sisyphean-five

[sisyphean-five]

[sisyphean-five]

thinking a lot abt how each of the hargreeves’ powers is a stand-in for attributes one might take on when growing up in an abusive home.

luther’s superstrength: the unintentional capacity to harm. being used to a different standard of behavior, to the extent that you have to guard your movements because you might unintentionally harm someone, because you’re used to being swung at hard, and you’ve learned to emulate that behavior, to have such a tolerance to it that you don’t realize it can really hurt someone who doesn’t. you know it’s something you can’t just do, but you can’t not do it, because you can’t turn it off. it’s the only thing your body knows how to do.

see: luther’s body language, for most of the season. he doesn’t mean to destroy things, or hurt people, he just keeps stumbling into it, and has to guard himself against it. and… well. he gives into them. for a good reason, he tells himself, but he gives into them.

diego’s super-precision: an intended capacity to harm, one that you’re so comfortable with, that’s become so easy and natural, that you’re so used to using to guard against someone taking advantage of your vulnerability (which you’ve spent a lot of your childhood having done to you, or being told that it will be done to you), that it keeps slipping out of you when you feel slightly threatened. 

see: his verbal berating of luther and vanya and allison and, to an extent, eudora. he knows exactly where to hit them to make them feel humiliated or alone or angry or disrespected and he can’t help but keep digging and digging at them.

allison’s rumoring: manipulation of others into doing what you want, being who you want, and giving you what you want. something you learn to do because you learn that nothing good ever comes for free, and that if you want love, or success or safety, you’d better claw your way in and make people give it to you, because they won’t let you have it in any other way. or, if they would, the way to get to it is totally alien to you. you have no idea what it is, let alone how to engage with it. so you fall back on the manipulation, because it’s familiar, because at least you can do that.

see: all the shit she canonically does that the show doesn’t want us to think too hard about. rumoring herself a career, a husband (and potentially other lovers, but noticeably not luther), a child. 

klaus’s seeing ghosts: being haunted. literally, being haunted by what happened, or by the people that hurt you, to such an extent that those memories follow you everywhere, that they surround you, that you can’t escape them and find yourself unable to function in everyday life.

see: … i mean. the literal ghosts.

five’s time-traveling: trauma fucks with your relationship with time and space. you become hyper-aware of where you are, and where you have to go to get away from a situation the second it goes a way you don’t like. it happened fifty years ago or a day ago, it’s happening right now, it’ll happen tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that, and you have trouble telling the difference. and you can get as far away from trauma as you want physically or chronologically, but at any second, you can be sucked back into it mentally, or find yourself unable to get yourself out of a location when you need it the most.

see: five getting trapped in the future and the department store. five, having flashbacks to being trapped in the apocalypse. 

and of course the more obvious: because of this strange relationship with time, you feel like you’ve grown up so fast, when you haven’t at all. or you grow up, yet you’re still acting like a child.

see: five’s a physically-13-year-old who’s legally 29 and has a 29-year-old peer group, with a 58-year-old mind.

ben’s tentacles: trauma is ugly. trauma is scary. trauma is nausea-inducing. it’s going to burst out and leave a big mess whether you ignore it or indulge it. and you cannot control it as much as you want to be able to, and as much as everyone around you wants you to be able to, and it feels like it’s going to literally eat you from the inside out.

see: the siblings’ reaction to ben’s powers in the bank robbery. big dead-dove-don’t-eat vibes. 

vanya’s initial lack of power: having your agency stripped from you. being isolated, being made helpless and being taught to suppress. being overlooked and neglected.

and her power itself: an unstoppable storm of emotion that’ll consume everything in your life, because all those feelings you’ve been hiding for so long, that you’ve been taught to hide for your entire life, are on their way out, and you can’t stop it. 

yeah. so. it’s not a coincidence that their powers go on to fuck up their lives beyond traditional repair.

[sisyphean-five]

this post has me in shambles

[sisyphean-five]

You see, the biggest problem with this is that Five HAD a love story all along.

His love for his family has been THE very foundation of the show and what kickstarted the entire chain of events.

He spent 45 years in the apocalyptic wasteland because he loved them too much to give up.

He found them in every possible timeline.

He reversed time for them.

He became an assassin to get a shot, however small, at coming back to them.

He’s been through countless timelines, doing his best to save and protect them in every single one of them.

No matter how dire the situation, he always pushed to find a way to save his family. His devotion was stronger than anything and there was no line he wouldn’t cross for his siblings. No matter how self-destructive the cost, he sacrificed himself again and again just for a chance at reuniting with them and saving the world so they could live.

It was a destructive kind of love, yes, but also inspiring. I think it resonated with many people because love can be intense, we love and want to be loved with this kind of intensity and dedication.

So, to throw it all away for a romantic subplot that no one asked for is not only a huge disservice to Five’s character but also goes against everything he represents. We already knew he’s capable of love and that he loves deeply.

I don’t understand how the showrunner who worked on the series for 5+ years can say that Five had to have an arc like this. It doesn’t make sense. He already had a love story. Arguably, the most beautiful and deepest of them all. He didn’t need more, what he needed was to have it returned and to finally settle down after multiple lifetimes of putting his life on the line to keep his loved ones safe.

To say otherwise means that the writers fundamentally misunderstood what made Five a great character and what fans loved most about the show. It feels like a betrayal, because it is one. It proves that the creators not only misunderstood the core character of the show but also never paid attention to the fandom and its preferences.

There’s a difference between catering to the audience and what they ended up doing, which is a character assassination at its worst. And it’s not just the character who was ruined but also the entire premise of the show, the reason why fans loved it in the first place. There’s no coming back from something like this.

[sisyphean-five]

Five hargreeves commits more murders with his facial expressions than with his hands

[sisyphean-five]

Just the fact that they never mentioned in the show that Diego and Lila’s daughter’s full name is Grace Stanley Hargreeves shows you how much they just couldn’t give a shit on that storyline

[sisyphean-five]

"It was sort of the challenging texture of an oyster, but without any of that rich, complex, ocean flavour."

Robert Sheehan The Umbrella Academy Season 4 Promotional Tour

[sisyphean-five]

tua s4 spoilers

so to be clear did any one except steve blackman actually want this then 😭

[sisyphean-five]

hey! i will not be adding season 4 to the doc for multiple reasons

- i do think what happened this season was super out of character, but also the Whole season felt weird, not just the stuff that happened with five. even the soundtrack was lacking

- i think the very original idea for the season was to have one for each character so obviously things have changed and it seems more like they just want to be done with the show. i dont think it got the send off it deserved.

- its a passion project. when it comes down to it, if i dont think an analysis of season 4 is going to help me with realistic characterization, then theres no reason or drive for me to pursue that

this being said, the doc will still be updated! my original plan will still follow through. it just may take a while bc writing is energy and im always scraping the bottom of the barrel for that

[sisyphean-five]

five fanrnr

[sisyphean-five]

FIVE HARGREEVES being #done THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY — 3.01: Meet the Family (2022)

[sisyphean-five]

Not Five joining the CIA 💀

[sisyphean-five]

more rough scribbles

[sisyphean-five]

Klaus hargreeves come home

(Happy ptide month)

[sisyphean-five]

You need to lighten up, old man.

[sisyphean-five]

I’m relieved, actually. This time, everything goes. There’s no Commission, no leaping away. No life spent going mad with the desperation to see a familiar face.

[sisyphean-five]

The Umbrella Academy 3.09