#phantom retellings

[estellamiraiauthor]

All right, this was not really an official ask, but in response to the lovely @alinacapellabooks and for anyone else who’s interested, I would like to explain exactly how I “got the idea for a Phantom of The Opera retelling set in early 2000s Japan, in the tail end of the visual kei scene”.

I’ve posted some of this before somewhere but it might have been on my now-deleted Twitter?

No spoilers, but it might be a little long, so more under the cut!

I had wanted to write a Phantom retelling for a long time… I was first introduced to the story through the Lloyd Webber musical, but I read the Leroux novel shortly thereafter, and started seeking out the different movie adaptations, so I never really thought of the musical as the “definitive” version. I loved how the same core elements could be respun as romance or mystery or horror, in different settings, with characters that were usually the same archetypes but also a little different each time.

It was Phantom of the Paradise that REALLY convinced me that I wanted to do my own take on the Phantom story someday… that film is just SOOO wildly different from any other version but also unbelievably good, both as a retelling of several different stories and also just as a story in its own right. So as early as high school I had started to play around with the idea… I know I still have about ten handwritten pages of a “Phantom of the Space Station” which was supposed to be kind of The Fifth Element meets The Ship Who Sang… but the characters never really gelled as their own people, and eventually I moved on to other things.

Then in 2005, after the release of the ALW movie, I started reading a lot of fanfiction… and again, I tended to like the ones that took the basic components of the story and retold it in a different place or time. I started writing again, first with a fairly cliched “university theatre professor and student” idea, and then a Star Wars crossover where the Phantom used a Jedi mind trick to hide his face, tutored “Christine” in the Force, and she’d eventually get strong enough to “unmask” him.

The Star Wars one was starting to feel a LITTLE more like a story that maybe only I could write, but the characters weren’t really coming together and there wasn’t necessarily a lot of overlap between those two fandoms, so I was still kind of searching for an idea for “my” retelling.

Around the same time, I was sort of struggling with being a visible minority myself. Although I love Japan, I was struggling both with sticking out physically and with having something that had always been a personal strength (language) suddenly become a weakness, so I was starting to build this image of a Phantom character who was struggling not only with a seemingly hopeless love but with kind of a loss of identity.

I was also looking at gender-bent retellings, as that’s something else I’ve always enjoyed, not necessarily for Phantom specifically, but it always interested me to see how gender could change the character dynamics of a familiar story. I’d read some gender-bent fanfic, but female Phantoms were kind of a hard sell. I mean, the Phantom has almost zero self-esteem but he also has the confidence of a mediocre white man? Believing that the universe owes him a wife? I hadn’t really found any fanfics, at least, that managed to create a female Phantom who really made psychological sense as a character. (Many years later, I can recommend The Monsters of Music by Rebecca F. McKinney as a VERY different take on a straight female Phantom that I did enjoy immensely.)

But the male “Christines”? Those I LOVED… a shy, less than confident male protagonist with a heart of gold? *chef’s kiss* So I started thinking, why couldn’t they both be male? And having a female “Raoul” could help that character be the “socially acceptable” option, since nobility isn’t much of a factor in modern-day fics.

The final piece—setting it in Japan in the visual kei scene—clicked into place when I was listening to X Japan’s Blue Blood Album in the car one day. I was listening to “Unfinished” (the song Teru ends up singing to himself in the first scene), and lyrics like “Go away from me now. Just leave, and forget me. No need to be hurt anymore.” just had SUCH Phantom vibes… he loved Christine so he let her go, right??? So… visual kei Phantom. It was perfect. I’d been active in that subculture myself around that time. I hadn’t been in a band, but I’d dated a few guys who were, and had been backstage and in the studio enough times that I knew how things worked from the other side. And it was a modern-day setting where it wouldn’t seem TOO out of nowhere for someone to choose to wear a mask instead of just, facial prosthetics or something? And it’s also a subculture that places a LOT of emphasis on physical appearance, which worked with the whole idea of becoming disfigured as sort of losing a part of his identity.

Everything just came together and felt RIGHT in a way that none of the other ideas I’d had really did… and I guess the rest is history?

[estellamiraiauthor]

The Stars May Rise and Fall: The Annotated Re-read (Chapter 21)

So it’s time for Chapter 21, aka The Date. This is one of the most memorable chapters to me, both because it’s sort of unusual as a relative downtime in terms of the neverending onslaught of angst (sorry), and because this was where I took a break for about 5 years before finally figuring out where I wanted the story to go. (Eternal pantser… I wish I could plot, but alas, I can’t.)

Have a photo of Ochanomizu, one of the several locations for this date, before we dive into spoilers under the cut!

This is a pretty long chapter but a lot of it is kinda fluff, so there’s not necessarily a lot to comment on. Teru’s initial “What in the world kind of date is going to go over well?” worries are very much a reflection of his author! I wanted them to have a good time, but it had to be in character, so couldn’t be TOO ridiculously fluffy?

Teru really tries to be thoughtful here, choosing to take a route that avoids the subway “with its endless stairs and squat toilets” (the Tokyo subway is much better now, but it’s still sorely lacking in accessibility in a lot of ways, and the toilets were downright disgusting back in the day), but he still kind of underestimates how hard something like window shopping is going to be on Rei. It’s not at all his fault, and Rei understands that, but Teru does feel a little guilty… he says here that he wishes he had a car (or a license for that matter), and of course that ties into him actually HAVING a car in the last couple of chapters… maybe not FOR Rei per se, but I think they both make some self-improvements during the time between chapters 32 and 34 to kind of… become the kind of partner they wished they could’ve been for each other?

The music store stuff is mostly fluff, but I really especially love how Rei comes out of his shell a little and messes around on a piano in the middle of the store… and absolutely slays, of course. I’d love to have fanart of that scene. I think it was important to show him both simply having fun with music, and also still being able to play live in some capacity, and to do it well.

There’s a tiny bit of angst when they find a vintage guitar that is apparently something Rei has wanted for a long time… but now that he’s actually found it and can afford it, he can’t actually PLAY it, and that puts a little bit of a sad cloud over the date.

They go to Odaiba… originally this scene was set in Kasai Rinkai Park, which also has a Ferris wheel and is across the bay from Tokyo Disneyland, so you can watch the fireworks for free. But VERY late in the editing process, I realized that the Ferris wheel in Kasai Rinkai Park did not actually exist yet in July 2000, so changed it at the last minute to Odaiba, where the Ferris wheel did exist at the time (but did not exist in 1995, which meant it could be something just for Rei and Teru, since he couldn’t possibly have shared it with Saki). I rewrote the Ferris wheel scene so many times that I always have a hard time remembering whether they kiss at the top or not. There were versions where they didn’t, there were versions where they did. I’m glad I left the kiss in (and this is another scene I’d love art of).

This is also where Teru learns exactly how much older Rei is. He wants a ‘64 Stratocaster because that’s the year he was born, which would make him 36 in 2000. Teru also acknowledges that he would’ve been on the older side as someone still working toward a major label debut at 30. A lot of people wonder why I didn’t just make Rei younger, to prevent all the “ewww yuck age difference” stuff, but it was really important to me that he have that history, that the success he almost had was something he had worked his ass off for for almost a decade and a half… he wasn’t just some teenage prodigy, and the hardships he’s faced up to now aren’t ONLY the ones he’s endured as a direct result of the accident. I needed this character to have this history, and Teru is a full-grown adult, he can certainly decide to be fine with a 15 year age difference.

They then go to a cheap yakitori place for dinner, and Rei tells Teru a little about coming to Tokyo from Aomori when he was 16–not EXACTLY the same as Teru coming from Niigata at 18, but the general experience being something they can bond over, and we get to see Rei a little more relaxed and comfortable again. Honestly, I kind of wish I’d included more little dates or domestic-ish scenes between these boys. If I ever get around to writing that sequel that’s pretty much allll it’s going to be. I just really, really wanted to sell this to a traditional publisher so I streamlined all that stuff to “move the plot forward”. Sigh.

There was actually ANOTHER fluffy scene at the end of this chapter that got cut. The chapter is long already, and that specific scene didn’t really add anything new about either of the characters, so I guess I’m glad I cut it, but it might be a nice thing to get art of someday too. In that draft, when they were eating dinner, Rei said he liked Teru’s nails, which were still painted from their last show but starting to chip, so on the way home, Teru says he needs to stop by the drugstore for something and semi-secretly buys nail stuff and they give each other manicures. The idea is kinda cute, but there was really nothing that that particular scene SAID that wasn’t said elsewhere. It would be wonderfully adorable for Rei to give Teru a kind of shaky, pretty awful manicure but for Teru to wear it for a week anyway, and then for them both to keep practicing on each other until they got REALLY GOOD… but that’s more of a fanfic thing, so it got cut.

Instead, we (and Teru) learn that Rei also writes super mega pop hits and sells those under Chizuru’s name, thereby explaining how he has so much money, and Rei tells Teru that he’s going to Saki’s grave to kind of ask for permission to have a real relationship with Teru. Teru also admits that he does feel sorry for Rei sometimes—he doesn’t use the word “pity,” though, like Rei does—but that the respect he feels is much stronger, and the real reason he’s here.

Random shout-out here to my husband’s grandmother, who inspired Rei’s wheeled cart that he brings out the drinks on. One of the hardest things about sort of physically blocking any scene with Rei in it was that he couldn’t really CARRY anything unless it was something light enough and the distance was short enough that he wouldn’t need a cane or a crutch. But my husband’s grandmother used to put things on a little wooden serving cart and then push it around like a walker. She was still alive when I wrote this, and I really just used it because it seemed like a good idea, but now I’m really glad, because I remember her every time I read this scene.

It’s probably important to note that I stopped writing after this chapter for about 5 years, before coming back to draft the next chapter. When I started writing this, I honestly didn’t know if I wanted these characters to end up together or if I was going to end with them breaking up, but both having become better people for having known each other. In the end, I kinda did both?

But at the time this felt like a weird not-quite end. Teru and Rei are together. They’re comfortable enough together that Rei is taking off the mask and being honest (at least here) about his pain. Kiyomi is still around, but not really as a potential romantic rival. The band is doing well (the “Bara comes back” subplot didn’t exist in that draft, so there was no real conflict there)… this definitely isn’t a happily ever after yet, the story didn’t feel DONE, but I also didn’t know where the characters were headed, and where they needed to go next in order to get there.

This is kind of the end of “Act 1” anyway, and the second part is much less tied to the “Phantom” structure, except of course for the end.

[estellamiraiauthor]

So. Thought.

I know a lot of Phantom archive type sites have kind of given up on books because of all the “published fanfiction”.

I get this. I do. But as an author and a reader it’s frustrating that written works that could actually be a valuable addition to the overall volume of work are being looked over because one or a hundred too many 16 year olds decided to put their Erik/OC post-ALW opus on Amazon.

So. Maybe I’ll do it.

I definitely couldn’t just go in chronological order because yes, I’d end up stuck in a swamp of “Music of the Night”s published by Lulu in 2005. But if I didn’t commit to doing EVERYTHING or doing it in a certain order, maybe I could bring some attention to those works that deserve not to be brushed over?

I would skip over anything that was obviously a direct sequel to the ALW musical or Kay or anything else that’s not in the public domain. The focus would be strictly Leroux-based works and original retellings or reimaginings.

I… might not be able to do all the YA fantasy stuff. That’s just not a genre that usually works for me, and one of them was sold by my former literary agent so I don’t think I could possibly be objective. But I could read and review the contemporary and historical fiction retellings at least?

I know there’s a thing with “authors shouldn’t review” but really, screw it. My book’s been out for 5 years and sells maybe 0.5 copies a month. These other authors aren’t my competition… if anything, we should be boosting each other, right?

IDK, would anyone be interested in something like that?

[estellamiraiauthor]

Is it OK if I simultaneously love another Phantom retelling and am immensely frustrated that it took off while mine did not? It’s literally free in my pinned tweet! Love my boys! Please? Someone?

[estellamiraiauthor]

Fun fact: I wanted to write a Phantom retelling for YEARS before I actually found the setting and characters I want to do it with… I had so many notebooks full of crap like “Phantom of the Space Station” (which was not nearly as cool as it sounds it was basically like the ALW musical with some late 20th century sci-fi tropes badly worked in).

Less fun fact: I kinda wonder sometimes if I should’ve called my book “Phantom of Something-or-other” because maybe more people would’ve found it that way?

[estellamiraiauthor]

Okay. So. What you have to understand is that it wasn’t so much that I loved Leroux or ALW so much that I had to publish my fanfic as it was that I loved Phantom of the Paradise so much that I had to make my own????

[estellamiraiauthor]

Random question for any of my fellow Phantom geeks out there: Are there any other versions of the story in which the Phantom is a “widower” (quotes because I don’t care whether an actual marriage was involved, just a serious relationship ending in death)? I can think of a couple where he knew Christine (or whatever her name is in that version) before he was disfigured, and with SO many versions out there I’m sure there are some in which he had a previous love interest but.... Google’s not giving me much. Help! Or if you don’t know, reblog in case someone else does?

(Absolutely not counting the 13 year old girl from Kay BTW, I know that’s going to come to mind but I mean like... adult, serious, mutual, committed relationship.)