So there's this idea I've been kicking around in my head for a few weeks now, which I haven't actually done anything with due to the little voice in my head saying, "This is a very bad idea and you shouldn't do it. It's got nothing in common with canon except the names. If you actually write this and post it online, it will end up being sporked somewhere."
It's a pirate AU, because my brain runs on pepper-jack cheese logic.
Christine is a pirate captain.
Erik is her Angel of Sailing.
Raoul is a naval deserter.
Basically, after her father died (do we know how old Christine was when her father died? I don't think the novel ever mentions it), Christine dressed in boy's clothes and got a job as a cabin boy on a merchant ship. Erik, one of the crew members, figured out she was a girl, but instead of revealing her secret, he took a liking to her and taught her the finer points of sailing. After a while, the ship was attacked by pirates. Erik and Christine were among those who volunteered to join the crew.
Nowadays, Christine is the captain of her own pirate ship, the Angel. (I know 20 is a little young to be a captain, but I can age her and Raoul up a little. And I know the Angel doesn't sound very pirate-y, but hey, Edward Low named one of his ships the Rose Pink. Besides, I can always add "of Death" or something.) Erik is her quartermaster. They've recently picked up a new crew member: Raoul de Chagny, Christine's childhood friend who's traumatized by his days in the navy and the death of his brother.
Here's the part I'm worried about. I came up with this plotline involving the hunt for a lost treasure and a literal ghost ship, which is all very well, but it sounds more like Pirates of the Caribbean than Phantom of the Opera. The canonical love triangle is reduced to a subplot. I know that's bad, which is why I'm having doubts about this whole thing, but part of me still really wants to write this fic.
So, uh...talk me out of it? Encourage me to go ahead and do it? Offer suggestions for improvement?
(In case you're wondering how I came up with Pirate-captain!Christine in the first place...I was reading Phanwank's tags list and came across the tag "white slave!christine." I immediately thought, "And then Christine escaped her master, commandeered a ship with the help of her fellow runaway slaves and a tax dodger, and became the most feared pirate in the Caribbean."
Remember Custer!Raoul,![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
igenlode? Now we have Blood!Christine.
Besides, "Captain Christine Daaé" has a nice ring to it, don't you think?)
It's a pirate AU, because my brain runs on pepper-jack cheese logic.
Christine is a pirate captain.
Erik is her Angel of Sailing.
Raoul is a naval deserter.
Basically, after her father died (do we know how old Christine was when her father died? I don't think the novel ever mentions it), Christine dressed in boy's clothes and got a job as a cabin boy on a merchant ship. Erik, one of the crew members, figured out she was a girl, but instead of revealing her secret, he took a liking to her and taught her the finer points of sailing. After a while, the ship was attacked by pirates. Erik and Christine were among those who volunteered to join the crew.
Nowadays, Christine is the captain of her own pirate ship, the Angel. (I know 20 is a little young to be a captain, but I can age her and Raoul up a little. And I know the Angel doesn't sound very pirate-y, but hey, Edward Low named one of his ships the Rose Pink. Besides, I can always add "of Death" or something.) Erik is her quartermaster. They've recently picked up a new crew member: Raoul de Chagny, Christine's childhood friend who's traumatized by his days in the navy and the death of his brother.
Here's the part I'm worried about. I came up with this plotline involving the hunt for a lost treasure and a literal ghost ship, which is all very well, but it sounds more like Pirates of the Caribbean than Phantom of the Opera. The canonical love triangle is reduced to a subplot. I know that's bad, which is why I'm having doubts about this whole thing, but part of me still really wants to write this fic.
So, uh...talk me out of it? Encourage me to go ahead and do it? Offer suggestions for improvement?
(In case you're wondering how I came up with Pirate-captain!Christine in the first place...I was reading Phanwank's tags list and came across the tag "white slave!christine." I immediately thought, "And then Christine escaped her master, commandeered a ship with the help of her fellow runaway slaves and a tax dodger, and became the most feared pirate in the Caribbean."
Remember Custer!Raoul,
igenlode? Now we have Blood!Christine.Besides, "Captain Christine Daaé" has a nice ring to it, don't you think?)
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But in addition to being able to laugh and banter and swing a sword, in his best performances he can do the sort of still, infinitesimally shaded stuff that you'd associate with a very different type of actor. (Custer is a pretty good example, as I recall.)
*nods*
And since it would be rude to speak of Errol Flynn so long without mentioning a certain person, I'll tell you how he helped achieve something I previously thought was impossible.
I've been a Robin Hood fan since I was a kid. I never liked Marian or the Robin/Marian pairing. I'm not entirely sure why, but it probably stemmed from my main source of Robin Hood lore being Pyle's book, in which Marian is only mentioned twice and never appears. Didn't that prove Robin had no need of a love interest, and that Marian was essentially a useless character? My very jaded attitude toward romance in general didn't help, either. Nothing could make me like Marian or ship the Robin/Marian pairing. Or so I thought.
Fast-forward a few years.
After a chance encounter with The Mark of Zorro, I was poking around on the Internet looking for more swashbucklers, and came across The Adventures of Robin Hood. I'd never heard of anyone in it (save Claude Rains and Basil Rathbone), but as previously mentioned, I love Robin Hood, so I checked it out.
When Robin and Marian met, I remember sighing, mentally bracing myself, and thinking, "Oh, fuck, here it comes..."
"Why, you speak treason!"
"Fluently!"
I was so shocked, I almost fell off the couch. The rest, as they say, is history.
Does Marian still annoy me? Yes. But not out of hatred, out of being spoiled by Olivia de Havilland. I doubt any Marian will ever measure up to hers.
I'm glad they made eight films together. That kind of screen chemistry is not something you see every day.
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http://www.forgottensouls.com/movies/Robin-Hood-(1938)%7B%7D_0.html
I think my first acquaintance with the story was the Carola Oman retelling, which I now know was based on the various ballads of Robin Hood, although she sets her Robin in the reign of Edward II, which makes more sense in the light of the book's depiction of a 'weak King' who needs the outlaws' help than using the chronology popularised in "Ivanhoe" (as seen in the Flynn film).
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Robin-Hood-Aldine-Paperbacks-Carola/dp/046002177X
It starts off as what appears to be the story of a mediaeval knight who has nothing to do with Robin Hood at all -- which, when you're a child who has just plucked the book off the shelf and don't have any idea what to expect of this 'Robin', isn't in any way off-putting, but might puzzle an adult reader who is already well-versed in the legend! Of course, by the end of the first story the narrator has had an encounter with Robin and his merry men and the day has been saved -- not sure this is a story I've ever seen anywhere else (I assume it's a specific ballad), but I was quite taken aback to find that the next version of the legends I encountered started off on a quite different note :-p
Anyway, I'd recommend the book if you ever come across an old paperback reprint, though I don't know now if it's still as good as I remember...
Marian doesn't feature very much in that one either, though she turns up in a couple of the chapters (including the first). I suspect she was a later addition to the corpus of stories, like Lancelot in Arthurian legend. Most children don't have any taste for love-interests anyway.
I think you must be the first person I've ever heard of who recognised Claude Rains and Basil Rathbone as headline actors before encountering Errol Flynn :-P
They're both very well worth watching; both fall under the category of people whose name on a film is likely to arouse my interest for that alone.
But yes, that "You speak treason"/"Fluently" exchange is a classic of its kind; I just wish the period costumes in this production did Olivia de Havilland's beauty a few more favours!
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Anyway, I'd recommend the book if you ever come across an old paperback reprint, though I don't know now if it's still as good as I remember...
If I see it, I'll read it.
I think you must be the first person I've ever heard of who recognised Claude Rains and Basil Rathbone as headline actors before encountering Errol Flynn :-P
I'd already seen Claude Rains in Casablanca and Basil Rathbone in the 1940 version of The Mark of Zorro (as I mentioned above), so yeah. :P
And hey, didn't Rains play Erik in the 1943 Phantom movie?
I just wish the period costumes in this production did Olivia de Havilland's beauty a few more favours!
So do I!
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Thanks -- I used to write a lot of very eloquent film reviews, before I went in for fan-fiction (I only have a certain quotient of creativity, I'm afraid, and it's getting channelled elsewhere at the moment). As a result I've been amused to see my comments on otherwise obscure films cropping up on DVD sleeves, in British Film Institute information sheets, and elsewhere on the Web :-D
I believe Claude Rains did play the Phantom, although I haven't seen the film; I thought you were more likely to have come across him in "The Invisible Man" ;-p It was actually his performances in "Notorious" and "The Passionate Friends" that I was thinking of, where he goes a fair way towards stealing the film in unpromising cuckolded husband roles: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041735/reviews-8 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038787/reviews-172
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That's awesome!
I haven't seen the 1943 Phantom either, or any of those other movies; like I said, I first saw him in Casablanca. He's a pretty good actor.