Not Sure If I'm Allowed To Do This (so Someone Tell Me If I Need To Trash This Post) But I Just Can't

I went to dinner and when I checked my phone a little later my best friend was live tweeting the Phantom boot I gifted him. Suffice it to say...I think I've converted my first person to the phandom.

I started him out with the 25th anniversary performance and then proceeded to give him comparative highlights of Hugh Panaro, Earl Carpenter, Davis Gaines and Norm Lewis to give him a sense of scope. Then built it out with others. Sprinkled in information about canon and the different Erik/Christine types and ranted a lot about hands and my personal tastes.

And then I gave him a Lucy St. Louis boot bc I suspected he'd like her and I asked him to share his thoughts afterward. Now his takes have me screaming because I've totally indoctrinated him.

"She was good, but I didn't like this Phantom. His ILY was weak! The hands weren't right. DO YOU WANT HER OR NOT BRO??" I warned him about the post-COVID fall off but now he's blaming me for setting him up with high expectations and declaring his allegiance to the 2000s era.

And he's already abbreviating POTO.

I'm so damn proud of myself (and him) lol.

Hugh Panaro's evolution over the course of his different runs deserves more attention.

There's that mysterious year long run in the 90s that I know nothing about (is there even footage of it?).

Then he came back around '03 and early on it seems like he tried to fit the mold of the more "classic," operatic Phantoms...but then by '05 you see him embrace his unique vocal style and that more psycho, jokeresque approach to the role.

And then you've got the final run in the 2010s where he builds on what he started exploring at the end of run 2 and perfects the unique touches like "my angel" and offers a more queer-coded Erik, and I love it all. How many Phantoms do you get to have these kind of change over time analyses with??

Oh shit, I started a fanfic!

Welp, we've gone this far. Follow me on AO3 and tune in to a POTO retelling lol.

What drives me absolutely crazy about the 25th Anniversary performance is Ramin Karimloo says a second (nearly imperceptible) "I love you" in the final lair and we don't even get to see it because the cameraperson is in love with a man who played Raoul with all the nuance of a block of wood.

I know the thesaurus abhors seeing me draw nigh

“I have touched you, heard you, felt the comfort of your presence–the sweetness of your consolation: I cannot give up these joys. I have little left in myself–I must have you. The world may laugh–may call me absurd, selfish–but it does not signify. My very soul demands you: it will be satisfied: or it will take deadly vengeance on its frame.”

— Edward Rochester (Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte) 

Franz Kafka, from a letter to Milena Jesenka featured in "Letters to Milena,

#I am screaming

Not this…

[X]

Same. SAME.

still not over that boot actually