Concerning the media overlords au:
First of all: I love it! Thank you for sharing the idea with us <33
Second: Does Alastor live in the tower with the other Vees? And does Alastor still move into the hotel? If yes, on a scale of one to absolutely how sad/pissed/jealous is Vox after receiving this info?
3. I'd like to imagine Velvette's fingers are constantly itching to get ahold of that handsome deer man, who doesn't know how to dress himself properly or trendy, and give his wardrobe an upgrade. Could you imagine this happening? (Maybe with lots of alcohol involved. So that he would at least temporarily let her experiment with his clothes. Bonus points if she is able to take picture too. Vox would obviously make himself some copies for.. private reasons...) Do you see my vision?? Can you see it??
4. Can Vox convince Alastor to do more audio features within their network? Like podcasts or interviews and the like? Or are they just screams as well? (I recently discovered a podcast about cooking, where each week they talk about one ingredient and explain a recipe with it. I think this would fit Alastor's preferences very well.. tho the ingredients might not be as commonly used now that I think about it... anyhow... now I can't stop thinking about Hannibal and Alastor hosting a food podcast.. oops.. sorry, but not really)
5. You mentioned that Husk still works in his casino, if he isn't needed. Do you have any headcanons for Niffty's whereabouts?
Anyway that's all for now! Have a lovely day/night! <33
p.s. Sorry if this ask is intrusive. For some questions it's pretty clear that I've already imagined something for myself that may or may not fit with your vision of this au. If you feel like I overstepped, feel free to ignore this or send me an alastor_fuck_u. gif :D
Im am very happy to have questions asked! You have no idea how many ideas i have and dont know what to do with xD
I'd love to see other peoples headcanons and ideas for this universe, if anyone does anything for it then please tag me so i can see ^^
This is gonna get long so I've put it under a read more
2: No one is really sure if he lives there or just works there. He HAS his own suite in the tower, but he's not always there when they go look for him, and not being able to find him is very a common occurrence, made more frustrating because he refuses to carry or awnser the mobile phone they forced on him. He hangs around in the common areas like the kitchen and living room sometimes. And if they do manage to rope him into something like a movie night its a huge hassle, because he will insist on a black and white or silent film if he HAS to engage with the tv, and Vel and Val hate those.
The whole top of the Tower is dominated by his large Radio tower though, its slightly seperated from the rest of the building, suspended above it with a staircase/ladder to enter the hatch. Valentino is usually not brave enough to check there for Alastor.
Its the same with the hotel. He does move into his own room there, but goes back and forth a lot, and doesnt have a schedule. Vox tires to pretend hes fine with it at first but often ends up the hotel to be a pain in the ass to Charlie, and getting kicked out by the staff of Alastor. Hes convinced himself that Alastor will lose interest sooner rather than later, and the others just tune out his whining at this point. No one buys it when he claims he didnt even notice Alastor was gone as soon as the Radio Demon gets back to the tower.
3: I may be planning to draw this haha He does let her dress him up ocassionally, he has a few differant suits he's approved of and kept, but does wear his original the most the time. Velvette has a line of 'Vintage chic' clothing that partly started as a way to get Alastor to agree to changing his 'ratty ass old man style' by appealing to clothes that were updated takes on his era. He still very rarely leaves the tower in anything but his own usual attire.
He does on rare occasions allow photos to be taken of him by the vees (and once, later on by charlie, under strict instructions that she keeps it to herself) but no video. And none under any circumstances are allowed on social media. He has blown up a few phones that have attempted, both the Vees and employees.
4: Alastor has agreed to be on a podcast a few times, but its rare, and only if its somehting hes really interested in talking about. It's one of the few modern things he approves of since its just a version of a radio talk show. Same with interviews, he keeps them even more extremly rare, and the mystery of the radio Demon keeps sinners in fear more than him being in the public. Vox always wants him to do more since the ratings sky rocket when Alastor features.
When Alastor has done an interview it is with his back to the camera, and sitting in a large wingbacked stupidly over the top ornate chair, that hides him from being seen, except maybe the top tuffs of his ears and antlers. And he doesnt reveal much about himself when he does. The chair is partly to hide him, and partly to stop the equitment form glitching too much. He likes to pulls faces and makes gestures deliberatly made to make Vox falter and look stupid on camera, since hes the only one who can see him in that chair.
He has teased on his own radio show that one 'lucky' sinner may get the chance to be on both a guest star on his radio broadcast AND a livestream if the mood takes. Valentino had to inform him that what he's referring to is called a snuff film
5: Niffty gets moved to the hotel pretty much full time once Alastor gets involved, Husk is a part time employee, but ends up spending less time at his casino as time goes on.
Valentino is happy Niffty is gone because she creeps him out, she ocassionally hung around his studio during work hours, especially if theyre doing a scene with 'bad boys'. Vox isn't bothered. Velvette is not happy, especially that Niffty is reduced to a maid/janitor for the hotel, and makes that very known to Alastor. Velvette loves Niffty, they are chaos sisters and work on very sketchy sounding potions together, and gang up against the boys.
Niffty is also a great seamstress herself and brings her designs to Velvette like an excited child showing off their latest art project. Almost none of these get used, but Vel has fun forcing models to parade around the studio and work in something Nifftys made, they often include bugs and bodyparts, Velvette finds this halarious.
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coming from an enby whos tme (tho i myself am not transmasc), i feel like a lot of transmasc people are doing this "have their cake and eat it too" thing where they want to be perceived as men or men adjacent, in our society a part of the oppressor class, while also still wanting to benefit from structures meant to protect against said class. specifically ones that have been set up in queer spaces. ive met quite a few trans men who were just as vehemently misogynysitic as your average dude bro. and (this is speculation based on convos ive had with trans men im not in every transmascs head) a lot of transmascs have a lot of internalized misogyny that they project onto trans women. ive had an irl ex friend of mine say something that i think encapsulates this particular issue fairly well. this was like 8 years ago, we were talking about trans rep in media (specifically orange is the new black iirc) so im paraphrasing; 'its messed up that we (afabs in this context) are sidelined for people who used to be men, we cant escape the patriarchy.' that was horribly transmisogynistic, so lets unpack it.
it assumes that trans women are just men
it assumes sex essentialism, that they and i were just women. that we were just poor Females having 'our space' encroached on by mean 'former men.'
im not saying that all transmascs think like this ofc. #notallmen. im saying that some do, and enough transmascs have internalized misogyny and not enough self reflection.
just because you are trans doesnt mean you are immune to bigotry and recouping oppressive structures. none of us are free of Sin™️. you as an individual have to make an effort to reflect on your thoughts and actions and how they might affect yourself and others, so that you are not a willing participant of our communities oppression.
for example, ive talked a lot privately about my journey to being a better person, (and pobodies nerfect, its always a learning process, you always will have things you can improve on. and thats okay, were all just human) i initially hated it/its pronouns. 'it' gave me the ick. i was called 'it' as a kid incessantly to make fun of my gender presentation, i couldnt fathom someone else finding peace and even euphoria in using it/its. i bought into the conservative talking points about neopronouns and it/its being detrimental to the trans community. they were "the bad transes" and me? well i use they/them but shakespeare used the singular they so im fine :), im one of the good ones. then one day, i was listening to some video essay idr what or who, but something they said stuck with me, "if it/its makes me happy, why do you care? how does 'it' hurt you really?" my trauma is not everyones trauma, people will find comfort in things that i wont, and thats okay. 'it' hurt me when i was young, by cruel kids and uncaring adults. why am i hurting my community, my fellow transes, by continuing to deny them their autonomy to identify how they like? so i got over 'it.' i saw the real harm was the fucking wedge being driven between us by conservative grifters trying to pick off the weakest in the herd before they go in for the rest of us.
visibility isnt necessarily a good thing for marginalized people. transfemmes are the biggest target of hate in our community atm. they unfortunately serve as the canary. global fascism is on the rise and to be frank, a targeted hate campaign against a trans woman is asking for her to be killed. outed, paraded as a freak, doxxed, swatted, killed. protect trans women, fascism doesnt stop with one group nor will you be saved by being "one of the good ones." trans solidarity, even the people you dont like, even if you think theyre icky or gross or whatever the fuck else you do Not give up trans solidarity. you dont make callout posts, you dont send death threats, you dont send hate mail, if you dont like someone Block Them and move on.
we stand together or we will be eradicated.
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The truth is every queer person has the right to come out on their own terms, and on their own timeline. They also have the right to choose not to come out at all. The forced conformity of the closet can not be answered with the forced conformity in coming out of it.
-Alex, Red White & Royal Blue (2023)
i want to talk about this quote. full disclosure, it’s because i keep seeing some really frustrating takes (some of which veer into queerphobia) and i am getting a bit annoyed with people and rather than directly addressing it with them & appear to be picking a fight im going to make an analysis post in my space. (tbf. its mostly on twitter and i have a priv account so that limits me)
disclaimer; this is my interpretation, im not saying its the only interpretation just something to consider. i am queer & cognitively disabled - don’t assume malice and dont be cruel. i will ignore and block freely.
tl;dr/very simplified summary: it doesn’t mean “dont ever speculate about other people’s sexuality” but rather that ‘coming out’ in the way society understands it shouldn’t be a necessity for queer people to exist openly as queer. full context under the cut & self-exploration questions at the end.
so lets start with the context. alex is talking at a point in time when the world has read their emails and so knows both are queer (bi & gay, specifically), but neither alex/the white house or henry/the palace have commented. so more simply - alex and henry are known to be queer, but have not come out. alex uses the speech to come out as bi, and as being in love with henry. he also uses it to imply that he & henry should have the right to choose not to do this formal coming out alex is doing.
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okay. lets get into the quote analysis.
The truth is every queer person has the right to come out on their own terms, and on their own timeline.
reasonably self explanatory. each queer person gets to decide their own timing for coming out, and the way that they want to address their sexuality.
They also have the right to choose not to come out at all.
this is where problems with interpretation have started to appear. fundamentally yes, this means people are allowed to not be openly queer/‘out’ if that is what their decision is. but it also means that they can be visibly queer - for example being in a visibly queer relationship; signalling with their aesthetic (e.g. someone being butch, someone who wears only ‘girl’ clothes despite that being at odds to their assigned gender); casually posting about queer things on social media etc - without addressing their own sexuality to others.
it does not mean that you should assume everyone is straight until they explicitly tell you otherwise. and quite frankly insisting that it does mean that is veering into homo-/bi-/queer-phobia because you are insinuating that being not-straight is a negative thing.
The forced conformity of the closet can not be answered with the forced conformity in coming out of it.
some people seem to be interpreting this as ‘you shouldnt force people out of the closet’ and i don’t think thats quite to the nuance of what it means. yes, i do think that is part of it - in much the same way as the previous sentence - but it is not really the whole of it. in my opinion this is actually addressing - at least to some degree - the concept of ‘we should assume people are straight until they explicitly say otherwise’.
the ‘forced conformity of coming out’ addresses the idea that to be “out” you have to follow these steps; that you have to make a public statement that ‘this is my sexuality and i am [queer/bi/gay/pan/ace/etc]’. you are conforming to this precedent of “how to come out” that countless queer people have followed. there’s nothing inherently wrong with doing so, but actually there are different ways to be queer - and even being “out” as queer - that don’t involve following that playbook.
here’s a hypothetical to demonstrate my point. two men, who have never dated any women, live together & spend basically all their time together over 5-10 years. they holiday with each other’s family, they’re always together at events (e.g. weddings of non-mutual friends), but they’ve never told you/the public that they’re queer and/or dating each other. at what point does one start to assume they’re together? and does the answer change if its a man & a woman rather than two men? if a man & a woman did that, people would assume pretty early on they’re probably dating. but yet when it’s two men suddenly it’s invasive to speculate. this is where this concept of the forced conformity of coming out comes in - along with the veering into homophobia i referenced earlier - why must they say the words “i am gay” for it to then be ‘okay’ to consider that they’re together? (the homophobia comes into play because if you think being gay is morally neutral (which it is) then you shouldn’t have any issue with the speculation about people being together regardless of their genders.) the idea that straight is the default is where this forced conformity starts to really kick in.
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i guess the main things i want people to ask themselves are these (and i have been asking myself these questions, there is no judgement or censure just self examination):
1. do you think people can be openly queer publicly without explicitly sharing that they are queer? (by this i mean in an announcement or in casual conversation. can you be openly queer without ever addressing it explicitly?)
2. if you do, why do you think that talking about the possibility someone is queer is something that should be hushed up? is it because there is an internalised concept that being queer is something abnormal and/or negative? if it was a straight couple would you feel the same way?
3. what does “coming out” mean to you? why does it mean that, what have you internalised to get to that conclusion & is it something that always works or are there other ways to be openly queer (or ‘out’ if you prefer)?
4. is it possible that there are queer people living openly and happily as themselves without explicitly addressing their sexuality to the wider world, who don’t want to address it publicly? does this make them closeted or ‘less’ queer to you? if so, what makes you think that?
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