The Phantom's Redemption

Those Eyes That Burn by muirin

“The Phantom of the Opera” by Gaston Leroux is a strange case. Not so much because of its content, but because of its background. The novel itself didn’t do overly well and is not read much today, but the story of the Phantom, his love interest, and her heroic lover has been adapted over and over again through all kinds of media. The interesting thing about the original story, though, is that it actually gives the Phantom, its villain, a redemption in the end.

Leroux frames the story as a mystery. Years after everything has happened, he has come to the opera house to find out what happened with that chandelier (which the Phantom drops on the audience after his blackmail demands have not been met). This allows for Leroux, who wrote mysteries before, to tell the story in a way which he was familiar with and which the audience did expect from him. But in its heart, the story of the Phantom is not a mystery - it’s Gothic horror. It has the innocent ingénue as the heroine, the brave (though somewhat flawed) hero, and the horrible, disfigured villain. It has dark hiding places, underground dungeons, and many other pieces of the Gothic horror novel.

That might be why the first half (roughly) of the novel is a little tedious at times. As the reader, you want to know about that Phantom you’ve read about in the title. You want to hear and see more of him, but instead you’re treated to a whodunit with different suspects and red herrings. Then comes the moment when the Phantom is named - not just as the Opera Ghost, which is the moniker he goes by in his blackmail notes, but as Erik. Yes, the Phantom has a name, but just one - must be an artist thing. He even has a background story. And he has a redemption arc of a kind - a redemption arc which a lot of the variations in different media have denied him.

To put the second half of the novel short: Erik kidnaps Christine, the heroine, her fiancé Raoul and the Persian, who has known Erik from before, follow her, but are trapped by Erik. He then uses them as additional pressure points to make Christine stay with him. She agrees (this is a pulpy, early-twentieth-century novel, so what did you expect?) and allows him to kiss her, even kissing him in return (no, despite the French setting, there’s no French kissing, it’s all pretty harmless). Erik, completely floored by the compassion shown to him, realizes the error of his ways and lets Christine (and his other prisoners go). He dies soon afterwards and Christine buries him, as she promised. The End.

Well, not completely the end. Leroux makes use of his ‘I researched this’ format to give the reader more information on Erik after the end of the actual story, detailing how Erik was, indeed, never loved because of his disfigured face and drifted around (despite being from a wealthy background), always in the shadows, always despised and hated. That, so says Leroux, is part of the reason for his actions. He doesn’t excuse Erik’s crimes (he garrottes several people, in addition to unleashing the chandelier, and also blackmails the owners of the opera into paying him or else…), but he points out that Erik wasn’t born evil and that there were reasons for his development outside of his control. For the villain of a pulpy Gothic horror novel, that is actually a surprise. They tend to either die horribly or they are left alive for eventual use in a sequel. Neither happens to Erik - he has a full arc and dies peacefully and ‘from love’ after finally having known compassion and another human’s willing touch.

The novel gives Erik a redemption of a kind, as does the Webber musical (provided you do the only sane thing and ignore “Love Never Dies”), but many other versions of the story do not. Partially, they give Erik much less of a reason for his actions - instead of having him disfigured at birth, which means a lifetime of being an outcast, they put the disfigurement into the story itself, which weakens the premise. Partially, they refuse him the redemption arc by introducing an angry mob to hunt him down or other stuff of that kind - denying him the chance to see the error of his ways and act accordingly.

That’s sad, because, when all’s said and done, “The Phantom of the Opera” is actually a ‘Beauty and the Beast’ kind of story - and the Beast normally does get a redemption. Erik might not turn into a prince and live happily ever after, but the end of the novel gives the impression that, after a lifetime of hurt and loneliness, he find peace. That is a happily ever after, no matter how short the ‘ever after’ is.

One of the biggest problem of many of the versions and rip-offs of Phantom is that they give the Phantom the disfigurement as part of the story. It’s not something which happened in the past - or even at birth, as with Erik -, it’s something which happens right here, in front of the audience. And as a result of this injury, the Phantom snaps. Remember the Christopher Nolan Two-Face? Essentially the same. Injury, horror, complete switch of personality, evilness. And that’s not exactly something you can see as a mitigating factor, because there’s too much of a change for what happened. It makes the Phantom more of a villain than he is already. Which means everything this Phantom does is less easy to explain (not excuse, as Leroux doesn’t excuse Erik’s deeds at all) than with the original. I mean, I see why the idea of showing the Phantom being born, the horrors of being doused in acid or burned or otherwise severely injured, lend themselves to a horror story, especially with a visual medium as TV or movie.

There is always an unmasking scene, though, which will uncover whatever horrid disfigurements the Phantom has - and they’ve often fallen short. Leroux describes the Phantom’s face as death-like. Erik has no nose, his face is gaunt, his eyes are sunken, but have a burning quality (see muirin’s artwork above). It’s a face to shy away from, but also one rarely put on well. Webber’s Phantom actually does only have a half-scarred face, because it turned out that a full mask didn’t work together with the microphone the actor needed to carry - that’s why the Phantom wears a half-mask on stage, but the logo shows a full mask, which only leaves the mouth and chin uncovered (the logo was done well before the wardrobe and makeup).

On the other hand, the Phantom being hunted down by a mob (instead of one or two heroes climbing into his domain to face him) robs the Phantom of the chance to see the error of his ways and change. He’ll be either killed or driven away, instead of finding his inner peace and letting go of what he thinks he has a right to demand - Christine. It turns the Phantom into a regular pulp and Gothic horror villain who has to be destroyed to keep up the status quo. Leroux gave Erik that arc for a reason, showed that his Phantom not only was human (something which some critics didn’t like at all), but also capable of changing and growing. It was surprisingly modern for a novel which saw its first print in book in 1911 (the same year as “Fantomas”) and its release in magazines even before that. Pure evil villains were still a staple then and would continue to be one for quite a while, yet, Leroux went against the standard with his character.

“The Phantom of the Opera” is much more interesting as a movie or a musical than it is as a novel, but it still pays to take a look at the original to see a very unusual handling of the piece’s villain.

Imminent Releases

It’s May and so I’m editing the next book for release. On the 31st, “One for Sorrow,” the first Magpies novel, will be released. That’s not all which is on the horizon, though (luckily for me). So this post is a short roadmap of what is going to come out during the next few months.

• August will see the release of the seventh Knight Agency novel, “Grave Diggers.”
• November will bring about the second volume of “John Stanton - Agent of the Crown,” which includes the three novellas “The Case of the Horrid Hellhound,” “The Case of the Goddess’ Assassin,” and “The Case of the Deadly Documents.”
• February next year will be the month in which my vampire hunter drama “Alex Dorsey” will be released.

I currently have quite some projects in the works, too.

The third Black Knight Agency novel, currently titled “Grey Eminence,” will have to undergo severe changes, because I’ve realized I’ve written myself into a corner with it. I even mentioned that in the last post before this one.

“Ignition Rites,” the eighth Knight Agency novel, is still in the early stages, but I’m looking forward to incorporating a few scenes I already have in mind. The basic plot is there, the sub-plots still need a little work.

“Two for Joy” is the title for the second Magpies novel, but it’s in a very, very early stage (I barely have the plot, but I want to revisit Inez and Tom, so there’s that).

Then, there’s three novellas with a common cast which I still have to write, but I’m sure they’ll see the light of day eventually under the current title “Benjamin Farrens.” I’ve already written quite a bit of “The Case of the Blind Medium,” but “The Case of the Blood Ruby” and “The Case of the Cornwall Vampire” only exist in my head so far.

Finally, there’s another Swenson and Carter story I want to eventually write and add to the first two, at which point they, too, will see release in e-book. “Vengeful Ghost” and “Raging Blood” are done already, but “Christmas Spirit” hasn’t gone far so far.

The Benjamin Farrens project is the oldest of them all, to be honest. I wanted to write it down as a novel years ago, but the actual structure lends itself more to three novellas with an overlying arc of gathering the necessary talents for the last of the three cases Count Benjamin will have to tackle. Not to mention that this one, together with the Swenson and Carter project, will give me the chance to dive into a real late-Victorian setting. John Stanton, after all, is a modern-day Steampunk era.

This is the roadmap, but the course may have to be re-plotted, if real life should intervene.

Writing Yourself Out Of A Corner

What do you do when you realize that you’ve written yourself into a corner with your new story? You either write yourself out of it again or you bury the story. There really are no other choices.

It might be because I’m a discovery writer that I find myself in a corner every now and then. If I planned my plots in advance, I might spot a problem earlier and could rework it then. Only, I personally wouldn’t get a single short story finished if I plotted it in advance. My writing just doesn’t work that way.

Recently, I realized that I had written myself into a corner with the next Black Knight Agency novel and I’m not completely sure what I will do to get out of that corner again - but in this case, giving up is not an option for me.

But what does it mean when you ‘write yourself into a corner?’ Well, very much the same as with a character who finds themselves in a corner, threatened by enemies and unable to escape. Your story has reached a point where you can’t continue and have no idea what to do. Unlike the character, however, you can simply erase the mistakes you made and choose a different path instead. Lucky you. Or not, because reworking a piece of your story (and often a big one) is no fun.

First of all, you need to ask yourself where you did a wrong turn. Where you went left when you should have gone right - or the other way around. This moment can be a long time before the corner. I will have to rework the main premise for the novel mentioned - because I’m not going to do a second ‘underworld takeover’ story set right after “Going Legal.” How much of the chapters written already will I be able to keep? So far, I don’t know. I’d like to keep some stuff I have started (since there are, of course, several plot threads), but I’m pretty sure that other stuff will have to go. Well, there’ll be other novels to use it in.

Sometimes, you realize that it will take a rewrite of your whole text so far - or everything beyond the very first paragraph or chapter. In such cases, you might want to wipe the slate clean and start over completely, instead of trying to cut and paste and realign. A new start can be a lot easier, depending on how challenging or complicated the work is.

From “Grey Eminence,” I will probably have to drop the murder of a drug lord (investigating it, not committing it) and also the whole ‘rearrangement of the underworld’ part - although that’s just one scene and I could keep it in as a start for Jane’s two more personal arcs: Jane taking over the old lair and making it hers and Jane becoming a consulting criminal can and will stay. I also will absolutely keep the casino heist - perhaps that can be expanded into the major plot line.

Luckily, I hit the corner early there - I’ve also had cases where I realized very late that I had written myself into a corner and had to abandon my story or start it over again. That is why I have a large graveyard of unfinished stories on my hard disk and commit grave robbery on them every now and then.

So, you hit that corner, you realize that you have hit it, you know where you went wrong, and you are ready to rework things. What you need to ask yourself now is why you went wrong. Which plot thread, which theme or topic sent you the wrong way. Why did you think the direction was right or a lot of fun to take? You need to figure out why you have written yourself into a corner before. Were you just sloppy? Did you think it would be the best or easiest way to go? Or was the premise interesting, but didn’t fit with the characters or the other plots? If you don’t look at why you went wrong, chances are the next corner is, well, just around the corner.

Usually, it helps to take a step back and look at what you have and what you want. I have a few scenes and plots I don’t want to lose, but I also don’t want to write the same basic plot again for the next novel in the series. That’s why I’ve hit a corner, realizing I was going to do just that.

I have two choices: I can accept that I will write the same basic plot again or I can figure out how to put a new main plot in with what I want to keep (Jane’s sub-plots of slipping back into the criminal world and the casino heist plot). If that means repurposing the murder plot for another novel or changing it so it will fit with Jane’s sub-plot (as she’s in the underworld again), that is what I will have to do. Since writing the same plot again is out of the question, I’m currently trying to figure out what kind of plot to put in instead and how to entwine it with the plots I already have.

Writing yourself into a corner can happen. It’s easy to take the wrong turn while you’re writing or plotting your story, but I guess it’s easier to do that when you’re a discovery writer and, thus, don’t really plot. The important thing is not to avoid the corner (because sometimes it’s unavoidable), but to know how to get out of it again.

Representation or No Representation? 2

Last week’s post was about arguments against diversifying from the ‘straight, white man’ hero, so this week’s post is about what to expect when you don’t use the standard hero in your stories, but go for someone from another social group. People will complain - which probably isn’t a surprise to you. Some will simply complain about you not using the kind of character they expect. Others will complain that your character isn’t all they should be. Those are the ones I want to talk about most.

It’s easy enough to deal with those who complain that your character isn’t what they expected. Expectations not being met happens on a daily basis, after all. Simply pointing out that to you the character you used was more fitting should be sufficient - if you want to address that complaint at all.

The ones which are far more difficult to deal with are those who claim that the character isn’t different enough - you know, it’s not enough to have a female hero, she needs to be black, queer, have two disabilities, and whatnot. The basic argument seems to be that if you don’t use the standard, you need to make your character represent everyone else - which is simply not possible, of course.

It’s a simple way for people who don’t like it when a main character doesn’t meet their expectations to keep people from repeating that ‘mistake.’ If authors face a lot of seemingly justified criticism over their main characters, they might want to revert to standard - others might never stop using the standard straight, white man. As a matter of fact, I have seen people in comment sections of articles about diversity in writing who say that they don’t use any unusual heroes because they don’t want to deal with that kind of thing. My suggestion? Don’t let others make you nervous there. Instead, you need to learn to discern between justified criticism - which can be very helpful - and criticism not worth your time - which is very common by now, too, unfortunately.

Personally, I write characters the way they are, because that’s the way they should be. Jane Browne came about when I wanted to write a secret agent who was female, but not the regular femme fatale. So I basically tried to make the regular image of a secret agent female. I later on removed the ‘ever-changing boyfriends’ topic when I gave her a steady one, but that wasn’t so much me thinking she should go steady than me being tired of trying to come up with new boyfriends. Besides, flipping the ‘hero with a caring partner’ idea also was nice and I like how Jane and Cedric have turned out together.

I like exploring how to tell a story with characters which are unusual. I like throwing my characters into a plot and see how they master it. Part of that is, of course, me being a discovery writer who never knows precisely what will happen in her next novel. Part of it is simply that I like to develop my characters instead of my plot in advance (because if I try to pin down the plot before writing, there will be no writing).

What you should really check your characters for, is not if they represent as many different groups as possible, but how well they represent the groups they’re part of (we all are part of several groups in real life). Not only ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation matter. Nor are possible disabilities the only thing to look at. We’re not defined merely by being ‘a woman,’ ‘a lesbian,’ or ‘someone with ancestors from Asia Minor.’ There are many things which define a human and a well-rounded character will have them all.

Even if you look at a character as old as Sherlock Holmes, you will see that he’s not just a detective. He’s hard to live with, as is obvious from his troubles finding a flatmate in “A Study in Scarlet.” He loves art, not just music (as is evident by his own mastery of the violin), but also painting and acting - there are several stories in which he mentions visiting galleries, but also concerts and theatres. He can fall into something akin to depression when there’s nothing to do and he mistreats his body when there’s a good case to follow, not eating or sleeping nearly as much as he should. He’s addicted to cocaine, but only when the depression has him (at his time, the use of cocaine wasn’t considered criminal). He is brusque and has little patience with stupidity, yet he can also deal very well with people in distress, including women of all ages, despite having nor romantic and, presumably, sexual interest in them. Doyle has given him a complete character, even thought the actual stories focus on his work as a detective.

If someone criticises your character, look at that character and ask yourself if they are a real person, if they have weaknesses and strengths, if they have more talents than just those focused on the work they do (remember that, according to the “Hitman” soft reboot of 2016, Agent 47 is a good drummer and capable of giving yoga lessons). Look at how certain situations might play out differently, because they are not the standard straight, white dude. Of course, if you’re working with Fantasy or Science Fiction scenarios, you might have different situations in which different groups will have a different experience. While creating a world there, make sure to wonder how living in it will be for different groups of people - depending on the setting, there might be little or big differences. In a medieval-style fantasy world, women, poor people, or people with specific ethnicities might be cut off from certain professions (but you can also turn that around, there might be professions which only these groups are allowed to have). In a science fiction scenario in a far future, an egalitarian society might give everyone the same rights and duties, no matter the gender, ethnicity, or other factors, but then try to show it (looking at you, “Star Trek” reboot and your ‘coincidentally all male’ leadership). It depends.

The best way to react to criticism of any kind is to look at whether or not it’s justified. Then try to incorporate justified criticism and just ignore the unjustified. It’s not easy, but unless you want to completely forego any heroes out of the regular, you will need to master that. And, honestly, those irregular heroes are often a lot more fun to write, so you shouldn’t simply abandon them.

Representation or No Representation?

Welcome to a double post about representation and the arguments some people will give you against it. This first post is more about the arguments against it. The second post will be more about the over-the-top demands some people make when you’re choosing not to go with the standard hero.

Let’s start with the standard hero, then. The standard hero, even today, still is the straight, white man. This is understandable historically, but still not the way it should stay.

A short historical discourse here. The ‘white’ standard across the globe (which leads to African and African-American people straightening their hair and bleaching their skin or Asian people spending money on getting their eyes reshaped) was introduced during the Age of Colonisation. White people, dissatisfied with neighbours who possessed the same weapons as them and ruling houses interbred all across Europe and tired of centuries of feuding about the same few square miles of ground, hopped their ships and started to explore the world - naturally assuming that everywhere no European had landed (as far as they knew - see North America, Columbus, and Vikings) was ‘undiscovered country’ and they could just take it. For them, people who were not Europeans were no real people. They could be killed, enslaved, raped, stolen from … you name it, the explorers and conquerors from Europe definitely did it. Their first venture was Africa and they expanded into parts of Asia as well. Then they expanded westwards, after Columbus had found the Caribbean while looking for India. They crawled across the globe like cockroaches. And just like them, they proved a little less easy to kill than most of the people they met. That is why African borders look that very linear way today - they were actually drawn with ruler and pen when the Colonial Powers came together to discuss who would keep which part of Africa. And basically all European powers, from Portugal and Spain to Russia, from Scandinavia and Britain to Italy, were in that game.

The colonies have won their freedom, but the world has been imprinted with the ‘white’ ideal. With the ideal of looking like a European person. With the ideal of dressing like a European person (even in climates unsuited for suits - sorry, not sorry). With the ideal of pretending to be a European person, if you can.

And that, friends, is why the straight, white man is white. More about the other two parts further down.

Especially in Fantasy novels or novels which claim historical sources, people often argue against a more diverse cast on the grounds of ‘that’s not how it was.’ If you listen to them, you’re led to believe that Medieval Europe (upon which a staggering number of fantasy worlds is based) was not only devoid of people with a slightly darker skin tone, but also of women, people with disabilities, or people who actually liked their own sex more than the opposite one. Despite the fact that women always made up about fifty percent of the populace and there were more people with physical disabilities around before surgery got to the level we have today. I’m not even going into what centuries of inbreeding did to the mental health of the ruling class. All of that is slightly … odd.

It’s not, of course. It’s build upon the premise of heroes being physically attractive and male - because we all know women faint at the sight of blood (we women do a lot of that once a month, yeah). The physically attractive part, which does exclude everyone with a physical disability or visible physical flaw, comes from fairy tales, where the good are beautiful and the evil are either ugly or vain. The male part comes from the strict definition of gender roles which excluded women from fighting and from being self-controlled (a definition which didn’t even exist then).

And, look, I can see why you don’t want a person from Asia in your story about Vikings. And while there are historically approved ways of constructing a situation in which to include someone like that, it’s not even necessary. The whole ‘those people didn’t exist in Medieval Europe’ just about (but not quite) works for Non-Europeans. Yes, there was no large number of Africans, Arabians, Asian, or Indigenous people from all over the globe in Europe then. There were some, though, at least of the first three. The Ottoman Empire, made up of a lot of Arabians, at its widest expanse reached through most of Spain and well into Eastern Southern Europe. At one point, they had reached Vienna, which is pretty central in Europe. It’s not unlikely they left their genes everywhere over the continent (genetic research shows a lot of European men share specific genes with men from Northern Africa). And during medieval times, there were Non-European traders and workers in Europe, even though more commonly in the cities than in small villages and hamlets. Silk was already imported from China, too, just as spices were imported from India. Since the Asian and the European continent actually form one big mega-continent together - and Africa is connected to them by the Arabian Peninsula - trade between those continents is easily possible, it’s just a question of time. Not ideal for stuff which goes bad quickly, but spices, silk, and other goods were not troubled by that. With trades also come traders, which means people from outside Europe. So, no, Europe wasn’t completely ‘white’ during the Middle Ages. Predominantly so, certainly, but not completely.

And even if we presume your quasi-European village has nobody in it whose great-great-grandparents weren’t already born there, there’s still diversity to be had.

Chances are about half the people in your village are women. And while male warriors are more common, history knows female ones as well. Several graves of female Viking warriors have been found, the Romans also trained female gladiators for a while, and women generally also took up arms and even took up leadership in times of need. So you can add a woman to your ‘straight white dude squad.’ Give her a ranged weapon, perhaps, or make her the group’s healer.

Chances are also that some people in that village have some kind of disability. What about a guy with only one eye? Odin thought that was cool enough to sacrifice one eye for wisdom, so, surely, you can have a warrior or advisor with a missing eye.

Not to mention that there’s no reason whatsoever for not having some LGBT+ representation in your group. Pre-Christianity, a lot of societies were lenient towards very different sexual behaviours and same-sex relationships happened. They weren’t necessarily the norm, but they were there. Hell, even the Roman-Catholic church ‘married’ monks to each other - supposedly platonic, but can you guarantee nothing ever happened there?

That means your ‘straight white dude squad’ does now include a woman, a man with a missing eye, a guy who is into other guys, and a straight white dude. Voila, you have reached diversity!

If you want bonus points, tell a story of a man from Asia Minor who was sold north as a slave, saved the one-eyed man’s life, was freed for that, and has now joined the team. That could have happened - the Vikings traded in the Mediterranean, took slaves, and valued courage. Wow, you’ve even eradicated the ‘completely white’ problem!

Diversity means having a greater range of characters from different backgrounds, ethnicities, sexual orientations, and genders. It doesn’t mean you need to do everything every time you write a story. It just means breaking the winning streak of the ‘straight, white man.’