#and i do use it i have no qualms/visceral negativity but i think it's something i do for them to use a word that they recognise

[variousqueerthings]

really been exploring the concept of aplatonic, but i do worry it'll alienate people from me... it's just the sense that the way i perceive people and my relationships with them as important comes from something that is not unemotional, but so outside of anything i have ever really been able to understand via dominant concepts. i've been exploring the limitations and vagueness of a word like love for myself and come up still very confused and distanced from it. so now i start to wonder what is it i do "feel" and does it even need to be calculated and defined so particularly? but in the meantime aplatonic concepts do seem to be exploring this in ways i dont see elsewhere in queer spaces, never mind more mainstream. it's interesting. it deserves some thinking about

[hognosesnakehalloweenfest]

Oct 2: Returning Home

By Meridies (meridies on ao3) CW: (Non-Explicit) sexual content, referenced death, drowning, suicide mention (breif), alcohol mention Sarah and I sat down for drinks on the second day of fall. The tavern was quiet, but the darkness was loud. I was drinking a beer, a man’s drink. Sarah had fruit juice in front of her. She had asked for something with no alcohol.

“I’m trying to be sober,” she explained. “I spent four weeks in rehab this summer, you know.”

I felt bad, then, for asking her out for drinks, but we hadn’t seen each other in months. I set my beer down and asked her how she was doing.

“Better. I think getting clean was good for me— I’m working at the library downtown now. And I’m seeing someone.”

“Who?”

A syrupy smile. “Charlie. You remember Charlie Davenport?”

I couldn’t remember a thing about Charlie Davenport, but Sarah was enthralled, so I asked, “Is he nice?”

“I think he wants to sleep with me,” she said. “We went swimming down by Craig’s Point last week, and he…”

But I stopped listening. Craig’s Point was the lake by the quarry. Someone had drowned there last year, and it was the town’s biggest scandal for a week until Elsie Bates was caught slipping out of William Hogg’s house in a little lacy thing during the dead of night. But the kid— Frank— was still dead, long after the town had forgotten about him.

I interrupted her. “I thought the lake was still closed off?”

“He pressured me into skinny dipping.” Sarah hadn’t heard me. “I thought I was going to sleep with him, but I’ll see him next week, so maybe…”

I remembered watching the boats haul hooks through the water until they dragged up Frank’s body. He was bloated and stiff. I wanted to feel what his skin felt like after it had absorbed all that water, but I never got close. No one touched him except for the paramedics, who told us all to back away.

Sarah waved a hand in front of my face. “Hello? Anyone home?”

“Someone died in that lake,” I said, “You shouldn’t have gone swimming there.”

She shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t really give a damn.”

Well, I did. “It’s disrespectful to his memory.”

Frank had been in my algebra class in sophomore year, a burly guy with shoulders like logs and eyes set into his face like whorls of wood. The night after his death was announced, I had stared at my ceiling in darkness and thought about how much water he must have drunk before he died. He must have been drunk on it.

“They say he killed himself,” Sarah said nonchalantly.

The thought made me nauseous. “Maybe he fell.”

“Rough way to go.” She sipped at the dregs of her drink. “See, this is the problem with staying in one place— you’re so obsessed with history. You need to learn how to let things go.”

I wondered why Sarah refused to admit to the power of the water. She had to know it, better than anyone.

Sarah grew tired of my moping and hauled me up by the arm, muttering something about history under her breath. “Exposure therapy,” she said, “We’re going swimming.”

I could hear the lapping of the lake before I saw it through the sparse trees, black as ink. The horizon stretched and faded into night mist. Sarah stripped her shoes, her jacket from her skin, and looked back at me.

“Valerie,” she said, voice a knife’s edge, “You’re not really scared, are you?”

I pulled my sweater off, unhooked my bra, and slid down my pants. Sarah was half naked, gooseflesh rising. I could see the paleness of her chest beneath the distorted water.

“Giardia,” I blurted. “Legionnaires Disease.”

“Conspiracy theories,” she teased. “Come under with me.”

I kept my mouth closed underwater. I could feel the water sliding fingers up my legs, to my thighs, to the quiet spaces inside me that had a breath of their own. Sarah struck out from the shore. She was grinning, hair damp. I took a deep breath and plunged beside her.

-

Two nights later I found myself with Eli, an acquaintance from many years ago who had just returned from the Peace Corps in Ukraine. We had no reason to see each other except for sex, which we had in his bed, his kitchen counter, and then on the creased sofa in front of the television. He looked up at me and said baby, you’re so good, you’re so good for me, and I thought, all men are the same.

I finished washing up in the bathroom. We drank beers together in silence while watching a sordid American drama, and then it was time to leave. No, thank you, I will drive myself home. Yes, I’m fine. I’ll see you later, I will, I promise.

I could feel the places Eli had touched me, his hands and fingers moving inside of my body. Something deep and lonely inside me ached as I drove, and without realizing, I found myself taking the left turn when the right led home— taking me to the waterside. The thing that breathed and pulsed had no voice, so I spoke for it.

“Is anyone there?”

The quarry remained silent.

“Give me a sign,” I said. “I’ll return if you do.”

Sarah told me I was obsessed with history, that I needed to learn how to let things go. But I felt my body responding to the water the same way it had responded with Eli. I thought that Frank was the first and last good man I had ever slept with, and I owed him something I could never give.

After his body was found, his parents had moved out of town. But I heard them speak about the incident only once. He was a sweet boy. Bring him home. Bring him home to us. Their house now stood empty at the corner of Fletcher Avenue and Second Street.

That night I thought about Frank, the blue of his lips. I tasted the quarry water in my teeth, felt Eli’s palms in between my legs. Baby, you’re so good. So good for me.

-

Frank died three summers ago; that was the summer I first had sex with a woman, her tongue underneath mine, in the bathhouse of the community pool. I slept around after Charlotte left for college. I tasted more tongues, more women, and naturally, I tasted more men.

“A girl is supposed to sleep around,” Sarah reassured me, after the first pregnancy scare. “Stick with women if you’re so concerned.”

Before looking at the result of the pregnancy test, I stared at myself in the mirror and thought about what I would name the unborn thing in my stomach. It would have been the size of a cherry at that point, and I was embarrassed to admit that I did not know who would have fathered it. But the test was negative, and I felt a sick, swooping sense of relief.

Autumn swelled and ripened into full bloom after I slept with Eli, and cold weather encroached upon the edges of town. The first rainfall happened. I cracked my windows open to breathe the sweet, thick air into my lungs. Water slipped inside my home with slim fingers, running in rivulets down my walls. When the storm ended, I saw the marks it left behind, white against dark dust.

And I dreamed about him, the night after the rainfall vanished.

He was rising, dripping, from the lake. Leathery and stiff and slick with black slime, more viscous than oil. Gills opened and closed at his neck. They were at the spot where I had wanted to be kissed once, before any man or woman had touched me. Frank stood, staring at me with filmy eyes. I stared back in silence.

He wanted something, I realized. This was the sign I had asked for a week ago. What he wanted was for me to return.

-

I did not tell Sarah about the afternoons I spent at the lakeside of Craig’s Point during the long month of October. Besides, she and Charlie Davenport were together more often than not. I heard about her comings and goings from other people. Eli asked to see me again; I did not answer.

I thought about Frank the more I was at the lake. We had never been particularly close; he knew my name, and I knew he was good at algebra. But he had gotten to know my body in a way no one else had— intimately, viscerally. It was the week before his body was found. He had grabbed my arm as school let out and said one word: please.

I was young, but I understood what he was asking for. I was only slightly ashamed to say that I had no qualms. He was inexperienced, and so was I, both messy and complicated. But he was a good man.

I still thought about that please from time to time. What he was really asking for, and what I had failed to give. Please, please, please.

As the sun was setting that evening, I heard a squeaking in the woods. It was high-pitched, and I followed the sound to its source. I nearly stepped right on it. Someone had skinned a squirrel alive and pinned it to the ground. The thing was still writhing. I stared half in awe, half in disgust at the twitching, red-white sinew which never should have seen sunlight.

It would have been kind to kill it, but all I could do was stare in sick misery and slowly back away. When I was by the lakeshore, I could not hear its sounds anymore. All I could hear was the water.

“Did you do that?” I asked out loud. No one responded, but I imagined that I heard Frank’s voice. Please.

“There are better ways to get my attention.” The water slithered towards me, mouth open and hungry. “I keep returning, like I said I would.”

I imagined him then beneath the surface of the water, eyelids slitted and covered with a thin film. He might have blinked at me; he might have reached a hand out to touch my skin. He might have wrapped a hand around my ankle, tugged until I followed him into the depths.

The sky was smeared with orange. When I went back to my car, the squirrel had gone silent.

-

Sarah wanted to have drinks with me again another night. This time she had ordered something with alcohol, peach schnapps and fruit juice. She didn’t seem concerned by the slip-up.

“Charlie and I had sex,” she proclaimed, “I’ve been meaning to tell you for ages. Where have you been?”

“Thinking,” I answered.

She reached out. “Where have you been for the last week? I went to your house but you weren’t there. It isn’t smart to leave all your windows open, you know.”

“I’ve been at the lake.” Before her expression had the chance to shift, I blurted, “Sarah, do you believe in ghosts?”

Her hand tightened around the glass. She set it down slowly, tenderly. “No,” she said, but it was a reflexive response. “I thought I saw one once, but I’ve never seen anything else like it, and I know I’ll never see him again.”

“Tell me.”

“I saw him the night I went to the hospital,” she began. “I was half dead, dying on the floor. But I opened my eyes to see a man standing over me. His skin was blacker than ink, and his eyes were white spots inside his head. I knew at once that he was death, and he was going to take me with him. He put his hand right here, right on my shoulder, and the other hand at my waist. He touched me— everywhere. And we danced, while I was dying.” Sarah turned and faced me. “I woke up in the hospital and asked about him, but no one had ever seen someone like that, and the doctor said that I must have hallucinated. But it was real. Realer than anything I’ll ever know.”

Then she laughed, high and bitter. “It’s okay if you don’t believe me. No one ever does.”

And at once, I wanted to ask her about who she really was, beneath it all. Beneath Charlie Davenport’s touch and his pick-up truck and the layers of skin she put on each day. Beneath the alcoholic drinks and the man who had danced with her while she drank herself to death and that cold, frightened look in her eyes. I wanted to peel back her skin, to see the ugly, squirming parts of her that curled away from sunlight.

“I believe you,” I said. Something in my voice must have made her believe me, too.

She rolled her glass around beneath the yellow tavern lights. “I wonder if I’ll see him the next time I’m close to death.”

“Sarah,” I said uneasily, “You should stop drinking.”

“I will,” she said, “I know I’ve got to. It’s the poison, you see. I’ve got to bleed the poison out.”

“Sarah, you’re not making any sense.”

“You and history,” she said dizzily, “You and your fear. You’ll be stuck with it forever unless you suck the venom out. I’ve got to bleed the poison from my veins. And you need to cut the rotten flesh out to heal the rest.”

-

Frank was waiting for me at the quarry. I was stumbling, half drunk. Sarah’s words echoed in my head. She had said it only once, yet it was burned into me.

“You’re here,” I said, “I knew you would be.”

He blinked at me. I pulled my jacket off, my shirt, every inch of clothing. It was cold, intimate. He watched me from the water. I could feel my heart beating in my chest, in my gut. It rang through me like a distant call.

“I’m here,” I said, “I’m here.”

His skin was slippery and bloated beneath my fingers, stiff to the touch, like I had imagined it would be. His fingers were webbed and translucent. When I drew my hand back, the same plasticky, taut skin was between my fingers as well.

I knew what Frank needed, what his body needed. I thought about touching my lips to the gills that pressed open and shut on the side of his neck. He needed something only I could give to him, and it was something that had been given to me many times over, slick and drenched in warmth. That writhing, slimy thing that resides in the tender part of a soul. Frank needed someone to come home to him. I would create that home.

“I’m dead,” I said. I knew it was the way to offer myself to him. “I’m rotting inside. Just like you.”

Frank’s face floated beneath me, drained and still. I stood and did not move as the swollen, slippery skin crawled up my legs, covered my thighs, and breached my body until we were both those awful dark things that crawl in the depths, serpents, reptiles, together.

Please, I thought. I could feel my own pulse ringing through the stone. The quarry breathed for me. It spoke with his voice. Cut the rotten flesh from my skin. Let me come home to you. Please.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Meridies is a 19 year old writer from California currently studying creative writing. They enjoy knitted sweaters, pumpkin carving, and swimming in potentially haunted lakes. They are very excited to be part of Snake’s Halloween Fest!

[dogbearinggifts]

Since Vanya was always kept out of everything and people were made to believe that Reginald only adopted six children, how easily could people have believed the contents of Vanya's book? Do you think the popularity or people's general opinion of Reginald and the siblings were significantly affected by it? If so, how dramatic do you think was the change in the public's perception? What do people possibly think about Reginald and the siblings now? Thank you very much!

Since Vanya was always kept out of everything and people were made to believe that Reginald only adopted six children, how easily could people have believed the contents of Vanya's book?

You know, I’ve thought on the flashbacks a bit more after reading this ask, and I’ve realized that Reginald doesn’t deny her existence so much as he fails or refuses to acknowledge it. He snubs her by omission in the bank flashback, but he makes no effort to keep her out of sight while they’re standing on that rooftop. He forbids her to join the family photo, but he doesn’t lock her away while it’s taken so the photographer can’t see her. And when all of the kids were infants, we see seven nannies pushing seven carriages—so the existence of seven Hargreeves children would still be within living memory. I think it’s highly likely that at some point after they began superhero work, this discrepancy was brought up. Maybe the tween magazine correspondent who wrote that “Getting Real with The Umbrella Academy” piece we see framed on Reginald’s wall asked them “Say, don’t you have another sister? Whatever happened to her?” to which they responded that she didn’t have any powers. Since the world was enamored with the young superheroes and what they did, I think this correspondent would’ve had little interest in asking further questions about this mysterious seventh sibling. Prior to the publication of Vanya’s book, I think there would have been interviews and other documentation confirming the existence of a seventh Hargreeves child, but the press probably didn’t take much interest in this fact until her book was released.

Do you think the popularity or people's general opinion of Reginald and the siblings were significantly affected by it? If so, how dramatic do you think was the change in the public's perception?

I think that would differ, by and large, from reader to reader. The best real-world example I can think of is the movie The Social Network, about Zuckerberg and all the drama surrounding the creation of Facebook. Some people who saw that movie took it as a fairly accurate account of the shady rise of Facebook and Zuckerberg; others took it with a grain of salt; some believed it was mostly embellished; some conceded that it was true to the spirit if not to all the facts; the real people whose lives it dramatized were angry over how they were portrayed; and some people just didn’t think it was an enjoyable movie to watch. (I’m in the last group. The How It Should Have Ended version was a much better movie.)

When it comes to Vanya’s book, I think public opinion would’ve been similarly divided. Some would’ve believed everything Vanya wrote, while others would’ve found parts (or most) of it unbelievable. I think there would’ve been some readers who were big fans of Vanya’s siblings and dismissed her book as a morally dubious ploy to profit off their fame; but I think there also would’ve been other readers who had always had their suspicions about the eccentric billionaire who bought seven kids and trained them to kill. Some readers might not have believed her claims of constant bullying from her siblings, but they might have believed the parts about the child abuse. We know her book was a bestseller for a time, but I don’t think there was any general public consensus on what to think of the contents.

If allegations of child abuse were ever brought to Reginald, I think he would’ve laughed them off, or pointed out that many of his children had gone on to great success and independence. Some would have taken this as an admission of guilt; some would have taken it as a sign that Vanya exaggerated her claims. Allison probably would have been interviewed about the more explosive things Vanya wrote about her family, but her publicist probably would have instructed her to keep her responses as diplomatic as possible. I don’t think she would have refused to comment at all—she would have wanted to refute some of Vanya’s most damaging claims—but rather than a categorical denial, she might have said something like, “There are two sides to every story—and in this case, there are seven. Vanya told her side, and I’d like to be given a chance to tell mine, when I’m ready.” Rumors would have flown every which way, but a response like that probably would have convinced her fans, at least, that Vanya had exaggerated some of her claims.

I think the most significant impact her book had was in sparking a debate. I think it would have raised questions in those who maybe hadn’t asked any before, and emboldened those who had already been questioning the wisdom of sending six young teenagers out to fight dangerous adult criminals. And those who were true believers in the Academy—maybe those who’d had a loved one saved by those kids, or who thought the basic idea of superheroes was good—probably would have dug in their heels and pointed to the angry reactions of her siblings as proof she exaggerated most, if not all, of her claims. I do think that, by and large, the public sympathized with what the kids had gone through in their childhoods, and I think they were probably horrified that no one ever said anything. Vanya probably hoped public sympathy would rest with her and her alone, but it likely extended to all her siblings and made Reginald the main object of disgust. Rather than focusing on Vanya’s exclusion from family life, as she intended, I’d be willing to bet a fair percentage of readers zeroed in on the claims of abuse and experimentation—in part because readers would have been more familiar with her siblings, and in part because “Dad would lead one of my siblings to the basement/lab/wherever the hell he conducted those experiments and they’d emerge hours later, completely broken” elicits a more visceral reaction than “I watched their missions from a distance, wishing I could be a part of it.”

What do people possibly think about Reginald and the siblings now?

Allison’s career apparently didn’t suffer too much after the book was published, but I’m sure there were at least some questions raised as to how she got to be where she was. Her public image probably took a hit, even if her bank account did not, because—well, it’s Hollywood. If producers think star power will help them sell tickets, they’ll keep casting that star regardless of whatever scandal is brewing. There are exceptions, of course, but by and large Hollywood is pretty amoral. The public might trust her less, and after the Rumor scandal it seems a good number of people saw her as the villain of Patrick and Claire’s story, but if Sgt. Cheddar’s reaction upon seeing her is any indication, people still enjoy her movies and have few qualms about seeing them.

I think that the initial reaction was sympathy for the siblings. The public would have read about all the horrible things Reginald put those kids through, and I think people would have pitied them. But over time, as more and more people read and discussed her book, and as more and more gossip rags published listicles of “The Most Messed-Up Things In Vanya Hargreeves’ Autobiography,” I think people would have paid more attention to the awful things she wrote about them. The negative press probably would have started with the tabloids, since they’re always out for a bit of good gossip and a tell-all book about the Umbrella Academy would have been red meat for them; but I think it also would have spread to book clubs, to groups of friends, and so on. We see that over time, interest in her book waned (her readings go from packed houses to one or two people over the course of the montage) because she’d spilled everything she had and left no room for a sequel. As interest waned, I think discussion would have tapered off, and whatever opinion people had formed of the Academy and Vanya’s view of it would have been what they held onto.

But I think the most devastating effects of her book were seen on a smaller scale. Patrick might have decided to watch Allison more closely after reading about her power abuse, leading to him seeing her Rumor Claire and subsequently to scandal and divorce. Eudora might have read about Diego taunting Vanya and started to see his jabs toward her in a more sinister light, leading in part to their bitter breakup. Luther probably felt as if he were at risk, if Vanya went into detail on his powers and weaknesses—not to mention the depression he likely fell into after reading that Vanya unequivocally blamed him for Ben’s death. After seeing his addiction, powers, and rotten childhood put on display for the entire world, Klaus might have ramped up his drug use to cope with the devastating impact that had on his mental health. Ben probably ranted for hours, if not days, at seeing his death discussed so publicly. And as Five read and reread that book over the years, it probably eroded his trust in the family he tried so hard to get back to—because if Vanya would make their private suffering so public, what else would his siblings do?