did anyone else find alastor's brutal rejection of vox in ep4 absurdly satisfying or is it just me
i've seen a lot of people empathizing with vox in the flashback scene, saying alastor didn't have to be so mean etc, but as for me, that brutal exchange filled me with utter exhilaration. i don't think i've seen a similar reaction so i decided to share my thoughts as to why.
so to a large extent the appeal of characters like alastor is that they sublimate our latent desire of going batshit instead of constantly having to adhere to the social norm of "being nice". sometimes people will annoy you to the point where you briefly fantasize about stabbing them and it's satisfying to see a freaky guy do that in a cartoon and get away with it. while it's clearly implied that the casual rudeness of alastor's victim in the backstory murder scene was a racist microaggression, i don't necessarily agree with fans who interpret alastor as a vigilante sort of figure bringing bad privileged white men to justice. i feel like the discourse can quickly become about whether one deserves what kind of punishment, whereas the fantasy we're offered has little to do with justice or deserving. instead, it's all about the dark satisfaction of seeing the perpetrator face immediate and disproportionate comeuppance at the hands of a charismatic audience avatar who can and will go batshit. in the end, regardless of whether the point being made is about racism or rudeness in general, we are invited to identify with alastor and go batshit with him, as it were.
in the flashback scene with vox the fantasy alastor allows us to partake in is similar, except the sublimated stabbing is of a more metaphorical nature. the violence is emotional instead of physical and the scenario being played out refers specifically to rejecting the advances of someone you don't want to be involved with - except in this fantasy you DON'T have to be nice about it bc you are above facing any repercussions.
while i'm sure many different kinds of people can relate to this, the two categories who come to mind immediately are women having to reject unwanted advances from men and aro/ace people having to reject unwanted advances from everyone. there are all these rules of social conduct you have to follow to make the rejection polite and yet, even if you follow them to a T, there is a non zero chance that you will be punished for making someone feel rejected. and this kind of punishment will range from pretty severe stuff if the other person is violent or toxic to just awkward social situations which nonetheless make you feel terrible through no fault of your own. which is why, completely regardless of whether vox as a person deserves to be laughed in his face in that particular situation, it feels beyond satisfying to see alastor do so. this is the kind of social transgression you are rarely allowed to indulge in irl bc you will pay for it tenfold, especially if you're a woman. it scratches that deep-seated itch of being allowed to STOP being nice just for once.
i'm aroace and i'm still kind of in awe of how alastor's subplot in this season managed to represent so many experiences from my personal life in a very considered way that i have never seen before. including validating this transgressive desire to tell someone to fuck off in the most over the top, gratuitous, brutal way possible. there's something to be said about rep as written to educate outsiders vs rep which addresses the insiders but will go over the heads of everyone else and alastor's writing is definitely doing the latter, which i'm very grateful for.
but it's interesting to me that most (or maybe the loudest?) fans seemingly intuitively identify with vox in that situation. ig it's bc for most people, for various reasons and regardless of their identity, it's easier to imagine themselves as the one being rejected than as the one who rejects. even more interesting is the mental process of trying to soothe the pain of rejection (that of vox and by proxy their own) by hyper-analyzing alastor's behavior to come to the conclusion that he didn't mean it that way, that he had to be so brutal for other secret reasons, that in the end deep down he does care about vox after all etc etc. for the record, i am by no means dismissing these theories out of hand, altho i find some arguments more convincing than others. but the result of this narrative is inevitably that alastor is sort of expelled as a subject of identification. he becomes The Other, feared and hated for the emotional pain he caused, and the only way to recuperate him into the circle of identification is to overwrite or reinterpret his words and actions so as to lessen their ruthless nature, make them more palatable and understandable.
i doubt i can put this idea into words very well but to me it feels like this fan reaction brings to light some complicated feelings and fears that lie at the heart of aro/acephobia. viewers are forced to confront the idea of not only their feelings not being reciprocated but also of a person who has no reference for that kind of feelings or such rejection and therefore has limited capacity to treat them with empathy in that regard. the kneejerk reaction to this confrontation with The Other is to deconstruct them out of existence in order to alleviate the fear.
i am NOT saying that everyone who doesn't approve of alastor's behavior in that scene is automatically aro/acephobic (tho it's worth mentioning that internalized aro/acephobia is a thing that exists and has to be taken into account). neither am i saying that alastor being super mean and unapproachable is an inherently aro/ace trait. what i am saying ig is that a person who will never ever want you back and does not hesitate to let you know in no uncertain terms is a viable aroace archetype, one i find very fresh and subversive, not least bc it challenges the audience instead of reassuring them, and that i wish there were more positive engagement with this kind of aroaceness in the fandom.
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