#I SO NEARLY used the “ghost with the most” quote from Beetlejuice

[voxiiferous]

Prime Time Reruns

Anyone who’s known Vox for a very long time know there was a change in him, though there’s no clear ability to pinpoint when exactly it changed, though everyone agrees it started sometime in the early 90s. Valentino‘s seen it, Hellaina, even Alastor has seen it in its purest flashes. Velvette never knew him before the boredom set in— the closest she ever saw were its earliest phases.

People who meet him assume he’s going to be the feared and all powerful TV Overlord, like he was in the 60s, 70s, even the 80s. They expect cruelty and a joy in the suffering of Hell— and what they actually get is someone so very tired. Even his periods of self-destructive tendencies have tapered off— the USBs of Exe.stasy have gathered dust, he doesn’t seek Alastor out for a fight in the same way, his relationship with Valentino rings increasingly hollow: empty apologies, empty promises.

And he pretends that it’s all fine— he grins and he shows up on cameras, endorses the new Vogitek product. He’s the media Overlord! He’s got so much money, and everything he could ever want— don’t you? Just pay a small fee and you can have everything. Lean into the brand loyalty and you’ll be rewarded. But the performance has been getting more transparent as he hurtles towards pure and abject burnout. His own smiling face on the billboards stares down at him and he wants to tear it all down some days.

He never stops. He builds and he makes and he broadcasts everything from his spot high in his tower looking down on everything he’s made. But he doesn’t really see it either. He sees the flaws— every artist is their own greatest critic— the breakups that are becoming more frequent, sex has become a routine pastime, every time the ratings drop. And part of the problem is that there’s been nothing new in a large way. The internet was but that was the last big thing that really booked in and about the mid 90s.

It’s a prison of his own making, but he doesn’t know how to fix it either. Part of the problem is his lack of hobbies. He used to like reading, but he hasn’t picked up an actual book in decades. He loved dancing in a way he’s never really loved anything else, and he can count on less than two hands how many times he’s done it since he died. He hasn’t built something like the little trinket she made as a child since he was one.

Those are just things he has control over, not considering the fact he can’t eat or drink, and the inhumanity in that bothers him more than he lets on a lot of the time. He can smell, sort of, and it taunts him. He brings people out to eat because it makes them more easily charmed and pliable when they get free food, and yes, he’ll laugh and he makes jokes about it, but it serves as a reminder to him that he isn’t really alive.

He feels trapped— he’s retreading the same old talking points he’s said a thousand times over. The smile is forced, and nothing is a threat so he can’t focus his attention on keeping everything he’s made. It’s fine, it’s stable, he’s made it so it’ll outlive him if something were to happen.

He’s been waiting for the boredom to pass, boredom does eventually… and it hasn’t, it’s just gotten worse.