Mentally Preoccupied

General Stuff

SkyStar but they're cats TFP MegaStar have a bad time in the SG universe - Includes official SG MegaStar prequel, written by @bairdcrevan Domestic G1 MegaProwl

Erotica

Series of SkyStar BDSM SkyStar but they met during the war (enemies as lovers) SkyStar but Skyfire has spines on his spike

Cowritten with @grayseeker

SkyStar being bad at humaning (holoforms) SkyStar with (Skyfire's) parents

New

G1 Prowl recovering from a head injury

Usually I like to rebel against tiny fandom-popular details because they're ultimately irrelevant, but in this case, I am going with the flow and saying low to non-existent. But my reasoning isn't that He's White.

I mean, that is part of it, simply because he was raised in a culture that probably didn't have much spicy food available. Especially since he was most likely working or middle class, and a lot of spices would have been too expensive for common use. And then the Great Depression happened and such things became quite a luxury. So even if he was inclined to try new foods, he would have spent the better part of his life without easy access to much variety, and gotten used to specific kinds of food.

But the main reason I settled on low spice tolerance is pure projection. Because my own perception of so-called "bland" or flavorless foods is that they are anything but. Iceburg lettuce is sweet. Properly ripe cucumbers are sweet. Tofu tastes like Play-Doh if it's not cooked right. Cauliflower has a black peppery spiciness. Plain oatmeal is incredibly bitter, but unboiled oats have a nutty flavor. Cottage cheese is too sour. Plain yogurt is too sour. Water has a flavor, and also a texture (that texture is coarse).

Like. People complain about foods being bland and I cannot relate, all of these "flavorless" foods are distinctly different, and half of them are disgusting.

And then you have foods with a lot of different flavors all at the same time, and it's like. I don't know what I just put in my mouth. Sure, I have eaten something. There might be an overall sense of sweet, or savory, or spicy. There is probably a texture coating my mouth. But the more flavors go into something, the less it tastes like anything in particular. It's like being in a room with a lot of people talking at the same time, but you don't know what anyone is saying because you can't separate any one voice from the rest.

Translating that into spiciness: Black pepper, horseradish, wasabi, mustard, and ginger are all spicy foods with a distinct flavor. And then you have capsaicin: that which makes chili peppers spicy. If a sensation can be a flavor, then yes, capsaicin has a flavor. And that flavor is pain. Chili peppers do literally nothing to make the culinary experience more enjoyable for me, so I do not eat them. It does not matter if it is a mere jalapeño, the one and only thing I can taste is the capsaicin.

Tl;dr: Vox already has clear sensory processing differences, and I am giving him one of my own.

So when it comes to shipping, my big thing is compatibility. Like, can I imagine these two characters having this kind of relationship, without significant changes to their personalities. I can work with/around other canon details like a pre-existing relationship or the characters being enemies as long as they could plausibly work as a pair (though I will admit that I'm becoming increasingly frustrated with fics "addressing" Lucifer's marriage by having him just move on. I know people don't want to spend time on ships they don't care about, but it's an approach to romance that I do not care for).

Obviously people interpret characters differently, and focus on different aspects of their personalities, so there's never going to be universal agreement on whether two characters are compatible. And RadioApple is an enemies-to-partners pairing, so resolving incompatibilities comes with the territory. But for me personally, it's also one of those pairings where there's just too much to resolve.

Lucifer thinks Sinners are beneath him, and in life, Alastor belonged to a demographic most around him considered "less than". And then he spent about a century with his soul owned by someone who literally called him her pet, complete with animal terminology. I would suspect he is long past done being treated that way.

Relatedly, Alastor absolutely loathes being controlled, which kind of puts paid to the Executioner Theory in my opinion.

Alastor cares very much about his reputation and gets offended when people don't care where he's been, and Lucifer neither knows nor cares who he is.

Alastor enjoys being the most powerful person in the room, and he can't be that if Lucifer is there (possibly mitigated by the revelation that Lucifer can't harm Sinners; remains to be seen).

Lucifer is both depressed and deeply insecure, and he takes it out on Sinners particularly (you cannot convince me that some of the things he says to Alastor and Vox aren't also things he thinks about himself). Alastor has a similar tendency to project his frustrations onto others.

Alastor has a low tolerance for criticism and Lucifer is intensely critical (see above).

Alastor is a power-hungry manipulator, enjoys violence, actively wants to be feared, and broadcasts eternal torture, which makes him a shining example of everything Lucifer hates about Sinners.

Strictly speaking all of this could be resolved with enough time and effort, and technically they have all the time they could possibly need. But it would be a hard sell to convince me either of them would put in the effort, because their personalities are kind of "unstoppable force meets immovable object".

Like, for me, the power/control thing isn't optional. It's a core issue that would get in the way of any close relationship unless Lucifer was willing to let Alastor call the shots. Which isn't likely because I can't see him letting a Sinner have any real power over him. At least not until after they'd built some measure of trust, which can't happen if they're both fighting for control the whole time.

And sure, you could approach it from the perspective of "willing submission is different from forced obedience, and it's empowering to submit by choice". Given the popularity of the Executioner thing, I'm sure there are a lot of people doing that. But there are also different paths to healing, and for me, with Alastor, that path just doesn't feel right.

(Bit of a tangent, but I literally just yesterday started outlining a RadioStatic thing where the entire premise is Alastor grappling with the concept of willing submission as someone who has never wanted to be subservient and never wants to be again. And the whole point is that he truly does not enjoy it and would not benefit from attempting it).

The only way I could see RadioApple maybe working is with a great deal of third-party influence, so they could work through some of their issues with someone who isn't each other. Or make it a polycule and give them a third who can balance them out a bit. But the only RadioApple polyship I've read anything for has been AppleMedia, and it has not done a good job convincing me that Alastor and Lucifer could have a close, in character relationship. So.

Step 2: Wonder how bowties are actually tied.

Step 3: Heed the siren call of knowledge to look up the answer, even though this information is not technically required, and also you are in the middle of something.

Step 4: Realize this information isn't actually helpful and look up how bowties are untied.

Step 5: Further realize that the new knowledge doesn't line up with the existing knowledge of the character's design.

Step 6: Look up how clip-on bowties work.

Step 7: Go looking for side/back views of every bowtie-wearing character that comes to mind.

Step 8: Conclude that the characters who might be wearing clip-ons are, in fact, exactly the ones who would do that.

Angel having no idea who Alastor was is one of those specific details from the pilot that might not be fully canon anymore, since Vaggi's Alastor backstory was retold in the show itself, but he definitely didn't know much about him. But he does know Vox.

So it's kinda funny to me that Angel is one of those random people who could be like, "yeah, my boss's business partner is the Radio Demon's archenemy", and it sounds like a brag but ends up actually being true. But instead it's more, "I dunno, I just live here".

Like, is he aware that Vox has a long-time enemy who he goes on public tirades about every so often? Yeah, probably. But he's already way more involved with Overlords than he wants to be, and he really doesn't want to know more about what they get up to than he already does. So he's just going to ignore it and hope it doesn't affect him.

More times than not I find myself agreeing with the analysis but almost never with the conclusion... and that's for every fandom.

Like part of media analysis is seeing/reading/ hearing the same thing but interpreting it differently based on everyone's own experiences and knowledge on any given subject. So it's always fun and interesting to see someone else's opinion on your favorite characters/ ships/themes but at the same time it can be frustrating when you see a big thread that you fully agree with and then there is this one sentence/ paragraph/ whatever where you just can't see the logic in and feels like it comes out of nowhere

Btw not targeted towards anyone in particular just a general thing I've been experiencing

In fairness, it's probably not intentional in most cases. Like, I try to avoid confirmation bias in my own analyses, but you have to recognize your biases to counter them. And I'm definitely not catching all of mine, so I can't really hold it against other people if they miss some of theirs.

Doesn't mean it doesn't bother me, but I do think (or at least hope) most people aren't doing it on purpose.

But then there are things that are like. A while back I shared my thoughts on how the Vees would be as parents, and I had a couple people disagree with my assertion that Valentino shouldn't be one. And that's fine, I was pretty focused on his temper because it reminds me of my dad. I could accept that maybe it was my own biases at play.

Except the disagreements were on grounds of fanon and headcanons. Outright stated by the replies themselves to be fanon and headcanons. So I'm like. You don't have to agree with my interpretation, but why are you using fanon to support your counterarguments. I'm open to having my mind changed, but headcanons I don't share aren't going to do it. So why.

Like. I'm a fic writer, so I understand the need to flesh out characters beyond what canon provides. I have my share of headcanons, and my hypotheticals are always going to be somewhat influenced by how I would write the characters in a given situation. But I don't understand why you'd look at a canon-based analysis, even if it's one working with limited information, and present fanon as a counter.

I don't know where I'm going with this.

Well, you see. They aren't exclusive. And romance is invalid if they aren't exclusive.

Or something, I dunno. At this point, I just mentally label everything I see debating StaticMoth's canonicity as "amatonormative nonsense" and go on my way. Because honestly, I have not seen a single argument nor come up with one myself that isn't based in amatonormativity.

Not exclusive? Amatonormativity.

They need to get over their respective obsessions before they can really want each other? Amatonormativity.

They need to confess their feelings or it doesn't count? Amatonormativity.

It's just sex so it doesn't count? Amatonormativity.

Like. If you need your ship to be completely committed to each other and only each other, or you don't like either of them with anyone but each other, you're free to headcanon them as monogamous.

They aren't. They are canonically not. Valentino at minimum is explicitly polygamous, given he fucks who he wants and outright encourages Vox to do the same on screen. But you're free to headcanon that they would be monogamous if that's the only way you can enjoy them.

Angel is a fascinating case, because his gender expression has actively changed over the course of the show.

When we first meet him, he comes across as exaggeratedly and often aggressively feminine. It's in basically all of his mannerisms, from the way he sits, the way he holds his hands, where he puts his hands. He frequently runs them through his hair and along his legs, and makes periodic use of the "limp wrist".

The funny thing is, when he's not actively sexualizing himself, a lot of Angel's behavior at this time is pretty masculine. He does prefer to sit in a manner that comes off as feminine (lounging or leaning back, legs crossed at the thigh or ankle, hands in his lap), but considering he has two extra arms and his lower legs are much longer than his thighs, it's hard to say how much of that is gender expression and how much is just comfort. He does also tend to spread out in ways that would be considered more masculine (arms draped over the backs of couches, etc), so I'm inclined to say it's at least partly a comfort thing.

His overall posture also trends towards masculine when he's standing or walking, with some incidental femininity from having extra arms that need a place to settle, and the fact that his chest is more prominent when he pulls his shoulders back. But he usually stands with his legs apart and elbows out, and his hips roughly in line with his shoulders. He also carries himself in a masculine manner when he's angry or trying to intimidate, doing whatever makes him look bigger and more aggressive (his having been in the mafia probably has an influence here).

And then, halfway through S1, the way he carries himself changes. He angles his hips more, stands with his legs closer together, and because his posture is more relaxed, his arms often settle in ways that look more feminine. He's still exaggerating his behavior when he wants to present himself a certain way, but overall, it starts to look more natural as he gets more comfortable with the others.

Come S2, while he's still exaggerating the couple times we see him in "porn star" mode, his overall behavior is much more naturally feminine. The way he sits hasn't changed much, and still seems to be primarily about comfort, but his general posture is more relaxed, and the way he handles objects and holds his hands is more elegant. He's also comfortable showing softness in ways that aren't necessarily feminine, but are a departure from his more masculine behavior early on.

(It goes without saying that he's also exaggerating his femininity when he's in drag, though in a way that feels more natural than his usual horny persona).

Oh dang.

I definitely think he would decide not to make the offer, like, ever. Because if he never does that, nothing has to change and they can at least stay friends.

Except that, as far as he knows, Alastor doesn't consider them friends. Which is like. That's fine, he knows the dynamic, he can play the role. He can pretend it doesn't matter (it matters so incredibly much, does Alastor even like him at all, or was he only ever "putting up" with him. Apparently he's a creep, so probably that last one).

So he. Can't play the role. Because he is traumatized and absolutely not going to do or say anything to imply they're any closer than... Well, he doesn't have the business partners excuse anymore, so what are they, acquaintances? Allies? Is that assuming too much? Anyway, he is going to stop the touching. That's like, the only thing he's sure of, apart from that they were never friends.

But that is a massive departure from his normal behavior, coming out of nowhere, so Alastor would notice. Which is also fine, he can play it off as having noticed that Alastor didn't like it. Try to laugh off how oblivious he was and how long it took.

But like. Vox isn't comfortable around him anymore. He's never sure if Alastor is just laughing at him, so he'd really rather not make him laugh at all. They aren't fighting, but this is actually kind of worse because he has to pretend nothing's wrong while "knowing" what he lost was never real in the first place.

Honestly, I feel like he'd just kind of break and try to sever ties himself after a while. Because he's never going to win fighting Alastor, and being around him hurts too much, so maybe he can achieve some sort of middle ground if he just doesn't need him anymore. Because that was the whole problem in the first place, wasn't it? He needed him. So if he's just splitting off to do his own thing, maybe they can at least stay civil with each other.

I don't think Alastor would take that too well. But I actually don't think he would necessarily think Vox was just using him to get a leg up all that time either, because he changed literally overnight, and the slightest investigation into the matter (read: spying on him) would make it obvious that he's completely miserable, and just faking it (not very well) whenever they're together. So from Alastor's perspective, something must have happened. More accurately, considering those changes included social withdrawal and a sudden cessation of physical contact, someone must have happened.

How do you think that Vox will get his body back after season 2? Will he maybe need help getting it back and attach his head back to it, maybe build a new one, or just regenerate it over time

Assuming Velvette was speaking literally when she talked about her model "pulling herself back together" in S1, it sounds like Sinners' bodies just kind of reassemble themselves if the pieces can reach each other. In which case Vox might need help in the sense that someone is going to have to retrieve the rest of him, but otherwise reattaching would probably happen naturally (insofar as anything in Hell is "natural"). How quickly that would happen, I have no idea.

Otherwise, he'll probably be left to regenerate over time. Though if that's the case, I rather doubt we'll see the process (though you never know, I could be wrong).

Part of it is mannerisms, part of it is the way they socialize. Hardly any of it is physical appearance, apart from the way they choose to dress, because body type doesn't affect my perception of gender much (your mileage may vary on that).

Alastor does have feminine mannerisms. Most notably, he often holds his hands in feminine ways, and makes ample use of the "limp wrist" (which makes it little wonder Vox felt comfortable doing the same when they were friends, since it was openly safe to do so).

The two of them also share a few feminine mannerisms that I didn't list for Vox, such as a habit of placing their fingertips on their chests while talking, and standing with their legs together (the latter of which I'd thought was just the way characters typically stand, but in the process of collecting screenshots, I've realized that it's mostly just Alastor and Vox. Other male characters do it, but not nearly as often. So that's an additional feminine-leaning trait for both of them).

We also see that Alastor cares about his appearance (more so than other male characters are indicated to), thanks to his trip to the tailor and a couple instances of adjusting his suit (and he is willing to wear pink, though that wasn't set in stone as a "feminine" color when he was alive. It's also unclear whether he would choose to wear it on his own terms, since all of his preparations in that scene were geared towards appealing to Rosie).

Messing with one's clothes is considered a more feminine trait, and one Vox definitely engages in more. But I actually didn't count it in his case because it's part of a pattern of neurodivergent/sensory seeking behavior, so it's probably not about gender presentation for him (though it could absolutely look that way to people who don't know him).

Posture and seating habits are one of the biggest differences between them in terms of body language; Alastor almost exclusively stands with his hands behind his back or on his staff. When he does lean on things, he generally stays fairly stiff, without the angled hips and loose posture Vox sometimes adopts (granted, part of this could be that Alastor never lets himself relax fully).

As for seating, while Alastor is seen crossing his legs from time to time, he's far more inclined towards propping one leg on the opposite knee, or (mostly in S2) "manspreading".

His time in the spinny chair is also mostly spent with his knees apart, and a number of the exceptions are for the purpose of emoting (or just spinning around). So his overall preference seems to trend towards "masculine" seating (for the sake of completeness, Vox's own preferred position is to put his feet up on whatever is in reach, often with ankles crossed. Which is a completely nongendered pose, though crossed ankles would be considered feminine with a more typical stance).

Transitioning towards social behaviors, it's generally considered more masculine not to show your feelings. Alastor is very emotionally restrained, and under most circumstances, shows positive feelings most easily (to what extent this is genuine depends on the situation, since he does hide his real feelings behind a smile. Though it's worth noting that women are often socialized to hide negative feelings that way). Beyond that, he rarely shows more than irritation, save in his interactions with Lucifer, Rosie (when alone with her), and Vox. Also Husk that one time.

Vox, by contrast, almost never hides his emotions. He does conceal his frustration when talking to the press and dealing with Valentino's tantrum in S1, which is part public relations and part de-escalation tactic (keeping his own feelings from making things worse), and being a manipulator, he often fakes emotions. But typically, unless it actively interferes with his goals to show his real feelings, he expresses himself pretty freely (sometimes more so than he might like, as when he's on the edge of tears after Alastor denies their friendship).

There is also the heart of their emotional conflict in S2, which is that Vox values teamwork and negotiation (stereotypically feminine), while Alastor values self-reliance and strength (stereotypically masculine). Obviously we don't know the full story of their falling out yet, but their values as expressed in S1 also line up with that conflict (Vox trying to restore the peace with the other Vees, Alastor getting upset at the idea of dying for others). So their general worldviews do create a gendered divide in their behavior towards others.

(ok obviously I'm exagerating my emotions abt this for the bit)

Oh. That's right. You don't know.

I spent two weeks sketching RadioStatic bloodplay. Trying to figure out posing and angles for biting and what the marks would actually look like. Granted, Alastor was the one doing the biting in my case, but y'know.

Anyway, I need to make something.

You have opened Pandora's Box.

https://c.org/m9YF2rNDrq