#vark is amphibious

[randomly--accessed--memories]

Thinking about the times Val and Velvette voluntarily let Vox out of his rooms and take him to visit the sharks. He’s always so thrilled to “meet” them. It’s nice, sitting on the edge of the tank and watching Vox play with them, bombarding them with disconnected shark facts all the while. There’s still a bittersweet element to it all, but at least he’s happy. They’ll take content, grounded-in-the-moment Vox over terrified or violent or completely-removed-from-reality Vox any day.

[randomly--accessed--memories]

his therapist eventually convinces him to get a service animal– vark was so helpful for him back in the day and being completely alone in his apartment isn't doing him any good (he used to live with sarah, but after the second time he woke her and her family up in the middle of the night with his night terrors, he insisted on moving somewhere else). heaven's got a wide array of potential service/therapy animals, but no giant amphibious sharks. vox learns to love whatever he ends up getting, but he's always bummed about that and it makes him miss vark.

something i'd like to explore in the heaven ending: vox processing the fact that he has a disability, it's not going away, and he just has to come to terms with it.

man has so much internalized ableism. it drives him crazy that ascending to heaven didn't completely "fix" him, it just tore down the mental blocks and restored his ability to remember who he used to be. he hates that he's still distractible and forgetful and deeply traumatized, but that's just who he is now– it's who he's been for the past century, he just wasn't able to process it until now.