Idk if this is a safe space to say this but since you’re one of the few people I’ve seen actually be willing to call out Vox’s behavior towards Al instead of just going “Lol he deserved it” I just wanted to say. Season 2 kind of turned me against Vox. I came into the season ready for Toxic Yaoi and Vox’s villian era but what we got was pretty bad. Like yes Al was a dick in the bar but the fact that people believe Sexual Assault,Flashing, public humiliation and having private info about an intimate part of your body revealed on live tv is gross as hell. It’s like if Adolescence made their takeaway “Yeah Katie was a bitch who deserved to get stabbed!” Like they made Vox so gross and made it seem like Al deserved to have actual sex crimes committed against him. It also doesn’t help that I agree with people who say other characters had to take a major dip in IQ to keep him a viable villain. Like ep 4 could’ve been such a good ep and character study for Al and I was looking forward to it what we got was his feelings and hurt and sexual abuse played for laughs and him being turned into a fandom wide joke and getting called a “cuck” and having memes made of his SA and now merch of the humiliation parade. Also this may just be me speaking but as a women it’s also more disturbing to me because the phrases some people use to talk about Al is stuff women who are abused or assaulted hear all the time “She had it coming””She shouldnt have been such a bitch””She asked for it”.I just don’t understand what message the show was trying to send with his story his season. If the show actually showed Vox as being a gross ahole instead of making him sympathetic I could’ve liked him in a love to hate way and it could’ve been a good message about how even messy stalking and Assault victims don’t deserve to be treated to treated that way. Instead we get metas excusing Vox’s SA cause it wasn’t penetrative rape and how he was the REAL victim. Like I said I just don’t understand what the show was trying to say by portraying Vox and Alastor this way this season
This took some time to write because I needed to put all my thoughts together. I understand exactly where you are coming from, and I have a lot of thoughts about it. This is going to be long, and it is not going to be a friendly post for Vox fans, so if you are a Vox fan who doesn't like hearing negative things, I would advise that you stop reading here.
I am someone who went into Season 2 expecting to enjoy RadioStatic, only to find myself learning to hate Vox. My mutuals who ship RadioStatic are the only reason that I don't hate it. However, I do not believe that any of this is the fault of the show. I put the blame solely on Vox fans and RadioStatic shippers. From the moment the episode aired, they started posting all kinds of content to downplay Vox's actions and shift the blame to Alastor. If you dared to mention that Vox sexually assaulted Alastor or any negative views towards Vox over his actions towards Alastor, you would get bombarded by people telling you that you were in the wrong. This has been done using a mixture of excuses and lies.
There have been several excuses made to downplay Vox's actions.
"Alastor has seen people have sex before in hell." This ignores that there is a difference between walking past people having sex or even choosing to watch porn, and someone making you watch them have sex. Alastor could not just walk away in that situation, like he would be able to if he encountered it in the wild. This leads to the next excuse that I have seen.
"He could have just closed his eyes or left." This excuse is victim-blaming nonsense that ignores the situation that he is in. I have seen people use him rolling around on the chair in the episodes that followed as evidence that he could have left the room. This ignores the fact that Alastor is never left alone without a Vee present. Even in the scene that they use as an example, he isn't in another room. He is just off-screen. He also could not just close his eyes. Ignoring the fact that he can still hear them, why would you think he would make himself more vulnerable in enemy territory? He has no idea if Vox will attempt something on him afterwards. He needs to keep himself aware.
"Alastor agreed to be captured." More victim-blaming nonsense. Alastor agreed to be a prisoner and participate in Vox's victory parade. He didn't consent to any sexual activities. Knowing there is a risk is not the same as consenting to it. A girl who gets raped at the nightclub didn't consent to being raped just because there was a risk of it.
"Alastor is a serial killer/bad person." None of which is the reason that Vox is doing this to him. This is being done by Vox because Alastor rejected him, and Vox refused to get over it for 70 years.
"Alastor doesn't seem traumatised by it/isn't a victim." I have talked about this before, but part of why Alastor always makes for a terrible victim is that he refuses to take on the role. He refused to act weak in the face of stalking, and after all that Vox did to him, the most he is willing to let himself complain about is the constant touching. He does not and will not act in the way that you would expect a victim to act. None of this makes Vox's actions okay. We do not measure an action based on whether the victim acts traumatised enough. That is the type of argument used to claim that rape isn't that bad if the victim isn't aware that they were raped. The action is what is wrong, even if the victim is resilient enough to refuse to let it weigh on them. It doesn't diminish that what was done was wrong.
"Alastor is a hypocrite." This one is used to dismiss everything from the sexual assault to the sexual harassment through constant touching. Alastor has touched people in the past, so he doesn't get to call the person who sexually assaulted him "a fucking creep" over their constant touching. This one was bad enough that I had to make a post about it.
These are the main excuses that I have seen people use to try to diminish Vox's actions. In some cases, people have gone beyond making excuses to just lying about what happened in the show.
"Nothing happened" I have genuinely seen someone who genuinely tried to push the idea that nothing happened, and the idea that anything happened is just headcanon. Thankfully, I only saw this from one person and refuse to believe that there are a large number of people who believe this nonsense.
"Alastor has asked to see Vox's dick before" Another one that made no sense. However, this is one of those lies that was designed to paint Alastor not just as not a victim of Vox's actions but as having earned it. The person implied that Alastor had forced Vox to show Alastor his dick when Vox was new to hell. While I have only seen one person try to push this headcanon as canon. The next one is something that I have seen more commonly repeated.
"It was done in reaction to the things Alastor has done to Vox in the 70 years since the break-up." This is a lie that uses a headcanon to claim that Vox's actions are completely Alastor's fault. It is not enough to downplay Vox's actions and say that Alastor isn't a victim. Vox is made into the victim whose actions are purely Alastor's fault.
"Vox stops touching Alastor when Alastor pulls away." This one is used to make it seem like Vox respects Alastor's consent. It gets repeated often, and I am confused every time I see it because it is something easily disproven by watching the show. He doesn't even stop touching Alastor in that song, as soon after Vox flashes light in Alastor's face and grabs his face when he looks away. Alastor complaining about the touching in the season finale is also another big piece of evidence of this that people ignore by calling him a hypocrite.
"It is not meant to be taken seriously." The idea that the show portrays it as a joke has been pushed so many times to the point that people have started blaming the show for not treating SA seriously. However, when Vox first stands up and flashes his dick in Alastor's face, there is a brief moment where you can see Alastor's worry that Vox will escalate to rape. The tension is there until Valentino breaks it with his joke about them having sex, which actually diffuses the tension by making you realise that the threat of rape has passed. Genuinely, the only people that I have seen who think that it wasn't serious are Vox stans and some RadioStatic fans. However, it is so pervasive that there are people who are confused by the fact that they saw it as serious when that supposedly wasn't the intent of the show.
So, as you can see, there was basically a propaganda campaign after that episode aired to diminish what Vox had done. I don't think it was the fault of the show. Memes about it are a natural result of the fandom accepting the ideas pushed by the campaign. I don't care much about the humiliation parade because Alastor consented to it as part of his plan. It showed that despite all the claims that he had a fragile ego, he was willing to put his pride aside to achieve his goals. So merch of it doesn't bug me, even though I wouldn't buy one myself.
The main thing that I would say that I disagree with you on is that it is a bad idea that the show made Vox sympathetic. I actually think it is important for characters like Vox and Valentino to be shown as human beings, not just monstrous abusers, as it is more accurate to how abusers are in real life. I understand how that leads to people getting things wrong, but it also shows how they get it wrong in real life. I have seen people claim that it is wrong to call Vox an incel, and while that might be right, he is definitely a Nice Guy. It doesn't matter if you think that Vox was upset over a rejected friendship. The behaviour that followed definitely falls under Nice Guy territory. Being so unable to take a rejection that you stalk the person, sexually assault and harass them, and when you come to the realisation that nothing you do will win them over, you try to kill them. That is Nice Guy behaviour. People tend to assume that the person stalking a person who rejected them or tried to kill them over it must never have loved them, but Vox is an excellent example of how it works in real life. Even down to people downplaying his actions, if they feel that he genuinely likes her. This leads to situations like a real-life story I was told, where their friends turned against them because they refused to date a member of the group. It didn't matter that they were asexual. It didn't matter that the person was stalking and harassing them. Their friends thought that they should apologise and accept the person because the person liked them. It is this belief that a person's feelings are more important than their actions that has some people claiming that the show will have Alastor apologise to Vox for rejecting him and the results of that rejection. I think if people can break free of that way of thinking using a fictional character, they would be less likely to express it towards real people.
gOOD i remenber what its like to render. I need to do that more often, anyway! Here freak old yaoi cause i indeed needed some time off from Uglydolls. Been wanting to draw Radiostatic for a while. Soo enjoy!
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