Anonymous
June 22, 2026 at 3:59:37 AM
Name of autistic character:
erik
from: the phantom of the opera (primarily the film(s) due to his mannerisms, but i would also count the book!)
i heavily related to him growing up-- david coward's translation does the best job of characterizing him, in my opinion. his operatic voice is beautiful but to the opera, he is grotesque. he is absolutely awful at romance and distinguishing social cues, but really very brilliant if you judge him on who he is rather than what he represents. i would recommend it if you haven't read it already.
even if you are not a french speaker, it may serve you well to purchase both the original french work and coward's translation to compare prose. many jokes and slang terms do not smoothly translate between french and english, so you may miss a great few nuances and details in coward's translation (i personally dislike how he handled mme giry's dialect; she is given a jarring cockney accent that does not fit the period or location at all), but his annotations are very robust. pros and cons 