Show me the moving pictures.

FROM ONE APPLIANCE TO ANOTHER is sending me oh my god.

I fear there is an equally plausible possibility that Charlie sees this and reads way too much into some of Vox’s language (“they’ll just replace you instead of trying to fix you”) (“from one appliance to another”) and insist on therapizing Vox for his perception of himself as an object.

The degree to which I got more than I bargained for on this front is just. staggering. Why in the WORLD is everyone on tumblr.com eating shark meat. WHERE are you people eating shark meat. I have so many questions.

One thing I am getting from this situation on a fundamental level is that "eating Vox's flesh" hits some of the most important criteria for Alastor Dinner, which are of course:

mildly to extremely unsettling to onlookers

"you cannot tell me that that tastes good"

"It was easy for Vox not to back down, of course, given that he’s learned for a fact that Lucifer won’t hurt him. That bit of posturing isn’t impressive—Vox is still a weasel and a coward—but he’s a hilarious weasel"

>

"The new posture brings him a little closer to Vox’s perch on the table—which clearly makes him nervous, but not enough to retreat. He always has been inordinately brave. Foolishly, even, but Hell if that isn’t half of the appeal."

like, wow, Al. do you even *realize* that your entire internal narrative about this guy has flipped itself on its head?

:)))))

Do you like how Alastor doesn't even remotely acknowledge that his opinion has changed and in fact is just gaslighting himself/the reader here btw? "always has been." What do you mean ALWAYS has been. Buddy.

If a non-alastor owned him: he would get out of it eventually. Hes clever and he would not give up, much like alastor. It would probably take him longer, cause there are some things he is not willing to sacrifice (like he would not intentionally sink his reputation, he cares too much). But I believe in him

If alastor owned him: I think there would be a honeymoon period where he would not even try to escape, like dont free him he is exactly where he wants to be. But I think eventually, even if it takes decades, he would start to try. I dont think he would succeed, just cause alastor makes him lose braincells even if alastor himself wasn't so clever. But he would try.

So it’s funny, I agree with you on the first bit (if Vox ended up in contract with someone other than Alastor) but I actually think his idea of “trying” under contract with Alastor would be to keep amassing power but not get out. Which would actually be very entertaining to Alastor, and leave him outside of the Husk bubble.

Come on this journey with me.

Let’s say Vox did the unexpected and takes Alastor’s dare of a deal at the end of Ch. 4 of WFLT (where Alastor was like if you really have given up, prove it by selling your soul to me for protection). The actual outcome of this path would be these events in the following order:

1. Vox wallows in his misery for a little while. Even here, his misery stabilizes around the idea that even if he’s lost everything/everyone, Alastor still wants him for some reason. So yes he’s upset, yes he’s pathetic, but he’s also trying to pick himself enough to keep appealing to Alastor (something that is normal to want and possible to achieve) which eventually leads to—

2. Vox tries to get up!! This is very challenging from his present position. He is just a head, he is in enemy territory, he is at the questionable mercy of the Radio Demon. I think his first play would be trying to be useful to the hotel in some capacity because obviously they’re a complete disaster and he has intimate knowledge of what a disaster they are from all of the spying that he’s done.

3. Alastor finds the above efforts combined with Vox’s horrible, terrible mood swings to be satisfactory enough in combination to give him his body back. Vox with a body redoubles his efforts, which are also now more visible to the hotel crew than ever because he can walk around and do things manually.

4. Once the hotel is running like a well-oiled machine he starts trying to butt into Alastor’s radio broadcasting shenanigans, because Vox has detected yet another thing that isn’t Optimized for Maximum Optimization. Alastor damn near bites his head off (again) but eventually redirects him to other things.

5. Vox ends up once a-fucking-gain trying to build a media empire. He’s just not an Overlord while doing it this time. Which makes it purely a business arrangement, I guess? All Alastor knows is that whenever he looks away for fifteen seconds, Vox is doing a new ridiculous thing. It’s like bees and beehives. He’s very self-motivated.

Perhaps Charlie has her story even more mixed up than Alastor imagines, and Angel is about to add jaywalking to his list of crimes.

HE’S SO UNSERIOUS HE HAS TO DIE LMAOOOO

Angel hitting him with the patricide after this really took the wind out of Alastor’s “hilarious jokes” sails too.

Fun fact. There were two versions of this scene, one of which had a more upbeat/comedic tone (and for obvious reasons, I had to go with the more serious one).

In the deleted version of this scene that I scrapped for important thematic reasons, Alastor already knows that Angel killed his father because that popped up in one of Vox’s unhinged rants about him (like the one at the beginning of Don’t Be Kind). So Angel is summoning up the nerve to make his Bigger Confesson and Alastor completely takes the wind out of his sails by going yes, sure, the patricide. We have all heard. Angel asks him how tf he already knows that, to which Alastor informs him that Vox complains about you all the time, it’s actually very tedious, and by the way, I’m fairly sure he’s only stuck on that detail out of envy. He obviously didn’t have a positive relationship with his father. After which the conversation goes in one of two directions.

Either Angel is like. [long pause] are you telling me right now that Vox has daddy issues. to which Alastor is like I am telling you I have heard what that man calls Valentino in bed—so, yes—or Angel lightly accuses Alastor of having very blasé opinions about killing fathers, like damn no love lost there huh Smiles, and Alastor completely casually with no visual affect drops that oh he didn’t have one. And then Angel has no choice but to make a fatherless behavior joke.