A quick little visual ref of Vox for my AU and some more stuff about him under the read more
- His skin is synthetic and slightly rubbery. It prevents his internal high voltage from constantly flying out of his body. It can scar like organic skin, and if it's not an Angelic steel inflicted wound, the scarring will fade out. His only permanent scar is the one on his right side above his hip, remnant of an old Extermination where both he and Valentino almost lost their lives.
- He is half artificial and half organic. He bleeds both blood and artificial fluids like coolant or oil.
- His chest cavity is filled with computer components, those replacing most of what people would have as organs. He doesn't have lungs for example, and air is filtered through the gills like slits on the sides of his torso. His heart is an electrical core, a sort of very powerful battery. It is surrounded by many many wires. All of this is protected under a layer of flesh and metallic ribs.
- His digestive system is almost fully organic with a few artificial modifications to accomodate the needs of his body. Food is turned into electricity to feed his core. He also can eat non edible shit like batteries, ect if he wants to. If he doesn't want to eat, he can plug himself into a powersource.
- Because he can't have shit in hell, his reproductive system is intact, and it doesn't make him happy.
- His spine is fully metallic. It is sturdy but also flexible. It extends way past his neck as it stabs into to bottom of his télévision casing to keep it stable alongside the flesh growing inside from his neck. It also protects a large bundle of wires that can come out between the vertebrae should he need them.
- His antennae are part of his body, not part of the television he uses as a head, that's why his left antenna is bent no matter how many times he changes his head. It wasn't bent by an Angel during an Extermination, it is self inflicted to cheer Valentino up when he got his own antenna burnt. This self inflicted injury is the cause of his glitches and seizure like behaviours.
thinking about trans masc vox and what his relationship with his kids would be like.
vox didn't want kids. he didn't want to get married and he certainly didn't want to give up his career to be a housewife either. but he didn't feel like he had a choice. that was the route that everyone expected him to take, and the way others perceived him was everything to vox. it was fine. he could handle it. he'd found a rich, handsome husband who looked at him like he'd hung the moon; they had plans to move to the other side of the country, far away from vox's parents; even if he no longer had to work, he could surely find something other than childrearing to keep him occupied. everything could be perfect as long as he let it be.
of course, vox couldn't force himself to be happy. he hated being pregnant (as well as what it did to his body) and he never felt as connected to his babies as he thought he should. he loved them, of course, but caring for them day in and day out was so monotonous, and he never felt like he was living up to the idealized image of motherhood he wished to achieve. it got a bit better as the kids got older and became more independent, but vox was still distant. he wasn't very affectionate with the kids unless they were out in public, although he had his moments. still never felt like he was doing it "right," though.
everything just felt so hollow. vox's relationship with his husband soured. vox sneered at his husband's increasing dependency on alcohol and prescription medication (the war was not a happy time for mr. kingston); vox's husband called him a terrible wife and an even worse mother. vox left most of the childcare and cleaning to the family's live-in nanny. he spent his days either socializing with the "other" women of the neighborhood (which only ever made him feel more inadequate and out of place) or sat in front of the tv, watching the lives that he could've or should've had play out on the opposite side of the glass. it was an accident when, after a night of drinking, he tripped and cracked his head on the side of the television, but he couldn't say he was particularly disappointed that it was all finally over.
poor little tommy was the one who found his mother dead in the living room one morning. vox had a complicated relationship with tommy; he saw so much of himself in him and hoped that he would grow up to be the man vox wished he could be, but because of that hope he was cold and exacting with him, his expectations always sky high. tommy had craved his mother's love when he was small, but as he grew, he began to feel like there was nothing he could ever do that would please "her." being the one to find vox's corpse just made everything even more complicated. sarah went to pieces, as you would expect. she had a somewhat closer relationship with her mother than her brother had, even if "she" was still rather distant. sarah looked at vox as though he actually were the perfect mother he wished he was, no matter how many times he fell short, and that endeared her to him. unconditional love wasn't something vox had any experience with before sarah. she could also see the melancholy that always seemed to hang over her mother even when “she” tried to pretend otherwise, and tried to help alleviate it as best she could. sarah was never able to feel safe in that house again after vox’s accident.
things get even more complicated if the kids reunite with vox in hell. in the scenario where they die as adults, they might take a bit longer than usual to recognize vox since... well, they were looking for their mother and instead they found a man. maybe vox finds them instead; maybe he simply hasn't upgraded his voice by the time the kids arrive in hell. thomas and sarah don't understand why vox is "pretending" to be a man, but he explains it away by claiming he does it in order to get a leg up in the business/overlord world (even though the kids can see there are plenty female overlords in hell). as the years go on, vox modifies more aspects of himself. the kids notice that he's not just living as a man in public, he's doing it in private too. they begin to realize that this is something more than just a tactical business decision, although they don't have the vocabulary to say what it is yet. tom may blame valentino at one point— maybe he's the one who got his mother into crossdressing— but as time passes, the two of them start to get it. they already call vox "dad" when in the company of others, so it's not too much of an adjustment to start doing it in private too. regardless of how unusual it might seem to their 1950s-1970s minds, neither of them can deny that vox is so, so much more happy than they ever remember him being when he was alive. now, if only he’d become a good person too, then they'd have the full package...
in the verse where the tom and sarah die as children, it's a similar situation, although vox may not have begun living as a man yet at the time of their reunion. the kids watch as their mother gradually changes from the unhappy housewife they knew "her" as on earth, to a desperate new sinner trying to scrape together enough so the two of them could eat, to a business owner head over heels with "her" mentor, to a newly christened overlord looking to build an empire, to a well-established overlord who projects strength and perfection in all he does, to their father, the same selfish and ambitious man he's always been, but now finally comfortable in his own skin. it feels odd to watch vox change so much while the two of them remain the same, but one benefit of being stuck as children for all eternity is that they'll always remain adaptable. vox's transition is complex yet simple in the same way that everything feels complex yet simple to their forever-young minds. the two of them now have an earth dad, a hell dad, a not-step-dad, and an almost not-step-dad; that's simply the way things are now.
i hope that vox's strength is based on his support, actually. i want all of alastor's digs about the vees to come back to bite him later when he's alone and struggling in a fight and vox isn't because he has valentino and velvette backing him up, because they're stronger as a team, and i want vox to throw it in alastor's face that alastor is fighting alongside absolutely nobody because he has successfully alienated everyone who might have cared enough about him to be there when it mattered.
@diamondkat & @fanby-fckry i'm really glad you guys brought this up because this is something i've been thinking about for a while
i don't know that the narrative does punish alastor for getting close to people. i kind of think that the lesson alastor is getting set up to learn isn't that friendship is exactly the weakness he always suspected it was and he's better off protecting himself with the kind of transactional distance he maintains with mimzy (a really safe relationship that doesn't challenge him or create any introspection, because it affirms his preexisting beliefs abt himself and his friends)
i think instead, his lesson is that he needs to rely on his friends, not always be the one that everyone else relies on. he lets everyone rely on him for absolutely everything and prides himself on not needing them in the same way, and it's exactly that mindset that leads to him facing off against adam alone, with no angelic weapons, and almost dying because he didn't have anyone to back him up or protect him. he didn't want anyone to be there to back him up, because he didn't think he needed it. and instead of realizing that he should've let himself lean on these people he's come to care for, his takeaway was that care itself was the problem, not his pathological inability to depend on anybody but himself
he can get close to people, but only on his own terms and under very specific parameters that he has to control. now maybe this is a result of his and vox's falling out, in that he let himself rely on someone for once and vox let him down catastrophically, but i'm also deeply compelled by the possibility that vox (who we already know is a deeply codependent person that intertwines every area of life with his partners) tried to get alastor to rely on him, to reciprocate all the ways vox had been letting alastor knight-in-shining-armor him for their entire acquaintance, and alastor just couldn't. and this inability to return what vox might've seen as an expression of trust or at least mutuality might have sown preliminary cracks between them that led up to their falling out. as long as alastor refuses to depend on anyone else, he's demonstrating that he doesn't see them as an equal or their relationship as mutually beneficial, which is damaging to both himself and the other person and is a self-destructive habit he needs to overcome
the narrative has been saying, over and over, that relationships (platonic, romantic, or familial) can't work if one person won't reciprocate bids for attention, extensions of trust, or expressions of commonality. charlie and lucifer don't reconcile until lucifer finally takes his head out of his ass and meets charlie on her level. vaggie and charlie almost break down over vaggie's secrets. angel and husk are at odds until husk finally gets through to him that he doesn't have to wallow in his misery alone, that other people understand and will be there if he's willing to be open to it. i really believe that alastor loses so badly in the finale because he absolutely refuses to do any of that, which, while possibly stemming from very genuine trust issues, is still a maladaptive behavior that is actively alienating everyone who might want to be closer with him
so vox could be the perfect person to teach him the lesson that opening yourself up and trusting that your friends will be there when you need them is simultaneously the most terrifying and most rewarding risk you can take, if you have the courage to take it. it'd be so satisfying for someone as untrusting and independent as alastor to be confronted with the mortifying fact that if even the vees can support each other no matter what, then surely the hotel will do the same for him and he has no excuses left besides paranoia
A Vox portrait thingy for Souless_Robot's fic Whispering to Your Dry Bones. It was originally part of a larger piece I was going to do but idk if I'll ever finish it. Referenced 1850s evening gowns.
Very self indulgent art of my human Val and Vox to cheer myself up. Velvette did his hair in the second pic (still need to draw her in a human version)
i feel like i have mentioned this before but i RLLY hope vox being a big infamous cult leader isn’t canon idk i just. really dont like it lol . i personally dont think it makes much sense to his character, i think he was evil in other ways
For me, it's not that I don't kinda get it, but that's not what I envision for him. I firmly believe that Hell mostly corrupted him. I think he was bad on Eath. I don't think he was evil.
The distinction is super important for his character development, imo
YESSS same! I don’t think he was an entirely bad guy on earth, but definitely not Good considering he still went to hell. He was probably just a normal guy who found out that being bad in hell would get him what he wanted
For me it's one of those aspects that, by themselves, are actually quite interesting, but the implications could make Vox's backstory a little weaker.
If he happened to be successful in life as a cult leader, it means in hell, despite dying and starting from scratch, he has kept the same goals and followed a somewhat similar path for his rise to fame, thus making the two storylines (life on earth and rise to success in hell) pretty alike and therefore making the character seem more flat.
On the other hand, given the time limitations of the show, I can see how giving him two similar backstory arcs could make the exposition of his character so much faster. To this I preach: Vees spin off when pls
dededos
kaledo-art
2087
jacobvanloon
yousharknotpass
