Earl Carpenter

David Shannon & Gina Beck

It looks like the les mis & fantôme-y goodness page has been taken down on YT? I'm hurt. They had like 20 of my favorite vids *crying emoji*

Again: Marie Danvers stood on business when it came to laying smooches on her costars. And her roster was impeccable.

The content I didn't know I needed.

another excerpt from The Hang With Ramin Karimloo where Sierra talks about regretting her choice at the end

Look, I'm very excited to see Jordan Donica in the Gilded Age, but all I know is THIS BETTER NOT INTERFERE WITH MY DARKEST DREAMS OF HIM PLAYING THE PHANTOM FOR THE NORTH AMERICAN TOUR. Listen to the voice. Look at the hands. Imagine the pants!! This man was made to play the Phantom. He is the second coming of Davis Gaines or Howard McGillan in the making.

Whoever is in charge...whoever I need to contact, petition, or pray to...MAKE THIS HAPPEN.

Me: Do I like my Erik a tender and sensitive loverboy like Earl Carpenter or a deranged sex God à la Hugh Panaro? Also Me: ...YES.

lol is it good?

masquerade nyc posting a fic on ao3... literally what is going on

Phantom Acting Choices That Live in My Head Rent Free (Part 2)

The way Hugh Panaro says "sing for me" during the title song. Extra emphasis on the ME, like this man knows Christine doesn't sing for anyone else like this--especially not that insolent boy.

Tim Martin Gleason's emotionally regulating self-hug.

David Shannon plays the Phantom like his skull exposure is actually vulnerable/causes him chronic pain.

Earl Carpenter directs tf out of Christine's voice during the title song in his '06 run. Gospel choir director energy, but make it sex.

Phantoms kneeling during the Don Juan AIAOY reprise. (Looking at you David Thaxton and Hugh P.)

Every acting decision Gina Beck makes in the final lair.

There's a boot (I think 1995?) where Davis Gaines pauses after he says "this is the choice" and he actually realizes he's gone off the deep end and "this is the point of no return" fr.

Michael Nicholson's deranged laugh turned sob. So sad, so disturbed.

Gary Mauer says like 4-5 ily's in the final lair like he can't stop now that he's uttered it aloud. And the more the merrier imo lol.

I've been thinking a lot about the relationship between gothic romance, melodrama, and fanfiction (mostly Re: POTO) and how they've been shunted into the category of "women's media." Like women and queer folks have been writing their desires into media for centuries and being told that such desires--the excess, the sensationalism/sensuality, the emotional transcendence--are not "realistic" and only good for aesthetic consumption in its place.

But then you look at the general endurance of "women's media" through time...and the fact that even in a capitalistic world obsessed with monetization and the "hyper-real," there are whole fandoms/online communities where authors are writing fanfics with hundreds of thousands of hits for FREE and where third spaces and alternative economies based on trading and sharing have taken shape around the very same desires deemed "unrealistic"....

Idk where I was going with that, but someone gets the point. Is it that queer and feminine desire are "silly," or do they imagine other ways of living and relating to each other, our bodies, our emotions that certain power structures want us to think is impossible?

Not sure what I just experienced watching the restaged POTO tour, but now I need to revisit David Shannon bootlegs to help me recover.