Rise up trans goth girl admirers

Don't get me wrong. I love those stories where a beautiful young maiden falls in love with a handsome, brooding vampire who lives in a dark castle.

But what about a handsome young lad falling in love with a tempting vampire woman?

That's even better!!

✮ ⋆ ˚｡𖦹 ⋆°°✩

i’m such a “i want your attention” but “won’t bother you” kinda person

Got that vampire autism where you gotta invite me in every time

though pale skin is the gothic beauty standard, trads in the eighties hardly ever wore a flat white base, its ok to be a brown goth! 🖤🧛🏻‍♀️

I miss the days when the goth scene was more body positive.

goth isn't white

goth isn't skinny

goth isn't christian/necessarily atheist

goth isn't abled

goth isn't european/westerner

goth isn't male

goth isn't cis

goth isn't straight

goth is for EVERYONE.

With his love of clever word play, there is no way a modern Erik would hate or condemn rap as a genre.

Honestly, I’m confused every time a Phantom spin-off or sequel has Erik snootily turn his nose up at modern musical genres, which they do with confusing frequency.  Erik’s certainly dismissive of what he considers boring, fusty old uninspired writing in the novel (god are you doing Mozart well I’ll just take a freaking nap then shall I?), but that’s the opposite of this - that’s a pretty obvious device to show him being innovative and interested in new musical forms and ideas, and frustrated that society at large, along with the many other things he hates that they do (and Leroux wants to show as symptoms of stagnation), seems obsessed with antiquated artforms instead of wanting to create anything new.  He’s far from hatin’ on musical forms that he happens to not like; he’s cranky that everyone seems to be stuck two hundred years in the past as far as operatic musical taste goes, not to mention that this is yet another way that he, a musical genius who has created music that these people would probably think was weird and/or repulsive, gets excluded from an area where he knows he should be excelling.

Erik represents new creation and creativity to a fairly great extent in the novel, and the musical carries this idea forward with the jarring modern modal organization of the Don Juan Triumphant opera, illustrating that he’s so far ahead of his time that not only the singers and opera-goers in the show but probably a large percentage of the real, actual audience isn’t sure how to consume or enjoy the result.  (Not that some folks don’t enjoy those kinds of tonal organizations, which by the time of Lloyd Webber’s musical were well-established and even a bit old as far as development goes themselves… but they have never been what you would call mainstream popular, so audiences still react to the augmented chords and lack of consistent major or minor tonality with confusion and/or dislike.)

Like, I just don’t understand how anyone could look at Erik, the forethinking musical genius, and not think he would find improvisational jazz and the use of things like quarter-tones completely fascinating, or that he wouldn’t appreciate and want to experiment with the visceral responses that augmented bass and resonant chords have in rock music, or that he’d somehow look past the complex social roots of the punk genre and its dedication to intentionally not sounding good sometimes because that’s not what it’s about without any interest, or that he would deride things like thrash metal or power screamo or prog rock for being nonsensical or sounding like a wall of noise when, in their attempt to just communicate the musicians’ emotions in the purest form they can come up with, they’re literally doing the exact same thing that he’s doing with his own opera in the original story, and in the exact same way saying, “Fuck you, I’m doing it because I want to express myself, and I don’t care if you like it.”  And rap?  Jeez, could someone explain to me how on earth performing complex and perhaps improvised poetry about one’s life with interwoven musical elements and the need for an extremely dextrous and engaging tongue and voice would somehow not appeal to this dude?

Generally, Erik and his analogues disliking modern music in fanfiction or retellings is usually a clumsy attempt on the part of the author to either declare all music that isn’t classical (a hilarious distinction in itself, since modern authors usually aren’t even aware of what would have been “classical” and what would have been new in Erik’s time period) trash, thus setting themselves up as a musical elite and all later musical forms as derivative garbage they wouldn’t sully themselves to enjoy; or to reinforce their own musical taste as the only “correct” option, by having Erik, noted musical genius, agree with them in the text (for example, I saw one modern retelling book in which the only modern genres Erik would listen to were musical theatre and jazz - not for any particular reason given, most likely just because that’s what the writer happened to like themself).

Also, there’s definitely a classism/oppression angle to which musical genres are considered “good” and which ones are “junk”, often having to do with who invented them and whether or not rich/white/influential people also like them - rap and hip-hop are great examples of that, with the genre struggling to achieve any kind of recognition as music at all since its creation because it was born out of African-American counter-culture, and only became “acceptable” to the mainstream fairly recently, not coincidentally around the time that white people decided they wanted to do it, too, and therefore “legitimized” it.  Ironically, this has happened with many other music genres that were considered trash when first created by oppressed people - jazz, rock and roll, native American tribal music - and only later allowed into the mainstream after they had become popular with whomever was in charge at the time and/or assimilated and performed by people other than the original inventors.

And frankly, if you think Erik, of all people, is going to jump on the bandwagon of disliking music because of where it came from, I just don’t even know what to say.  Versions of Erik who become disgusting elitists and regularly look down on poor/dirty/ethnic/sex worker/whatever people are my least favorite modern spin-off archetype for the character, and I wish everyone would stop doing them.  (Or, at least, do it only if you’re willing to explain why it’s happening, maybe examine how being consistently demoted to the bottom of the barrel has caused him to desperately look for someone else to make the “least” so he can feel a little better about himself, and if you do, don’t try to then sell me on how great a person he is for doing this.  Ugh.)

TL;DR:  Erik would probably have the most eclectic musical taste in history if exposed to other musical forms from after his time and it just doesn’t make any sense to have him snootily look down on things that should be just as fascinating to him as French Grand Opera.  No musical genre is inherently bad, although all musical genres have bad examples of the style in them; a character like Erik would likely appreciate the good things each genre had to offer, and not be silly enough to say any one of them was garbage as a whole.

thank you for saying all of the things I am not eloquent enough to say

oh look this post is back again and @ancientphantom is still right

This is a fantastic post

THANK YOOOOOUUUUU👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

Writers, please. Erik is an outcast, a genius of misunderstood, dark and alternative art. Writing him slutshaming sex workers, being elitist and puritist is absolutely out of character. Erik is the OPPOSITE of elitism and puritism, for fuck's sake.

Also, if we follow the common headcanon that Erik would be a goth, then FOR SURE he would be anti-elitism, anti-conservative and anti-capitalism.

We love crows

Yes

90'𝔰 𝔤𝔬𝔱𝔥𝔰 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔳𝔞𝔪𝔭𝔰 ☥🦇 ݁ ˖ִ ࣪