#“aww vox poor baby I wanna hug him 🥺” that man is 5 seconds away from having an incel breakdown you do NOT want to hug him

[onesidedradiostatic]

alastor, certified misandrist, decided "okay I will try this friendship thing with one (1) man don't mess this up alright" (vox messes it up and the next time alastor has any sort of close relation with a man he takes ownership of his soul (husk))

but fr though I am of the opinion that they were both at fault in this situation and that there was no clear true victim because they were both gigantic douchebags who made it worse than it needed to be and are incapable of thinking themselves of being in the wrong.

in fact I think if they were to tell their stories they would frame themselves as the victims in their respective cases.

like a rashomon effect type case where we see vox's perspective and he frames alastor as being the one entirely in the wrong "he used me. he didn't see me as anything but a source of entertainment. then when I poured my heart out to him he threw me out like I meant nothing. he was just leading me on." and alastor is completely framed as an unjustified dickbag and vox as the victim who did nothing wrong.

and then on alastor's end he frames vox as being the one entirely in the wrong "he only saw me as a disgusting object of lust. he pushed my boundaries. he couldn't take no for an answer and got pissy." and vox is a lot more overtly creepy in his version and alastor leaves out any possible faults he himself may have.

but the reality is that it's not as black and white as they make it out to be, in a way they're both right but they're also both wrong and refuse to acknowledge their own faults in the situation. I like to think they both saw elements of a genuine friendship in their relationship but in the end thought the other never saw it as meaning anything. the falling out was as bad as it was because they were both assholes, alastor being a dickbag who is incapable of letting someone down easy, vox being an entitled asshole who thinks he deserves what he wants and more.

of course this isn't to say there isn't sympathetic elements on both sides regardless, on vox's side well, considering he was from the 50s, alastor could very well have been the first man he was allowed to openly like and then he got brutally rejected. on alastor's side, like I said, #1 man hater tried to make one male friend and it ended up working out terribly, possibly had his boundaries crossed, only proving his previous views to him that men suck.

I saw so many "Alastor ruined Vox" takes but how about: Vox ruined Alastor? What if Alastor just wanted good, comfortable friendship like he has with Rosie but one day he learned that this whole time Vox saw him as sexual object and in his eyes this frienship that Alastor genuinely cherished was just a temporary thing on the way to RomanceTM.

I might overestimate Alastor's sensitivity but on the other hand I believe that he's as much human as any other sinner and craves very human things, like safety and some levels of intymacy.