Bit of a tangent I removed from my post about Vox and creativity because it was getting off topic, but I feel like the creative stereotype also has a heavy influence on interpretations of Valentino. I find that people who like him tend to treat him as the softest and most romantic of the Vees, and the most family-oriented, and the most outwardly affectionate (I was gonna say between him and Vox, but considering Velvette is so often written as uncomfortable with displays of affection, it's honestly out of the three of them). And I'm like...
I like when villains have depth. I like that Valentino isn't just a one-note abuser, and instead has positive relationships with people he genuinely cares about, and who care about him. And I get that other people who also like those things want to explore them. Which is fine!
But no amount of fanfic and sad musical numbers will convince me that Val is some secret sweetheart.
Yeah, he cares about the other two, and he can be nice when he wants to be. He's legitimately saddened and hurt when Vox pushes him away, he advocates for Velvette as well as himself, and he worries about the future of the Vees as a whole, not just his relationship.
He is also unreasonably demanding and ungrateful, and doesn't care how his actions impact anyone else. He expects Vox to come to him when he's having his tantrum in S1, and when he arrives, the first thing Val does is snap at him for taking too long, then throw a glass at him. This on top of disrupting both Vox and Velvette's days, impeding their ability to do their jobs, and forcing them to deal with and clean up after him. And when Vox does get him calmed down, Val immediately and intentionally upsets him by telling him Alastor is back.
By contrast, you have Velvette, who is easily the most openly (and publicly) affectionate of the Vees, comforts Val despite her own upset, and seems more concerned than genuinely angry when she scolds Vox for not giving her advance warning about blowing Heaven's gates off (and is also the first to act when Vox decides to blow everything up).
And you have Vox himself, who is terrified of emotional intimacy, but still doing things like lighting Val's cigarette with a heart-shaped spark and giving him soft looks when he's not looking. He makes sure Velvette has things handled after her studio gets wrecked, makes sure Val eats, baby-talks his giant demon shark son (which literally recognizes him as its dad). He's got so many pictures of the other two. Hell, he kept a photo of Alastor for decades.
Like. Vox is objectively the most family-oriented, based on what we've seen so far (and by all appearances, the most sentimental). His soft side is "hidden" behind a wall of glass.
I'm not saying Val doesn't have a soft side. More implying that he has the emotional depth of a puddle. It could end up being a deep puddle, but the bottom is still pretty easy to see.
