#*spinning the prize wheel until it lands on me (Vivian Price)

[voxiiferous]

She's only just woken up. She's used to having several alarms set, but this is.. a ring tone. She's getting a phone call.. Who the hell is a Cyberhubby and what is this number doing in her phone? She feels oddly compelled to answer. If they've got her personal number, it must be someone she's met at some point. "Mhh.. Yeah?" Her voice is still groggy with sleep, and a little confused. (Alt!Maria time, let's gooo!)

@do-these-eyes-look-human

“Good morning, dearest,” Vox says into his phone. It’s early yet, bumpy so early as for Vix to have not started the Sisyphean wading of his emails. Most are, predictably, trash, but there’s one asking for an interview with them that feels worth honouring. They’ve appeared at events together, but that’s hardly the same thing.

“I do hope you don’t have plans Wednesday next. It finally seems to have dawned on the press that we haven’t done any interviews in the lead up to our wedding and want to rectify that.”

[voxiiferous]

Clarence closes his phone again, but keeps it on the table. Something-- call it a hunch-- says this isn't the last time they'll need to compare universal notes. "You're princess of two separate rings, and I'm a sinner drag queen," he says, and throws an arm out to encompass the penthouse.

"I know whatever makes it to the press, which isn't as much as you'd think," Because sure some of it did, but that was mixed in with baseless tabloid rumour. "Relationships between Violence and Lust are strained enough, but not actively bad. At least not enough that there are no relations, but Vi'd know more of the economics, and the politics. You'd probably know more than I would,"

She compares the pictures, and the expression on her face clearly indicates that she's starting to change her mind on it being too early for drinking. One glance between them, and she has already decided, if they're anything alike in this world.. "I don't trust her. Do you have any idea how the other me feels about her?"

[voxiiferous]

Vivian isn’t a better or kinder person than Vox, but she is a happier one. This is due to two main facts:

The first is that she hasn’t spent 50 years in a toxic on again-off again relationship with Valentino. Vi isn’t terribly fond of Valentin, but from a business perspective it’s better to keep your friends close, and potential rivals closer. This gives her more insight and control over his choices and therefore gets to benefit from them rather than worry about competition.

The second is Clarence. Vi didn’t eschew entirely the past because she couldn’t in the same way. Here is someone who didn’t just know her, but was an inextricable part of her life for half of it, and married to her for almost that entire time. He supported her, in life and then in death. Clarence knows Vi better than anyone, and the same is true in reverse, which meant that the same sense of isolation that characterizes Vox’s human life, while still there, is somewhat subverted.

And, glad as they are to not need to be married for the protection and career advantages it gives them, they will always be best friends and a pair who spent almost twenty years married to one another. He took her name, her took pictures and documented their lives together, and then he died and ended up as her headlining act. They bicker, endlessly, but ultimately, he is a massive contributor to her overall stability as a person.

[voxiiferous]

Some pictures of Vi, as taken by Clarence. Spanning 1936-1955. The captions on the backs below.

a. "Vi in the apartment (after the furniture has all been moved out!) -1943." Taken the night before Vi and Clarence completely move from one apartment to the next.

b. "My wife, the first lady the president. 1945." Taken in an office during lunch-hour during the waning months of the war. Both were acting in a propaganda ad.

c. "Vi: winning at cards. -1936." Taken in her dorm room during the exam period (what's an exam period if people don't occasionally engage in some dorm room shenanigans instead of class work?)

d. "January 1937. Essay research. She's on the second book. We get ever closer." Taken during the research for Vi's first assignment of their last year at NYU.

e. "The photo-album was my sister's wedding gift. Vi's organizing it." Taken two weeks after their wedding. Winter 1937.

f. "She's judging my taste. -1937." Taken right after they move in together after graduation, but before their marriage.

g. "New (colour) camera! Vi's playing model. Summer 1953."

h. "Facepalming elegantly from the idiocy or shading her eyes from the sun? (At least it's not golf?)" Taken at a tennis court in 1954.

i. "Glamor! Giving me everything!" 1955. Unbeknownst to them, this would be the last picture Clarence takes of Vivian before her death.

j. "The look she gives the news. (Or just the first thing to disrupt her reading)." Following them arriving home from a dinner party in 1949.

[voxiiferous]

Send “⇷” to view a memory from my muse’s past life. / For Vi!!

@thefaeriescafe | March 18th, 1942. (The day following the announcements of the third military draft lottery). Some mild inspiration from this picture!

There were always quieter days at work, but the mood today was somber. A year ago, everyone had known that America would enter the war and that it was, at that point, mostly a matter of time. But that wasn't true anymore.

The latest lottery had been announced last night, and Vivian had never found herself seeking out Clarence's hand more than to see if his number had been on the list. It hadn't. But that hadn't been true for everyone. They'd walked past people crying on the subway, and those who simply stared ahead with vacant eyes.

"They're going to ask questions about us soon," Vivian calls through the propped-open door between the washroom and the living room. She leans towards the mirror, pinning a hair roller in place. It's the usual shape of their nights. She prepares for bed, and then Clarence does.

"They already do," he says, voice growing closer. She catches his eyes in the mirror as he comes to lean against the doorway. And it's true, they do: about the fact that she works and has no plans to stop even once the war is over, that they don't have children, or own a house, or any of the other great number of things that make them just so subtly unlike the other couples.

"About children" she elaborates.

He grimaces. "You don't want children,"

She sticks another roller into her hair. "No," she agrees. "And you don't want them with me," but they both know that what they really want isn't an option. It was why they ever got married in the first place. She thinks the only reason they've managed to avoid more pressure thus far is because they had still been newly married enough, but it would be their fifth anniversary soon.

Clarence tries to laugh, bitter as it might be, and nods in acknowledgement of the truth of it all.

"They'll probably listen for a while yet about worries of ending up like our parents." Like her own father, she doesn't add, who came back in nothing but flesh. Now is hardly the time to have children, so soon to when everyone thinks they'll need to ration. But after the war... she'll be older then, but not so old as for it to still be unreasonable and they'll need a better excuse.

And there is, perhaps, a comfort in discussing the future like this. She doesn't want him to die in the war, as much a farce as the marriage might be. And the last day... they've come closer to the risk than has felt real since the day he had to register.

He seems to catch onto the concern before she needs to say it. "We need something they won't question,"

Vivian nods.

"Fear of being widowed?"

"Only so long as the war lasts."

"Notoriety?" This time, Vivian turns to look at him directly, and the sigh says it all. "The assistant and a daytime television star? We're hardly the most notable couple in New York," whatever dreams they both might have to the contrary.

They both fall into silence for a long minute while Vivian finishes preparing her hair for tomorrow.

"Infertility," she says a moment later, and Clarence's eyes light up.

"We play it off as a tragedy," he says.

"A mutual desire that just isn't to be," she adds.

"No one asks anything past it," he says, and a split second later. "But now that you're done, it's my turn with the washroom now."

-

An hour later, when there's nothing left illuminating their apartment but a lamp, she touches his shoulder gently. "For what it's worth, I am sorry I can't give it to you."

He catches her wrist before she can move away, leaning his head against it. "Don't be. How could I ever play the handsome heart-throb if I'm living the role of the exhausted father?"

"The same way you always have," Vivian answers. "You're a good actor,"

Clarence laughs, and it's just enough to lighten the mournful air. "Ah, Vi, if only you were the person running it all. Maybe then the world would see my true vision. You're the best wife I could have asked for."

[voxiiferous]

**| Did I just go through and make a decent handful of icons for Vi and Vincent to go with my Vox icons so they're all consistent???

Mayyyyybeeeeee....

Gorgeous in a myriad of forms! It's only fair!

[voxiiferous]

Can you fight God?

Tagged by @e-m-p-error, tagging @do-these-eyes-look-human, @rocxyoulikeahurricane, @outofradios

Vox totally has the composition to fight god!

“And be glad I’m not.”

Vincent and Vivian legally cannot fight God.

"You think we believe in him enough to bother?"

[voxiiferous]

Vivian and nicknames | Vi, Vivi, Annie

Vivian has three main nicknames, for a given value of 'main'. Most of the time, she's 'Vi'. That's what she's most likely to use, its what most people, just in general, use. It's what her friends use.

Clarence, in particular, uses Vivi. She knows he means it affectionately, and also, that its just in theme with who he is, as a person. Anyone else who uses it would suffer far greater consequences.

The last of them is 'Annie', and she hates it. Anyone who knows her, knows not to use it. The people who did, tended to be the studio executives, and it was always used as soft, and patronizing. For her, the most important part of her name is the seeming sharpness, and distinctiveness offered by the 'V', and Annie strips that.

[voxiiferous]

**| Like this post for a Vivian starter!

[voxiiferous]

**| I'll be honest dash, when I say this piece of art is one of the The Best ones I have EVER seen for Vox, and every time I thought 'a femme Vox could be fun' is the art I gravitate towards. The hat??? The skirt, the skirt!!! The expression??? That's it, that's Vi.

[voxiiferous]

(Alastor preferring Vivian Vox over Vincent Vox)

@halcyonterror

I was thinking about this!!! And I feel like it can go one of two ways: Vi still thinks that Alastor is, fundamentally, wrong, about a lot of his opinions, but they get along better. She's short one homoerotic, psychosexual obsession with him. They almost work well together at Overlord meetings.

OR she goes full scorched earth policy when their friendship falls apart. He wants to reject her offer, and return to his solitary radio lifestyle? Very well, but that means there is nothing between them anymore. Her approach to making him obsolete is just to not give him any attention at all, let him fade into obscurity if he so wishes.

In either case, it is a different relationship! But yes, I do love the idea that Alastor prefers Vi. Some people think she's in love with him,a nd she so very much Is Not.

[voxiiferous]

MUSE(?)/VERSE(?) UPDATE | Vivian Price (AKA femme!Vox)

FC: Rebecca Hall

Vivian's story is much the same as Vincent's. As a child, she read and built little mechanical toys, she realized she liked girls, and didn't like boys, she did well in school-- at least, until 1933. While Vincent Price, would, in another life, go on to pursue a degree that's half engineering and half journalism, which, in turn would lead him to a year at a newspaper and television after that, Vivian found herself doing much the same, just without the engineering-- NYU wouldn't admit women fully to that program until 1959.

And that was, annoying, deeply so, but... fine. And then she met Clarence-- technically, they met a two weeks earlier at the same swing club, before the semester transition in their third year of university, when they ended up in the same class.

Clarence was many things, the most notable of which, and the most important of them, was gay. Clarence dreamt of velvet dresses and his name in lights, and was, for somewhat obvious reasons, given the time, unable to fulfill those dreams. Instead, they sat together in the library to write essays, and pretend to the whole world, that they weren't both deeply, deeply queer.

They hit it off, and ended up working at the same newspaper upon graduation. Rent was cheaper split two ways, and it meant people didn't ask questions. They got married six months later, and when, six months after that, he got the offer to make the transition to television as the star of some new sit-com, his one condition was that Vivian came too.

And she did, and oh how she loved it. Sure, she might have been playing the role of the pretty assistant, but it felt fascinating and modern, and at least some of the people on set respected her, a few more showed her how the cameras and the technology all worked. For the first few years, she spent quite a lot of time learning the inner workings of all of it-- anything for the chance to make it higher in the network, to become something more than a living prop.

During the war, it seemed like she's finally get that big break, what with so many of the men leaving, and in fairness, she did! From assistant to news desk and voice of the advertisements, occasionally filling in roles on the other sets where needed.

And then the war ended and the men came back, and her nice position with more respect, always just a little bit off having all the power she wanted, fizzled out, despite the fact that she does everything right.

Her story ends in rather much the same way as another world's Vincent Price. Her ambition gets the best of her, she blackmails her way to a position she's then killed for. Somethings, however different, all stay the same.

In Hell, Vivian takes the name 'Vox', and takes the being an Overlord with a vicious sort of ambition, the same luck that helped another Vox become so powerful so quickly, the same media, the same streets falling to her.

Three years later, Clarence, caught up in the Lavander Scare, dies and, when he realizes he can just be open about it, sheds his suits and his role as the straight man and love interest to become her headlining act in drag. It takes death, but 'Clara' gets what he wanted.

And Vivian? Well down in Hell, she owns the media, and there's no network executives and 1950s expectations holding her back from shaping it into what she wants.

[voxiiferous]

**| Watching the newest Tasting History video about Girl Scout cookies, and I feel like Vincent totally had at least one girl who lived in the same apartment complex who sold them. He would usually buy a box or two if he saw them.

Conversely, I suspect that Vi and Clarence would just be inundated with cookies. Clarence was undoubtedly the sort of person to buy two boxes of every type. She would talk to the parents, and he ends up talking to the kids selling the cookies, and suddenly she's being passed boxes to hold because he can only hold so many at once.

[voxiiferous]

Pictures of Vivian and Clarence Price, taken between 1936-52.

a. "This makes it look like either of us can drive. It's my brother in law's. -1948 trip." Taken on the visit Clarence's sister in Portland.

b. "Leaving the courthouse after signing our marriage certificate!" 1937. The certificate at the wedding itself will be for show. Getting the legal paperwork part of it sorted early was Vi's idea to cut down on any potential problems with it on the day of.

c. "You'd almost think we were in love, and not just that I forgot my lighter." A dinner party in 1951.

d. "My cruel and unyielding mistress. She's locking me out!" Clarence and Vi's 4th wedding anniversary.

e. "Such is life as a married man! -1949."

f. "After one of the weddings. -1944." Despite appearances in the monochrome, Vi's dress is actually a pale pastel colour rather than white. This was taken after the reception of a wedding for one of their friends, which took place during the husband's time at home between deployments for the war. This one of a several similar weddings they attended during the period.

g. Unlabelled. Taken on the steps of the network building after one of the draft lotteries. Clarence was not drafted.

h. "A sign we've spent too much time together (but it's not like we can get out of it now)." Clarence and Vi's 15th wedding anniversary, Winter 1952. They went to one of the museums. Their actual options for divorce were limited at the time.

i. "Hottest 'couple' of Broadway! Or at least the most believable." 1952, they were on their way to a show.

j. One of the few pictures of them during their year at the newspaper. This was taken on one of the stories where they were working together. Predictably, they are seen bickering. Presumably taken in 1938.

k. "My daring wife and our mimicry of a normal relationship. -1948 trip." The same trip to Portland as a. Taken after a comment from Clarence's brother in law that despite being married, they never seem to kiss, despite their physical closeness.

l. "You'd think it's romance. But no. Studying for exams (and deciding to move in together)." Spring 1937. Taken somewhere in Washington Square Park, near NYU.

m. "I didn't realize anyone captured our engagement on camera." Fall 1937.

n. "Summer 1952."

[voxiiferous]

**| Shoutout to Clarence for potentially being the funniest NPC I have ever made. He’s gay, he’s a drag-queen, he’s the leading man in an early TV sitcoms. He’s married to Vivian for to 20 years, he’s a widower. He dies a couple of years later. He’s the most important person to her for a very long time, and despite presumably existing in the normal timeline, Vox doesn’t even know who he is!