BRIN

Someday this will all be behind, nothing more than bad dreams and haunted memories.

Isaiah Bailey & Jordan Lee Gilbert, POTO US Tour 2026

Which means when Victor wakes up to the Creature standing by his bed like ☺️, and Victor freaks out and runs away, the Creature could have ostensibly wandered into the hallway after him, only to be met with a pack of incredibly drunk-after-an-all-night-1818-rager yet well-meaning frat boys.

Who were so blasted that they were just like, "Dude, what, do you play rugby? Holy shit, he's fuckin' huge, look at this fuckin' guy! Absolute unit!" And they all whooped and hollered and just ushered the Creature into their dorm to keep the party going.

And the Creature was just like, "?????" but very pleased to find other people vaguely shaped like him, so he lets them because he may be just minutes old but he knew early on all he really wanted was one (1) buddy and now there's, like, a herd of them and they're all having a blast.

When the guys inevitably pass out, sloshed beyond all sense, he just sits and waits for them to wake up and when they do, later that morning, he's poking at one of them to make sure the guy is still breathing, and the kid wakes up and yells for a second and squints at the 8 foot-tall (rugby???? player????) guy in their dorm and is like, "Shit, what is that?"

And another one squints at him and goes, "I don't fuckin' know, bro, but he can throw us so hard. Did you see how David just...fuckin'...flew out the window last night? Just hurled David like it was no big deal. That was awesome."

David groans and puts his head under his pillow because his headache is awful but he lets out a pained, muffled, "that was awesome" in agreement.

So in a rare case of wholesome frat boy camaraderie, this herd of college roommate boys, all of whom are dumb as rocks but well-meaning, just take the Creature in because, "There's this huge fucking monster guy and it's the coolest thing we've ever seen."

This would possibly mean the Creature is socialized to be a dumb-as-rocks frat boy, but because I cannot allow that to happen and because there is no universe in which he would not be into poetry, he somehow also gets socialized by liberal arts majors and is just as Sensitive™, it rubs off on his frat buddies, who start saying things like, "No, man, it's Sturm und Drang, it's, like, the fuckin' vast rolling of the soul that, like...fuckin' eschews Enlightenment rationalism."

But some of the boys' lingo inevitably rubs off on the Creature so when, months later, Victor comes back to get all of his things with Henry post-mental breakdown, he bumps into a crowd of rowdy guys playfully jostling each other, and that crowd includes an 8-foot tall dude in a letterman jacket holding a volume of Goethe in one hand and a tankard of beer in the other, and he scoffs down at Victor and goes, "Accursed Creator! Why didst thou abandon me in my hour of need? Fuckin' lame."

the inherent intimacy of following the man with whom your fate is forever entwined because you saved his life to his underground domain and getting caught in his trap, knowing he's tricking you but falling for it anyways, being enchanted by his voice and comparing the sound to that of a siren leading you to temptation.

the inherent intimacy of his familiar hands rising from the water and seizing you by the throat, the hands which usually grip a lasso to commit their violent deeds but instead are gripping you by the nape of your neck, the hands of the wretched man you should hate and yet do not.

the inherent intimacy of wrapping your fingers around the arm of the monster trying to drown you, the monster you've forgiven for far worse, as he drags you below the surface, as you realize you are cursed to follow him even in death.

the inherent intimacy of giving one last cry before he finally takes your life, the life you already gave him years ago without question. the inherent intimacy of him instantly recognizing you by the sound of your pain, as murderous rage turns to dull frustration, as his lethal hold relents and becomes gentle even in his annoyance, as he lays you on the shore almost tenderly.

Erik DID NOT exist, the novel is presented in a journalistic style but reality contradicts what Leroux wrote

Christine is NOT 15/16 in the original novel, she is 16 in the movie, however in the original novel she was about 20/21, which matches up with Raoul who is 21. The claim that she was 15 in the book was due to a mistranslation.

The novel and the original book DO NOT imply that the Phantom has been teaching/grooming Christine from a young age, in the book, he has been teaching her less than six months.

Susan Kay/Love Never Dies/The Phantom of Manhattan has NOT been approved by the Leroux estate, therefore is not canon

Erik’s last name was not Destler. That’s from the Robert Englund movie. Erik’s last name is never revealed, and “Erik” is a name he gave himself (it means “eternal ruler”), it’s not his birth name. His real name is probably something typically French, since his parents were very conventional middle class French people.

Erik was not captured by Romani people as in ALW and Kay, and there is no evidence he was locked in a cage. He ran away and joined them as a performer in an attempt to spare his parents the shame of having a child that looked like him.

Christine’s scarf was not red. In fact, it’s color is never revealed. However, the word that Leroux used to describe her scarf (voile) suggests that he was envisioning a head scarf (such as a stereotypical 19th century Swedish peasant girl might wear) and not a neck scarf.

Meg Giry may have been at least part Romani, based on Leroux’s description of her as having brown skin and black hair and eyes.

They did NOT torture anybody for fun or for pleasure in Persia. The death penalty was a common punishment for specific crimes just like how it was in Europe in those years but it is unspeakable that the shah would do it for his own amusement. For entertaining the harem?? Completely impossible. That would be the lowest of the crimes, killing and torturing people in front of the shah’s family. No no

Harem is NOT some sort of exotic place filled with sexy slave babes and underage girls that the shah could toy with whenever he wanted. Far from it actually. It was where the shah’s family lived in the palace that’s literally it. It had a political value more than anything. Privacy of personal and family life held a very important place in people’s ethical rules of that period. No outsiders were allowed in the harem except for relatives and few people that worked at the palace. As usual, European travelers wrote out their biased opinions and fantasies after unsuccessful attempts at entering the harem instead of the truth and it caused a big wave of misinformation that is still present today. To sum up, no they did not have sex slaves, they did not give away random girls from the harem as a present, and they definitely did not jerk off to blood. What the actual fuck was that anyways

It was seen as unethical when a commoner had multiple wives. The shah had multiple wives because of political reasons as I mentioned. Marrying a woman from another country meant political alliance, the genetics were passed upon without any incest situation ect ect. Even though it was possible for a normal man to have multiple wives, it was something that was looked down on by society. This is how it was for the Ottoman Empire at least and I don’t really think it would be too different for Persia since their cultures are really similar to each other. So no again. Nadir having four wives casually is weird, and I really really really hate how Kay portrays Middle Eastern women. The place of the women in society in both Europe and the Middle East was nearly the same, the only difference is the culture. I hate it when writers glorify Europe and blame East for slaves and mistreatment of the women where the same fucking things were happening in their country too.

Speaking of the Ottoman Empire, Erik went there too! He made the trap doors in the Yıldız Palace (Leroux writes Yıldız Kiosk) located in İstanbul, and worked for the shah there as an architect and as an inventor.

And lastly just for funsies; the name of the shah mentioned in Susan’s Kay book is Naser al-Din Shah, and he actually has photos taken of his harem! The Persians were not as strict with their privacy ethics as the Ottomans were so we do have some graphic media of it: