Randomly psychotic Raoul (original) (raw)

Laugh at Stupidity > Recent Entries> Archive> Friends> Profile> The Sueniverse: A Mary-Sue RPG	May 19th, 2014 igenlode02:02 am - Randomly psychotic Raoul Something to Sing About by Josephine de Chagny:I got to chapter 28 of this one, and just went _What...?_The irony is that it wouldn't have come as such a slap in the face if it had been chapter 2: I'd already seen and discarded this story once, with its predictable opening chapter featuring a Christine who dreams of her noble Angel of Music after marrying an abusive and unfaithful drunk (otherwise known as Raoul de Chagny). The only minor difference from the standard plotline is that that they have a couple of months of happiness before Raoul arbitrarily mutates, and that Christine still claims to love him.But for some reason or other I took a look at the latest instalment somewhere around chapter 20 and discovered a completely different plot going on: an anxious, tender Raoul nursing Christine with concern. Looking back in confusion, I found the story busy explaining just what Raoul had been up to -- not what Christine or the audience assumed -- and how he feels about her and her music, while establishing the Phantom with a group of OCs (while the girl Josephine to whom he becomes close and who wants singing lessons turns out to be infatuated not with Erik but with Raoul, whom she "lusted after" and of whose wife she is fiercely jealous). In other words, that clichéd first chapter appeared to have been put in there with the express intent of blindsiding the audience...Christine falls down the stairs after a night of heavy (jealousy-induced) drinking; Raoul gets very worried and has what is actually a quite justifiable rant after she calls him "Angel" when he kisses her in her sleep: _"Oh Raoul, please threaten me with murder. Kill a bunch of people in order to advance my career- hell kidnap me and hide me away underground while everybody worries about me! It is all I crave in this world!"_However I think this is supposed to be seen as quite unreasonable behaviour on his part: at any rate, Christine has a miscarriage the next day, leading to a lot of cherishing and fluff. Meanwhile Erik takes up murder as a trade for his new friends (and for some reason, their leader suddenly asks him to help him commit suicide, which is a bad idea... as Josephine tells Erik angrily, "What sort of people need to be told not to kill?") He is told that Raoul mistreats his wife and becomes murderously obsessed with killing him, which is ironic since Raoul and Christine are at the same time undergoing a marital reconciliation; we've been in Raoul's head for the last twenty chapters or so and know how humble and loving he feels towards her.In fact Erik is "gifted with a release" in the form of murdering a couple of random thugs he finds misbehaving themselves in the street: at this point he is coming across as psychotically dangerous and deluded, and when he makes his move on Christine's husband we are not surprised that her response is to beg desperately for the Phantom not to hurt him.And then... the Raoul we've known for the previous twenty-seven chapters is suddenly replaced with a conveniently psychotic monster who holds a knife to Christine's throat and forces her to put the blade inside her mouth so that he can slice her face open from the inside, scarring her for life. Then he cuts Josephine's throat -- what??? Remind me just who is the crazed killer out of the two men in this story? So far as I can tell, from this point onwards the story turns into a standard-issue Wicked, Evil Raoul hunts down Helpless, Innocent Erik and Christine fic -- which would be less of a slap in the face if the author hadn't just spent tens of thousands of words establishing what looked like an actual relationship between the characters based on misunderstandings and tragic mistakes...And killing off Josephine (the one character who can actually stand up to Erik and holds no illusions about him) as an almost random aside -- why? Was the author afraid that her OC was going to be a rival to Christine for audience interest? Did she realise that having her lusting after this new-model torturing, murdering 'viscomte' (misspelt with monotonous regularity throughout) was going to be a bit hard to sustain? Did someone accuse her of being an authorial insert? (The writer's pen-name is "Josephine de Chagny", which with hindsight was probably a bit suspect...)I've seen some weird Raouls, but I don't think I've ever seen a Raoul who mutilates Christine and then gets sprayed with arterial blood when cutting the throat of an innocent third party in the street, let alone one who does so after spending the entire story feeling unworthy and then joyously reconciling with his wife!Current Mood: shockedTags: ...the heck?, abusive!raoul, canon? what's that?, character abuse(2 comments \| Leave a comment)From:kryss_labryn Date:May 28th, 2014 01:59 pm (UTC) (Link)Wow, what?Kudos to the author for setting up the cliched first chapter and then following it up with what sounds like a pretty original story; that last bit sounds right out of left field, though! I too wonder what the hell happened. Perhaps she had phan friends ragging on her about making a likeable Raoul and decided to finish the story with a burst of rage.(Reply) (Thread) From:igenlode Date:May 28th, 2014 05:41 pm (UTC) (Link)So far as I remember (I haven't dared look back at the story after posting a somewhat flabbergasted comment on it!) the story only ever had a couple of regular reviewers, who were busy waiting with bated breath for the despicable Raoul to show his true colours and for the grand reunion between Erik and Christine: the latter was certainly being set up more or less from the start. It's just that, the way things were going, it would have made more sense for Erik to murder Raoul and then have to spend the rest of the story consoling a distraught Christine when it turned out the whole thing had been a terrible mistake...So the author may well have been trying to live up to her readers' expectations: or she may have been planning this all along but had her Raoul and Christine run away with her, as it were, so that the planned confrontation didn't sit right when it finally arrived. Or she may have been trying to write Uncontrollable-Temper-Raoul who has a brief reformation and then reverts to type -- though where he gets the psycho knife skills (or indeed the knife) from is not clear.The trouble with that is that she writes so many of the intervening chapters from Raoul's own point of view: fine, so she has her Christine jealous, traumatised into muteness by miscarriage, and suffering foreshadowing dreams of being beaten up by her husband (although she also has her clinging frantically to a husband who who would otherwise retreat from her out of shame, and eventually seducing him into mutually disbelieving delight). But she makes the mistake of showing at the same time a Raoul who is angry, who is jealous (quite reasonably so!), but who is frantically remorseful for causing Christine a moment's pain, who wants her to star in a new theatre production, and who controls his anger when she disappears one morning because he is just so grateful when she comes back again. When we've seen how unworthy he feels when she clings to him for comfort and how ashamed he becomes after a brief outburst of temper, suddenly assaulting her with a naked blade comes across as a total change of character... And then we're cheerfully told that Christine knew all along that he would have killed her in the end: well, Raoul apparently didn't! If the author had written the whole thing from Christine's point of view, the same behaviour could have been written off as Raoul's Deceitful Ways: but since we supposedly know what he is thinking during most of the story the retrospective reinterpretation doesn't make sense.And I'm still very confused by an author who christens herself after the would-be name of her original character and then arbitrarily kills off said character in the middle of the story. It could be an incredibly courageous and daring thing to do, of course, but the way she's written it comes out more like an anti-climax. I actually went to the lengths of wondering if the whole thing is another smoke-screen, that the death turns out to have been faked and that Josephine ends up successfully seducing Raoul after all (yes, he does consider adultery -- with this girl who reminds him of Christine before she turned into a moping oppressed aristocratic relict -- but Josephine is furious to find that she can't get him away from his wife...)But having made her Raoul into a monster she can't very well pull this one off without making her own character into a fellow-monster. And I couldn't bring myself to continue reading the story to find out!(edit: these Are You a Human? challenges are almost impossible to read! Took me three goes to get it right...)(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)
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Laugh at Stupidity > Recent Entries> Archive> Friends> Profile> The Sueniverse: A Mary-Sue RPG

May 19th, 2014

02:02 am - Randomly psychotic Raoul Something to Sing About by Josephine de Chagny:I got to chapter 28 of this one, and just went _What...?_The irony is that it wouldn't have come as such a slap in the face if it had been chapter 2: I'd already seen and discarded this story once, with its predictable opening chapter featuring a Christine who dreams of her noble Angel of Music after marrying an abusive and unfaithful drunk (otherwise known as Raoul de Chagny). The only minor difference from the standard plotline is that that they have a couple of months of happiness before Raoul arbitrarily mutates, and that Christine still claims to love him.But for some reason or other I took a look at the latest instalment somewhere around chapter 20 and discovered a completely different plot going on: an anxious, tender Raoul nursing Christine with concern. Looking back in confusion, I found the story busy explaining just what Raoul had been up to -- not what Christine or the audience assumed -- and how he feels about her and her music, while establishing the Phantom with a group of OCs (while the girl Josephine to whom he becomes close and who wants singing lessons turns out to be infatuated not with Erik but with Raoul, whom she "lusted after" and of whose wife she is fiercely jealous). In other words, that clichéd first chapter appeared to have been put in there with the express intent of blindsiding the audience...Christine falls down the stairs after a night of heavy (jealousy-induced) drinking; Raoul gets very worried and has what is actually a quite justifiable rant after she calls him "Angel" when he kisses her in her sleep: _"Oh Raoul, please threaten me with murder. Kill a bunch of people in order to advance my career- hell kidnap me and hide me away underground while everybody worries about me! It is all I crave in this world!"_However I think this is supposed to be seen as quite unreasonable behaviour on his part: at any rate, Christine has a miscarriage the next day, leading to a lot of cherishing and fluff. Meanwhile Erik takes up murder as a trade for his new friends (and for some reason, their leader suddenly asks him to help him commit suicide, which is a bad idea... as Josephine tells Erik angrily, "What sort of people need to be told not to kill?") He is told that Raoul mistreats his wife and becomes murderously obsessed with killing him, which is ironic since Raoul and Christine are at the same time undergoing a marital reconciliation; we've been in Raoul's head for the last twenty chapters or so and know how humble and loving he feels towards her.In fact Erik is "gifted with a release" in the form of murdering a couple of random thugs he finds misbehaving themselves in the street: at this point he is coming across as psychotically dangerous and deluded, and when he makes his move on Christine's husband we are not surprised that her response is to beg desperately for the Phantom not to hurt him.And then... the Raoul we've known for the previous twenty-seven chapters is suddenly replaced with a conveniently psychotic monster who holds a knife to Christine's throat and forces her to put the blade inside her mouth so that he can slice her face open from the inside, scarring her for life. Then he cuts Josephine's throat -- what??? Remind me just who is the crazed killer out of the two men in this story? So far as I can tell, from this point onwards the story turns into a standard-issue Wicked, Evil Raoul hunts down Helpless, Innocent Erik and Christine fic -- which would be less of a slap in the face if the author hadn't just spent tens of thousands of words establishing what looked like an actual relationship between the characters based on misunderstandings and tragic mistakes...And killing off Josephine (the one character who can actually stand up to Erik and holds no illusions about him) as an almost random aside -- why? Was the author afraid that her OC was going to be a rival to Christine for audience interest? Did she realise that having her lusting after this new-model torturing, murdering 'viscomte' (misspelt with monotonous regularity throughout) was going to be a bit hard to sustain? Did someone accuse her of being an authorial insert? (The writer's pen-name is "Josephine de Chagny", which with hindsight was probably a bit suspect...)I've seen some weird Raouls, but I don't think I've ever seen a Raoul who mutilates Christine and then gets sprayed with arterial blood when cutting the throat of an innocent third party in the street, let alone one who does so after spending the entire story feeling unworthy and then joyously reconciling with his wife!Current Mood: shocked

shockedTags: ...the heck?, abusive!raoul, canon? what's that?, character abuse(2 comments | Leave a comment)

From:

kryss_labryn Date:May 28th, 2014 01:59 pm (UTC) **(Link)**Wow, what?Kudos to the author for setting up the cliched first chapter and then following it up with what sounds like a pretty original story; that last bit sounds right out of left field, though! I too wonder what the hell happened. Perhaps she had phan friends ragging on her about making a likeable Raoul and decided to finish the story with a burst of rage.(Reply) (Thread)

From:

igenlode Date:May 28th, 2014 05:41 pm (UTC) **(Link)**So far as I remember (I haven't dared look back at the story after posting a somewhat flabbergasted comment on it!) the story only ever had a couple of regular reviewers, who were busy waiting with bated breath for the despicable Raoul to show his true colours and for the grand reunion between Erik and Christine: the latter was certainly being set up more or less from the start. It's just that, the way things were going, it would have made more sense for Erik to murder Raoul and then have to spend the rest of the story consoling a distraught Christine when it turned out the whole thing had been a terrible mistake...So the author may well have been trying to live up to her readers' expectations: or she may have been planning this all along but had her Raoul and Christine run away with her, as it were, so that the planned confrontation didn't sit right when it finally arrived. Or she may have been trying to write Uncontrollable-Temper-Raoul who has a brief reformation and then reverts to type -- though where he gets the psycho knife skills (or indeed the knife) from is not clear.The trouble with that is that she writes so many of the intervening chapters from Raoul's own point of view: fine, so she has her Christine jealous, traumatised into muteness by miscarriage, and suffering foreshadowing dreams of being beaten up by her husband (although she also has her clinging frantically to a husband who who would otherwise retreat from her out of shame, and eventually seducing him into mutually disbelieving delight). But she makes the mistake of showing at the same time a Raoul who is angry, who is jealous (quite reasonably so!), but who is frantically remorseful for causing Christine a moment's pain, who wants her to star in a new theatre production, and who controls his anger when she disappears one morning because he is just so grateful when she comes back again. When we've seen how unworthy he feels when she clings to him for comfort and how ashamed he becomes after a brief outburst of temper, suddenly assaulting her with a naked blade comes across as a total change of character... And then we're cheerfully told that Christine knew all along that he would have killed her in the end: well, Raoul apparently didn't! If the author had written the whole thing from Christine's point of view, the same behaviour could have been written off as Raoul's Deceitful Ways: but since we supposedly know what he is thinking during most of the story the retrospective reinterpretation doesn't make sense.And I'm still very confused by an author who christens herself after the would-be name of her original character and then arbitrarily kills off said character in the middle of the story. It could be an incredibly courageous and daring thing to do, of course, but the way she's written it comes out more like an anti-climax. I actually went to the lengths of wondering if the whole thing is another smoke-screen, that the death turns out to have been faked and that Josephine ends up successfully seducing Raoul after all (yes, he does consider adultery -- with this girl who reminds him of Christine before she turned into a moping oppressed aristocratic relict -- but Josephine is furious to find that she can't get him away from his wife...)But having made her Raoul into a monster she can't very well pull this one off without making her own character into a fellow-monster. And I couldn't bring myself to continue reading the story to find out!(edit: these Are You a Human? challenges are almost impossible to read! Took me three goes to get it right...)(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

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