I have cleared the day and made it perfect for working on HT's plot, but a thought has recently came to me about the general content of this story.

It kind of makes it out to be that I am an Erik/Christine shipper. That I see them as an OTP (one true pairing) sort of thing or may be avenging the fact that Erik is always left behind despite all that he offers.

That is not actually the case! It's kind of complicated actually, but I don't think the two should be together! They're an awful match that are bound for failure in most, if not all, cases. The closest I've gotten to shipping an Erik and Christine was Charles Dance and Teri Polo, probably because they shared more time together and C-bear was so cuddly. lol

But let's all be honest here, and leave out interpretations such as Andrew Lloyd Webber's movie where the Phantom is a tan Scottish man with an eye infection. Erik is an old creepy bastard. He's at least twice, and at most thrice, Christine's age, he's either been following her around as a young woman or for years, since she was a child. I mean, it'd be like if Mr. Wihr or Mr. Hicks, my old anthropology and art history teachers I was fond of, had the hots for me -- I'd be scared.

That's without acknowledgment of the fact that Erik stalks and controls the life of Christine in reaction to his "hots", and is homicidal and sadistic in the process.

Any mother will tell you that it would be a complete crisis if this type of person were after their daughter, or any friend if they were after their friend, etc etc. (Which is why Twi-Moms worry the hell out of me if they think it's fine if a vampire-douche breaks into their daughter's rooms at night without permission.)

Many say that his bad behavior can be fixed with compassion and that they could still have a strong chemistry, but I call bullshit on that as well, because they are opposites in a way that's no fun at all. Christine is around 17 years old, she ain't that smart, she's still immature, and I just couldn't see her appreciating the kinds of things that Erik would appreciate. He's not even just with the capacity of someone her father's age, he's a genius. Maybe the sex (shudder) would be good for a while, but he's going to find the stimulation-well running dry after that. It'd be like if I dated Teller. Great for me, but he'd probably be banging his head into a wall when I wasn't looking.

I'm not saying I like Raoul and not the Phantom, though. I like the Phantom; he's the one I want to read about; he's the one I want to see interacting with Christine. Raoul (outside the book, I haven't read that in a while) is a really flat, weak character to me, especially in the musical where he just comes out of nowhere and is in love with her, but ignores all of her claims that she's being stalked. If I were Christine's boyfriend and cared about her at all, I'd be taking out my rifle or whatevertf they do in the 1800's and would not rest until she was safe. I would also do some research on her stalker, enough to know that angrily marching down to the catacombs would do nothing to help her and would instead have me with my neck snapped/drowned/trapped in a room of mirrors. But he doesn't. He's stupid.

Which is why it would surprise many phans to know that I think Christine belongs with Raoul. There, I said it! If you really think about it, it's a backhanded compliment, though. She belongs with Raoul because they are of the same kind. Flat characters with pretty faces. Or, if Christine's not a flat character, she's just too young. But Raoul's young too, and they seem to be into the same things. I-it just makes the most sense. They were destined to get together because their lives brought them together, whether a crazy man living under an opera house was obsessed with Christine for a while or not. The whole point of the story is that it's unrequited love.

So... why the Erik and Christine as a couple in my story?

It developed a long time ago from a combination of me liking the intimate vibe of just a few characters, not wanting to clutter Lily with Suedom by having two suitors, and needing to strengthen the fact that she will find herself equally obsessed with him and his ideas.

What mainly makes this work is that we have entirely new people, here. Lily is self-conscious about her performance as Christine for a good reason - she isn't a lot like her. And "Erik", he's got his differences too. Many traits that I compare to movie-phantoms could be emulation instead of what's really coming from his core. That and he is not an old man, or a genius. He's actually *cry* a year younger than me now, and suffering from a mental illness, even if he's still intelligent, because being mentally ill doesn't necessarily mean mentally handicapped.

But yeah, they're both young, and that allows Lily to feel that way about him when the real Christine had a very hard time (seemingly) even conceiving a romantic relationship with some old dude.

This is a story of connection. Blind, dangerous connection, but connection nonetheless. She is following her childhood/adolescent fascination, just as Christine follows her "angel of music", and the only one that seems to grasp her yearning to be other-worldly and come to that place she can only touch when acting on stage. I had to find a place where that connection was possible, and with Lily as my self-insert, we have a place in our hearts that is Erik, because numerous times I have related to him, rather than Christine. People relate to him every time they feel like an outcast, every time they feel there is something about them that makes them unlovable to anyone. Also, any time someone they care about betrays them. (I had a particular situation in high school that I related to the Phantom love-triangle, but I won't get into that.)

Even though they are not supposed to be a fitting couple, I always found significance in the scene where Erik speaks to her through the mirror. I know that it's a two-sided mirror so he can watch her and it's supposed to be a trap door, but because she sees him in her own reflection, I look at it a little symbolically and wonder if there could be more things about them that they share than is readily apparent.



Lily is Christine, but I think she is part Erik, too, which brought about easily the ability to empathize and later look at him romantically. Maybe even want to because of this feeling of wasted potential.

And if you know their behavior as well as I do (being the writer) they synchronize themselves a lot with each other. They repeat each other's lines, feed off each other's moods, Erik recently claimed she was thinking like him, and I'd like to delve more into that because it's a new kind of relationship for this century-old duo of mostly misunderstandings, fear, and repulsion.

BUT! There is one more aspect of this relationship not gone over. Although they were drawn to each other for reasons having to do with their individual selves, Lily and "Erik" will eventually *spoiler* be torn apart by the same forces that are in every Phantom story. It's like they have to fulfill the prophecy, even though it hurts; even if they touched on something special. Eriks and Christines aren't meant to be together, somehow. They may be different people, but they've committed to those persons' paths.