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Well, its midnight, or 12:09 actually, no midnight parties for me. Oh well. Having your mother work the Wal-Mart advantages has its advantages- they won't let the employees snatch copies before the store opens at 6, but she'll be able to get one as soon as she gets off work and I'll have a copy of Half-Blood Prince in my hands in the morning.

In other news, amazingly, I just finished The Phantom of Manhattan by Frederick Forsyth.

I have my complaints, it took some time for me to forget how pissed I was at the things said in the Preface and to get over that whole CHRISTINE AND ERIK DID NOT HAVE SEX IN THE LAIR *TWITCHTWITCH* issue in my brain. But besides those, there was the seemingly lack of understanding of the characters (As was revealed in THAT STUPID LEROUX-BASHING PREFACE) which led to them being rather Out of Character- Erik, in the beginning, seemed to have elements of both Lloyd Webber's Erik and Leroux's Erik, but I was willing to deal with that. When Christine came into the picture, however, she seemed out of character most of the time and both were very out of character, in my opinion, when they confronted eachother both times. They had the closeness to the originals (Looking at the musical, not the Leroux novel) that a decent fanfic writer might give them, which didn't make me want to strangle Forsyth (As I did while reading the STUPID PREFACE) but I expected a little more from someone attempting to do a sequel to the most popular musical of all time.

Did I mention previously after seeing the Robert Englund movie that I don't like Erik being portrayed as a Satanist? Yes, yes I did. At least there was talk of his redemption in here. The Priest's conversation with God and the belief that Darius could not be saved irked me for many reasons that I don't have the heart to go into, but comparing it to Robert Englund I can deal with that XP

Pierre? Well... I was okay with him. I've seen some fics as to what Erik's children might be like, ect. and considering that, Forsyth did well in not being too overly-preachy of Pierre's parentage. And he showed enough signs of pansy-ism to have been raised by Raoul XDDD My only complaint about Pierre (Besides having such a gaggingly overly French name of Pierre XD) is that, though girls mature before boys, he is about a year going on two older than my little sister Jenn, and he seems a little too childish for the age. I guess its the temptation of writers to make children childish no matter what the age as long as they are children- I found myself doing the same with an RP character of mine, which lead me to knock a few years off of her.

As for Erik's second opera? It was obvious from the beginning that it paralleled the love story of he and Christine, but I had a little trouble figuring out who paralleled who in the Opera. I've heard it said that it doesn't seem like the kind of Opera Erik would write, but considering his love for Christine, I'll give it the benefit of the doubt.

The ending seemed a little too typical 'reveal a great secret in my dying breath', and considering Forsyth had already did one of those deaths with Mme. Giry in the beginning, it was a little annoying to me. But that's just me and my dislike of a lack of realism with deaths XP

Overall, I would recommend it, just for kicks. Try not to hurt someone if you're a Phantom purist reading the Preface, however tempting it is to punjab the person nearest to you. I wouldn't consider it a real sequel myself or any more valid canon than any of the other adaptions and sequels out there, of which there are dozens, just another person's take. Besides, a real sequel would have to be, in my opinion, a sequel to the Leroux novel, the ultimate canon, of which there is no need and few ways to do (I can think of none myself) without completely butchering the original, so I guess a sequel to the musical is the best anyone could do. I wish it would've been better done, butThe Phantom of Manhattan is in a way just published fanfiction, and for fanfiction it does fairly well.

I'm happy I got Phantom of Manhattan out of the way and out of my mind with the coming of Half-Blood Prince (Which just happens to come near to the due date for my essay on Ethan Frome which I haven't touched since I first got it and the assignment when school ended, so let's hope and pray I can juggle these two. In school I would, but I'm in a different frame of mind in school... In summer, procrastination reigns.).

Boy, voting at Masque_icons starts today, doesn't it? And I haven't even checked to see my competition yet! I only glanced this morning and the voting wasn't up yet... Man, Phantom really has eaten my brain, even if today it was a different Phantom than usual. I'm off!

Now its 12:37 >.>

More on Phantom of Manhattan

Did I mentioned we put a copy of the original, black-and-white, silent 1925 version of The Phantom of the Opera on hold? Fwee.

Anyway, I was considering Frederick Forsyth's book some more, and I was thinking about fanfiction.

What makes good fanfiction?

I'm not real big on reading or writing fanfiction, not at all like some people, I've read a few fics and written a couple short ones (Actually, I'm writing some fanfiction on fanfiction in a way, in that I am re-writing The Phantom of the Opera to take place in Stellmond Academy, my fictional wizarding school in J. K. Rowling's world which in a way is fanfiction itself), but I've spent a lot of time around people in love with fanfiction. I think that the basis for good fanfiction is, first of all, having a clear and deep understanding of the canon. Canon being a fanfiction term for the original work and the rules and boundries set in it. In this case, the canon is the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, which is basically fanfiction of the Gaston Leroux novel Le Fantome de l'opera (The Phantom of the Opera), but that's not really important...

Anyway, does Frederick Forsyth show an understanding of the canon? We have already established that I'm pissed about the Preface, right? I don't have to go through the whole BUTCHERED, BUTCHERED I SAY deal again? Okay, good. Well, in the preface he outlines what he believes to be a summary of the events of The Phantom of the Opera. For someone who seems to feel he can nitpick Leroux's novel so thoroughly, he doesn't seem to have been paying that much attention to the canon he is going off of, the musical!

I've hinted plenty at spoilers in my last few entires, but I'm going to outright talk about some spoilers in the next part of this post, so I'm going under a cut.

( 'If that doesn't say LOLZ SEX I don't know what does. Well, except maybe PONR. -Adam' )

Maybe I'm being a little critical, say he's taking some liberties, but if he's going to be so critical of Gaston Leroux's novel, which his novel in a not necessarily very roundabout way is based on, I don't feel like being especially kind to his novel. Especially considering that that illogical claim is not the only thing wrong with it- there are the out of character conversations, the lack of realism with some events (Though I understand that that is part of storytelling)...

I guess I just expected more from a published sequel. Because, frankly, though it may be an outrageous claim and I wouldn't anyway because the story goes against a lot of the things I believe about what happened in Phantom, but if I did write this story, I would probably write it with about the characterization ect. that he did. And since I am a fourteen-year-old whose greatest accomplishment in writing was winning 2nd place in a short story competition, and he is an accomplished author with a nice collection of published novels, I expected just a little bit better than that.

I should've been in bed hours ago.