Hey, there, everyone!

Back from long radio silence, I'm almost about to be able to go back to reviews again soon. Things are going off to the publisher this next month, and I will be able to sleep the blissful sleep of the published-but-not-yet-savaged-by-critics. I look forward to that day, when I can work on the Cole book to my heart's content.

In the meantime, I have only snips and clips of time - not enough to get through a book or do a thorough review, but enough to make things better around here. I've been keeping the Progress Page up to date with new releases (oh my goodness, you have NO IDEA how excited I am about these new books from Sarah Fine!), and I even started up a Tumblr account because I have been having way too much fun stalking the Phantom fan community over there (but don't get all excited about following me - I am just as bad at updating over there as I am here).

My biggest project, though, is to clean up around here, and by clean up I mean edit a lot of old reviews. I've been working on this project for seven years, and during that time I've grown a lot as a person; I've learned new things, become aware of more issues in the world around me, and realized that life is a process of both learning good new things and unlearning bad old ones. The wee baby me who was fresh out of undergrad when she began this had good intentions, but she didn't always do a great job of carrying them out, so it's up to (slightly) more adult me to do that now.

So, I'll be working on editing old reviews for a number of things. I'll be trying to remove unintentionally sexist objections (oh man, you all know I love Christine but many years ago there was some pretty sad internalized badness that comes out in a review once in a while), jokes that I now recognize are harmful rather than funny, and my pretty rampant use of ableist terms. I hope there aren't too many of them, but I know I've seen some going over old reviews, and I know you all have, too. There's also been some fantastic fan research in the past few years into the origins of Leroux's story and inspirations, and this'll give me a chance to make a note here and there if need be!

In the meantime, thanks to all of you for sticking with me in spite of my blunders, and for being an awesome, fun, and supportive community. You rock.

Back to your regularly scheduled Phantom holiday extravaganzas, whatever they might be!

I put "worst Phantom holiday gif" into Google and this is what I got. Glorious.

A quick update from the trenches! There's no new review yet, but that's not the current author's fault; it's mine. If anyone ever tells you that it's a good idea to try to get a novel and an RPG core book out at the same deadline date when that deadline is less than five months away, you should probably hit them in the face because they are an appalling liar. My busyness is through the roof so unfortunately the Phantom Project had to be back-burnered for a bit, but I hope to be back soon.

In the meantime, awesome Project follower Heather made this hilarious bingo card for use when reviewing self-published Phantom novels. I laughed, I cried, I thought of how true it was and got drunk.

Now you, too, can follow along with the self-pubs in your own libraries! I did a few for the greatest hits of the Pit of Infamy on the Project site, and oh boy, you can totally see them hitting all the high notes.

To the left, Becky Meadows' Phantasy; to the right, Etienne de Mendes' The Return of the Phantom: Le Coeur Loyale. Truly amazing.

In more serious news, however, some of you may not be aware that Universal Studios is currently planning to demolish Stage 28, which was the original stage on which the 1925 Julian/Chaney Phantom film was shot, and which was used again for the 1943 Lubin/Rains movie as well as for countless other Universal productions since. The Phantom set itself is being preserved, according to this Variety Magazine article, and hopefully moved to a new home as a historical attraction or museum exhibit, although we don't yet know where it will end up or in what shape (the article notes that it's unsure how much of it can be preserved when it's moved off the stage it's lived on for the past ninety years).

While I personally am pleased as punch that the set is being preserved and don't mind letting the stage go once it's been moved off, there is a petition started by fans of the first Phantom film adaptation and other Universal movies to try to stop its demolition, if any of you would like to go add your voices to it.

No matter what your feelings on it, now seems like a great time to go show the 1925 film some love, right? Let's get some Chaney up in here!

And boom! Your eyes do not deceive you - this is a third review in the same month. We should all celebrate. I know I certainly am.

Okay, it was a little bit of a cheat - it was a board game and apparently those are quick reviews. But since I see all of you voted for a book next in a giant landslide, we'll be able to go right back to spending weeks crying into our drinks and wondering what we did to deserve all this.

On to the next round of votes - on, I say!

What kind of Phantom material should Anne review next?
	Book
	Comic
	Film
	Game
	Short Stories
	Stage Show
	Other

It's time! A new review to go on the fancy new Comics page! It's weird. Be prepared for weirdness.

The voting tied this time, so I have to choose between a book or a game next. I'm autocratically electing a game, because this board game has been burning a hole in my living room game shelf for a while, but it should go considerably more quickly than a book, and I'll be back for the next round in no time!

Let's hit that voting booth again!

What kind of Phantom material should Anne review next?
	Book
	Comic
	Film
	Game
	Short Stories
	Stage Show
	Other

I realized this month that the Phantom Project's website hasn't been updated, cleaned up, or really in any way made less embarrassing since I started it. Which was seven years ago. How time flies when I'm being lazy. So therefore you'll see some cleaning up and streamlining going on this week, which will hopefully help keep me more organized and make life easier for all of you that like to visit and don't appreciate being lost in a forest of poorly marked lists.

At the moment, I've updated the following:

• The Progress Page now separates materials by type and provides better information about their publishing and authoriship. For those of you who have been using it as a list of possible materials for years and struggling through the messy giant list format, hopefully it'll be a little easier on the eyes and the navigating fingers now.
• Comics now have their own separate page instead of being lost in the flood of other printed works. They deserved it; they're really an art form of their own.
• Book reviews now have subheadings to separate out childrens' books, fiction and nonfiction, again to help break up these big ugly lists of things.
• Similarly, film reviews are now separated by feature films and adult films, so it's no longer a surprise when you're clicking along and suddenly porn happens.
• The iframe situation for the blog is less ugly now, and there are no more terrible nested scrollbars.

That's all for now, but I'm planning to also brush up the FAQ and possibly see what I can do about making the whole place look a little more pleasing to the eye and a little less like what it is, which is someplace I occasionally copy and paste a lot of words and then ignore for weeks at a time. If you have any requests for things you'd like to see or suggestions that would make getting around on the site easier for you, I'm all ears; I can't promise I'll have the skills to pull them off and it's always possible I'll hate your ideas, but most likely I'll be willing to give it a shot in the name of internet harmony.

Back to reviewing for me!

It's here! The review that launched a thousand ships!

Now that that's finally on the site, I feel like having a milestone party and celebrating with something fun next. And as luck would have it, comics won the last round of votes, so fun times it is! Below it's time for a new vote, and for this round I'm going to just collapse ebooks and books together - they're basically the same and y'all don't care if I'm reading them on a Kindle or in my hands, after all.

What kind of Phantom material should Anne review next?
	Book
	Comic
	Film
	Game
	Short Stories
	Stage Show
	Other

On to Comicstown!

Here we go! To ring in the end of the month, we've got a brand-new review!

It's a long one and a sad one, but now we get to move on to something new, so woohoo! Let's do it!

The last poll squeaked in with stage show at the top of the heap. Alas, I still don't have access to a copy of the Takarazuka Snow Troupe's version of Singing in the Moonlight and Roger Moss's Phantom of the P'Opera still doesn't have an easily accessible script or recording, but I know what all of you are really looking for anyway. Next up: Love Never Dies, the stage review everyone has been waiting for anyway. It's been a long time coming!

In the meantime, voting's back up for something new. Let me have it. :)

What kind of Phantom material should Anne review next?
	Book
	Comic
	eBook
	Film
	Game
	Short Stories
	Stage Show
	Other

This has been a crazy neat month in the world of Phantom material reviews. While I don't have a review for the de Mendes book yet, I did recently finish the nearly 500-page behemoth, so it'll be incoming soon. But instead, other cool stuff!

First of all, a quick correction from an alert reader - in my review of John Fowles' The Collector, I drew a parallel between Frederick and Leroux's Erik both being significantly older than the object of their affections. It's been pointed out that I missed the implication elsewhere in the book that Frederick is in his twenties himself, and therefore not that much older than Miranda. I've updated the review with a note!

Then, another awesome reader noticed my wistfulness over the fact that my recording of Ken Hill's 1984 musical did not include "All My Dreams Faded Suddenly", the new number based on Dvorak's Mesicku na nebi hlubokem that later replaced the original "Love Has Gone, Never Returning". They were kind enough to let me listen to a recording of the song performed live, which was frankly awesome! I can't post it here because it doesn't belong to me, but I added an addendum to my review, so you can check it out here if you want to.

And finally, and possibly neatest of all, I received an email from Scott Schneid, the original screenwriter for the 1988 movie Phantom of the Mall. He was incredibly kind about my unimpressed review - in fact, he said that the final movie differed substantially from his original script, and offered me (and now all of you!) a link to this article in which he offers his perspective on what the movie could have been and a lot of background information on its production. The article's full of cool stuff, from storyboards to Schneid's original ideas to comparisons of the script and the final movie, so if you're in the mood for some insight into the world of 1980s movie production, head on over and take a look!

Back next time with reviews, I hope, so until then...

I come bearing gifts of film reviews! Not as exciting as wine or chocolates, but I don't know how invested we are in this relationship yet.

Now that we've done a few side trips, it's back off to the land of books again, according to you fine folks and your votes. I realized this week as I was wrapping up the last review that for some reason I didn't have stage shows on the voting poll, which was just negligence on my part, so here's an updated poll with a brand-new option.

To the shelves!

What kind of Phantom material should Anne review next?
	Book
	eBook
	Film
	Game
	Short Stories
	Stage Show
	Other

Welcome to the delightful, sunny months of spring! Here's a delightful new review, for all of you to go forth and read on a picnic blanket while ants cavort around your ankles, or whatever it is you like doing in the springtime.

The votes squeaked in for a movie next, so I'm off to chomp Twizzlers and pop corn until the credits roll. New poll's up below - go nuts!

What kind of Phantom material should Anne review next?
	Book
	eBook
	Film
	Game
	Short Stories
	Other

And bam, second review, less than a week, AWESOME.

Since there was a four-way tie on votes (how does that even happen?), I had to choose one; and since books tied games last time and I went with games, books it is. On to a new and exciting self-published experience. I know you guys will love it.

In the meantime, here's that shiny poll again. Books are harder than games, so it'll probably be here for longer this time.

What kind of Phantom material should Anne review next?
	Book
	eBook
	Film
	Game
	Short Stories
	Other

Are you guys ready?

...because BOOM, REVIEW.

I could apologize some more for the long hiatus or tell you about my arm falling apart and not being able to type and stuff, but you guys don't care about hearing that again. Instead, read a review, marvel at the wackiness, have a good day!

The voting (here and on another platform where the Project is hosted) came in at a tie between Book and Game next. Since I just did a book and games are usually pretty quick, I'm going to go for game first... but look, new votes! It's a party!

What kind of Phantom material should Anne review next?
	Book
	eBook
	Film
	Game
	Short Stories
	Other

See you all sooner rather than later this time!

So, as I trudge onward toward the end of another review, I'm ruminating on how long this past hiatus has been. It really got away from me. There are a lot of reasons for that - new job responsibilities at the dreaded Day Job, major health complications from crippling tendonitis that made typing difficult, general laziness - but regardless of how it happened, it sucked. Let's not do that anymore.

The Phantom Project's been around for a long time now, and has kind of outgrown its original mission statement; it's not part of an academic project anymore, and a lot of the old strictures on it, including reviewing everything strictly in order of publication, really don't need to apply anymore. So, in the spirit of mixing things up and not slavishly following my own made-up rules (so rebellious!), I think we're going to start jumping around a little bit. It'll be like a fun adventure where you have no idea what I'm doing until I do it, and then you question your decisions to follow me in the first place.

But hey, let's all get involved! I'm retaining final decision, but since you guys are the ones reading this claptrap, I figure now's a good time for you to have some input into this semi-organized mess.

What kind of Phantom material should Anne review next?
	Book
	eBook
	Film
	Game
	Short Story
	Other

Go nuts. Vote all the votes. If there's a particular material you're dying to see a review of, feel free to tell me in the comments.

And now, it's back to the salt mines for me.

Some quick thoughts on being a responsible reviewer:

It is kind of bananas how old the Phantom Project is. I started it in 2007 and could have had toddlers twice between then and now. (I didn't, though, because I'm crochety and I don't have enough love in my entire body to deal with more than one other human being and some cats in my life.) I've reviewed 140 Phantom-related pieces of media since then, and have at least that many more still waiting on my shelf/Kindle/secret porn folder for the future. And I like to think that I've gotten better at it in all that time. In fact, I know I have - there are some old reviews that make me actively cringe at my own writing these days, and a few I downright disagree with now. (Not that I'm taking them down, because darn it, I am my own little slice of academic history in action now.)

But there's "I was not as good a writer then" cringing, and there's "oh, shit, I have grown as a person and realize that was actually offensive" cringing, and while I can rest assured that most of the internet will ignore or quietly grumble to themselves about the first, the second matters a lot more. So today, a little older and wiser, I went through my archives and edited any references to "gypsies" to use the term "Romani" instead.

We talk about "gypsies", a group of people consistently demonized and fabulized in European myth and history right up to the present day, in Phantom-related lit all the time. They, like the Persians, were present in order to provide an element of exotic occultism and mystery in Leroux's novel, and the motif has been repeated through countless descendents of that novel in various ways, most often in connection with a carnival and/or the origin of the Phantom himself. Leroux's book especially is a period piece from a time of staggeringly rampant racism against Romani people, and it along with all the other materials using the word that I run into in this project are still quoted faithfully where applicable. The word is widely considered an ethnic slur now, but it's one that a lot of these materials use.

However, I was also using it as a casual word to describe Romani people in my reviews, without realizing that it was offensive to people of those ethnic groups, and only recently realized how totally not okay that was. So, I won't be doing that anymore, and have removed old places where I did. If any Romani person read those reviews and was hurt or offended, I hope you'll accept my sincere apologies and promise to never do that again.

And now, I will head off to work on a review and hope to do better in the future. I can't time travel to whack my dumbass younger self upside the head with awareness of major social issues, but I can at least take responsibility for fixing her mistakes and hope to not repeat them.

(Of course, another part of being a responsible reviewer would be actually, you know, reviewing things on motherfucking time, but let me try to improve one step at a time here.)

Soooo... I am not dead, but I did have a lot of things that made this project grind to a shrieking halt for the past several months, including an arm that stopped working almost completely and the ensuing no-work financial crash. However, new reviews are on the way. Really. I am a real person saying real things.

In the meantime, have you guys seen this Kickstarter for the phenomenal-looking new proposed Leroux-faithful animated Phantom movie? Because if not, you should! It's right up my alley, of course, but even if you're not into the Leroux-style hijinks, you might want to take a peek at the fun and games.

And now, back to the world of self-pubs, from whence I will soon return with prizes.