#[ holy heck it's almost what he says in canon I'M YELLING ]

[despairforme]

WHY DO YOU HURT.

you're choking on how much you have to try       you have tried. you have carried the weight of the world on your shoulders and accepted more responsibilities than you have ever wanted, even intended to gain. it isn't crushing - you are strong enough to hold it - but you are choking. you don't know what to do with it. you don't know where it goes, how to move this weight everyone knows you can hold onto, and do you even want to get rid of it? Never. You would not give this to - force this on - anyone else. but you /can't/. but you are choking on it. your body will hold it up even when you lose all the air in your lungs, and your footing, and your courage. it does not mind choking you. it seems almost designed to do so. if you weren't wrung out you wouldn't be doing this thing properly.

[in-tua-deep]

Hi! Ok so I'm totally taking you up on your offer and gonna send in some stuff! So, I did a rewatch recently and took a few notes (mostly following 5 bc his concept and interactions are just so fascinating to me) and I noticed some stuff! 1] none if the kids have practically ANY physical interaction unless it's a fight or Allison and Vanya. Idk about you, but to me, that implies an oddly formal relationship even tho they're family and makes 5 and the handler that much stranger (1/?)

(2/?) And gives it that much of a contrast. I think someone on here counted that she touches him like 20 times or something? Idk BUT 2) there is such a clear divide between the “older” and “younger” siblings bar Diego and Klaus that it almost feels like 2 different families at times and it’s really interesting! 3) only 3 siblings have canon PTSD flashbacks/visions if we exclude Vanya during her breakdown: 5 and Klaus obviously, but also Allison, which is really interesting and plays into how

(3/3) Her growth bc of Claire. 4) 5 had to see his dead siblings, we know this, but he was also the one holding the cloth over Allison’s neck when Vanya attacked her, which is a horrifying detail but I love it. 5) there were 2 extra seats at the dining table in the flashback of all the kids! It’s probably not important, but with the shows attention to detail I can’t help but wonder. Also I’m sorry I just completely dumped on you but I wanted to know your thoughts 😅😅 that and I love your metas

yeAH my sister pointed out to me at one point that the Hargreeves familiarity with violence was alarming in that a lot of their physical interactions with one another were… violent. Diego fighting with Luther at the funeral. Klaus smacking Five across the face at the eyeball place. Luther choking Klaus. Luther choking Vanya. Ben punching Klaus. Like genuinely a concerning amount of their interactions with one another involve some form of violence oof and none of them really apologize for any of it either. It’s accepted and made to seem almost normal which says all manner of bad things about their family dynamic rip

BUT they also have interactions I feel are at odds with that - Vanya taking care of Five’s arm, Diego tying up Klaus to detox, Klaus attempting to comfort Luther even after literally just being smacked around by him, Diego with Klaus at the vet bar, Klaus and Five’s conversation on the steps of MeriTech where Five tells Klaus about Dolores - just these soft in between moments where they look after or confide in one another

and all of those moments are private, they’re one on one whereas in a group they tend to fight and put up walls and argue which says to me that collectively the family wasn’t allowed to show weakness (thanks Reggie) and so they fight in order to protect their weak points before anyone can attack them

there’s like, the four A’s of how people handle conflict and one of those is aggression. It’s attacking because you feel like if you aren’t on the attack then you’re the one being attacked. It’s raising your voice and being the aggressor and starting conflict because you’re trying to protect yourself, because you’ve learned that it’s kill-or-be-killed and if you aren’t on the offense then you’re being hurt (i know there’s avoid and appease and i can’t remember the other one off the top of my head whoops)

so what i’m saying is that when there’s witnesses, when there’s a group, they’re on the offensive from the start. But alone, there’s a little more wiggle room for weakness. Alone is at night when there’s no training left in the relative safety of their own rooms. Alone with one other person is private, and privacy is safety in a house like that.

So there’s this paradoxical roughness and softness with one another, they were in competition with each other no doubt but they’re also family. Reginald pitted them against one another, but there’s no possible way to keep walls up ALL the time, you know?

but yeah i have a lot of feelings about the kids interactions with one another to say the least u picked a topic i like to ramble about as is clear from all this text and i didn’t even talk about the handler and how i feel like her touch was with the primary motivation to make Five uncomfortable and to punish him for his rebellion

okay there is more to this ask and this response is going to get so long I can already tell sorry in advance

and yeah the divide between the siblings with ‘older’ and ‘younger’ siblings is interesting!! Luther-Diego-Allison are one-two-three and are sort of purposefully portrayed as the older siblings. I definitely think Luther and Allison were off in their own little world as kids and they were definitely the golden children, the good kids, the ones who didn’t really question their father and avoided a lot of punishments. They were set apart from the rest of the family - and I think a lot of that was on purpose.

Because Reginald Hargreeves pitted these children against one another, in a move that honestly was smart even as it speaks to the fact that he’s a horrifying human being: because if there is discord among the ranks and rivalries and pettiness then the kids aren’t banding together against the true threat in the household - they’re going at one another’s throats instead of Reginald’s. The rivalry between Luther and Diego is probably the clearest portrayed tbh but Five was clearly also held up as someone to beat, someone who was competition (”he ADAPTED”)

so it’s almost like there are three groups really - the ‘good’ kids, the middle kids, and the disappointments. You have Luther and Allison at the top, Diego and Five and maybe Ben in the middle (and Five is only in there because he’s too headstrong, too willful to be at the top because Reggie doesn’t appreciate those that can think for themselves), and then you have Klaus and Vanya way down at the bottom. And there’s crossover relationships between the tiers (Diego and Luther’s rivalry, Five and Vanya’s solidarity, Klaus and Ben being bros etc.) but they were divided up on purpose tbh

alright moving on i could yell about how reginald fucked up a bunch of perfectly good kids all day lmao but

Allison is such an interesting character in general??? like she’s not even in my top three for the show but damn if tua doesn’t have some seriously interesting characters in the show hot damn like her journey from petulant and manipulative child familiar and comfortable with violence to an adult trying desperately to piece her family back together and prove to herself that she can be the good mother she desperately wants to be to Claire

i feel like i yell an awful lot about luther and allison for someone who has them towards the bottom of their list of favs tbh whoops

also GOD how dare you remind me of Five’s Extra Trauma regarding that scene holy heck like is wasn’t enough he had to find his siblings dead bodies in the apocalypse he also has to press his hands to his sister’s throat and literally see the life fade from her eyes as they rush to save her?? like shit man and that’s a concept that i haven’t seen anyone really do anything about as well like actually @ authors who aren’t me bc i have a dozen other aus to write on top of my various ideas, someone please address this

also do you think that’s the reason that Five initially agrees to killing Vanya at the bowling alley?? because he’s thinking about Allison’s blood hot against his hands and he missed the entirety of the apology/Vanya freaking out scene???? I mean even though I yell about Five’s motivation being his family I don’t think it was out of character for him to turn on Vanya because in his mind stopping the apocalypse has become so entwined with saving his family that they might as well be the same goal

if it helps though i don’t think five would ever actually kill Vanya even if he did okay the plan like look the boy could have jumped behind vanya himself and snapped her neck like did you WATCH the fight scene in Griddy’s holy shit but he does Not do that because he doesn’t want his sister to die and he especially doesn’t want to be the one to kill her and that’s the tea on that

alright where was i

HMMM i dunno if there was any significance to the bigass table other that i mean,, technically there are two other family members?? There’s Grace and Pogo if you count them, but i mean otherwise I think it’s just a feature of a mansion to have a bigass dining room table that can’t possibly fit the entire family

so maybe it was a statement about Reginald not considering Grace and Pogo to be members of the family and excluding them

or maybe it’s just a rich people table lmao

but i really enjoyed all your thoughts and observations 10/10 feels free to yell at me again ;3c

I will admit that i’m a bit of sham because i’ve only seen the series like,, one and a half times?? like once all the way through and then watching the first few episodes again and then jumping around the random points to fact check or other things oops but i do plan on rewatching sometime when i actually have free time to spare!! only a few weeks until the end of the school year oof