This.

This.

the thing, why Erik and Christine is my ship and beyond that the dynamic that fascinated me the most is because their relationship is so toxic and so beautiful and so layered. it's like...i am the angel your dead father sent you, you are my angel of music, i am your father (figure), i am your teacher, you are my teacher, you're my muse, you're my victim, i am yours, you made me experience musical ecstasy, you too, you guided me out of my grief, i am grieving because of you, you're the normalcy i long for, you bring out the side in me i didn't even know i had, i've never been so happy, i've never been so frightened, i've never been so desperate, i want to die because of you, i want you to kill us both, he's just a man, he's every shadow, she's just a woman, she saved everyone, it's just a kiss, no, it means everything!

Erik and Christine are an abuser and his victim but they were also two lonely, broken people who found solace in each other, they are also musical geniuses inspiring each other to inhuman achievements in their art, they share are bond that even they can't really understand or anyone else.

I also love the weathered frenemy relationship he has with the Daroga and Raoul is also a perfectly nice young man who, in my opinion, is the most interesting when he's at his worst (jealous) and I love that everyone has fun with their non canon ships too. But Erik and Christine's dynamic will always be like crack to me personally. They're Death and the Maiden, Hades and Persephone, Mephisto and Faust/Margarete, the Rose and the Nightingale, Beauty and the Beast, they're opposites, they can't be together, they're day and night AND YET

ah! Fate links thee to me, forever and a day...