I'm sorry Angel's, but I'm the worst schedule keeper in the history of... well schedule keeping.
I have several half finish posts I've been meaning to finish, but a new idea comes before I can finish the old. So, therefore, the blog sits stagnant. That's not very kind of me is it?
So, hopefully there will be a few more update from me, at least with things to come from this blog. It was always my goal to write about my own exploration into this world and into this character, and the way the story is always slightly different for every person, writer or receiver. I think Erik just molds that way.
Some small updates:
I'm finishing up my reviews on Susan Kay's Phantom. I've originally chose to do this in sections, but decided I wanted to finish the entire book first before finishing each section. That actually chose to serve me better on a analytical standpoint, but not necessarily on a "getting posts out quickly" standpoint.
I've also started planning a trip to Vegas to see Phantom before it closes in September. My original plan was to visit New York, but budget says Vegas... especially because I'd like to see the show before it closes. I have a feeling that even if the touring Broadway show re-vamps and changes its sets and design that the original show will always be there on Broadway. So, once I get my planning date set (I'm aiming for June) then I'll post more about my plans. Maybe I'll see some of you there!
I've started on Phantom of Manhattan by Fredrick Forsythe but haven't gotten farther than the introduction (does that even count as starting?). Needless to say, Forsythe hasn't given me much of a reason to like his book with this introduction.... but I'll give it more of a chance when I finally pick the damn thing back up again.
I am also finishing up my notes on Erik: Portrait of a Living Corpse. This movie has to be one of my favorites and I have (mostly) good things to say about it.
I do have another request of my few readers! I'm looking for my next Phantom book. I've looked through other fan related fiction and I'd like suggestions on which one I should read next! Comment or send me an email.
Look for more to come!
- Maya
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Monday, December 26, 2011
Monday Update
Good morning Angels! I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas! This is a pre-scheduled post, and I am currently driving from my little town in Texas to another little town in Arkansas where some family is staying. I hope everyone else traveling out there is being safe.
Updates for this week... Not a lot unfortunately. Nothing I can find is going on in the Phantom community itself, but I'm keeping an eye out.
If you haven't ready my first post about Susan Kay's Phantom, take a look and tell me what you think. I'm going to try and get started on my second post about Erik's time with the Gypsy camp while I'm on vacation, but we'll see if I actually get to it. I'm also currently half way through posts on both the Robert Englund movie and Erik: Portrait of a Living Corpse. I'm really enjoying rewatching some of these Phantom movies, and seeing new ones that I'd never encountered before, but I'm not really thinking about what order I'm going to post in.
Chronologically is just too easy... right?
Updates for this week... Not a lot unfortunately. Nothing I can find is going on in the Phantom community itself, but I'm keeping an eye out.
If you haven't ready my first post about Susan Kay's Phantom, take a look and tell me what you think. I'm going to try and get started on my second post about Erik's time with the Gypsy camp while I'm on vacation, but we'll see if I actually get to it. I'm also currently half way through posts on both the Robert Englund movie and Erik: Portrait of a Living Corpse. I'm really enjoying rewatching some of these Phantom movies, and seeing new ones that I'd never encountered before, but I'm not really thinking about what order I'm going to post in.
Chronologically is just too easy... right?
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Happy Holidays
Good evening Angels. It's Christmas eve, and I'm getting ready for dinner with my family. With shopping and cooking and decorations, this is a slow blogging time for me. But I wanted to update with a bit of holiday cheer curtsy of Cressida. Oh Gerry... how you slay me...
Oh my! *Evil cackle* And, for those of you that haven't known me for very long... I kind of have this thing about elves...
And I can hear the critics now. How dare you post indecent photos of our Gerik! Well, my friends, I say this to you:
Everything is always in good fun. Enjoy the holidays, and I wish you and your families the best.
Until next time, be good Angels,
- Maya
Friday, December 23, 2011
Susan Kay's Phantom - Madeleine
Susan Kay's Phantom is probably the most well known novels spun off from Laroux's Phantom of the Opera. As I get deeper and deeper into this book, the more I feel that I need to go back and talk about the sections I've already read. Kay does a masterful job of breaking up Erik's life, prior to the opera house, into sections of experiences and homes that he lived in.
We start off the novel with Madeleine, Erik's mother.
Every time I read the original novel, I always had to suspend reality a bit when Erik spoke of a mother that never kissed him. For some reason, this was always hard for me. I couldn't think how to imagine the person that Erik described, that could think that way about her own child... all because he was ugly. Kay finds a way to do it and make it completely believable.
The first section of the story is told from Madeleine's point of view. We find out very quickly that she was a spoiled child, the daughter of a wealthy gentleman that didn't let his daughter feel any sort of worldly hardships. She marries Charles at a young age, gets pregnant, they buy a house in the country and start there life together. All seems well in this woman's life... until she's 7 months pregnant and her husband dies in some work related accident and her perfect little life begins to crack and crumble.
It isn't until Erik is born that her life shatters. I feel that her madness begins here, when the midwife and her maid run from the house to fetch the priest and never return after seeing this infants face. She couldn't give the child her husbands name, like she'd planned, so instead tells the priest to christen him after himself. She asks the priest if she refused to feed him, if she ignored him and let God take him, if she would be sent to hell.... but being a "devout catholic" she recognizes this as murder and tries to bring herself to find a way to care for this devil's child.
So... she covers his face with a mask.
Madeleine's section of the book rushes through a lot of little stories. It covers 11 years in only 75 pages, but serves as an effective way to paint the picture of the child genius. At only a few months old, he plays a tune with a string of bells that Madeleine's friend strings above his crib like a mobile. He develops a love of architecture and scribbles and draws plans for beautiful buildings to perfect scale. He composes music, and frequently takes singing lessons from the priest who gave him his name.
One part of this that I found odd, and perhaps I didn't quite understand, but Madeleine can not be in the room when Erik takes his singing lessons from the priest... because she find his voice so beautiful that it is almost incestuously sensual. Not that she is suddenly attracted to her son, but that his voice fills her with emotions that manifest a physical reaction as well that she can't seem to control. On one hand I like the idea that not even Erik's own mother can ignore the beauty in his voice... but on another hand I wish she could ignore it just as piously as the priest seemed to...
When Erik is old enough to begin to doubt his mother's words and push the boundaries of discipline, as all children do, Madeleine's punishments are clearly just as insane as she is. When she's not beating him to bruises and broken skin, she always seems to do something to him that she admits will never leave him as long as he lives. On his fifth birthday, for example, she rips off his mask and takes him to the only mirror in the house and shows him his face. Erik doesn't understand and thinks it's a monster in a window... and not a reflection of himself... The realization of this fact seems to take Erik much longer to realise (I felt like it was months before he truly understood, which is an eternity for this very smart child) and he tried first to rationalize the monster by saying that the mask was magic and would keep the monsters away.
Scenes like this happen every year or so for Madeleine, and as she reflects on them she always seems to admit that she has scared him for life and she truly feels guilt... but this doesn't stop her from doing something else just as stupid and immature when she's angry again, or even try to fix it by being nice to Erik for a few days afterwards. No, she just sort of shrugs, says she made a mistake (to herself, never would she actually admit the mistake to Erik) and goes on about life as normal.
The end of this section was a bit slow to me. Madeleine found herself a love interest that tried to convince her to put Erik in an asylum so that they can be together. Erik's dog and only friend passes away, and after he's told that dog's do not have souls and wont go to heaven he renounces any faith in God and runs away. Madeleine doesn't go after him, and we presume that she goes on and starts life over again with her new man and forgets the last 11 years with this child.
While I found this section of the book dragging a bit at times, I feel that it helped me understand a lot of the developmental aspects of his childhood that shaped him to have the attitude towards himself that manifested in his later life. He was ugly, because the only person that should have loved him thought he was ugly. He was a monster because she thought he was a monster. It really makes me want to know what would have happened, how he would have developed, if he'd had a normal and supportive family.
Madeleine's section helped to form Erik's views of himself and of God, while the next section, told by Erik's point of view, will help us understand how he developed his view of the human race.
So, until next time, be good Angels,
- Maya
We start off the novel with Madeleine, Erik's mother.
Every time I read the original novel, I always had to suspend reality a bit when Erik spoke of a mother that never kissed him. For some reason, this was always hard for me. I couldn't think how to imagine the person that Erik described, that could think that way about her own child... all because he was ugly. Kay finds a way to do it and make it completely believable.
The first section of the story is told from Madeleine's point of view. We find out very quickly that she was a spoiled child, the daughter of a wealthy gentleman that didn't let his daughter feel any sort of worldly hardships. She marries Charles at a young age, gets pregnant, they buy a house in the country and start there life together. All seems well in this woman's life... until she's 7 months pregnant and her husband dies in some work related accident and her perfect little life begins to crack and crumble.
It isn't until Erik is born that her life shatters. I feel that her madness begins here, when the midwife and her maid run from the house to fetch the priest and never return after seeing this infants face. She couldn't give the child her husbands name, like she'd planned, so instead tells the priest to christen him after himself. She asks the priest if she refused to feed him, if she ignored him and let God take him, if she would be sent to hell.... but being a "devout catholic" she recognizes this as murder and tries to bring herself to find a way to care for this devil's child.
So... she covers his face with a mask.
Madeleine's section of the book rushes through a lot of little stories. It covers 11 years in only 75 pages, but serves as an effective way to paint the picture of the child genius. At only a few months old, he plays a tune with a string of bells that Madeleine's friend strings above his crib like a mobile. He develops a love of architecture and scribbles and draws plans for beautiful buildings to perfect scale. He composes music, and frequently takes singing lessons from the priest who gave him his name.
One part of this that I found odd, and perhaps I didn't quite understand, but Madeleine can not be in the room when Erik takes his singing lessons from the priest... because she find his voice so beautiful that it is almost incestuously sensual. Not that she is suddenly attracted to her son, but that his voice fills her with emotions that manifest a physical reaction as well that she can't seem to control. On one hand I like the idea that not even Erik's own mother can ignore the beauty in his voice... but on another hand I wish she could ignore it just as piously as the priest seemed to...
When Erik is old enough to begin to doubt his mother's words and push the boundaries of discipline, as all children do, Madeleine's punishments are clearly just as insane as she is. When she's not beating him to bruises and broken skin, she always seems to do something to him that she admits will never leave him as long as he lives. On his fifth birthday, for example, she rips off his mask and takes him to the only mirror in the house and shows him his face. Erik doesn't understand and thinks it's a monster in a window... and not a reflection of himself... The realization of this fact seems to take Erik much longer to realise (I felt like it was months before he truly understood, which is an eternity for this very smart child) and he tried first to rationalize the monster by saying that the mask was magic and would keep the monsters away.
Scenes like this happen every year or so for Madeleine, and as she reflects on them she always seems to admit that she has scared him for life and she truly feels guilt... but this doesn't stop her from doing something else just as stupid and immature when she's angry again, or even try to fix it by being nice to Erik for a few days afterwards. No, she just sort of shrugs, says she made a mistake (to herself, never would she actually admit the mistake to Erik) and goes on about life as normal.
The end of this section was a bit slow to me. Madeleine found herself a love interest that tried to convince her to put Erik in an asylum so that they can be together. Erik's dog and only friend passes away, and after he's told that dog's do not have souls and wont go to heaven he renounces any faith in God and runs away. Madeleine doesn't go after him, and we presume that she goes on and starts life over again with her new man and forgets the last 11 years with this child.
While I found this section of the book dragging a bit at times, I feel that it helped me understand a lot of the developmental aspects of his childhood that shaped him to have the attitude towards himself that manifested in his later life. He was ugly, because the only person that should have loved him thought he was ugly. He was a monster because she thought he was a monster. It really makes me want to know what would have happened, how he would have developed, if he'd had a normal and supportive family.
Madeleine's section helped to form Erik's views of himself and of God, while the next section, told by Erik's point of view, will help us understand how he developed his view of the human race.
So, until next time, be good Angels,
- Maya
Monday, December 19, 2011
Monday Update
I finally got a profile picture up! Yay for me! But I looked at the slightly daunting task of filling out the rest of my profile that that's all I really got to. Who really wants to know what my favorite books/movies are or what I do in my free time? You're here for PHANTOM! Isn't that all that matters? (*cough*cough*ExcusesExcuses*cough*cough*)
Anyway. In actual Phantom related news. This last week, the release date for the Australian filmed Love Never Dies has been announced and is also available for preorder through Amazon. It has been rumored that LND will be released in cinemas before the dvd release date, much like the 25th Anniversary screenings, but I have yet to find any credible source to confirm that.
I have high hopes for this dvd, and I'm genuinely interested in the story that I've heard so much about... good and bad. But, I'm not going to give any more opinions until at least February 7th. :)
Check out the latest trailer for this film HERE.
I've been working on my post about Erik: Portrait of a Living Corpse, but it wont be ready until at sometime next week. I got the David Staller Musical in the mail this week as well, although I haven't had the chance to even crack the plastic on the thing. I am finishing up Unmasqued by Colette Gale, which has been interesting to say the least, and will be starting either Phantom by Susan Kay or Phantom of Manhattan after that. All of which, eventually, will have a post accompanying it!
Until next time, be good Angels,
- Maya
Edit~ I just saw a new post on Lessons From the Phantom of the Opera. Vicki is offering her print edition of the blog FREE on Kindle for the next four days. Check out that post HERE.
Anyway. In actual Phantom related news. This last week, the release date for the Australian filmed Love Never Dies has been announced and is also available for preorder through Amazon. It has been rumored that LND will be released in cinemas before the dvd release date, much like the 25th Anniversary screenings, but I have yet to find any credible source to confirm that.
I have high hopes for this dvd, and I'm genuinely interested in the story that I've heard so much about... good and bad. But, I'm not going to give any more opinions until at least February 7th. :)
Check out the latest trailer for this film HERE.
I've been working on my post about Erik: Portrait of a Living Corpse, but it wont be ready until at sometime next week. I got the David Staller Musical in the mail this week as well, although I haven't had the chance to even crack the plastic on the thing. I am finishing up Unmasqued by Colette Gale, which has been interesting to say the least, and will be starting either Phantom by Susan Kay or Phantom of Manhattan after that. All of which, eventually, will have a post accompanying it!
Until next time, be good Angels,
- Maya
Edit~ I just saw a new post on Lessons From the Phantom of the Opera. Vicki is offering her print edition of the blog FREE on Kindle for the next four days. Check out that post HERE.
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