clemmy !!

okay so the thing about Angel is that he reliably derives a sense of power from his own objectification. a huge part of the persona he puts on, especially in the early episodes, comes down not just to sexualizing himself but reminding people, incessantly and at every opportunity, who he is. he brags about the creepy fanmail he gets, he offers his ‘star power’ to the hotel, he shows off his films to people he has no sexual interest in, on and on. it’s one of the things husk directly calls him out on in masquerade—’nobody in that hotel cares who you are, how famous, how hot. so you might as well just cut the act.’ and it makes sense! while we obviously don’t know the original terms of his contract or exactly what motivated him to make it, in practice being hell’s big sex symbol is what he gets in exchange for having sold his soul; it’s effectively the only form of power he has available and the only thing that Val can’t take away because it’s as intrinsic to their dynamic as all the ways that angel is disempowered. not to a mention a functional substitute for his non-existent self-worth, which is part of what made ‘loser, baby’ such an important moment for his character. there’s also the fact that angel is, generally speaking, under no obligation to fuck the public (and in fact one might argue it would depreciate his value as an asset if he was too easily available)—for once, he has the ability to actively deny people access to his body. even if the way he’s talked about and treated by strangers appears violating from the outside, to angel the most defining factor is how he gets to react. which incidentally would mesh well with the idea that Val punishes him with traditional street-corner prostitution or fucking ‘greasy truckers,’ taking away the privilege of withholding sex from people considered unworthy of his status

and obviously this is a double-edged sword, because being desired for angel also means being exploited and dehumanized, if not violently abused. the dynamic that empowers him is just as likely to hurt or degrade him depending on the situation, and it can’t be separated from the ways in which angel is materially disempowered. but still, it’s not entirely illusory. there is a level at which the wanted will always have the wanter at a disadvantage, no matter how negligible that may be.

But Vox doesn't want Angel, sexually or otherwise, and that's a big part of what makes the violence he enacts so uniquely disempowering. The defenses and coping strategies Angel’s developed in response to the kinds of trauma he regularly undergoes do not work with Vox. And we know that Angel reacts badly to that. In the early episodes where Husk and Angel are still scrapping with each other, it’s Husk’s challenges to the quality of his work and desirability as an infamous sex object that visibly bother Angel the most, prompting actual anger instead of more exaggerated sexual harassment, and when Husk rejects him outright in Masquerade he responds with a rant about how many people would kill to be propositioned by him before running off to court the attention of shady strangers, with the implication that he may have been actively looking to get himself roofied, or at the very least was accepting of the possibility. Point being, Angel is very attached to his self-image as an object of desire, and is willing to get himself hurt in order to have it affirmed. Paradoxically enough, the lack of (literal, explicit) sexual violence involved in their dynamic makes things worse, just because it’s something Angel is already so used to coping with and compartmentalizing. Vox puts him off balance precisely because he doesn’t operate like Angel’s other aggressors, and what happens to him in S2 is new in a way that doesn’t just bypass his defenses but obliterates them. So basically, it’s all about keeping things as awful for Angel as they can possibly be. Sorry, Angel.

Another less important but still salient reason coming from Vox's end is that I don't think it really meshes with the reasons Vox has to hate Angel in the first place. Operating purely on the information we have now and not assuming any future reveals, Vox's fixation on Angel feels less like frustrated desire (e.g. Alastor) and more like projected self-loathing in the form of jealousy and fear—and not just with regards to Val, either, though that's obviously a big part of it. Angel simultaneously represents a lot of the things Vox wants (Val's obsessive fixation, the ability to derive empowerment from what Vox considers shameful, being Wanted by everyone everywhere for what Vox likely perceives to be very little effort) and the things he fears most (loss of control, disempowerment and degradation, Val turning on him). Angel is like a twisted funhouse mirror reflecting everything Vox could be, and the only appropriate response when you’re faced with something like that is to smash it until you can’t see a resemblance. Sexual attraction isn't necessarily incompatible with all this, but it does complicate the dynamic in a way I find more distracting than engaging. That, and it doesn't really fit in with how I'd describe the flavor of Vox's self-loathing. Angel isn't an external object for Vox to chase but a symbolic representation of himself, and I think Vox's most sincere response to that is going to be repulsion!

... I suppose there isn't, strictly speaking, any reason I think it's especially important that Angel isn't attracted to Vox, it just seems so catastrophically unlikely I didn't think to specify otherwise. Though Angel being openly repulsed by Vox's everything probably isn't doing any favors for his shrapnel bomb of an ego, so that's always a fun bonus.

will. probably fix later