9 Days

the umbrella academy + emo kylo ren tweets (part 1 here)

ATTENTION

If you see this you are OBLIGATED to reblog w/ the song currently stuck in your head :)

Fair warning, this is gonna be a ramble!

So I was just thinking about Vanya, and how sort of sweet and polite she was in the first season, and that got me thinking.

I fully believe Vanya is autistic, and from my own experiences, I was thinking about growing up. When I was a child I didn’t really know how to interact with the world. I grew up watching a lot of TV shows and movies (mostly ones that my sister would put on) but before I mirrored TV shows characters, I mirrored her. But Vanya didn’t watch TV growing up, so she didn’t have Disney Princesses or Thomas the Tank Engine or Arthur like I did. (For anyone who doesn’t know, mirroring is one of the ways that autistic kids may learn to interact with the world, through watching how NTs interact and then mimicking it to fit in or at the very least to be able to communicate with someone.)

The only people Vanya had to mirror were her family, and given their general attitude towards her it seems unlikely that she did. When I was a child I recognised which behaviours I never wanted to mimic: my parents screaming at each other or us, my sister telling me if I didn’t do what she wanted she’d never love me again/she’d hate me for the rest of our lives. I knew those things made me feel bad, so I knew they weren’t things I wanted to do to others.

In the same way, I think Vanya knew she didn’t want to mimic the negative behaviours of her siblings. So I think the person she mirrored most was Grace (and maybe Pogo a little). Grace was their mum, she was loving and nurturing and exactly the kind of person I would have wanted to mirror as a child. Except Vanya has added insecurities. It made me realise that growing up, Vanya was often softly-spoken and polite, because that’s how Grace was. But we never see Grace get angry... So Vanya never learned a healthy way of dealing with her anger, especially given that she was drugged up a lot of her childhood.

If anyone can word this more coherently than I did, or come up with a better analysis, please do, because I’m not sure my argument made much sense (or even had a point to it...?)

TL;DR - Autistic!Vanya mirrors Grace, and that’s why her personality is somewhat reminiscent of Grace’s.

Klaus saying No 🤚 to drugs in 2.03

The things the Hargreeves each say to Vanya in the brain eating scene match up perfectly with how they see themselves/who they are.

Klaus accuses her of faking it, when we see a performance from him for the entirety of the show. He fakes almost everything the family sees from him.

Luther accuses her of not trying hard enough, and we know that Luther thinks he wasn't a good enough Number One. He pins this on himself completely.

Allison accuses her of using her powers too much and not being able to handle the consequences. This TOTALLY follows with her s1 plotline and her decision to use and use of her powers in s2.

Ben says that she isn't ready and it isn't her fault. This is how Ben views his death, we know from s1.

Diego and Five don't say anything because they don't REALLY know themselves at all. These two have declined getting to know themselves in favor of dedicating themselves to saving others. Diego literally says he doesn't have daddy issues. Diego. And Five does not know who he is without an apocalypse, or what to do with himself when it's over.

I think this is interesting. I dunno. I don't think any of these people (except Ben) ACTUALLY feel this way about Vanya. It's an analysis on them, done by Vanya in Vanya's head, but because Vanya is the way she is, it gets directed at her.

TUA s2 Bloopers

this is what i image vanya’s instagram to look like

i’ve just thought of a concept that is either genius or madness, i haven’t decided yet. but what if vanya and diego swapped their season 2 arcs?

so like, vanya touches down in 1963 and doesn’t forget everything that’s just happened, doesn’t forget that she’s just ended the world, and starts her sixties journey with a well deserved freak out. she ends up sobbing on the street about how she killed everyone, how she destroyed the moon- and promptly finds herself in a psychiatric clinic. which is where she finds lila. lila, who isn’t afraid of her. lila, who doesn’t make her feel like a freak because, lila is weird too. 

and when vanya uses her powers to save them from the swedes, lila still isn’t afraid of her. they run, and it’s wild and crazy in a way that vanya never thought her life would be-

up until lila betrays her.

and it’s even worse, because vanya had trusted her, had told her about how jenkins had used her, and lila’s done it all over again - but she doesn’t look happy, doesn’t look smug or vindicated, and vanya recognises the look on her face, because she knows what it’s like to hurt the people you care about. and if vanya could be forgiven, if she could still be loved, then maybe lila could be too.

meanwhile, diego drops down in the sixties, immediately runs out into the street without thinking, and gets acquainted with the bumper of sissy’s car. and the guy looks dangerous, with all his scars and knives, but sissy just hit him with her car. so she takes him home - and of course she can’t tell her husband, so she sets him up in the barn, thinking once he wakes up he’ll be on his way

except, diego wakes up without his memories beyond his name. and he doesn’t seem dangerous, not really, so she can’t just throw him out, can she? besides, carl is barely home these days, and she could use some help around the farm. she doesn’t really intend to let him around harlan, but it’s a small farm, and it’s not long until she ends up introducing them. diego doesn’t seem to know how to act around kids, because he freezes up, but as soon as it’s clear that harlan is non-verbal, he sort of just- clicks. he doesn’t try to get harlan to speak, not like carl does, just quietly plays with him without any expectations. and when he witnesses one of harlan’s meltdowns, he doesn’t seem alarmed by it. he just… understands. looking at his scars, sissy wonders if he had been prone to them, too.

one day, she sits down with him in the barn, when carl is asleep, and asks him how he’s so good with harlan, when his own father doesn’t want to be around him. diego goes distant, thoughtful. says he thinks he had a speech problem as a kid - a stammer, maybe. sissy goes hopeful, and says, you don’t stammer at all now. you got better. but diego doesn’t smile. he says, no, he doesn’t, but he doesn’t think that happened out of kindness. he might not remember who he was, but he still feels a rush of fear when words stick in his mouth. he tells her that he wishes he’d had someone to accept him as he was, rather than trying to change him. and suddenly it’s not so strange that he’s so good with harlan.

they talk. a lot. diego thinks that it might be unusual, for him, because it’s hard, but he trusts her. almost like a sister, he thinks. and he’s protective like a brother, too. so when sissy finally admits that she wants to be free of carl, free of the way he looks at harlan, free of the way he bullies her, diego is more than happy to have a… conversation, with carl. it turns out, he’s very good with knives.

anyway, not sure where i’m going with this, but it sure was a Thought

can you imagine living in 1963 Dallas and you're just minding your own business, probably on the way to do errands when you find the largest human being you've ever seen in your entire life being yelled at by a child in a fancy school uniform, and said child just blurts out I'M THE DADDY HERE with all the conviction in his tiny body, and later on, just when you think things can't get any weirder, you find out on the news that the man is a suspected terrorist/kidnapper/killer with four other accomplices and the child is apparently their hostage, i mean really what a wILD DAY

All these lovesick idiots did was talk about running away together and then they actually did.