Why I don't ship E/C

[betweensunandmoon]

It's not just that I prefer Raoul and identify more with Raoul than with Erik, though that is part of it. I wouldn't ship Erik and Christine even if there were no Raoul at all because the relationship is so very obviously unhealthy for both of them. It surprises and worries me that so many people seem willing to overlook that.

Comments

[erimia]

My main problem with E/C is not even that it's unhealthy - after all, some people may like this or that pairing because they find the relationship interesting, not because they think it's a right way to have a relationship or because it's something they would want to have in real life - but because it's so often written/presented in the way that I don't find interesting. This post pretty much sums up what I dislike about the certain approach to E/C that is and always has been very popular:

But where most E/C shippers go wrong is in assuming that because their dynamic is more interesting and more appealing, Erik and Christine are going to settle down happily and have eight children and make sweet sweet music of the night together until they die at a ripe old age, romantically curled up in the coffin in one another's arms. An ending like that is, quite frankly, R/C dressed up with a mask and some pretty music. The excitement and passion of their relationship, let loose as it is in so many twisted forms, makes it ridiculously unstable; to remove the instability is to remove what makes E/C appealing.

(Obviously I disagree with them that R/C is boring or less interesting). A lot of E/C fics are precisely about "settling down happily and having eight children" and it comes with its own bag of problems: changing characters' personalities (like making Erik less dangerous or more attractive), glossing over Erik's crimes and psychological issues, glossing over Christine's trauma, creating a Christine that either is nothing like in canon and sometimes is too bland/"everywoman", diminishing other characters and relationships and just ending up looking too damn similar to a "stereotypical" romance novel. Some of these problems may crop up in R/C as well, but generally this pairing is just more... balanced, whether in their relationship dynamics, their personalities, the amount of interest the fans have in either character, the level of grounding in reality etc.

[igenlode]

My problem is with the whole fan-perception that the Phantom is self-evidently irresistible (and therefore the whole unlikely attraction doesn't need to be explained) -- they are projecting their own feelings about how sad and exquisitely romantic a character he is (and, apparently, sexually magnetic) onto Christine. Now, I'm at a disadvantage because I don't get the overwhelming sex-appeal; I can understand that they are themselves identifying with the Phantom's situation and want to make him happy, but the idea that he is not just sad and pathetic but knee-tremblingly lust-inducing (even if we're talking about Gerik in tight trousers), to the degree that Christine finds him erotic against her will, is... outside the bounds of my imagination. (Even where I'm writing an LND-Christine who has, according to canon, been attracted to the Phantom, I can't write one where she suffers from raw lust for him. It's just beyond what I can visualise.)

So you get arguments that start off "It's all about seduction and forbidden desire", "Erik and Christine have attraction in spades", "E/C is terribly romantic" and "who doesn't instinctively root for Erik?" (an unlovely Americanism that always makes me think of pigs snouting in the mud), while what I'm seeing is fiction that is failing to convince because it takes the intrinsic attractiveness of Erik as an absolute foregone conclusion so far as its target audience is concerned (Erik is Hot! We'd All Love to Jump His Bones!) Whereas the character they actually depict is, as a rule, far from attractive if you don't start from the premise that everybody loves the Phantom...

I'm somewhat tying myself in knots here because I'm trying to work out why I find LND-Raoul a sympathetic character when, on the face of it, he's not giving Christine any of the adoration, safety and respect the character is being praised for in contrast to Erik, and when he is exhibiting the same sort of self-pityingly angry/whiny behaviour as the Phantom in POTO. It's certainly not because I'm seuxally attracted to LND-Raoul in some way! (Authorial/fan bias does have something to do with it, I'm afraid; seeing a character's very understandable reactions being treated as beyond the pale automatically enlists my sympathies, while being exposed to mass adulation of the Phantom considerably destroyed my sympathy in that direction -- he really doesn't need it when he has a horde of screaming fangirls flinging themselves at his feet.)

Thinking about it, I think my gut dislike of the E/C pairing is down to the prior commitment thing; I simply do not like fiction that revolves around the idea of someone deciding that she is tired of one lover and is going to switch to another one. It's a trope that a lot of romance novels seem to be fond of (let's ditch Mr Boring Husband/Boyfriend and go for Mr New, Exciting and Dangerous!), and it unsettles and repels me on a very deep level.

Yes, E/C basically involves breaking canon by changing all the characters (deliberately by a process of development or inadevertently) in order to make its romance work; modern AU E/C stories that *don't* create a fluffy Erik often end up pretty queasy-making, with an obedient barefoot Christine in the power of a jealous unstable lunatic (but a Sexy One!), often one who has killed off other major characters and been forgiven for it or else successfully concealed it from Christine (yes, I'm thinking of at least two specific stories here). And yes, I've seen some pretty tedious R/C stories that consist of nothing but Raoul being the author's idea of the perfect modern boyfriend, holding his wife's hand while she gives birth, supporting her desire for independence, and generally ticking all the boxes required in order to be acceptable by their friends' Tumblr ideology... and not conveying any recognisable sense of the characters at all, let alone the setting. I've seen a couple of modern-day AUs that present a credible modern ALW Raoul -- I don't think I've seen anyone attempt a Leroux-Raoul! -- but anodyne 21st-century attitudes injected back into the 19th century make no sense. Stories like this are well-meaning, but dull and/or annoying. And they tend not to contain any plot beyond 'Christine gives birth and they all live happily ever after', which is of course the classic complaint about the lack of potential in writing R/C...

I think 'stereotypical romance novel' is pretty much what people are generally looking for :-(
(It's certainly what most of the self-published Phantom retellings/sequels seem to produce, from what one can gather.)

[erimia]

It's ironic, given this canon, how many phans basically use "beauty equals goodness" trope when dealing with Erik. If they find Erik sexy/attractive, of course it means that his personality is better than it seems! Or, in a more high-brow version of this, if his music is so genius, of course he can't be that bad, can he? (This one was pointed out in some review on the Phantom Project/Phantom Library. It said how in this case it's about beauty of the art rather than beauty of the face, but it still runs on the same premise.)

Yes, I, too, strongly dislike it when people cheat on their previous partners or ditch them for others in romances, and it's often treated as no big deal because it's with their True Love. It doesn't help that authors often use previous relationship to showcase how great the new love is in comparison to it. It feels so cruel and dehumanizing if the "ex" is a decent person, and a cheap source of conflict if they are not.

[igenlode]

I think there's a very basic human assumption that beauty in art must reflect beauty of the soul (perhaps derived from a religious idea that all good in the world ultimately reflects/derives from divine goodness, whereas all evil is either man's own wickedness or else the inspiration of the Devil?) It's very hard to imagine that someone can write beautiful, elevating work and be himself an ordinary mortal who leaves hairs in the soap, snaps at the parlour-maid and bilks the bus-conductor of a tuppenny fare ;-) The beauty has to come from somewhere, and if not from the artist's innermost self, then where?

[igenlode]

Love doesn't have to be certified healthy to be permissible (what chance would most of us have if it were? I've had enough trouble trying to convince psychiatrists that just because something hurts that doesn't mean I want to forget it, or stop it hurting if the choice is between pain or nothing.)

I don't 'ship' Erik/Christine because it doesn't happen, and trying to violate Christine's integrity when she's pretty explicit about what she does and doesn't want not only offends my sense of canon but seems to me a pretty rotten thing to do to a character. Erik loves Christine. Christine doesn't love Erik, and the more she sees of him the more scared of him she gets. That's sort of fundamental to the whole plot, and if you change that basic dynamic you're not writing fan-fiction -- you're pretty much writing your own romance and putting the labels of your favourite characters on the protagonists.

"If there were no Raoul at all" is an interesting supposition. I've a feeling I have come across stories taking that premise ("Phantom of the Paradise" is of course one where the Phantom and Raoul are effectively the same person -- at any rate, Swan certainly isn't Raoul), and while that ought to offend me more on the grounds of being wildly distant from canon, in practice it doesn't seem to have that effect.
It does have a tendency to morph into straight "Beauty and the Beast" territory, where monster imprisons girl who eventually perceives that he is a big softy underneath.