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.
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: 2020-04-29 02:57 pm (UTC)(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.