#analysis of the umbrella academy
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The fact Reginald didn't have Allison rumour Viktor as 'You think you're normal' or 'You think you don't have powers' but instead went with 'You think you're ordinary' is so insidious.
Because it didn't just affect Viktor's belief around his powers, it affected his whole world view. You can't excel in anything if you think you are in no way special or distinct. He had the talent to be first chair (yes his power helped but his power couldn't make bad playing appear good, he still had to play well) but he didn't believe he did and so was stuck at third chair. Even in teaching he talks himself down when Harold compliments him, saying his next student could probably teach him (but if that were the case why would that student's parents not just get another violin tutor?). It's also part of why he falls under Harold's spell, because he's ordinary and along comes this guy who seems great and thinks he's special, something Viktor literally cannot believe he is because of the rumour, so how can he not be won over by that attention?
I also believe this was completely intentional, because believing he is in no way special, coupled with being numbed by his medication ensures he will be a docile child and easily manipulated. Seeing as Reginald didn't predict the siblings would leave as adults, he had intended to control Viktor his entire life.
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Viktor Hargreeves' entire life was dictated through that rumor and that fact lives in my brain the way a monkey lives in any enclosed space
Like, "you think you're just ordinary" is such a broad order to follow! Not only does it stop him from realizing he had powers, but it also stops him from thinking there's anything even conceptually unique about him.
It stopped him from seeing himself as talented with the violin because he has an ordinary level of skill in it. He can't be into girls because that's considered abnormal in society. He can't be trans because he's just ordinary.
Every season is him breaking out of the rumor's hold, little by little. Realizing things about him that had been kept on chains for years.
#tua#the umbrella academy#umbrella academy#viktor hargreeves#Viktor Hargreeves analysis#character analysis
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Something interesting about Five that I've noticed as I've been watching the show is that he acts unemotional, especially toward his siblings (threatening to kill them when he gets upset, ignoring their relationship problems, that sort of thing) but he does everything for his family and people he doesn't know. Over the almost two seasons I've watched, he does everything in his power to prevent the apocalypse from happening and his response when people tell him "who cares?" is "7 billion people are going to die". When he thinks he doesn't have a choice, he makes a deal with the Handler to kill 12 people in exchange for his family and the world's safety even though he hates killing. When that falls through, Five sees another version of himself at the risk of no longer existing to get a time machine. He may be an older man, but that 13 year old version of him that was taught to help people no matter what is still there.
#probably going to do more character analysis' of the hargeeves because they are so complex#five hargreeves#the umbrella academy#tua#nerdygirlramblings
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i love characters with deep gravelly voices or strong proud noses. i love characters with messy curls, wide-set downturned eyes, and clumsy slow walking gaits. i love characters who’s clothes always seem to be expensive but dirty; who’s skin is marked with sunburn and scars and freckles and acne and windburn. i love characters that are tall and angular or short and round. i love characters that have cupid’s bows, and oval faces and long calloused fingers. i love characters that always wear a good pair of bright red gloves or that one odd patchwork hat. i love characters that have crooked yellow-ish teeth, but who have the best smile. i love it when characters have actual distinct physical traits instead of just being as conventionally attractive as possible.
#asoiaf#got#legion fx#the umbrella academy#preacher amc#character design#media analysis#art analysis#design analysis
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One of my favorite things about The Umbrella Academy is Reggie’s disturbingly excellent portrayal as a manipulative parent. He knows every trick in the book and uses them so impeccably well to control his children.
Take for example, in S2 when he berates Diego about having a hero complex, which effectively reduces Diego into a stuttering little boy. Nobody dares to stand up to Reggie as he (in that moment, at least) re-establishes his place as the ultimate authority figure in their lives.
In S3, he twists the knife in Five’s old wound by saying, “you ruined your life once before by not listening to me. Are you prepared to do that again?” A classic “I’m your parent so I know what’s best for you” move.
In contrast, he also tries to get on their good side by using flattery, acknowledging them as his children, and calling them by their ‘human’ names.
At Luther and Sloane's wedding, he packages himself as a pitiful old man who only wants to repair his relationship with his estranged children. The siblings try to stand their ground, but Reggie catches them off guard when he admits his faults, praises, and validates them. Saying Sloane has always been exceptionally bright, Diego would have made a superb father, and later on, asking Luther for forgiveness for everything he’d put him through (I applaud Luther for his “I lived my whole life for you” speech. No matter how many times I watch it, it still breaks me when Luther gives in after Reggie asks, “will you forgive me, son?”)
Reggie's cruelest act so far is helping Klaus master his near-immortality and confront his fears while creating a father-son bond with him. And because Klaus has been longing for this his entire life, Reggie easily wins him over. He has Klaus wholeheartedly campaigning for his Hotel Oblivion plan— running around, convincing his siblings that he is not the emotionally abusive father who raised them— only to tell him he’s more trouble than he’s worth before leaving him to be consumed by the Kugelblitz.
Reggie perfectly exhibits the traits of a manipulative parent. He uses his children’s deep-seated need for approval and affection or strikes them where it hurts the most to make them do his bidding.
I’m sure there are more instances that I missed. These are just the glaring examples I can’t stop thinking about. Feel free to add your thoughts!
#the umbrella academy#reginald hargreeves#diego hargreeves#luther hargreeves#klaus hargreeves#character analysis#[academy award winner voice] I’d like to thank the umbrella academy for giving us a delightfully accurate manipulative parent#and the ways he inflicted trauma upon his children that followed them well into adulthood
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at a family reunion-esque dinner an i just found out i have the cilantro soapy gene when i tell you i yelled at everyone “WHO WAS IT” so damn loud. anyway to cope here’s tua cilantro soap gene headcanons. please read i worked so hard XD
luther- yes and he’s sad about it :(
diego- no but he makes fun of luther
allison- nope. kind of convinced that it’s not real and everyone just made it up as an inside joke she wasn’t in on as a kid. she’s wildly insecure and bitter about it and is really passive agressive when it’s brought up
klaus- no but he is infinitely curious about what it tastes like and when he was 9 he ate a sliver of a bar of soap and cilantro at the same time to simulate the experience so he could empathize with his siblings. he cried and ran to grace who was confused but supportive and helped him wash his mouth out
five- yes but he doesn’t care. his food opinions and vibes are Very Fucked Up and he used to eat rocks anyway so. you cannot tell me this man didn’t eat rocks in the apocalypse drunkly because he was so hungry i’m sorry. also like cardboard poor baby
ben- thinks he does but he doesn’t. this is og ben bc i’m always posting about him he is the real ben hargreeves to me but this goes for s! ben too. and idk how to explain it either
viktor- yeah but he likes it. he’s like mmmmm and diego is horrified everyone is losing their minds and he’s like yummy :D my favorite
lila- yes but pretends she doesn’t because she’s seen diego make fun of luther for it. he’s all “extra cilantro right babe B)” and she’s like “hell yes” but is sad inside. if she just told him he would never order cilantro on anything again in case she wants to eat some of his food but she’s too far in at this point
sloane- no. she eats all of luther’s cilantro for him though <3
reginald asshole hargreeves- yes and i hope He Fucking Suffers. stupid ass alien tastebuds or whatever. he pretends nothing’s happening because he thinks it’s a human thing and he doesn’t want to blow his cover
grace- she can’t eat, but is aware of the chemical that makes it taste/smell like that because of her advanced sensory hardware and software
the handler- no. she puts cilantro in five’s food because she knows he has the gene. she thinks he’s on to her and picks it out but he just has no reaction. he just doesn’t care lmao. she’s playing these fucking mind games 4d chess and he’s like absentmindedly chewing on checkers
pogo- nope.
#tua#writingastraightanswer#fuck you ill do random ass characters if i want#luther hargreeves#diego hargreeves#allison hargreeves#klaus hargreeves#five hargreeves#ben hargreeves#viktor hargreeves#cilantro soap gene#the umbrella academy#sloane hargreeves#lila pitts#the handler tua#phineas pogo#i need to make pogo analysis rn#fucking enjoy ig
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Something I wish was shown more is that like, while Viktor is undeniably more dangerous than his siblings in a unique way, his siblings are... most definitely deadly in a way he isn’t. Like...
Viktor’s violence comes from suppression. We can argue about if him killing the nannies as a kid means he’s sociopathic or whatever, but the fact remains most of his danger comes from the fact he has absolutely no fucking clue how to process things, be it his powers or his emotions. He’s so used to just not having them that they wind up bursting out in the most deadly way possible, like world-ending apocalypses, just because that’s how his powers work. It’s unintentional.
But every single one of his siblings has one key difference: their deadliness, their violence, was intentional. It was taught to them. Right from age 11 we see them killing the bank robbers in their debut in S1, and that gets us a clear idea of what their childhood was like. They were taught to direct their powers, taught to control them to a degree, taught to be desensitized to all that. Of course there’s exceptions - Five also has his assassin training that did the same thing just to a more extreme degree and Klaus definitely doesn’t have the control over his powers the others do, but still.
The other Umbrellas, 1-6, were raised with violence. It was always present in their lives and the only thing they could do was control it. They are comfortable with it in a way I’d argue Viktor really doesn’t seem to be because again, his violence is uncontrolled. If he can or can’t stop when his powers cause the end of the world doesn’t matter, because even if he doesn’t he still has absolutely no idea what he’s doing. All he knows is ‘he was wronged, suppress the anger and the powers that come with it, let them all burst out and hurt’. I doubt he even really comprehends just how much hurt it causes.
But with the others, they all know what they’re doing!! They know they can knife someone in the chest or cut off their finger; the know they can smash people through walls or just hit them hard enough for a public fight. They know how to massacre entire hit squads or rooms of robbers. They can rumor someone to eat broccoli or to kill their brother. There’s a line they all very knowingly walk between violence and death, just how much control they need. And that’s it’s own type of deadliness! Like, we don’t typically think of Diego or Luther as controlled in the way we do Allison or Five but the fact remains they all are! They’ve all been raised with violence as a given and have only learned to moderate it. They have all been raised to kill and have had to draw their own lines in the sand, learn to live with that in a way Viktor never has.
But it’s never gone. It’s still there. They are all able to kill and they can all get through torture without saying anything worthwhile even without a motivation (Klaus in S1). They can also make the conscious choice not to. But then...
Then they can hurt anyway. They can manipulate entire groups of people into destroying their lives on a whim (Klaus’s cult); they can make a man burn themselves and smile (Allison), they can fight and live violence all over again even if it isn’t deadly because it’s what they recognize (Diego S1, Luther S2).
That type of smaller, controlled violence is something we don’t see from Viktor. From him it’s always all or nothing; mass murder or Just A Normal Person. And the existence of that, of that ability to dish out smaller but just as damaging bits of the killing they’d been raised with their whole lives, is a really interesting thing I wish was explored more.
#umbrella academy#meta#analysis#umbrella academy analysis#viktor hargreeves#allison hargreeves#five hargreeves#ben hargreeves#klaus hargreeves#luther hargreeves#diego hargreeves#reginald hargreeves
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one thing i like more about comic!five than show!five is that while comic five is like arguably Worse (but also everyone in the comics are worse people than their show selves so he isnt special) we get more... flashes of childishness that in my opinion enhances his character.
one of the most fun parts about five's character is that he is a man filled to the brim with contradictions. he is arguably the most devoted to his family but he constantly goes rogue and is a lone wolf. he is a time traveler but is always running out of time. he is ruthless and objective but also sentimental as fuck. he is brilliant to the point of stupidity.
one of the most obvious contradiction of his character is that he is simultaneously the oldest sibling and the youngest sibling. you cannot deny that five is old, that he is the sibling with the most experience, that after facing what he faced, you cant really call him a child. but it is precisely his experiences that stop him from maturity because when you are forced to rapidly mature, you end up not really maturing at all.
five is 58 and 13. he is simultaneously aged by his experience and preserved by it. and you can see it sometimes in the show! but it's better shown in the comics, at least it shows the dichotomy better.
comic five is just as snarky and asshole-y as show five. he has a larger body count that doesnt seem to stop rising. hes a paid mercenary but comic five has his dog that he HIMSELF named mr. pennycrumb. he gets excited over fortune cookies. he got himself ice cream after a job well done and offered it to the others because thats what they did as kids when they did well.
im not saying the show should infantilize five, hell no! but i think it's an important thing to show that despite all his talk about being 58, there is still a part of him that's still very much 13. the little flashes of childishness really adds to the tragedy of five's character and in my opinion, is also integral to his character.
#recently reread the comics and man comic five is like so annoying /affectionate#he is so fucking feral i love him#the umbrella academy#five hargreeves#tua#tua meta#tua analysis#tua comics
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me: i’m perfectly normal about this show thanks‼️
also me: is actively analyzing the music from said show
#celeste game#our flag means death#umbrella academy#merlin bbc#music analysis#totally normal about shows hahahahhahahahahahhahahaha#i have to do a certain amount of presentations for a lit to film class i’m in#and the book focuses about the affect that music has on a characters life#so i’m doing an analysis on the descriptions of music in the book and how it translates to the film#i’m about to be the most annoying motherfucker in this film class!!
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PLEASE tell us about klaus and reggie similarities
Thank you!!
I think in general Klaus’s and Reggies relationship is much more interesting than the other siblings, not only in season three but when they speak in season one in the void, they talk well with each other. I think specifically in season three we get to see their dynamic more clearly, and while yes, it’s mainly built off of Klaus’s want to be loved and Reginald seeing him as an east target, I think generally they’re more similar than the others are to Reggie.
Both Reg and Klaus’s character arcs and story’s stem off of their respective partners, the brellies only exist because Reg needed them to get Abigail back, while Klaus losing Dave pushed him to put everything he struggles with aside in order to get Dave back, and while he starts to accept that his Dave is gone, I think given the opportunity to see him again, he’d take it.
I also generally think they have similar personalities, in terms of having no filter or awareness of how their actions affect others, and their knowledge for trivial things/way of getting people on their side.
I think because of these similarities, it makes Klaus a much easier target for Reginald, because it’s easier to get in his head, he knows his weak points because they’re the same as his own.
On that note, fuck Reginald, but he’s also a very interesting character that I think a lot of the fandom misses out on because of daddy issues jokes or people simply taking the fact he’s a shitty person without actually looking into how he does it, which you can see makes him a much worse person, and gives loads more opportunities for angst!!
Thank you for the asks! Keep them coming I love them <333
#Reginald’s A+ Parenting#I hate that man so much but understanding his character is fantastic for analysis and stories#klaus hargreeves#the umbrella academy#reginald hargreeves#number four hargreeves#number four tua#dave katz#klaus x dave#klave#david katz#incorrect klave talks
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I do not have the mental energy to write out a fully fleshed out version of this theory but I want to share - did Reginald set out to adopt a different seven children solely because of his impression of the Umbrellas when he met them in the '60s or, knowing that they were attempting to return to the future, and so would at some point likely return to the academy, did he deliberately want to create a paradox by adopting different children simply to give himself access to more super powered beings making it more likely that he would have seven of them to carry out his plan? Because presumabley in the original timeline that had also been his goal but then, not being able to adopt more than seven kids, coupled with Ben dying, made it impossible. Adopting another seven children, knowing the Umbrellas would also show up would give him access to thirteen people with powers. Yes, when the Umbrellas arrive he tells the Sparrows to get rid of them, but he was drugged and had been for along time and so he may have acted differently if he had been sober and unimpaired.
I don't think he ever intended to take all thirteen through to Oblivion - after all I've seen people point out that he stopped Klaus entering the tunnel as he would be an extra person and therefore could interfere or try stop him (as Allison ended up doing but he thought their deal would stop her interfering), but thirteen children made him more likely to succeed as he has spares in case any die or he loses access to them somehow.
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mild five hargreeves rant???
before you all go and say i'm just a random person who js likes how five looks or whatever (im sure someone somewhere has said that), i'm not. i'm a writer guys give me credit for the fictional people i like :c
BUT IN ALL SERIOUSNESS he is such a well written and thought out character??? AND I NEED THIS OUT MY SYSTEM SO DEAL WITH IT!!! but i sometimes go back and binge watch the TV show in order to prepare myself for the final season (which btw is coming out like 10 days after my friends bday which is basically their bday, shoutout friend), and every time i just fall in love with his character all over again for one reason or another.
he is a little different from the comics, not gonna lie (i've read the first one, but i have all three gotta read em frfr), but i honestly think that umbrella academy is one of the shows i really don't mind the changes in compared to the comics?
like, for example in the show, all of the siblings are able to gang up and team up against viktor and eventually stop the apocalypse. but in the comics??? five just shoots vanya (i refer to the comics with vanya to differentiate them DON'T CANCEL ME PLS I LOVE ELLIOT PAGE)
but anyways, back to the topic, he is just such a good character??? both comics and tv show???
like, he loves his family. he loves his family. he stood through 45 (or 42, i don't know whether the commission was separate from the apocalypse time or he js added it in), years JUST TO SEE HIS FAMILY AGAIN??? TO STOP THE APOCOLYPSE AND SOLVE IT AGAIN??? and he's so funny and sarcastic and he does it so well that almost nobody realizes he's using it to cope, he puts others before himself without many people realizing it, like??? AND HE LOVED DELORES JS SO MUCH IT MAKES ME CRY BC I WANT A LOVE LIKE THAT.
but also, in the comics, he's still witty and all despite being js so much more deranged??? but even still, even with how different these two are, they're so precious to me okay AND YAWL NEED TO APPRECIATE FIVE FOR MORE THAN JS AIDAN BEING HOT!
#rant post#personal rant#the umbrella academy#five hargreeves#love five hargreeves#appreciation post#character analysis#kind of#more to come??#maybe??#okay thats it#i need sleep#i really do#okay bye peeps
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"But killing [insert character's name who murdered a loved one] won't bring them back."
That's the point. The character who lost someone knows that. The person they love was killed and because the loved one is no longer living, neither should the killer. The pain the murdered person felt in their final moments needs to be given it to the murderer. The killer may not have cared for the person's life but the character does and they will bring the killer the wrath of a thousand suns to show that.
#finished the umbrella academy and was thinking about Diego's reaction to patch's murder#and his sibling's reaction to him wanting revenge#also this applies to kaz#hoping this makes sense#bookish#fandom#booklover#books and reading#character analysis#the umbrella academy#grishaverse#six of crows#diego hargreeves#nerdygirlramblings
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I’m in love with everyone that acknowledges that Brelly Ben was shit <3 (said with love)
Brelly Benny, in the first season, does only one thing: he controls Klaus. He feels powerless for being dead and of course he cares for Klaus and is somehow trying to help him with his addiction, but in his powerlessness, he is all the time trying to make Klaus do what he thinks is best.
And, I get it! It must suck to be dead and see the only person who you can talk to living like Klaus used to live. I get how fucking mad he must get when Klaus lies, saying he is against killing his mom or that he was not able to time-travel. Or when he pretends he doesn’t know who your crush is just for you to see she’s not all that.
Klaus & Ben are both pretty shitty to each other. And they only have each other.
Benny is a bossy guy. He likes to tell Klaus what to do, what he’s done wrong, how shitty he is. He fucking forces himself in his body (hello everyone who is hating on Allison this season), Klaus says he feels violated. Later Ben is waiting for him to fall asleep so he can fucking steal his body and Klaus has trouble getting him out.
We see Ben deciding to not help Klaus, but every time Klaus goes against his wishes he fucking bullys him into listening to him os he fucking forces him to do what he wants.
Benny is exacly a pushy guy towards Klaus. He would totally use what he knows about Klaus to make him submit.
Klaus don’t want to share Ben with the others. Ben wants Klaus to obey him.
That’s the way they fucking love each other.
And when we get to Sparrow Ben, all this shit, his shit, is everywhere.
He’s also manipulative, bossy, pushy, bitchy and fucking selfish.
We talk a lot about how he “didn’t care” about his siblings deaths, but we don’t talk about how dead Ben makes Klaus’ panic attack about how he feels trapped. to a guy who’s kidnapped and being tortured lol.
The difference between Sparrow and Brelly Ben is not about how bitchy or selfish or mean they are. It’s about c o n f i d e n c e.
Sparrow Ben is afraid of showing himself. Ben6 is not, because he is fucking dead and has only one person to judge him and this person is Klaus who no one takes seriously. (And who he knows love him no matter what)
Sparrow Ben was once number one and for some reason (that I’m sure we’ll see next season) he was demoted. He has a portrait of him on the wall to remind him of who he could’ve been. He feels like a failure and is trying to show his father, and himself, he actually deserves to be number one, to lead.
He fucking hates himself. He’s full of shame. He probably feels like no one would love him.
You know when someone with rejection issues fucking sabotages their chance of getting close to people for them to not have a chance to be rejected? Yeah, that’s Ben2 dealing with the umbrellas.
Ben2 thinks he needs to earn affection, so of course he freaks out when those strangers seem to love him for nothing. And of course his impostor’s syndrom gets worse when they keep comparing him to some perfect ghost.
And then we have Klaus.
Who tells him all of the shitty things about Ben6. Things that are true about Ben2 as well.
When Ben2 points out that those reasons for him to love Ben6 are all bad things, the point is not really that those are bad things. These are his things. Things that no one loves about him.
And that’s why he opens up to Klaus, because Klaus seems to be able to love not his perfect (and nonexistent) self, but all those flaws that haunt him.
Klaus is looking for belonging, that’s why he feels at peace in the void. He’s always felt out of place. Guess who also longs for belonging and feels out of place? Benny Boy 2.0
I personally see a way healthier potential in Ben2 and Klaus’ relationship than Ben6 and Klaus’ simply because I don’t feel like Ben2 has this much power over Klaus. And Klaus is unable to control his access to the world just as much.
And again, I get how Ben6 could only influence Klaus from all the world and nothing else. And I get why lonely Klaus wouldn’t like to share Ben6 with the world. But I’m dying to see how Ben2 and Klaus will deal with each other sober.
after all I believe they are soulmates and Ben2 and Ben6 have the same soul.
#look at me hiding a#horrance#dynamics analysis#in a#Ben Hargreeves#tua s3 theories#and yes i dont think sparrow ben is that bad at all#i can totally emphatize with him#a lot#sparrow ben#umbrella ben#the umbrella academy#tua#klaus hargreeves#klaus x ben#tua season 3#tua s3 spoilers
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you want me to forgive my parents? the thing that killed luther hargreeves?
#this is a Joke obv#i’m writing a tua analysis on manipulative parents and i’m blown away by how much hold reggie has on his children. ouchie#luther hargreeves#reginald hargreeves#the umbrella academy#tua
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Ok so I’ve been thinking about Five and Delores recently and I honestly find the whole concept of Delores absolutely fascinating. I wanted to post this before season three in case I get contradicted and all of this work was for nothing
So today I present to you:
Why I think that Number Five can still be aroace and have loved Delores
An essay on comphet by me, a bisexual who is procrastinating the work he actually has to do and stayed up way too late for this
So I’m going to be talking about Five’s sexuality, a very controversial topic of which I could end up pissing off at least one person whilst discussing. So a little disclaimer: y’all don’t have to listen to a word I say. We can all have different headcanons. I just request that you please read the entirety of this before you reply
Anyways
Five does not have a canon sexuality as of when I’m writing this so it is therefore entirely up to interpretation
Here’s mine
A lot of people who argue Five can’t be aroace often point out that he had a romantic relationship with Delores or feel that saying Five is aroace undermines the relationship that he had with her. I’m here to say that that isn’t necessarily true. In fact, in my opinion, it could make their relationship more faceted and interesting if it wasn’t a romantic relationship
To me at least
Firstly, I don’t think Five ever explicitly states what his relationship to Delores was other than saying they were ‘together for over thirty years’ when Klaus has a brief discussion with him about romantic and sexual relationships. Now, this does heavily imply that they were in some sort of romantic relationship however, it could also be taken as them being partners in a more platonic sense because Five mentioning it seems more prompted by Klaus claiming him to have been alone (and Five feeling semi comfortable enough to take that as an opportunity to open up to him) more than anything else.
Secondly, (and here’s my main argument) their entire relationship will always be based off Five’s perception of how certain relationships work. If Five believes that him and Delores were in a romantic relationship then that can only be based on the way he perceives romantic relationships or more accurately, the way a sheltered thirteen year old perceives romantic relationships. And as Delores is an extension of Five himself, she will always have the same subconscious values and feelings that he has, as well as with him being trapped in The Apocalypse, he couldn’t have been told differently by anyone else.
All of how he sees romantic relationships is going to be based off the limited knowledge of what he saw around him. Majority of this would have been from late-nineties/early-2000s media as well as (and mostly) older literature that he was taught in class or burnt up books, magazines and newspapers in the wreckage of The Apocalypse.
Five didn’t have a very good model of what a healthy, loving, romantic relationship looked like, growing up. And he didn’t really have anyone that he could have fallen in love with other than his siblings (eek.) His two real life references for what a romantic relationship could look like would have been his father and robot mother; and his brother and sister unhealthily projecting their repressed puberty feelings onto each other due to their isolation from the rest of the world
Robot Grace was essentially a maid to Reginald and not a real romantic interest so I highly doubt that he ever saw them as being in a romantic relationship despite them both being his ‘parents’. This is backed up by the way that Diego reacts to finding out that real Grace and Reginald were dating in the 60s
Reginald (although I doubt that he would have wanted the Hargreeves to fall in love and distract from saving the world) seems like the kind of man to have very old-fashioned values that a man and a woman fall in love and then they get married. And all of the Hargreeves would have been influenced by that somewhat by what media he let them consume. As well as this, we have a very heteronormative society and back in 2002 the access to information wasn’t void but it wasn’t excessive either
Five, having a curious mind and always striving to understand everything, probably did have some idea on different relationships and sexualities but he still would have had limited access to those resources. He could very easily be aroace (or any other sexuality for that matter) but during his years at The Academy, had such little eduction on the matter that he couldn’t truly figure himself out. I doubt he would have known about sexualities other than being straight, gay or bi and could have had the thought process of ‘I’m not attracted to men, so I must be straight,’ or ‘I’m not attracted to women so I must be gay,’ or even ‘I’m attracted to both equally (equally not attracted) so I must be bi.’ He could have also had such little interest in romantic relationships that he just didn’t put that amount of thought into it/thought that everyone had the same internal nonchalance about it but that some people were just more externally excited about the prospect than others
His access to this kind of information would have decreased when he landed The Apocalypse, partly because there was no one else there to give him the information and partly because a lot of books containing said information would have been destroyed. That’s not to say they would have all been destroyed because obviously Viktor’s autobiography survived, but a large amount of them would have been destroyed.
Now, Five, as we’ve seen, is often described by the fandom as being a magpie in the way that he mimics the behaviour of those around him as a survival mechanism. Five, obviously knows what love is, and I have no doubt that what he felt for Delores was love, but for someone who, was separated from society at a young age and has a tedious reference for what romantic love looks like, it could be quite difficult for him to distinguish between romantic and platonic/familial love. Delores was very much created by Five as a coping mechanism to slow his impending insanity. It wouldn’t be far fetched for him to have created Delores and as he slowly slipped into believing she was real, he ended up developing a love for her -which could have been platonic/familial love- but based off of his knowledge of ‘when a man and a woman are in love they must be in a romantic relationship’ he analysed his own feelings of love and went ‘hey, this must be what romantic love is!’
And Delores wouldn’t be able to say any different because she wouldn’t know any different because she lives inside Five’s headspace
Essentially what I’m saying is that Five spending his teens (and entire life) in isolation with his only companion being a person who he made up, would realistically hinder his own sexual exploration and due to limited resources, could cause him to misinterpret his own feelings of platonic/familial love for romantic love. Meaning that with Delores he could have ended up subconsciously or maybe even intentionally mimicking the traditional heterosexual romantic relationship with his own interpretation of what he’s been taught is what happens when man and woman love each other, as a way of experience some semblance of the life he was missing/be able to live semi-in-denial of his suffering on occasion. Therefore, Five (and Delores by extension) could still be aroace and have been in a relationship
Five clearly loved Delores (and we know that he does love people in a platonic/familial way because his entire character/motivation is based off his love for family) and he clearly needed her but it’s never specified what their love entailed, and therefore their relationship could have been based off of a child’s misunderstanding of how romantic relationships work. They could have still been life long partners without loving each other romantically. Five could still love her deeply and strongly and in a meaningful way without loving her romantically. They could have still technically been in a romantic relationship if both parties (singular party technically) believed that they were.
Five could still not experience romantic or sexual attraction and still have loved Delores. He does it with his family every single day
And obviously this logic of Five not being able to explore his sexuality and having limited resources for that could also apply to him having any sexuality. I’m not denying that. I’m just using it as a way to show that him and Delores could still have loved each other and had a relationship that was just as important as a romantic one without it actually being romantic
Thank you for coming to my Ted talk
#reminder that yall dont have to agree with me on this#i just wanted to share my opinion and analysis#there arent any s3 spoilers in this btw#tua#the umbrella academy#five#delores#number five#five meta#louie says shit#aroace five#long post
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