Are you writing about Vox, pre-flatscreen, but you’ve never seen a CRT screen before in your life because you are A BABY CHILD (affectionate)?
Come gather round, sit upon my knee, and listen to this elder-millennial tell you all about it. (if you want to I guess, I'm not the boss of you).
CRT’s don’t glitch the way we see Vox do in the show, but they had all sorts of ways to go wrong. If you flipped to a channel where there was nothing broadcast, you’d get solid static or those multicolor bars we see Vox with.
But also, if a channel had bad reception, you’d get a little static over the top and sometimes the image would distort. We called this “snow/ a snowy channel.”
Sometimes you could get better reception if you fiddled with the antenna a little. Sometimes grabbing the antenna made the channel better, and then letting go made it worse! Because your body became the new antenna!
I’d like to introduce you to something even before my time: Test patterns!
TV didn’t used to run 24/7! At the end of the day, the network would “sign off”, say good night, play the star-spangled banner, and end with a test pattern. Later, test patterns looked like colored bars, but early ones in the 50’s and 60’s looked like this!
One of my FAVORITE things about CRT’s is when they had been on for a while, if you ran your hand across the glass, a very gentle static would crackle wherever you were touching, and could make your hair on your arm stand up. Tell me that doesn’t have fic applications, my friends!
You can HEAR a CRT when it is on, even if nothing is playing. It’s a very high pitched whine.
I cannot explain to you how nice it felt to change channels with a dial. They were heavy metal, and there was resistance, and a very satisfying click!
If you held a magnet up to the screen you’d get crazy rainbow color distortions, but if you left it too long you’d get those color distortions permanently burned into the screen.
CRT’s are VERY heavy in the front, where the glass is, and MUCH lighter in the back where there's empty space.
CRT’s don’t have fans (only vents), or processors (they only receive, there’s nothing to process!) What they do have is something called an electron gun and vacuum tubes! This is what their insides look like:
But, Lady, you say, how do they work? I don’t know! Ask this guy!
Other things to consider:
The word Podcast didn’t exist until 2004, and I'd never heard it until 2013 or so (who even taught Alastor this word????) I remember the first time I heard it, and I needed someone to explain to me what it was.
Emails weren’t widespread until the 90s. If Vox is communicating with his employees via text, and it’s pre-1990, the word you’re probably looking for is “Memo” which were literal sheets of paper people could send each other via an in-house courier.
If I’ve forgotten anything, please feel free to add on!
I was really hoping I would get to go to the frameline movie festival this year so that I could see Nicole Maines in the gay/trans vampire movie “Bit”, but it's at 9:30pm in SF and I can’t find anyone available to go with so I might have to miss it :(
I'm writing a post season 1 Five Times Angel Dust called Alastor Daddy fic and I'm looking for a beta!
I'm three chapters in, and it's about 14k long now, and each chapter has been exponentially longer than the last, so I really don't know how long it's going to be.
I'm looking for help with typos and sentence structure, and maybe someone to bounce some later ideas off of, also would love help deciding how to tag it.
It's surprisingly light on the daddy-kink considering the name. Like... very light.
Actually if someone who's into Daddy-kink wants to be my Daddy-Kink advisor that would be amazing.
Contains: Present-tense, Angel is super horny for Kaiju!Alastor, asexual alastor, bdsm in later chapters, though I don't know how explicit I'm going to get (knowing Angel though probably pretty explicit), It swaps perspectives between Angel and Alastor, Alastor is... so crazy. I think it's pretty funny, but I'm also not shying away from dark ex-abuse-victim-stuff (angel doesn't work for Val anymore but there's fallout it's not swept under the rug).
There's a sample from chapter 2 under the cut
That spider fellow was turning out to be far more entertaining than Alastor could have ever expected!
Why, he hadn’t danced this much since his last partner started stepping out with that wretched moth and his brain oozed out of his… well. It seems very clear to Alastor that Valentino’s hellish power is to make other demons boring.
Not that Vox was ever anything but a mediocre dancer. Angel, though! Oh ho! Not only is Angel excellent at following, but he already knows the proper forms, so Alastor is free to improvise and experiment on the fly! Not even dear Charlie can keep up with him quite so well, quick study though she is. What a waste! To have had him chained to a harlot’s dancing pole for so long, when he has such a talent! And passion! Every time Alastor has solicited a spin around the floor, Angel has indulged him with a joyful laugh.
Then of course, there’s the cooking. With all the new wayward souls to feed, Alastor has had a crash course in Italian batch meals from a surprisingly knowledgeable teacher. Furthermore, he seems quite happy to trade a story about his Zizi for one about Mother. Though, Alastor frequently adds extra seasoning when Angel’s back is turned. His family recipes are tasty, but could always use a little more kick. The result is something Angel calls “Louisitalian”.
And! And! Just the other day Niffty came to get him on account of some commotion and by the time Alastor arrived, Angel had it well in hand! He’d knocked the poor sap right to the floor and had him pinned, fine as a dandelion! Effective communication, with magnificent stagecraft!
Afterwards, he had been cycling between playful glee and that long, deep stillness that Alastor had come to know intimately. That night he saw something powerful in Angel. It was a thing he’d had to find on his own, and it was rare. If exercising such a small amount of passion was enough to trigger that state for Angel, Alastor suspected he would make as natural a hunter as he does a dancer.
Best not to actually invite him on a hunt, though. It would upset Charlie if Angel started killing recreationally again, and Alastor has already put a great deal of effort into cultivating an arrangement with her that results in few questions about what exactly Alastor is doing when nobody is looking.
He will have a think on how to manufacture further opportunities for Angel to practice violence that Charlie cannot morally object to.
What would it have been like if he had recruited Angel in those early days before he was broken and left to fester? It would have been so useful to have him in the collection! To have a true artist’s soul, free to shape as he’d like! He marveled at all the different directions he could have taken his myriad talents, instead of having him wasting away underneath that – UGH! Why it makes him feel… Well, its an unpleasant emotion, to be sure.
The problem is fixed now, Alastor took care of it quite handily. If every problem could be solved in such a simple and satisfying manner, he’d run out of problems altogether! If he had killed that frivolous moth decades ago, he might have been able to free another soul or two wilting under his insufficient light. Why, he’d practically become a philanthropist in the autumn of his career, and isn’t that just the way of it, sometimes?
Unfortunately, the only thing that would upset Charlie more than the ruination of Angel’s little redemption effort would be Alastor collecting his soul. And to think she didn’t consider herself an overlord. A tragedy.
If he can’t own him, he’ll have to settle for a dance here and there. At least it will keep him entertained while this little job drags on.
The hotel wasn’t supposed to work, and his job here is so much more complicated now that it does.
~*~
Angel Dust has a long, storied career being groped, manhandled, and roughhoused in every way imaginable. He’d even invented some new ones. And yet, he feels as if he’s never been grabbed more in his life. Alastor has popped out of so many nooks and crannies that Angel’s startle reflex has given up the ghost.
Usually, it goes like this: Some swing tune will start playing out of fucking thin air, and he just holds out his arms, ready to be swept away by Alastor’s shenanigans.
He hummed one beloved song from the Radio Demon’s childhood or some shit, and suddenly he’s being hunted by a dance beast! Alastor might not be regular-horny, but he’s, like, the dance-horniest man in Hell! Angel has started wearing his more comfortable boots all the time even when they don’t match.
Angel had seen him spinning Charlie around plenty of times, usually when he was trying to manipulate her into doing something he wanted (or into forgiving him when Alastor does something terrible), but Alastor doesn’t seem to be trying to get anything out of Angel other than a dance (or two five hundred). At least he hasn’t set off Angel’s bullshit detector yet.
Angel had wanted Alastor to look at him, to notice him. And oh boy, did he get what he asked for. That attention is so much weirder and more fanatical than he could have ever expected. On the other hand, it comes with way less sex than he would prefer. Al’s such a gentleman, he won’t even try to cop a feel! Doesn’t he have eyes? Does he not appreciate Angel’s sexual magnetism!? It’s insulting, is what it is.
It’s not like Angel doesn’t also love a good dance, he absolutely does, though he’s starting to question if anyone loves dancing as much as Alastor. He loves the breathless feeling he gets dancing with Alastor, but he’d like him to turn it down from an eleven to, like, a nine and a half - eight, minimum.
It’s really cute, actually. Angel can tell he’s trying to make friends, but it’s almost like no one ever taught him how. Or how to relax.
