I Forget My Notebook In Desk Drawers With Worrying Frequency. If Someone Was To Pick It Up, I Think THEY

Vampire's pearls.

My current coping mechanism is using a pair of big battered pliers to bend metal, so now there's another new item in my vampire hoard.

This is me now:

Be back to cat drawings this weekend. Busy week. And my brain's been weird for a while; it likely shows in my creations. I've got an eyeball ring on my desk right now, for crying out loud.

The Phantoms meet Love Never Dies Phantom. They are Unamused. I refuse to accept that this Phiasco Phantom is the same entity as the Phantom from the original musical.

I said I'll be pretending LND doesn't exist for the rest of my life. I lied. I watched it yesterday. Lying is bad.

All my Phantom cats here!

@cecil-87 This scene when he took off one mask to reveal another mask beneath it had me on the edge of my seat. I went from 'Wait, are we going to see his face this early?' to laughing my head off so fast.

This is not a Christmas ghost...

Today on the Goober Cat advent calendar! Leroux's Erik doesn't like the mask, but I'm sure 1990 Erik would. He's got many fancy masks, after all.

Thank you to everyone who showed the Persian love! @jennyfair7 @angel-with-paper-wings @differenceenginegirl @lokislynx your reblogs are delightful!

More Phantom: Cowboy (Cowcat) of the Opera, more Cherik here!

Phantom of the Opera (1990), you did Erik proud

Alternate title: Christine, we have beef!

(Meme inspired by this post.)

I have not a bad word for this Erik (and not just because I can feel a certain friend of mine holding a chandelier over my head). The 1990 adaptation made some big changes to the story, but it perfectly captured the childlike soul of Leroux's Erik that is often lost in translation but vital to him. (When I was explaining POTO to someone outside the situation, i. e. my mum, two things I kept using as comparisons were a child and Gollum - not because he's a chaos gremlin, I was trying to describe how he has a skewered perspective of the world that isn't evil but doesn't follow the accepted moral system. But that's for another time.)

I found myself trying very hard not to resent Christine - a first time for me. I will defend her choosing the Compte de Chagny over Erik, she doesn't owe Erik love, no matter what he did for her. The problem is that she took on a responsibility she couldn't possibly carry.

Never, ever assume to fully understand someone. Especially someone like Erik, who thinks and exists on a different pane as most people. Christine was wrong, terribly wrong, to assume she 'knew his heart.'

When faced with a person so sensitive, so particular, when you are the one person trusted by someone who trusts no one, don't make huge gambles like that. She shouldn't have assumed she knew what Erik needs better than he himself does - if he told you he is happy with where they were, then stay there with him! Instead, she pulled the 'I can fix him' and shattered him completely. I don't hate her for being unable to catch Erik when he falls, I hate her for blindly promising to catch him and failing him.

(I do realise how much of the above describes myself and my worries about how people treat me, so fair warning, I may be a bit biased.)

An opinion: in most versions of the story, Erik emotionally manipulates Christine, but here, Christine is the one who is emotionally manipulative. ('Manipulative' may sound malicious, but manipulators aren't always aware of what they're doing.)

In the second part of the series, she said at least three times 'If you love me...' Now, that is one of my least favourite sentences to see and hear in the best of times, but this is somehow even worse because Erik DOES do everything because he loves her. In other versions, there is the question of possessiveness against love when it comes to their relationship; in that context, I would accept her saying this, to remind him that he should love and not obsess over her. But here, Erik is not possessive.

As for Monsieur Carrière, I have beef with him, too. It's an even bigger, tougher slice of beef. He is irresponsible: not once, but twice, he got in relationships and then left his partners when they have children. The first time could be a mistake; the second time, especially when kept Erik's mother in the dark about his marriage, is inexcusable. Yes, he stayed with her till the end, but then left their son in a basement. Yes, he reached out to Erik in the end, but too little, too late. If Erik is emotional and irrational, it's because Carrière never gave him the guidance he should have.

Christine and Carrière love Erik, I don't doubt it. But it's still painful to see Erik fall down through everyone and everything that should have caught him: his talent, his parents, Christine.

If you'll excuse me, I need to cry in the catacombs and draw something miserable.

I talk about several other adaptations here!

Monster cocoa party 🍫☕️

@blackforrestpunk @vladimirsangel and a fungal guest who has escaped containment.

The only context I can provide is the Zombie Aiden drawing. The rest is what happens when you let people communicate almost exclusively through jokes, art, and hyperfixations.

Erik feels a bit lonely on Christmas.

(Let me make clear that I only ship Pharoga on condition that they are a fluffy perisan cat and a bald gremlin sphynx cat. But in this particular case, I will do it often and obnoxiously.)

Erik DOES cook chicken. The meal is canon, people. More (very canon) Pharoga cats here!

Yes, very convincing, Cherik. Oh well, he tried. And hey, it worked! Apologies for messing with Kerik again, it's this or put him in prison, sooo...

Anyway, new reaction picture?

All POTO cats here! Prompts from this list still welcome!

Results are in... of course. How can I forget that this blog is haunted by Phans? Fluffy Erik it is.

I'm pretty sure I'm powerless to resist making more than one (if not all of them) eventually, so no need to break your brain trying to choose just one.

For those who don't know her, this is my nwedle felt Nosferatu, Ankle Biter Krysa Veinessa Whateley-Dickenson, Kryssie for short. More pictures here!

WAIT, this deserves a drawing reblog:

Pierce, mon cher, that's nice, but your philosophy of 'You have problems? That's all right, me too!' is the reason you have so many relationship problems. And you're lucky Aurik is an angel who puts up with your shenanigans. (Your hair looks magnificent in any style, Aurik.)

Vlad, this is better than anything I could have imagined when I first started posting doodles of my disaster kitten Pierce, thank you 😹

Well, Aurik, you did say he could do your hair.

@purrlockswatson

Susan Kay's Phantom // L'Opéra des Vampires by me. (Full except and context below cut)

I haven't yet uploaded this part of Gothic Tales because this "tale" is undergoing severe redrafting, but this scene stands thus:

(Anyway, chapter one of Gothic Tales is up on AO3!)

My Erik is very talkative. I also had to take care to make him more gremlin, since he's often too wise and sad.

I think a lot about how Madeline swore to change when it's too late. Maybe it wouldn't have been different anyway. Maybe it would have been too late even if Erik didn't leave that night.