Absolutely love your artwork!!!! Christine is so beautiful like holy moly
What is your interpretation of Erik's personality... I AM SO CURIOUS
I am glad that you enjoyed my art! And, yes, she is! 🩷🩷
Below is what I would have describe my interpretation of Erik's personality. It is quite long so I put it under the cut. 😅
I'll start this with an art of my version of Erik. I first planned to just sketch him, but I got carried away TT (Left side is him without mask, right is with the mask. They're both smiling btw.)
(I'm not sure whether you are curious about my interpretation of The Erik or My Erik. So I am going to be writing about my version. I apologize in advance if this isn't exactly what you were asking, anon! I don't speak English!)
Firstly, for my interpretation of Erik, do think of it as just a head-canon. To summarize, I like to tip his scale towards a more absurd-comedic side, haha.
Light-heartedly, I like to think of Erik as a kind of "Chūnibyō/中二病 " If you know you know. Not (too much of) a weirdo, but very passionate about what he likes. Think of him as an Otaku, but instead of Anime it's opera. (???) Either way, this man is a massive nerd.
I am not sure about the usual agreed interpretation of Erik's MBTI, but I am an INTJ. So my Erik is close to something of an INTJ too. (unfortunate...)
He's cheeky and sassy, quite arrogant as well. Basically a smartass. His way of speech is quirky (uninfluenced?), so it often went over people's heads ...a lot. He either said something dead blunt, or comically vague. (Plus: complex vocabularies, obscure quotations, crazy metaphors, out-of-context mentioning of personal details, etc.) Sometimes he pulls up with a completely made-up answer for no reason. I think it'll be funny.
Erik is very contradictory. I am not elaborating.
He's a little bit naive in social settings - as in rusty, not entirely clueless. Erik isn't embarrassed about it, though. I don't think he wanted to be that big of a recluse, not naturally. He knows he lacks the etiquette and cues other people had (which, in turns, makes him not as naive ???), he is surprisingly self-aware.
Erik has a dream of wanting to be "like everybody else", and he is dead set on making it happen. Personally, for me, I believe he doesn't really believe he could ever fully be like that. He perceived it as unattainable, and he does not yearn for total normalcy. But my Erik is a perfectionist (and a persistent bastard), so just knowing that he was able to change something a little bit with his will alone, had already satisfied him. Like he proved to himself that he can be a normal person if he wanted to. Other than that, he doesn't need anything more than what he already had.
This is random, but I believe he smiles a lot (even if it is almost indistinguishable from his usual expression...) My Erik isn't as edgy as he looks. He's not cold. Definitely eccentric, though. Dude probably had an out-dated sense of humor ...and everything else too. This is quite off-handed, but I also like to make him left-handed (because I am). His posture varies, he could be the most sophisticated person, or literally on all fours.
If you cut all of the questionable parts, he might be quite an agreeable person ...who occasionally commits bad stuffs from time to time. With all his wrongdoings, he did it because of desperate situations and his warped worldview. He's still a threat to society nonetheless, the man is unpredictable. Erik gets emotional and quite irrational when he is "in the zone". He is not mad or insane, he's built different - so just a very twisted moral compass + a hidden side of immaturity. You don't even have to fix him, he'll damn well do it himself if he knew he could.
Despite all that, Erik remains extremely bitter about what could have been of him. He held himself as high as possible, building himself a (pitifully) charismatic persona to make up for his appearance. He did not fail nor succeed. Some people can handle him, some liked him, some fear him. Nevertheless, In the end he will stay unknown and ultimately forgotten. (until fictional Leroux wrote about him 30 years later lol)
Please don't take anything too seriously about my interpretation, though. This is just me describing my Erik in his most basic form. I admit, I usually base my characters' persona on vibes alone when I draw them, basically "Hmm. What would Erik do?" I'm not that much of a biographer. Neither am I a writer, as you can see.
Lastly, thank you for the question, I enjoyed writing this! Even though more than half of my interpretation is just rambling, not really much about his personality... lol
I hope you can understand my un-checked English! It has been a while. 🫶🫶
