual (regardless of how much or little Daaé might try). The Daroga can relate to this a great deal, and it's something that makes them empathise with Daaé slightly more than they do other members of the opera. There's other story-related things that make the Daroga start to really keep an eye on Daaé, but this is something that made Daaé stand out to them well before the other external factors came into play.
Sorelli: Suspicion. For a long while Sorelli didn't honestly take that much notice of you. What really starts to get Sorelli to pay attention is when the Voice shows up (not that Sorelli knows it). Why is Daaé spending time at the opera house early in the morning when no one else is there? Why is Daaé behaving suddenly differently than before? Why are a host of other things happening around Daaé that individually would be nothing, but all together paint a picture of something else going on? Sorelli is very protective of her opera house and the people in it, so naturally she's going to pay attention to Daaé more - how else is she supposed to know if Daaé's the one that needs protecting or if Daaé's the one that the opera needs protecting from? She knows logically it all may be perfectly normal and benign, but she absolutely hates knowing that there's something going on that she doesn't get to be a part of.
The Voice: I think that if I ever end up making a Patreon, I'll probably write a scene from the Voice's point of view featuring the first time they notice Daaé. So for this I'll just answer what it is about Daaé's voice that drew his notice. Daaé's voice is not naturally the best (for a professional opera singer that is), it does take you a few months of practicing proper technique before the Voice deems Daaé good enough to perform a major role. However, Daaé's voice has a unique sound to it, something indescribable that makes them memorable compared to other voices of a similar quality. For the Voice specifically, he chalks this unique sound up to emotion - he views it as Daaé feeling the music more deeply than any other singer, and feels that when Daaé sings he is getting to see a part of their soul (hence the reason that I called the acting skill Acting and Soul).
