“Alastor looks indifferent”
That's pretty much what people are saying about the chair scene. And while I do agree somewhat with those statements, to me it seems that he is bothered. He is uncomfortable. Very much so.
He's not indifferent. Let me explain.
Alastor must have known what he was getting into when making the deal with Vox and he has a bigger plan behind it, sure, but that doesn't mean he's not seething on the inside ("Yeah, this calls for a celebration!", to which Alastor responds with "Hm, yes, not like you haven't been doing that all day...") the whole time. He's bearing it with gritted teeth.
I genuinely do believe he was annoyed in this scene, but not indifferent. Not going as far to say he was traumatized, but being made to watch Vox and Valentino go at it against his will did make him feel as disguted, vulnerable and powerless as someone in that position would have felt, asexual or not. I think him being asexual is an aggravating factor, although we can't affirm that Vox knows that.
And I'm going to say this too: this scene ends the humorous Vox publicly humiliating Alastor montage, but it didn't feel humorous to me at all? It felt like the change of tone after the comedy, as in you're actually meant to take it a bit seriously, at least.
Remember, we are seeing this overpowered character stripped of most his power and therefore vulnerable. We are seeing a side of him we haven't before.
With that in mind, dare I say that Alastor is... Scared?
Not the word I want to use per se. It feels wrong. But he's high-alert and perhaps (?) aware of the looming threat of Vox deciding to cross a line, is what I mean.
I'm going to bring this up because I haven't seen anyone mention this moment specifically, but when Vox gets up from the bed and stands naked before Alastor, his reaction is to pin his ears down, slightly widen his eyes before narrowing them, tense his body (you can see his legs shift slightly) and hiss. He hisses! Doesn't show up in the subtitles, but you can hear it and it's easy to miss. A defensive sort of stance. And, just for this moment, the background music turns a bit sinister before going back to calm.
I kindly ask you to rewatch this scene with this in mind.
Mind you, his ears were down the entire time since he let himself be captured, and were already down at the beginning of the scene. So we can assume the animators made it so they were back up just so Alastor could have this reaction (that, or they just shot up in alarm like they did when Valentino talked at the end of the Reprise). He is comparable to cornered prey here, and reacts like it.
And to add to it, next we see Vox about to blow smoke on Alastor's face. I don't think he was trying to drug Alastor here, it was just a small power move to humiliate him. We've seen the "blow smoke in someone's face to provoke/humiliate/disrespect them" trope before.
That's not the point, though. I want to you bring your attention as to how Alastor is averting his gaze as Vox, presumably, was putting his boxers on. It is another sign of how truly uncomfortable he is to be in this situation at all. He's tense, he's furious, he's on alert, he's vulnerable and hating every minute of it.
I guess the point of this post is analyze Alastor in the chair scene, obviously, but to bring another point of view to it. I've seen a lot of people say he was absolutely fine, no biggie, didn't care and was not affected at all, mildly inconvenienced or a little annoyed at worst, which made me want to offer my two cents. Again, this is my opinion and my interpretation, and you're welcome to have yours!
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