In your opinion, what does Vox think about friendship?
I think. He understands and values it more than people give him credit for.
Obviously there's the fact that Alastor throwing away their friendship and claiming "There are no friends in Hell" didn't stop him from pulling a team together, or presenting it like something he's proud of right after Alastor accuses him of relying on others for his power. Which is already a defiance of the "villain failed by friendship decides friends are a weakness" trope.
But I think it actually shows most clearly in his moments of conflict with Charlie, whose commitment to her friends would contrast very clearly with a villain who didn't value friendship.
When Vox and Velvette visit the hotel, Charlie puts up with all of their antics right up until they actively target Angel, which angers her to the point that she enters her demonic form and sends them on their way. In the process, Charlie tells Vox, "You can mock me. You can shit on me. But I won't allow you to push my friends around like that, okay?"
Right after, Vaggi threatens Vox with her spear, which gets no reaction whatsoever. But when she changes targets to Velvette, he steps in immediately. He basically said exactly the same thing Charlie did, just with actions instead of words: they can threaten Vox, but he won't let them threaten his friends.
He isn't in his normal state of mind the next time they clash in person, so of course he's all about himself. But the thing I find interesting here is that it's obvious that Charlie isn't working alone to disrupt his plans. And when the attempt to broadcast from Heaven fails, it's obvious that it's because her friends dropped the ball somehow. It's the perfect setup for a "friends will fail you" villain to target the hero's reliance on friendship.
And Vox doesn't do that. Instead, he does exactly what she told him to the last time their paths crossed, and he targets her. Because he's trying to break her down enough to admit defeat, and the last time he targeted her friends, it actually had her pushing back for the first time since they met. She's weaker on her own, because she won't fight for herself the way she fights for others, and he knows that.
As far as I'm concerned, that proves Vox understands friendship better than a vast majority of villains. Even when he's in the middle of pushing his own friends away, even after weeks of being mocked himself for relying on others, even when he can present actual evidence that Charlie's friends "failed", he still recognizes that her friends make her stronger. And when he does use them against her, it's only to tell her that she messed up. "Leading your friends into disaster yet again."
Vox's problem with friendship isn't that he doesn't believe in it. It's that the last person he called a friend stabbed him in the back, and now he's afraid of it happening again.
kaledo-art
turnnoffyourmind
blakekathryn
