#I hc that klaus ben and diego were close as kids but after ben died they got a bit distant with each other

[bisexualmultifandommess]

I love Umbrella Academy a lot but one thing I hated is how much distance they put between Diego and Klaus as the seasons went on. They were my favourite duo in the first season and they gradually got to a point where they didn’t even seem to like each other that much. Every season I’d hope for more scenes and then didn’t get any.

Their season 1 dynamic was great because it really did seem like despite finding him annoying and not liking his drug addiction that Diego really cared about Klaus and was protective of him. It also seemed like he was the only one in the family that actually seemed to check in on him throughout the years but in later seasons that was sort of forgotten.

I love the other duos the two of them have but their relationship was really special to me so I need to find some fics about them.

[kneworder]

okay one hc that I hold near and dear to my heart despite probably being wrong in canon: klaus and ben were not close before ben died. ben was the quiet kid who liked to read, klaus was loud and obnoxious ((mostly to drown out the ghosts but also bc it’s just How He Is)). they didn’t dislike each other, per se, and they definitely understood each other on a ‘they both hate their powers’ level, but personality wise? they just didn’t really click. there were moments of connection between them, but ben was way closer with vanya and especially five, and klaus was best friends with allison (in like a normal brother way, not a weird kind of way, lookin at you luther). but once ben died, they were forced together, and found they had a lot more in common than they thought.

(also ben no longer having to worry about their father’s abuse (and also only being able to talk to klaus) made him a lot more open and willing to crack jokes where he never would have before)

((i also like this hc bc it makes the siblings not believing klaus about seeing ben make a lot more sense, they would feel like he has no right to pretend to see a brother he was never real close to, and that ben wouldn’t just stick around just to be plastered to klaus at all times anyways))

(((also ben’s death pushed everyone apart and Allison and Diego definitely left like immediately after, so Klaus was 100% alone except for ben which means,,,,,, ben just said ‘you literally can’t get rid of me and also you’re the only person who can see me so now it is my Personal Mission to make you a functioning adult’ and then proceeded to hardcore underestimate klaus’ ability to ignore all of his advice)))

[b-rainlet]

Here it comes, the post that about two people have been waiting for:

Watching tua I saw a lot of parallels between Vanya and Luther, so much that I decided to make a little post about it (based on my knowledge after watching the show one time)

So let's look at them, shall we?

One of the first things I noticed is their clothing.

I saw a lot of people joking on how Vanya dresses like a gay (which I def support) but looking closer to her clothes, you can see that she mostly wears stuff that’s ill-fitting on her, baggy jeans and too big shirts. Plus, compared to for example Allison or Klaus she wears muted colours, nothing flashy or memorable (the only thing that stuck in my head was the suit and even that was -at first - a normal suit, nothing extra-ordinary. Someone else may have worn a dress, or even some jewellery with the suit, little things that catch the eye).

I think we can all agree that she doesn’t wanna attract any attention, she tries her best to hide herself, be it by blending into her surroundings by avoiding too colourful clothing or by actively hiding her form under too big clothes.

Luther tries more or less the same, although you can argue about how succesfull that is.

Luther is even more obvious about hiding his body, never taking of his coat and even wearing gloves to conceal his hands. He can’t really wear anything that’s big on him because he already is incredibly big (and probably has clothing made extra for him, made to fit) but I bet if he had the chance, he’d also wear baggy things to hide himself.

At the same time, his stuff also isn’t all too flashy (and as far as I remember, he always wears the same stuff? He doesn’t seem to have a big wardrobe).

In both Vanya and Luther’s case, their clothing style stems from low self-esteem. And they both have low self-esteem because of their father.

So while Vanya probably had to live with very low self-esteem since she was a child, due to being reduced to being ‘ordinary’ - and that being treated like it’s a bad thing - and Luther’s problems with his body most likely only started when he was transformed, both of those incidents were engineered and executed by their father.

(But you could argue that Luther seemed to have a very tense relationship with food even before that, binge-eating or not eating at all and feeling guilty about eatogn too much, so maybe he had body issues way before his transformation. But I’m not sure whether the show really intends to explore that, so I stuck to post-monkey body Luther).

(Also also Luther canonically hates his body enough to self-harm (the scars on his chest) and in an interview it was stated that he thought about suicide because of it, both of which are things Vanya can probably relate to but aren’t addressed in the show, so I’m leaving them out on her part).

The only other person I could see having similar problems with his body is Five (Allison and Klaus both seem to be comfortable and Diego calls his body a temple, so it’s save to say they are content how they are body-wise). Ben is dead so I don’t know whether you can say he even has a body. But Five - although surely not happy that his time traveling plans didn’t turn out as planned - seems to be more annoyed at people treating him like a child and not at himself for looking like that (Also his hair is really fly, I keep getting jealous of it)

Speaking of low self-esteem, did you notice something?

Looking back on the show I realized something: Luther and Vanya are both alone.

If you think about it, there aren’t a lot of people outside of their family any of them interact with. But the others do have people they know and they are close to that aren’t family.

Diego has Eudora and even though they don’t have a relationship anymore, they continue to be close to each other and Diego obviously trusts her a whole lot.

Allison had Patrick and Claire. Those two aren’t as prominent as Patch but nevertheless Allison shows that she loves her daughter a lot and at one point in life, seemed to have loved Patrick enough to marry him and have a child with him (there’s also the fact that they seem to have divorced because of Allison using her powers on Claire and not because they had problems as a couple).

Klaus....is a bit trickier. He doesn’t have anyone in the present timeline he seems to be really close to whose not one of his siblings, but he does seem to know a lot of people. He seemed to have a good relationship with the people in rehab, the paramedics seem to either already know him or took a liking to him real fast (I usually don’t high five my paramedics) and he seems to interact with loads of people and he’s had at least one boyfriend in the past (the guy who’s good at cooking).

Then there’s also Dave, who Klaus seems to have loved deeply, actively trying to get sober to summon him. Interesting how every non-familial relationship is immediately romantic

Five and Ben are a bit out of the loop but since one of them died and the other was alone for several years, they are definitely special cases.

And even then, Five had Delores to project a personality onto and have a relationship with to mimick the human interactions he sure as hell craved and he also spent some time working for the commission and it seems like he was well-liked there for his effiency (and the Handler seems to have a weird, creepy crush on him).

And what about Luther and Vanya? Well, Luther never left home and never had any contact with anyone except his father, Pogo and Grace (and even then, Reginald seemed to spend as little time as possible with his kids when it wasn’t about training and he seemed to have stopped training Luther at that point, Pogo is somehow only ever present to be a dick under the guise of mystery and I don’t remember any flashback with him really genuinely interacting with the kids or Luther and Grace may have been a good mom but she doesn’t really count as a human, does she now?)

(And from what you can see, she also doesn’t seem to interact with the kids a lot once they’re adults and mostly sticks to making food for them. Also Diego is obv her fave askalja)

And well, after the mission gone wrong Luther is supposed to spend the rest of his life on the moon, so there’s not a lot of possibility for him to socialize.

Vanya on the other hand has the best chances of starting a new and normal life with loads of friends since she was never required to dedicate her life to the academy like the others had to.

But what do we see of her before Leonard comes into the picture?

She lives alone, no mention of prior partners, no friends, the people who work with her in the orchestra don’t even know her name.....

(Granted, she does have a relationship with someone outside of her family during the first season but I don’t actually count that as a genuine relationship since Leonard only uses her).

The others also have all those added relationships established from the beginning, while Vanya has no one in the beginning and Luther continues to be completely dependant on his family concerning human interaction.

Which brings me to my next point: They both don’t have a real relationship with their family

The one who seems to get along best with everyone is Klaus. He has a good relationship with Diego, they have a lot of scenes together, he and Allison seem to get along, being the only two who actually hug each other and of course him and Ben are really close due to circumstances.

Diego has - as already mentioned - Klaus and also he’s close to Grace (something the others aren’t, even though they all are obviously very fond of her).

But Luther and Vanya are both kind of on the sidelines.

Vanya because she always was and her father encouraged that by not letting her train with her siblings (which I still think is stupid because she could’ve learned combat?? Both Klaus and Allison don’t have powers that grant them a lot of fighting skills and they were still trained how to to take out enemies, so why not Vanya, honestly). He didn’t let her get a tattoo, didn’t let her be on family portraits, her room was moved from being closer to her siblings to being up in the attic as far as I know, basically she was taught she isn’t part of this family.

And that shows in how little she really interacts with her siblings and how in all of those interactions she gets put down, mostly by Diego.

Then there’s Luther, who was part of the academy, who was granted all the things that Vanya couldn’t do and still he doesn’t have a better relationship with his family.

He was obviously closer to his father than his siblings and there’s a wedge between them based on the way his father favoured him over the others (good example is his relationship with Diego).

I personally also think that taking on the role of leader made him distance himself more from the others? Like, you obviously have a different relationship with your co-workers than your boss and I could see the others being cautious around him because what if he snitches on them? Also they obviously didn’t share his views on how good their Dad is and that obviously further divided them, although all of that is more of a hc since we don’t get a lot of general Luther flashbacks about him as a kid.

Notice how in all those scenarios Vanya is the one who deliberately chooses to push herself further away from everyone else whereas Luther doesn’t seem to have a choice about it. Even with their family, Luther doesn’t seem to get out of his role as the leader and genuinely tries to be there for his family even though it only makes matters worse whereas Vanya chooses to write her book (something that really breaks her relationship with Diego) even though she must’ve known about the consequences.

You can argue that Five and Vanya seems to have had a good relationship as kids but looking at the show Five really seems to not ‘belong’ anywhere, spending some time with Vanya, then Klaus, then Allison and Diego, then Luther and then he’s on his own again for some time....

He’s a bit like that one kid in school that doesn’t have a fixed freindgroup and just changes every other week, which makes sense considering that he spent a lot of time apart from his family (even longer than they spent without him) and he’s changed a lot due to that and probably needs to properly reconnect with the others first.

But who did I forget? Oh yeah, Allison.

See, I didn’t mention because Allison she’s another factor where Luther and Vanya parallel each other.

Allison is the only Hargreeves who seems to try and reach out for the two of them on several occasions.

We already see that both their relationships with Diego are tense but we also see that they both seem to click best with Allison.

Allison tries her best to include Vanya in the family again, telling her she belongs there and trying to be supportive when Vanya tells her she met someone (and later on going on a whole detective tangent because Leonard seems shady, that’s peak older sibling).

With Luther, there’s the romance subplot of course but even without that, Allison tries to comfort him about his body and the fact that everything he did was for naught (something none of the others by the way do when the chandelier drops on him. They all see his body, but only Allison tries to talk to him about it as far as I remember. Diego makes fun of it).

Seriously, Allison tries very hard to reach out to those two especially.

(And in the end, both of them end up pushing her out. Vanya by lashing out and hurting her and Luther by not listening to her repeatedly and locking up Vanya).

Both of them are also the most emotionally vulnerable.

Vanya is manipulated by Leonard easily because she desperate for love and approval, even though Leonard screamed ‘shady guy’ from a mile away, let’s be real.

And Luther was blinded so badly by his Dad’s teaching that even when he nearly died, he didn’t leave him and even when his father was dead, he kept acting exactly how Reginald would’ve wanted him to.

All the others don’t seem as perceptive, with Allison seeing through Leonard’s bullshit right away and Diego clearly stating what a monster their Father actually was (and even though all of them are affected by their childhood trauma, they all seem to realize that there was something traumatic happening at all, Luther never really got that far only after he found the unopened sample he had sent his Dad).

So basically, Luther’s and Vanya’s arcs have a lot of similarities that are probably 100% deliberate and they seem to go through a lot of the same stuff even though their original placement within the story (Number One versus Number Seven) seems to frame them as opposites.

And they are opposites, just thinking about how exactly they were isolated from their family shows that. But at the same time even though both their stories are happening on opposite sides, they always end up paralleling each other.

I like to say ‘Two sides of the same coin’

This is basically a long rambly post of me saying that I really think those two could help each other a lot and have an arc about growing closer together, especially considering something  @deweysdenouement has said:

Luther’s whole arc goes from believing your Father was just and always made the right decisions and being convinced that your life had a very specific purpose to learning that everything you thought was basically a lie and that you just wasted your time doing something completely useless because your Father couldn’t stand the sight of you (also your Father was abusive and what you suffered through was, in fact, abuse, and not justified in any way).

And Vanya goes from I am only ordinary and I will never be special in any way and therefore everyone is right to just brush over me and my feelings to I actually am the most powerful out of all of my siblings and I have a right to speak my mind.

(Basically from One to Zero and from Zero to One in one Season).