Whoa

I….am in love. SOMEONE UNDERSTOOD

Theme of this little book, The 8 Grecian concepts of Love.  A final project that I’ve forgotten the parameters of, for a class I cannot be bothered to recall, BUT I got two books out of it, one in English, and one in dubiously translated French.

Process pics are on my Patreon

From my College Illustration Thesis, Lesbian Phantom of the Opera

The Exterior Artwork on The Opera House

The Dance by Carpeaux —&— Lyrical Drama by Perraud

So many tender and painful, sweet and bitter, emotions crowd in my soul—yes, there are painful and bitter ones. You cannot dream how bitter it is for me when people don't understand me, when they mistake what I say, and see it in the wrong light.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, from a letter to Mikhail Dostoevsky, written c. October 1832

I'm in the torture chamber

[…] for when one has fire within and a soul, one cannot keep bottling them up – better to burn than to burst […]

Vincent van Gogh, from ‘The Letters of Vincent van Gogh’ ⁠— Wilhelmina van Gogh c. summer or autumn 1887, tr. Arnold Pomerans

Outside the Opera, Paris - Jean-Georges Béraud - 1879

This.

the thing, why Erik and Christine is my ship and beyond that the dynamic that fascinated me the most is because their relationship is so toxic and so beautiful and so layered. it's like...i am the angel your dead father sent you, you are my angel of music, i am your father (figure), i am your teacher, you are my teacher, you're my muse, you're my victim, i am yours, you made me experience musical ecstasy, you too, you guided me out of my grief, i am grieving because of you, you're the normalcy i long for, you bring out the side in me i didn't even know i had, i've never been so happy, i've never been so frightened, i've never been so desperate, i want to die because of you, i want you to kill us both, he's just a man, he's every shadow, she's just a woman, she saved everyone, it's just a kiss, no, it means everything!

Erik and Christine are an abuser and his victim but they were also two lonely, broken people who found solace in each other, they are also musical geniuses inspiring each other to inhuman achievements in their art, they share are bond that even they can't really understand or anyone else.

I also love the weathered frenemy relationship he has with the Daroga and Raoul is also a perfectly nice young man who, in my opinion, is the most interesting when he's at his worst (jealous) and I love that everyone has fun with their non canon ships too. But Erik and Christine's dynamic will always be like crack to me personally. They're Death and the Maiden, Hades and Persephone, Mephisto and Faust/Margarete, the Rose and the Nightingale, Beauty and the Beast, they're opposites, they can't be together, they're day and night AND YET

ah! Fate links thee to me, forever and a day...

Sylvia Plath, from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

the real true purpose of having a brain is to think about fictional characters

*gasp* I love them

“Kissed her bruised and bleeding forehead”