#people just hate to admit it because they're yaoINCEST

[tua-headedcalf]

thinking about how diego is orderly and five is chaotic, but diego craves chaos while five craves order. walk with me here...

i. diego is orderly

in season 4, diego has the white picket fence life with lila. they're the spitting image of midlife domesticity. he values hygiene and precision of details, asks his siblings to take their shoes off in his house and notices the quality of the pinata at his daughter's party. he likes to adhere to routines, as seen in the road trip & his insistence that they keep good on time (you can even argue his delivery route has trained this into him as well). but even before that, he was close to grace as a child, so some of her decorum, tidiness, and organization skills probably rubbed off on him too.

ii. five is chaotic

five, on the other hand, was raised in the apocalypse. he's got no home skills, because he had no home for 75 percent of his life. he's programmed for violence (from the academy's training and the commission's genetic alterations making him the perfect assassin); that's why he's "buzzing after this morning's slaughter" in season 2, excitable against his own will. he's a great assassin, but a messy killer. the only time i can recall him killing someone neatly was grace in season 3: a quick and clean neck snap. you know, grace, who he killed so diego didn't have to.

ok this next part is kind of silly, especially because i'm not a physicist, but hear me out: five's power is an inherently spontaneous process, or a process that occurs without any external energy to help facilitate it. the second law of thermodynamics dictates that a spontaneous process results in an increase in entropy. when removed from any serious or real scientific meaning & instead applied to number five from the umbrella academy, it means that each time he jumps through time or space with the help of nothing but his own powers, he's increasing the amount of entropy/disorder in the universe.

iii. diego craves chaos

i mean. well let's just go in chronological order. he throws himself in harm's way as a vigilante in season 1. he has a huge hero complex, leading him to try & fail to prevent JFK's assassination, which points to his desire to have a greater impact on the world (re: "everyone changes the world, luther"). and if that doesn't spell it out for you enough, he literally wants five's epic job at the CIA and hates his dull, monotonous job as a delivery truck driver. (he also just wants five, but we'll get to that.)

iv. five craves order

again, do i really have to explain this when it's been explicitly illustrated by the show multiple times? i guess i'll summarize: tells klaus he doesn't actually want an apocalypse in season 1 before destroying the glass eyeball. oh he says it so many times in season 3, like wanting to retire, tells lila he doesn't "actually like chaos", tells his old self all he wants to do is buy that damn stingray car. and lastly, he enjoys his quiet domestic life with lila in the strawberry garden. so much so that he delays returning back home to another apocalypse he has to prevent, returning back home to their family.

and i want so badly to say that all of this is why five and diego are made for each other, why they balance one another out and complete each other, how they're everything they've ever wanted, but the truth is:

v. every time they get what they want, it all leads to shit

you know how season 4 episode 1 is titled "the unbearable tragedy of getting what you want"? well that basically sums this post up. every time five obtains order or diego gets a chance at chaos, it yields disastrous results.

in season 3, five gets to retire, but quickly gets pulled out of it when he realizes their existence in that timeline created a grandfather "kugelblitz" paradox. in season 4, he gets a shot at a domestic life, but ruins his brother's marriage, his relationship with diego, and his relationship with lila all in one go.

in season 1, diego finally convinces eudora to try fighting crime his way, bypassing all the red tape of the cop life, but it leads to her murder which he gets arrested for. at the start of season 2, he successfully prevents JFK's assassination, but ends up causing nuclear warfare and killing all of the umbrellas and then some.

ultimately, while five & diego and their desires & their attributes fit together like cookie-cutter puzzle pieces, the puzzle they're a part of is a fucking bomb. and if they click together and get what they want, the world explodes. they're perfect for each other, yet doomed to be apart. they're kind of like ben and jennifer but good if you think about it.