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

[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.