#but i was always terrified of the phandom

[danandfuckingjonlmao]

ok everybody block dnp on all socials they have eyes everywhere. they know way too much. those omniscient fuckers are always watching. no one is safe.

like what do you MEAN you know about those stupid “real voice” compilations and people absolutely clowning about jumpcuts and smudged whiskers and what do you MEAN you’re aware of those 2009 phan theories people still debate to this day? what happened to “i don’t check my indirects” “i don’t go on the tags”?? i bet you’re lurking RIGHT NOW reading this very post. all men do is lie. can’t trust anyone 😤😪

[manchestereyes]

I had kinda dipped out of the phandom during the was era (sorry) so I would to hear how that era led to them being so connected in this one

oh that is so valid, friend! 🧡 i kinda did too since it was announced right when i got my first full time job and suddenly i didn't have time to engage with phandom stuff anymore 😭 but things are a lot chiller now, so let's dive in! (under the cut because this is gonna be loooong--dnp please do not read if you happen to stumble across this!)

i think to get a full perspective on this journey, we really need to look at the full history of dan and phil. how they forged such a deep connection in 2009 and did whatever they could to be together. how they were blowing up more and more in the early 2010s and seeing more opportunities come from this youtube business. and how one youtube glitch could've ruined those opportunities forever.

i'm sure we all know by now how big of a deal the vday video was but if you don't... it was a huge deal. suddenly this very private piece of their lives was out in the open, long before either of them were ready to publicly address it. and it changed everything. yes, their love story was basically documented already, but they never expected those posts would be seen by millions of people one day, potentially even by people who could give them jobs. so they shut down. they insisted they were separate people and made completely different videos while also showing us the family sized box of shreddies they'd bought for the two of them.

and this is where wad comes in. yes i know i'm jumping really far into the future here, but hear me out--in a way, i believe wad is directly connected to everything that went down in 2012. see, phil's told us that he's always been happy doing amazingphil and dan and phil things. but dan's different.

SPECULATION TIME -- IF YOU ARE DAN AND PHIL, PLEASE CLICK AWAY NOW. THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING.

dan grew up desperate for validation from parents who never had time for him and from peers who constantly bullied him. he's always had a voice in the back of his head telling him he's not good enough, and even when phil tells him his videos are great, he still wants them to appeal to all the people who dismissed him growing up. he wants to be his full self, yet he's also terrified of acknowledging that he could be the very thing he was tormented for. meanwhile, phil (as far as i can tell) had that validation growing up. his parents were older and had more money and therefore, more energy to devote to phil and martyn. phil's always been super close with his whole family, whereas dan (from what we know) has only ever been close with his nana and popsie, and now with his mum too. phil had a whole group of friends growing up, whereas dan flitted from group to group, never quite fitting in, and even had no friends for a while. this is why he developed the cynical, sarcastic persona he's worn for so long. it was his battle armor. every time he'd shown his real self growing up, he'd been rejected. but once he saw how lovely we all are, that battle armor was quickly becoming restricting. but he'd spent so long wearing it that now dan didn't know who he was now.

so we got the hiatus, while dan worked out who he was and how he wanted to present himself and threw himself into different projects that did and didn't see the light (rip dinok our strongest soldier 💔)--one of those projects being wad. suddenly dan, theatre kid extraordinaire, who'd spent two tours working with his favorite person onstage, was now facing the prospect of carrying an entire stage show on his own. on one hand, that was terrifying as fuck, but on the other, it was a culmination of all the work dan had done on himself. and he did it. he spent months physically apart from phil only to find that we loved him for who he is. and that was deeply healing for him.

however, being apart for several months was SO hard on him and phil. phil said he was having a lot of trouble with his migraines around that time and i have to wonder if that could have partly been from the stress of not having dan around for long periods of time. and we know dan had plenty of crises on the road that he frantically texted phil about--enough to have him credited as "remote crisis manager" in the wad recording. and that's the thing, isn't it? i think dan especially needed that time apart to realize that he and phil are truly magical together. and with all the pressure he puts on himself for solo content, he knew it would take a herculean effort to put anything out on his main channel. but phil's been working with a really cool editor for his main channel. and the gaming channel has never had that content threshold.

so they finally both dropped the masks (for the most part) and dove into this new version of dan and phil that emphasizes their connection. because it's okay for them to be this close now. they've already worked with some hugely powerful people (and been accepted by their families) and now all they need is us. and we've not only accepted them for it, we've celebrated it--all the way to the finals of the rpf tourney. and i think that acceptance means more to dnp than we will ever know.

tl;dr: dan and phil had to be apart for a while to see just how much they needed each other. and now that they've experienced that, they know they can never let each other go--and that their connection is just as special to us as it is to them, so there's no harm in showing it off every chance they get.

[dross-the-fish]

What do you think Erik's past was with women, when it comes to dating and women. I'd like to know what your take is.

"dating" is probably not the word I'd use. Delving into the text of the book there are two parts that stick out to me as indicating that Erik may have a history with women other than Christine this segment here from the scene at Apollo's Lyre where Christine is recounting events to Raoul "You wanted to know what I looked like! Oh, you women are so inquisitive! Well, are you satisfied? I'm a very good-looking fellow, eh? … When a woman has seen me, as you have, she belongs to me. She loves me for ever. I am a kind of Don Juan, you know!' And, drawing himself up to his full height, with his hand on his hip, wagging the hideous thing that was his head on his shoulders, he roared, 'Look at me! I AM DON JUAN TRIUMPHANT!' And, when I turned away my head and begged for mercy, he drew it to him, brutally, twisting his dead fingers into my hair." Seems to indicate that this kind of thing has happened before. It is possible Erik is speaking generally and it's not definitive proof but it is interesting, the verbiage he uses.

And this scene towards the end of the book when he has Raoul and the Persian in his torture chamber

"What are you running away for?" asked the furious voice, which had followed her. "Give me back my bag, will you? Don't you know that it is the bag of life and death?"

"Listen to me, Erik," sighed the girl. "As it is settled that we are to live together ... what difference can it make to you?"

"You know there are only two keys in it," said the monster. "What do you want to do?"

"I want to look at this room which I have never seen and which you have always kept from me ... It's woman's curiosity!" she said, in a tone which she tried to render playful.

But the trick was too childish for Erik to be taken in by it.

"I don't like curious women," he retorted, "and you had better remember the story of BLUE-BEARD and be careful ... Come, give me back my bag! ... Give me back my bag! ... Leave the key alone, will you, you inquisitive little thing?"

And he chuckled, while Christine gave a cry of pain. Erik had evidently recovered the bag from her." He says he doesn't like "curious women" and makes a reference to Blue Beard, which is a fairytale about a serial killer who murders his wives. There's a scene in Blue Beard where the most recent wife discovers a room with the bodies of his previous wives. The first quote could be dismissed but this is the second time Erik has indicated a dislike for curious women. Erik's lair is canonically full of traps and features a very cruel torture chamber. By evoking the image of Blue Beard in particular the narrative seems to be further implying that Erik does have some history of women and not a pleasant one. It's possible that Erik is just trying to scare Christine out of looking in the room but it's equally likely that it's not an idle threat. He's shown that he's not above putting hands on Christine and treating her roughly despite his claims to love her. I have a personal theory that Christine is not the first but Erik knows she is going to be the last. I've always kind of run on the idea that throughout the book Erik is aware his health is failing and the clock is winding down for him and that's why Christine is different, because she's his last chance and in the end she does give him, not a living bride, but something much more needed: redemption and forgiveness from someone he's harmed. Proof that he's not unworthy of human compassion. A lot of people in the Phandom don't seem to recognize how dark of a character Erik is. I find him legitimately scary as much as I also find him sympathetic and I think he is fascinating in part because there is something genuinely terrifying about him that tickles my love for horror stories. I feel like it's vague enough that you can leave it up to interpretation, so if you don't really like the idea that he's had women in his past that he ended up killing you can chalk it up to Erik just trying to frighten Christine into compliance but I think it's interesting to look at the darker takes and speculate about the skeletons in his closet.

[night-unfurls-its-splendour]

What do you think of Sarah Brightman in POTO? She gets so much hate from the "phans" but I love her as Christine. She looks so victorian, classy, proper and innocent. When I got into the show (which I regret) I couldn't stop watching her with MC and Steve. I love her voice, it's so unique as Gillian Lynne described — like a dew dropping. Also Michael Crawford and her were similar in age to Erik and Christine. I think she wasn't more sympathetic and "into" him because that's how she was instructed to act, Hal Prince was very clear about Christine loving Raoul though she felt sorry for Erik. And Steve Barton was such a perfect Raoul. My all time favorite pair is JOJ & Gina as well as JOJ & Katie Hall. I also adore Hugh Panaro & Samantha Hill.

Honestly I would love to give an opinion, but I can't because I have only ever seen one Brightman performance and it was quite degraded, so her visual performance was very difficult to analyze.

What I will say is that I didn't know this about Hal Prince (keep in mind, I've only been in the Phandom for about eight months, so I'm still learning a lot of the production's history.) And I find that interesting, given the fact that Lloyd Webber himself has always dropped hints (and in more recent years, been more open about) his own very pro e/c feelings. I think in the end, everyone in the production has their own perspective, and those combinations of attitudes bubble and collide on stage with different outcomes every time. We have to keep in mind that every element of the main trio shifts the chemistry and even with repeats of the exact same trio, sometimes the vibe you get from Christine can be very different show-to-show. I've seen Crawford/Kristien/Barton in three separate boots and Kristien's performance has had varying degrees of enthusiasm with Erik in every one. In one she was more naïve and timid, in another she was blatantly horny.

I've seen Gina Beck absolutely terrified with Ramin Karimloo and gently spooked with David Shannon. I've seen Rachel Barrell mortified with John Owen Jones and sweetly sympathetic with Earl Carpenter (though her Christine always seems to be Lukewarm for Erik no matter what).

I can also say, having worked with some theatre directors (and of course, every director is different in how far they view their directorial power reaching) but the ones I've talked to have said "when we're in rehearsal it's my job to show you what to do. Once that curtain comes up, my job is done: it's in your hands, you know what to do."

Of course there's a limit to defying direction, but an actors job is not just to stand there and do what they're told. They have to do it in the way that will feel most organic to them and to the people watching. Theatre direction is different than movie direction. The director can't stop the show and give the actors notes to make sure that everything goes just how they want it to. The actors have a lot of power to interpret their direction, and like I said, that interpretation can vary from show to show even when it's the exact same main cast.

So I'm sure Brightman had performances where she was more into Erik and ones where she was more into Raoul. But I don't know.

Now as for her voice, I'm going to be honest that yes it's unique and she's without a doubt a fantastic singer, I'm not a huge fan of her vocal quality. Her voice is very thick to my ears and it's just not my favourite. I don't hate it by any means, but it's just not my favourite.

As for the hate, idk. If she did have a lukewarm performance across the board, it is partially her fault, but as I've said, creating a role is a difficult thing. Other Christines have been able to look at her and form impressions, have ideas and come to conclusions that Brightman may not even have thought of at the time. It's a lot of work to build a character with nothing to go on except the book which only partially resembles the story you're acting out, so I'm disinclined to be very harsh towards her. But I think we as phans have a feeling that no matter how many Erik/Christine pairings we've seen where Christine definitely embraces her attraction to Erik and leaves only reluctantly at the end--pairings that vindicate the E/C stance a lot of us hold dear--theres a sense (and an irrational one, I think) that the original interpretations are the only ones that really matter. While that's understandable, I think it's a bit of a fallacy, because as I've said, shows like this grow over time. New interpretations add new layers and ideas occur to both actors and directors that they maybe want to approach things differently from now on. If they changed their perspectives, it must be for a reason. The first version is often flawed.

ALSO keep in mind that later Christine's, Raoul's and Phantom's have had the benefit of full-text translations of the book that weren't available to the original cast and crew. Post 1990 Christines had the benefit of knowing that, in the book, Christine practically admits to Raoul that, if Erik was handsome, she would certainly have fallen completely in love with him (and, with Erik being pretty darn sexy in the musical, that definitely shifts the perception of Christine as a character and how she would make her decisions in this musical timeline). Maybe this is a factor into why most of the 90's Christines I've seen really went in for an enthusiastic interpretation.

Who can really say?

Also yes, Hugh and Samantha slap.

She's one of my top 5 Christines.

[darthfrodophantom]

2 days until the final chapter of A Secret Uncovered! (2 days 2 days 2 days!)

Today we have 2 admissions straight from my heart.

I’m terrified of releasing this chapter. Honestly. I’m actually shaking. What if no one cares anymore? What if no one likes it? What if it’s not satisfying? What if it doesn’t end the way people want? What if it’s been too long that what they’ve built up in their heads is better than what I can put on paper? I don’t want this to be the last season of Game of Thrones. I mean I don’t think it is, otherwise I’d keep working on it, but I’m scared other people will think it is. I’ve always had the “will people like it?” jitters that come from posting a fic, but it’s never been this bad.

But at the same time...I’m also incredibly excited. I cannot express to you the weight that lifted from my chest and my heart as soon as I typed the final words of this chapter. It had been hanging over me for so long. Even when I wasn’t in the phandom, I would constantly get reminders that this still sat there and people still wanted it. And finishing it after 10 years...it felt so good. It’s probably the best feeling I’ve ever had as a writer. This massive thing (and the chapter is massive) is finally done and I am excited to share that joy with everyone else.

There you go, straight from my heart as we get closer to the launch.

Countdown List 10 things that happened since I last posted a chapter 9 people I'd like to thank 8 of my favorite memories 7 things I wish I did differently 6 life lessons I learned 5 common questions 4 questions for you 3 sneak peeks 2 admissions from the heart

[weshney]

You know, as a Phandom we always talk about the two tropes of "you can fade even after you die" and "danny lives forever so he has to experience existence long after he doesn't want to".

But we hardly ever talk about as a ghost, you can't die, but eternity's not the problem. It's how you spend it.

Bit fucked up, under the cut.

What happens to the ghosts that Skulker skins? Do they have to be awake, without anesthesia, while they wait for their skin to regrow? If a portal opens in front of you in the Zone and it happens to lead to a black hole that disrupts your intangibility, do you live forever at the center of this warped space until it collapses? Constantly being compressed and ripped apart by the gravity/dimensional rifts inside? If another ghost captures you with a pechance for torture, are you a neverending victim? If you got lost in space, would you ever find your way back to earth in a time frame that mattered?

I find that terrifying to think about, even as a human.

This HC could easily be made into a story following a group of ghosts (The Remediators/Mistakes Were Made Brigade/Soul Salvage) that go around rescuing others trapped in horrible situations. Could even have them meet Danny while something's happened to him for a one-shot.

[polariie]

didnt like the full piece so heres a crop 😜

[dnp-and-blankets]

Sometimes i get sad that this isn’t my main blog cause I want my followers to know that I do in fact follow most of them back, but my main is empty and stuff and lowkey looks like a bot and has nothing to do with phan

So unless they were super curious and looked into it

They would never know

And I feel like they think I’m rude?

Like

Pls don’t hate me

I am following you

Pls don’t hate me:(

[constellaj]

Genuine question to your last humorous post (it got a chuckle out of me so thank you for that) would you say Danny ITA here? Or Sidney for that matter? I keep seeing mixed reviews on the both of them in the phandom per this episode and I’d love to hear your thoughts on it!

ok bet

i think danny is 14

heres the thing right is yeah blahblah abuse or whatever bad but a) middle school bullying is always comedically exaggerated for kids media, esp and DP and b) 14 year olds are just like that. like literally the capacity for empathy is not fully developed at that age. this is also recognized in-universe; Vlad goes iirc "of course you wouldnt understand, you're what, fourteen?" and danny says "hello misplaced aggression"-- so applying the "children are shitheads" logic isnt just something I can say from the armchair, but within the show itself. basically i think he gets a bit of a free pass on being an asshole because of the Circumstances that are about being a teenager

2. the argument that "fighting your bullies makes you as bad as them" IS a shit argument, but theres Context DP has

yeah yeah fight back against ur oppressors or w/e (please god remember dp is a show about a nerdy elmersona who thinks hes a better person than he is, and NOT a succint and valuable critique on class relations in contemporary america.) but like. buddy. he can walk thru walls disappear and fly. dudes bringing a gun to a fork fight. if we're reading into deep metaphorical language here then literally whatever danny is doing is 100000% worse than dash. dash does physical assault (bad). DANNY does physical assault (bad), reputational ruining (bad), mental assault/gaslighting (bad), and psychological trauma (very bad. we see in that same episode that getting possessed is absolutely horrifying and dannys just doing it for a Bit. a Joke. a Gag if you will). what I'm saying is if you want to approach this issue as a microcosm of a larger conceptual element, you cannot walk away from here saying danny is NTA. luckily for me i dont give a shit about this point like, at all, and in fact am mostly tired of hearing it

3. fuck sidney

maybe this is rewrite bleed (it is <3 I made him a redditor) but sidney is just so much of a nothing, stupid character it hurts. dude haunted the locker NEXT TO DASH for at least a school year and his first conclusion was that dash was some POOR VICTIM OF BULLYING? if we gloss over that then its just like. what does he do here. 1) terrifies children internationally with that possession sequence 2) traps danny in 50s hell 3) is the episodic antagonist 4) has an annoying voice 5) gets. redeemed? for some ungodly reason? sidney in this ep is a metaphor/stand-in for danny's recompense and Not Bullying, but he's. EVIL? but we're supposed to be chill with it? except when we're not. and SIDNEY bullying bullies is (goood? funny???) except when the narrative needs him to be the Good Person he totally drops that entire personality and is now bffs with dash? i do not understand what the fuck he means within the larger narrative, like at all. as such im just like. fuck this kid fuck this episode in its entirety and it makes me want to disagree with the episode premise just bc its poorly written

4. dash did nothing wrong

dash did nothing wrong. i have a brand to keep but for real tho like, the conceit of this episode is that bullying is normal within the world yeah? like its not GREAT but danny and sidney aren't demonized for it (the conflict is about like. learning to be liked as a person? OKAY fucking ripoff side tangent here but SIDNEY gets to be bffs with DASH and ALSO his 50s bully -- if Sidney is a character parallel to danny WHY DOESNT DANNY BEFRIEND DASH BY THE END OF THE EPISODE? GOD? IT MAKES NO SENSE) and dash's is just like. slightly annoying slapstick. dash's character is also built on super dumb hypermasculine traits like hazing, ie, a bonding experience (even though danny might not see it as such). instead of like. talking w dash. or using his powers to impress him. (you know. what sidney does. right here). danny just goes "die a thousand deaths" and slams his head into a locker. like. bro. Unproductive. PLUS when sidney DOES stop being a shithead to dash (again i will never understand why. hes a fucking trainwreck of a character), dash IMMEDIATELY does a 180? like hazing continues but after the football scene dash is genuinely impressed. bro if you just get on dash's playing field he will literally do nothing. according to this episode anyway

summary: this episode fucking sucks

basically i think this episode is horribly plotted + written and the overall message/theme gets very muddled very quickly because its more of a "what would happen, realistically??" story than a "this is a story with a message that the universe will bend to accommodate" and thats just like. NOT good for this kind of "is he an asshole" discussion. in a realistic setting id say yeah danny ITA because. bro. you could do LITERALLY anything else. but not in a condemnatory way. like if danny was telling this story at college and making fun of himself when he was 14 id be like omggg daniel you did NOT. shut up thats so funny.

anyway if im extrapolating whatever message this ep was trying to push, and debating it with the rest of danny phantom tumblr as if it were a cohesive plot worth arguing about, id say ESH. sam is supposed to be a "rebel" yet she hates beating up dash. sidney is supposed to fight for the "little guys" yet he doesnt fucking know dash is the bully. danny psychologically tortures people which i think is probably a war crime.

except dash tho. i have a brand to keep and that means that everything he did in this episode was fine actually. he was having a bad day <3 he beats the shit out of dweebs to cope <3

[arashikitten]

Dark Danny Should’ve Come Back at Least Once

I think most of the Phandom can agree that The Ultimate Enemy was one of the best Danny Phantom episodes ever made, and for good reason. It was incredibly dark of a kid’s cartoon, especially one made by Bitch Hartman, and on top of that, it provided some very interesting lore and characters. We get to see Danny pushed to his absolute emotional limit in a way that I don’t think the show ever did before, save maybe for My Brother’s Keeper in season 1, and we get our first glimpse at Clockwork, who thanks to @five-rivers fanfic Mortified, has become one of my favorite DP characters. And of course, we get to see Dark Danny, or Dan.

But there’s one little thing about this episode that’s always bothered me: the very ending.

Because at the very end of TUE, we get a shot of the Fenton thermos that Dan is sealed away in rocking back and forth, before Dan’s face forms a massive dent in the side, his laughter echoing as the screen fades to the end credits.

You would think, with an ending like that, that Dan would come back in a later episode. That he would return in the series finale is this last big bad, this final demon for Danny to confront once and for all. 

But that’s not what happens. And it kinda pisses me off.

Dan should’ve come back. We should have gotten at least one more episode with this guy, exploring more of his character, more of his side of the story, anything at all. And you know what would be a great way to do this?

Vlad.

Imagine this, if you will.

Dan makes his escape from Clockwork’s lair, dead set on finishing what he started. Eventually, he discovers Vlad’s portal (let’s say that Vlad decided to rebuild his here) and, upon coming face to face with the man who made him like this in the first place, freaks out. Dan makes an attempt on Vlad’s life, and Vlad just barely manages to escape.

Once Vlad is sure this strange new ghost won’t find him so easily, he realizes that this new ghost had Danny’s insignia on his chest, and puts it together that Danny must be involved in this somehow. 

So Vlad makes his way to Amity Park to confront Danny about this new ghost. Danny assumes that Vlad is there to try to kill Jack or whatever, the two get into a massive fistfight, before Vlad finally tells Danny that he’s only here because a strange new ghost wearing Danny’s insignia popped out of his portal this morning attempting to kill him a second time.

And Danny freezes. He goes from snarky and flippant to sheer, raw terror that has Vlad actually worried. Danny demands to know what this new ghost looks like, and Vlad’s concern turns to fear when Danny’s face goes white with horror because this is the same kid who went up against Pariah Dark without a second thought, who has faced countless ghosts who’s powers could be considered godly with a fearless smile on his face, and Vlad may not have much respect for Danny but he knows what the kid lacks in intelligence he more than makes up for in bravery. 

Meaning that whoever this new ghost is must be incredibly powerful, incredibly horrific, and incredibly dangerous.

Danny tells Vlad to go to Danny’s house and tell them to put the ghost shields surrounding the town up, to not try anything funny, and don’t. Leave. The Shields. No matter what.

For once, Vlad decides to take Danny’s lead. He appears on the Fenton’s doorstep, Armani suit ruffled and hair disheveled, telling them that there is a very powerful ghost making it’s way toward Amity Park and they need to put the ghost shields up now, or risk a Pariah Dark-level threat again. 

Then Vlad makes his way toward the edge of town, because he still hasn’t gotten an answer from Danny as to who exactly that ghost was, and he’ll be damned if he can’t get an answer.

Meanwhile, Danny is just outside the ghost shields, waiting for Dan to arrive. He’s absolutely terrified, because what if Danny isn’t strong enough this time? What if he fails again, like he almost did before Clockwork turned back time? Would Clockwork do that for him again? Would he have to watch his future burn down this present that he’s taken so long to keep up?

Then Dan arrives. Right as Vlad makes it to the edge of the shield. 

And Vlad watches with awe as the two fight. He watches as Danny holds his own against this ghost that had almost decimated Vlad barely 2 hours prior, watches as Danny outmaneuvers, outsmarts this menace, watches as Danny fights tooth and nail in a way that Vlad is sure he’s never seen before, and he realizes that Danny has been holding back. Maybe not at first, maybe not during those first few months, but definitely for a while now, because Danny is holding his own now when Vlad couldn’t.

But then that leaves the question as to why? Why is Danny going all out now? Why was he so scared of this new ghost? More importantly, when did Danny encounter this guy? 

Because he had to have fought this ghost at least once before, to have had that reaction to Vlad’s description. 

And then, he hears the other ghost’s voice, one that sounds like a strange mixture of his and Danny’s, and he hears him say “It doesn’t matter what you do, Danny. You might’ve stopped that explosion, but there are still so many other things that lead to me. A car crash, an unlucky ghost attack, the ecto-filtrator, Vlad getting lucky, all of them could still happen. Your friends, your family, all gone, and you still turn into me.”

And suddenly, everything makes sense. That ghost that Danny’s fighting, that ghost that attacked Vlad, that is Danny, or it was, before something twisted him into an unrecognizable monster, and Vlad has a creeping suspicion that it has something to do with him.  And he realizes that Danny is so much more than he ever gave him credit for. He sees Danny, fighting his own future with a hope that Vlad would call naive if not for the fact that Danny had already thwarted whatever horrible future lead to this at least once before, and he understands that he was wrong about Danny.

Because this? Fighting against the personification of all the worst parts of yourself not once, but at least twice? It would require a maturity, a strength of will that Vlad knows he himself lacks, and he comes to the stunning realization that for all the childish quips and petty pranks, Danny is far more mature than Vlad ever was, far stronger than Vlad ever was.

And then, Danny does the ghostly wail.

And if Vlad was surprised before, then he's absolutely terrified now. That’s enough power to destroy an entire city, that single wail, and the sound is a bone-chilling scream that rubs the older halfa wrong in every way possible because that sound should not come from someone as young as Danny.

And now Vlad is caught between two realizations: that Danny is so much stronger than Vlad could ever be in every sense of the word, and that the only reason Danny is that strong is because he has to be, because he’s a child being forced to go against all manner of ghostly and cosmic horror all on his own, and Vlad suddenly feels intensely guilty because he should’ve been helping Danny, and instead he’s done nothing but make his life harder.

At that point, Jack and Maddie arrive. They freak out because Vlad is so close to Phantom and this other extremely powerful ghost, what the hell is he thinking!? And Vlad is trying desperately to get them to leave, because Danny looks exhausted and Vlad might be an ass, but he’s starting his redemption arc now and that means making sure Danny’s secret, and by extension Danny himself, is safe from his parents. Vlad knows what it’s like to be on an examination table, knows how terrifying it is to have doctors looming over you with knives and bright lights while you have no idea what’s going on, and he’ll be damned if he lets Danny (who he again reminds himself is very much still a child) go through that with his own parents.

But it’s too late. Danny detransforms right there on the street, in full view of Jack and Maddie and everyone else who’s gathered there (Dan’s been sucked back in the thermos at this point).

Danny turns around, covered in scratches and burns and bruises, blood in his mouth from where Dan punched him in the lip, left arm hanging in an unnatural angle, and he sees everyone: He sees Vlad, icy blue eyes so similar to Danny’s own filled with uncharacteristic worry.

He sees Sam and Tucker, both with wide, scared eyes, and he can just barely see the faint shimmer of tears gathering in their eyes.

He sees Jazz, face pale and her knuckles white as she grips the Fenton peeler with all her strength.

He sees Valerie, her helmet down and exposing a flurry of emotions ranging from shock to anger to horror to pain.

He sees his mom and dad, clinging to each other as they stare at Danny, at their son, and come to the realization that their son is dead, their son is a ghost and he has been for a while now and how did they never notice? How could they not notice that they had been shooting at their own son for at least a year now, that their boy had been putting his afterlife on the line for them while also trying to keep up with school, and evade capture by the GIW, all at the same time?

And Danny is scared, he’s so scared, because his parents look horrified of him and they think he’s a monster, and they hate him, because why else would they be looking at him like that?

He feels his fathers arms wrapping around him and he’s sure, he’s so sure that they’re about to haul him off to their lab to be pinned down and dissected by his own parents, because they saw Dan, they saw what he would become, they saw what he is now, they know now. But then his mom and dad start apologizing, because they never noticed, and they should’ve, they should’ve seen that Danny’s low grades and missed curfews and skipped classes were because he was putting his life on the line for everyone in this town over and over and over again. They apologize for not making him feel safe in his own house, because how many times did they rant about dissecting their own son right in front of him? How many times had Jack and Maddie shown Danny a dissected blob ghost and effectively told him that he was the next one on the list? How much hell did their own son have to go through on his own, because his own parents couldn’t see what was right there?

And Danny finally realizes that no, he’s not going to end up on a dissection table, that his parents do accept him as he is now. 

But there’s still this lingering fear because they don’t know. They don’t know what Danny might turn into, and he can’t keep that from them anymore, because Dan is a secret he can’t keep anymore.

Jack and Maddie are confused when their son pulls away, and for a moment they’re worried that Danny’s upset with them, that he’s angry at them, because why wouldn’t he be?

Then they see this nervousness, they see how he’s shaking and tense, and they might not always be able to read the room that well but they can tell that there’s something else going on here that Danny wants to tell them, even if he’s scared to.

So Jack and Maddie ask Danny if he wants to talk about whatever it is back at the house, and Danny says yes, but Vlad, Sam, Tucker, and Jazz should also be there, because Danny needs some level of support and he knows that Vlad won’t stop pestering him about Dan until he tells him.

Valerie steps in at this point, finally getting over her shock to demand to know what the hells going on, was Danny Phantom the whole time? Who was that other ghost? Why did that other ghost say that Danny would turn into him?

Sam and Tucker, who have been through the emotional wringer watching their best friend fight his evil future self, then reveal his identity to his parents, are kinda pissed at Valerie, because Danny’s already stressed out enough as is, she doesn’t need to be adding on to it. A fight almost breaks out between the three of them, which only stopped when Vlad of all people, steps in saying that while Valerie does have a right to know what’s going on, all of this yelling will do nothing but cause problems.

The three simmer down, and they all head over to the Fenton’s house, where Danny tells them everything: the portal, Pariah Dark (Vlad suddenly finds a particularly interesting spot on the floor), and Dan. He tells them about how Jack, Maddie, Jazz, Sam, and Tucker died in an explosion in that timeline, how that timeline’s Danny turned to Vlad to take him in, how Alt!Danny asked Vlad to remove his human half so he wouldn’t feel that pain anymore. How Alt!Phantom had been driven insane by the separation (he leaves out the part where Phantom fuses with Vlad’s ghost half: he’s not sure Vlad wants him to tell them about his halfa status), killing his human half before destroying most of humanity. How Danny had been forced to fight Dan a year ago, when he had attempted to blow up his friends in family in this timeline to ensure Dan’s recreation here.

When he’s finally done, about an hour and a half later, Danny looks around the room: at Valerie, at Vlad, at his best friends, at his sister, at his parents, and he sees not only acceptance, but respect. Pride. Because they saw that Danny was willing to look his fate in the eye, and say that he would change it no matter what. They saw him fight tooth and nail to protect them, they saw him defend them from his own demons with a bravery most grown adults don’t have, much less a 14 year old boy.

And they accept him.

[redrobin-detective]

Love that your getting into danny phantom lately. Got a fav fanfic in the fandom to rec?

I always love when people ask if I’m new to the Phandom as if I wasn’t there April 3rd 2004 watching Mystery Meat live and then proceeded to dedicate 4 solid years of my life to the show and take my first steps in the world of fandom.

I have a lot of old school reccs from FF but I’ll stick to some of my recent favs I’ve found on AO3.

Exhumed by Masalias is what started me back down the familiar rabbit hole of DP love. Basically Danny left a body behind after the accident and its accidentally found launching Amity’s first murder investigation and leaving Danny all sorts of uncomfortable. 

A Snapping Sound by Represent traumatized me in the best way. They wrote some dope ass fics from FF that still make my chest hurt, Little Fires in particular made me scream. Anyway, Sam is new to Amity Park, moves into the local haunted house. A series of murders and suicides occur leaving her to unravel a 50 year old murder mystery with no good way out. 

Exposed by ADraconicScribe oh I am obsessed with this fic. I have always had a weakness for DP fics centered around a ghost war with Danny’s secret on the line. I have a dozen in my FF fic list. Basically Phantom gets outed as half human which causes the ghost hunters to reevaluate him even as a ghost named Empress slowly conquers the Zone. Great characterizations, great plot, great world building and ghost biology. 

Humans and Ghosts by RedGhost1010 oh this one hurt deeply. Jack and Maddie are extracting ghost cores and it really upsets activists, ghosts and Danny who can feel those ghosts being obliterated. It’s a moral debate on whether ghosts deserve basic respect and the Fenton’s loving but neglectful and harmful parenting. 

A Different Kind of Hero by RedGhost1010 this was kind of an alternate take to My Brother’s Keeper where Spectra talked to everyone else but Danny and he sees the abject depression and mental illness and works on getting his classmates out of their funk before something truly bad happens. 

Smells Like Teen Spirit by UnluckyAlis this one had me cackling the whole time. Amity is used to Danny’s unnatural presence but out of towners are unconsciously terrified of the tall, skinny boy. Casper High students use it to their advantage and make him their mascot to scare off competitors. 

end of the beginning by deuynndrabbles a good ole 5 + 1 of people noticing that Danny Fenton is hecking weird.

Glowsticks by DarkNymfa this one was a short little shot with interesting implications. Danny and Val go to a blacklight rave essentially and discover something interesting hidden under their skin in the blacklight.

What a Nice Surprise by DarkNympha, Jack and Maddie have an alliance with Pahntom. He helps them with (humane) research and they help him when he’s injured. The more time they spend with him, the more they connect him with their odd, wayward son. 

Red Flags by avearia Danny is referred to an actual decent, human school counceller who takes one look at the entire mess that is Danny Fenton and realizes there is something, deeply unsettlingly wrong with the boy and he doesn’t know if he can help.

[lucifer-is-a-bag-of-dicks]

So for your take on "Sam and Tuck weren't there for the accident", at least in the beginning of the show's timeline, Danny doesn't really *need* the ectoplasm in his body. He'd be a lot *better* if he had it but at that point he had two sets of blood and really only needed the human set to be alive. Again, he'd be a lot better with both but he really only needs the human set. And the Doctors Fenton have this convenient power eliminator through this actually effective medicine. [1/2]

the way I see it though is like, it's not really about his body needing it, his body has been irreparably changed and the ectoplasm cannot be entirely removed because it's basically a part of his molecular structure, that's why the treatments felt so painful because it was attacking every cell in his body, which in turn were expending all their energy into healing the damage

the Fentons thought it worked because they'd not so much destroyed all of the ectoplasm in his system, just used it up, Danny isn't producing a whole lot yet because he's young and his core is still sort of gaining power, so the amount of energy he can spend is limited

once he used that energy, his ecto-readings went down and the Fentons let him stop taking the treatment, giving his core a chance to recover and replenish the energy in his burnt out cells

so like, think of the ectoplasmic cells in his body as batteries, his core charges them, the batteries were drained by trying to heal themselves from the onslaught of the medication and his new baby core couldn't keep up, once they were drained they stopped giving off signals to his parents devices

and now that he's off the medication, his core can recharge his cells!

this is some hella bunk pseudo science but this is the phandom we live and breath bunk pseudo science

the next problem to arise, is that his ghost cells are kinda completely merged with his human cells, which means if the ghost cells are damaged, so are his human cells, it's all a 'different sides of the same coin' type deal, if his parents kept him on that medication for any longer, it would have destabilised him

Danny, on some kind of instinctive level, could feel that this was the case, which is what made him terrified of telling his parents when things started getting more serious, because they were so supremely confident that their treatment was harmless to humans that they simply wouldn't listen when he said it was making him really sick

and in regards to it being used against him later, it would have to be a much larger dosage, because once his core is properly up and running and gaining strength, it can keep up the energy necessary to keep repairing the damage to his cells, and since his abilities always seem to change to suit his needs, he probably gained a wicked tolerance to that stuff from that one event alone, meaning that each time it was ever used on him it would have to be made more potent, and each time he survived it, he gained an even stronger immunity

kinda like he's getting inoculated every time he's exposed

also fun fact, I like to think that one of the components of the medication comes from blood blossoms!

another fun fact, his portal accident would have imbued him with so much excess energy that had his parents not stripped him of it with this treatment his powers would have developed way faster, the excess energy is also what kept the treatment from outright killing him in the first place

in a way the Fentons almost did him a favour in that they made his body have to develop abilities much more slowly as it recovered from the attack to his system, making them easier to learn to control

[glassprism]

Your answer to anon about Christine not knowing the Phantom forgets that in both, Erik has been tutoring her for a least a few months before she goes through the mirror. He is no stranger to her. A stern teacher, certainly, but someone who cares about her. As for Buquet, his body was found hanging in the cellar, so there was no reason for Christine to assume she would be next. She knew of his death through gossip, not personal experience.

As for ALW, Buquet was killed because the managers were hesitant for Christine to sing. Again, no reason for Christine to be afraid for her own life, although, yes, she was duly upset.

She entered the mirror because she trusted the Angel - hypnotized or not. Not sure what she expected when she snuck up on him to remove his mask, but it was rather rude at a minimum. Who goes around pulling masks off of people's faces? Even in his rage, did she think he would kill her? I have to go back to my initial observation that even though he was no longer an "angel" but a man, she still "knew" him. There was enough of a connection there for Christine to know he would not hurt her. Angry as he was, even trying to grab her - it was mostly words he threw at her. The run around the room burned off enough steam for him to come to his senses and want to explain to her. Being Christine, she listened. As for the grasshopper vs scorpion challenge in Leroux and ALW's stay with me and Raoul goes free or choose to leave and Raoul dies: in both instances the choice is obvious.

Christine would stay with him. No one was going to die.

JMO.

Wow, that is one long response. Let's break it down.

First of all, since the post you are responding to had to do solely with the ALW musical, and since I did not mention Leroux until the very end (and even then I noted it was an entirely different canon), I'm going to ignore all the Leroux references, save for the ending ones, as irrelevant.

Second of all, I should again emphasize that I do not think that the Phantom would kill Christine at any point. I do not think he would ever lose control to that extent (or at least, I hope he wouldn't). But the post was asking why Christine would feel that way, and to explain that, you need to get into her head, and the fact is that Christine does not know how her story ends. She is not an audience member, she is a character experiencing all of this for the first time, and that needs to be accounted for!

The rest is under the cut.

Your answer to anon about Christine not knowing the Phantom forgets that in both, Erik has been tutoring her for a least a few months before she goes through the mirror. He is no stranger to her. A stern teacher, certainly, but someone who cares about her.

I did not forget actually, because the fact is, the Phantom is going to Christine in the guise of the angel. This means it's very likely that Christine does not know a lot of things about him, things that would shatter the angel persona. She probably does not know he is a composer; she probably does not know his backstory; she does not know he has a facial deformity; she does not know he is currently squatting in the bowels of the opera house; heck, she doesn't even know he's a human being! And you can speculate all you want on lyrics like, "In all your fantasies, you always knew / That man and mystery / Were both in you", but it also has to be said that in songs like 'Angel of Music' and 'Little Lotte', when Christine is not in a semi-entranced, subconscious state, she seems fully convinced that she was being taught by an angel, not a man.

As for ALW, Buquet was killed because the managers were hesitant for Christine to sing. Again, no reason for Christine to be afraid for her own life, although, yes, she was duly upset.

So, when I was getting my teaching credential, I had a wonderful professor who taught the methods course of my program, and who would later turn out to be my observer when I was student teaching. He was very smart, very witty, very well-traveled, and his own care towards my work really helped me to gain confidence in my own abilities; it's safe to say that he made me both a better student and a better teacher, and that I highly respected and even idolized him a bit (as did many other students). I was deeply saddened to hear of his death about a year ago, because of how inspirational he was to me in my career. He meant a lot to me.

And if that professor had murdered a random dude for a mundane reason, you sure as hell can bet that I would be terrified and immediately have requested that I get a different professor. Oh, and called the police. Because let's face it, what's scary about a man murdering someone else, for as little a reason as "the managers were hesitant for Christine to sing" is that he does it so easily, which implies he's done it before and can do it again, and with no warning. That is frightening. Christine even says it herself: "And if he has to kill a thousand men / The Phantom of the Opera will kill, and kill again!"

She entered the mirror because she trusted the Angel - hypnotized or not. Not sure what she expected when she snuck up on him to remove his mask, but it was rather rude at a minimum. Who goes around pulling masks off of people's faces?

Who goes around hypnotizing random girls into mirrors? Who goes around dropping chandeliers? Who goes around murdering someone because two people didn't immediately comply with their request? But I get it, if Christine were smart, she'd have gone along happily with being taken to an unknown place with an unknown man who has spent the last few months lying to her. Stupid Christine (and rude too! Can't forget her rudeness, her most unforgivable sin here), how dare she try to find the identity of the guy who did this to her?

Even in his rage, did she think he would kill her?

Yes, she did. "He'll kill me!" she says in the rooftop scene. "Am I to risk my life to win the chance to live?" she says in 'Twisted Every Way'. Beat around the bush however much you want, but those are words she actually says.

As for the grasshopper vs scorpion challenge in Leroux and ALW's stay with me and Raoul goes free or choose to leave and Raoul dies: in both instances the choice is obvious. Christine would stay with him. No one was going to die.

And this part is what makes me saddest, that the choice is obvious and that it ought to be a foregone conclusion that Christine goes with him. Gone is the conflict that is part of Christine's character, the tug between her fear and her empathy, her horror and her pity, her wish for freedom and her undeniable connection to the Phantom. Gone is Christine's compassion for the Phantom even amidst his crimes. Gone is the understanding that she found a third option, one that nobody expected her to take, one that leads to the moment that makes the story most memorable. Gone is any acknowledgment of Christine's intelligence, her sympathy, her complexity. This simplistic interpretation of Christine is not rage-inducing, it's just sad.

Tl;dr: I cannot believe that it is 2021 and I am still arguing that Christine is justified in being scared of murder. What is this, 1990s phandom?

[angelmichelangelo]

I’m gonna speak over anon because I’m literally terrified of phannies coming after me even though I’ve rebranded, I still get hate anons from them even now which is crazy. Anyway. It’s honestly a relief to read a respectful take on why someone’s left the phandom. Your words put my exact feelings into articulation and I think my main emotion is just... disappointment? I feel like dnp hold their audience at an arm’s length now and for good reason. It’s impersonal, and after what we put them through I think they deserve that. The fact that people are still trying to keep some kind of momentum going, hyping up cookie-cutter content or you know, making aus about a literal REAL BABY just doesn’t sit right with me. It feels good and healthy to move on. They aren’t interesting now. Seeing people running full time phan blogs makes me actually uncomfortable. Because I don’t feel like it’s really about dnp so much as clout seeking half the time these days.

anon you are always MORE than welcome to come talk to me about all of this stuff lol (i have a lot of feelings ok?)

and you’re totally right. one of the weirdest shifts for me that kinda gave me the final push to leave was the fact that dnp stopped caring about their audience. and the thing is, dnp always seemed different to other youtubers because they had this connection with us. twice daily livestreams, one a week upload from the gaming channel, twice monthly updates between them… take 2018 for example, if you asked any phannie they’d probably agree that it was the best year for us all because it felt like dnp were on this emotional wavelength with us where it was like: ‘okay this is the content we like and this is the content we’re getting’ and it was so perfectly balanced. it never felt like they were just pumping out content for the sake of it. they could take a boring ass game like ‘google autocomplete’ and make a real good video out of it. that was the content and the dan and phil i enjoyed.

and now??? dude. the mere idea that phil went ahead and deleted all his lessamazingphil videos to reach a larger audience is just…….. if i cared more i’d be mad. they so clearly want a different audience now. im sorry to the phannie moots that follow me still but that’s just what i see. phil’s content went from lighthearted jokey funtimes to ‘oh my god you’re a 30 something year old man making content on the same level as fuckin troomtroom and you’re still making butthole face thumbnails to appease the algorithm.’ and that’s just heartbreaking bro. what the fuck happened. i was around for the cereal tasting video (i never watched it i don’t think i’ve watched a single video since last year) and like………… the hype it got? for a low quality looking buzzfeed quiz type video is just… yeah. dude, this goes beyond the argument of ‘BUT JENNA MARBLES MADE THESE VIDEOS!!!! SHE DID IT AND EVERYONE LOVED IT!!!’ and the difference between phil and jenna was: jenna put a whole lot of fuckin effort into those videos to make them unique. not just: trying on makeup! but instead: ‘trying on makeup and then squirting eye drops into my eyeballs to make myself cry to then see which one is best for dramatic crying purposes!!’ there was a whole spin on the take that i’ve never seen phil EVER do. sorry to this man but he really…… isn’t as creative as he used to be. he falls flat every time in his videos and it makes me laugh when i see the same 😯 face in his thunmbnails with the most boring looking video idea painted in bright colours. this is the same man that was making those wacky ass videos in 2009? could have fooled me. are we sure he isn’t working for buzzfeed or something because that’s the vibe i get from him lmao.

and dan. ohhhh dan. OH DAN! he’s fed up of his audience too. at least he’s got the balls to at least half admit it (or maybe he’s just stupid idk lol) but yeah. he’s not coming back to youtube, or at least, in a way that’ll bring him back the views. he doesn’t care, and he hasn’t cared for a long time. i’m not sure what the hell he’s doing and like i said: to those running phandom blogs, you’re tough dude. you’re tough as hell because how anyone can scrape together content for this man is beyond me lmfao. he either wants: real intelligent smart people audience from his book (i have so much to say about that i could write a fuckin book) OR he wants: gay 30 year old men audience from his…. *sigh* his weird horny tweets he makes once a month. im sorry but WHAT?! THIS is a man that people want to stan????? AND ANOTHER THING: that hideously awkward livestream thing he did for AIDS… did nobody else think it was just SO HORRIFICALLY out of touch for him to making SO MANY “im such a horny slut i slept with so many people i got so many diseases”…. for a charity stream…….. for AIDS????? im sorry but how gross. that…. that fucked me off so bad im sorry but what the actual fuck is wrong with this man?? his content it all over the place and frankly i thought it was all awful. if this man ever does do a stand up comedy show like he’s been alluding to then holy shit THATS maybe the funniest thing he’s ever said in his life because that man ain’t funny (and he never had been im sorry i always was too scared to say that in the pits of phandom hell but yall need to hear it: he’s not got a single funny bone in his body and really honesty? neither does phil. they’re only ‘laugh worthy’ because they’re acting like the mf chuckle brothers).

that’s the impression i get. dan and phil have never been more disconnected from their audience. their merch is horrific like seriously what the fuck phil why are you charging your fans £70 for something i could get in primark for £15?! because again: their merch was always a plus for me (not that i ever bought it personally) but it was nice to know a youtuber wasn’t just slapping their name on a shirt and going DONE! it always had a theme or a connection to them, their brand, an inside joke or whatever. now phil is making…. couch club merch??? what the fuck is that? also side note: when i went onto their website to take a look at it i actually cried laughed at the fact that he’s selling the socks separately. phannies, you’re in deep i tell ya. oy vey.

so yeah im probably gonna piss everyone off with this huge rant but frankly idc anymore lol phandom is probably gonna die out anyways because how can you keep a wholeass fandom afloat on the algorithm appeasing content squeezed into 10 minutes and a man that is too embarrassed of his audience to ever give a shit about them. like, if u like their shit and u wanna keep ur blog about them: go for it everyone should enjoy what they wanna enjoy but also this is my opinion and if anyone wants to come crying to me about it like ‘b-b-but emmy YOU were a phannie once! ur just a jealous ex-phannie doing what all ex-phannies do which is be mean a bitter!!!!!’ like…… ya. why do you think everyone that leaves phandom starts being honest about them? because in phandom dnp can do no wrong 😌 and in phandom you must be nice to smol bean phwiw lester and danny howell 😌 otherwise all the big phannie account will come and eat you 😌 lmfao but yeah that’s all i have to say i guess. boy, this felt theraputic as fuck. and also im sorry you’re getting hate anons, i get a few filter through as well like… idk, phandom is just insane to me and now im like the final girl in a horror movie, standing in a pool of blood like: oh shit. i’m alive! lmfao

thanks for the ask anon, take care <3

[glassprism]

I meant to put this in a reply but it got too long. I believe this perception is in large part because Kay's characters spend a great deal of time character shilling describing Kay!Erik as this incredibly sensual or even sexual person (albeit one who is unaware of his own potency), to the point that phandom has either taken it seriously because, well, that feels like what Kay wants readers to do, or equally likely, they take it as a joke ("haha Kay's Erik is sex god!Erik") because it's just so much.

It starts with Erik as a newborn turning his mother on with just his voice:

I had always considered the cry of the newborn to be utterly sexless —piercing, irritating, curiously unattractive. But his voice was a strange music that brought tears rushing to my eyes, softly seducing my body so that my breasts ached with a primitive and overwhelming urge to hold him close.

And as a child, she wants to forbid Erik from singing because:

"His voice is a sin," I said grimly. "A mortal sin. No woman who hears it will ever die in a state of grace."

Then we have Giovanni, who describes Erik in adolescence as such:

Beneath my roof I was sheltering a young prince of darkness. The sensuality of power radiated from his every gesture, but he remained entirely unaware of his extraordinary ability to attract. There were women here in Rome—women all over the world—who would have gladly sunk themselves in his shadow.... But he was blind to the most essential element of his own magnetism.

And Nadir Shah also says:

A powerful sexuality informed [Erik's] every gesture. Curbed and leashed, expressed in the enormous sensuality of his hands, this sexuality gripped every audience and made him a uniquely compelling performer. I believe it was this very quality that had fascinated the khanum... They say that each time she watched him kill, the intensity of her pleasure bordered on sexual gratification, and I had heard a whisper that she would have invited him to her bed, had she only dared to take the risks involved.

And of course, we have Christine:

...I found him standing by the pipe organ in full evening dress... He looked suddenly so strong, so incredibly powerful, that I felt my hands begin to tremble against the tray. I've never seen him on his feet before, I didn't realize he was so tall… and yet I seemed to recognize the inherent authority—the awesome mystery!—with which he was now invested... I suddenly understood that this was how he must have looked the evening that he brought me down here... some deep-buried memory stirred now, sufficient to make me clutch the tray against my breast in an effort to still the sudden trembling in my heart.

Those graceful, sensitive hands, which are so beautiful to watch, are the hands of a man who is capable of killing without a qualm of conscience when provoked. I'm not shocked... this veiled undercurrent of threat is the final missing piece in the jigsaw of his alluring mystery; it is part of an awesome power that excites as much as it terrifies.

And of course, the infamous "raped with music" scene, from both perspectives:

As the notes drifted through me, strangely urgent and compelling, I found that I had begun to rock gently to the primitive, pulsating rhythm. I became aware of answering pulses all over my body, pulses in my wrists and neck and groin... There was a swelling heaviness in my breasts that caused my nipples to stand erect against my exploring fingers; but now the irresistible pulse was beating harder and more insistently below my stomach and my hand traveled farther and farther until it reached a place I had never known existed. Neither innocence nor ignorance was a shield against that music which was deep inside me now, gathering a throbbing momentum that made me twist and writhe.... I dared not think how near I had been to losing control, how terrifyingly easy it would have been in that moment to rape her. I'd raped her with music instead, and perhaps that crime was almost as bad as the one it had so narrowly prevented. Either way I'd violated her trust and destroyed a rare and precious innocence—-soiled the delicate ambience that had lain between us all these weeks.

Bonus: how he strokes Ayesha:

I watched his hand trace the line of her body from her nose to her tail, a swooping, sensual caress that made the creature arch with unashamed ecstasy. Even in silence there was always music in those hands, a cadence which seemed to flow irresistibly through his fingertips.

It should be noted as well that in Kay's afterword, she quite clearly says she was inspired by Michael Crawford's Phantom, who was the master of exuding elegant sensuality with his movements, and as you do say that musical!Erik is the actual sex god here, it's not hard to make the leap from "musical!Erik is a sex god" to "Kay!Erik who is inspired by musical!Erik is therefore also a sex god". And finally, Susan Kay notes the following in this rare interview:

I felt that essentially this was a fiercely proud man who came to desire his own human dignity to an almost insane degree... Couple this with the unstable temperament that often accompanies pure genius and you have a very dangerous man... Those attracted to him are always rightly aware of an underlying fear, and I believe it is this mixture of attraction and fear which is responsible for his powerful sexuality. It’s what separates the Phantom from Raoul and all the other nice young boys like him who offer a safe mundane existence to a woman, but no thrills or chills.

This isn't me saying I disagree with you, by the way, I don't really think Erik is a sex god either. But people saying that, whether as a joke or seriously, ultimately has less to do with the act of sex itself that Kay's Erik performs, and more to do with the many repetitions from characters themselves about how magnetic, how sensual, how seductive Erik is. Because if you spend a whole book using wildly purple prose to describe Erik that way and only devote a part at the end to saying that he could only actually do it once (and make it clear to attribute it to sickness and old age, with the implication that were Erik younger he might have been more capable) that's what will stick in people's brains.

I'm genuinely so confused when I see people talk about Erik in Kay as a "sex god" as if this is particular to Kay.

I mean he's not any more a sex god there than anywhere else and is arguably in the worst health of any version of Erik, except maybe the original. He thinks about his desire for Christine a lot, but he has zero sexual confidence with her and he's constantly hung up on keeping her innocent. He never does anything remotely seductive with Christine and when they do finally have sex he's so close to death, I'm 90% sure she was doing all the work.

In fact I would say he's probably the least sexually adept version I've ever seen.

Like Erik is an extremely sexual being in any iteration--its a core tenet of his character, but I'm so so confused as to why THIS version is the one many people point to as the example of him at his most sex god-like because he's just... not. He can't do anything without having a heart attack.

If we're gonna point to a sex god Erik, isn't it surely Erik in the musical, where he's fully confident in his ability to touch and seduce her and has no scruples about "sullying her innocent purity", but rather seeks to guide her to ever more enrapturing sensual delights?

[ttlmt]

ive watched dnp for years/went to their tours/got their books and all that (they’ve always been my comfort youtubers) but I’m so glad I didn’t join tumblr til after ii era cuz the ngl some of the “phandom” that existed seems terrifying to me and poor dnp yikes idk I was just thinking about it rn cuz I saw the phandom heritage posts lmfao

i know this was meant to be funny. i wasn’t gonna answer this, and please don’t take this as an invitation for discourse or shade or anything cause it’s not. and it’s also not really @ you nonnie, its just some thoughts ive been having as i’ve been seeing that stuff around.

there has been and always will be good parts and bad parts of the phandom. phandomheritageposts (and the original heritageposts blog) targets the bad parts cause its funny or cringy or shocking to look back on. in the case of og hp, it also tends to just make fun of fandom culture which was inherently different back then as well, not for better or worse in some cases, just out of context. there has always been the respectful, largely queer, soft, part of the phandom, it’s just not the part you’ll see on php. but it is the part that dnp love, and it is the reason they’re still making content and being themselves online. and if they didn’t want to do that, they wouldn’t.

(nothing against php, the person who runs it, or anyone enjoying it, it’s all in good fun. it’s just not for me.)