Just a random thought about how Alastor and Vox must’ve been really good friends before everything fell apart. Because Alastor knows how to make a video ad, he knows how to set things up for a movie/video shoot, things that had nothing to do with his medium, that he probably learned how to do because of Vox, because he was willing to try and learn from or for Vox. And Vox literally welcomes Alastor back home when he finds out he’s returned, has literally counted the years Alastor’s been missing when no one else seemed to know, and fashioned his clothing style to match Alastor’s (assuming it’s not just a case of everyone gets a pinstripe suit!), uses the same techniques Alastor taught Charlie about how smiling can be a tool to keep you ahead of the game.

And how it all fell apart and it wasn’t just Vox that was hurt in the process. Because you can’t tell me the man who hates TVs and modern tech due to its association with Vox doesn’t feel anything for what friendship they had and lost. Who snarls at the mere sight of him on a screen (admittedly while also dissing Alastor), who went straight back to his radio tower to diss Vox right back (and absolutely crush him lol), before threatening him against taking action, privately, twice. Alastor’s just better at hiding how much it’s affected him, and doesn’t let the bitterness of what used to be consume his every waking thought.

And maybe that’s the difference between how they view their old relationship and how the fandom seems to view it. Alastor’s upset about it, sure. He’s bitter now about Vox and everything Vox represents because he’s a past friendship that failed, but he’s also moved on with his life. Vox hasn’t. Vox still obsesses over Alastor, in the way he dresses, the way he talks, how he presents himself. It’s all reminiscent of Alastor. And when he finds out Alastor’s returned, the first thing he does is draw attention to how Alastor’s back! Talk in a roundabout way about how much he’s missed him! Has wondered where he’s been? Sends a spy into the hotel to, well, spy on Alastor! And when that doesn’t work, Vox continues to stalk Alastor through his drones instead. (And then gets off on seeing Alastor get beat up.)

Vox very much has not moved on from whatever friendship they’d had before. He hasn’t moved on from Alastor. (Or from his heavily implied obsessive crush).

We don’t know what happened between them, aside that it’s complicated and sad, that they were friends, and now they’re very much not, and that maybe part of the reason why is because Alastor rejected Vox’s request to join his team (upend his entire life to partner with Vox, assuming Alastor always worked solo and what the Vees currently have is what Vox had wanted with Alastor with his request). We can assume maybe part of why they fell apart was because Vox wanted something more from his relationship with Alastor, something Alastor could not and did not want to give him. Or maybe they just grew apart, grew distant. Vox constantly upgrading and changing and keeping up with the newest trends, chasing whatever new Thing that’ll keep him relevant, while Alastor remained set in his ways because he’s not looking for the approval of the masses.

Anyways, all this to say: when I, and I assume most other OneWayBroadcast fans talk about one-sided radiostatic, it is specifically about how Vox has a one-sided romantic/sexual attraction/crush on Alastor, that Alastor does not return, that has now turned into a one-sided obsession over Alastor. Not that their entire friendship was completely one-sided. I think saying that Vox was the only one who was ever invested in their relationship is a rather bad faith interpretation of Alastor’s character, but also does not do their relationship justice at all. It minimizes Vox’s responsibility in the fallout of their friendship, and puts the blame only on Alastor. It takes away all the juicy complexities of Vox’s character, how he’s bad person who’s done and is doing bad things, and paints him as an innocent victim to “Alastor’s manipulation”.

That’s not to say Alastor was completely innocent in the fallout either. But I hear a lot more about how the fandom woobifies Vox in their relationship than I do Alastor.

With all the focus episode 2 put on The Vee's ability to control others, especially Vox's eye, I heavily suspect he gave into a bad impulse and tried that with Alastor after he said no to a partnership. Probably the first time Alastor actually resorted to punching out Vox's screen and one reason he doesn't like to be near him.

I also suspect that we will see such a punch in season 2 after Vox pushes Al too far.

If there's a character in Hazbin that I feel most represents "Free Will", for better or for worse, it's the Radio Demon.

OOOH! I want there to be a punch between them. I want to dig into their backstory so, so bad 😩 I've pieced together my own some-what backstory for them, but Viv drop the deets, I need to know what went down between them.

Also, the idea of Vox trying to use his mind manipulation/hypnosis on Alastor and THAT being what ultimately fractured them is 😙🤌 so good. Oh the betrayal! The heartbreak! The broken trust! I want it alllllll gimme gimme gimme.

More Shenanigans from Flaggy the PuritanBot

So, having the day off work, I decided to finally rub two braincells together and run the lovely @flight-of-the-felix’s script that helps you track down potentially flagged posts. As suspected, there’s a bunch of posts that it turned up, including the oh-so-salacious thumb-biting sketch that I couldn’t actually request a review on when I found it on my sideblog on Monday.

(The above was taken on Monday, when Flagathon began.)

So here’s the interesting thing, I can’t pull up the orange “this post has been flagged” anywhere else for any of the posts. I begin to wonder what the heck is going on, so I go back to the one post I know is still flagged, first on my desktop, and it’s “clean”. Nothing indicating it was ever falsely flagged as explicit. Then I go back to my phone, scroll alllllll the way down and find it, and oh! There’s the flag. “Cool”.

Except I accidentally tapped into the notes of the post above it, because Tumblr Mobile hates fun, and it’s users apparently. When I get out of the notes of that post, the flag for the “explicit” thumb biting sketch has mysteriously disappeared. And it won’t come back.

See, the thing is, I’m fairly certain that Tumblr hasn’t had a change of heart and realized the error of its ways on this particular post, because of the two posts I was able to find on Monday and request review on, I got an e-mail telling me they had been restored.

Not so on the thumb-biting naughtiness.

It’s very hard for me to verify on my own, since this entire system was rolled out in an extremely underhanded way that seems unintentionally designed to cull half of their userbase, but I’m starting to suspect the reason I haven’t been able to find flagged posts since Tuesday is because they turned off the ability to request review. Or it’s possible there’s glitches in the code (what? Tumblr??? code something badly???), or, and this is my personal theory, Flaggy the PuritanBot crashed itself by flagging everything on the internet except for the pornbots, and the “review” system is now clogged up and useless.

I’m mostly just pointing this as something to be cautious about come December 17th, because there’s not really much any of us can do about this. Tumblr has said that it won’t delete or deactivate our accounts for old content, but I think the events of this week (combined with the revelations of the Vox article) have shown that they’re not exactly the most trustworthy source right now, and they are not acting in good faith with their users.

As I said before, I’m not planning on going anywhere, and will just be trying to cross-post to various platforms until fandom as a whole decides where it belongs. But I don’t have the greatest of feelings about this.

Back up your stuff guys

I guess we’ll see how all of this shakes out when the 17th arrives.