I Rewatched S1 And S2 Of The Umbrella Academy For The Tenth Time, And I Decided To Keep Track Of How

“Christianity didn’t become a world religion because of the quality of its teachings, but by the quantity of its violence.” -Eleanor Ferguson.

klaus has this habit of searching for answers and purpose in the same place he lost them. his autonomy was stolen from him as a child, and he lives with that loss every day. it’s quite common for people with that experience to live with dissociative symptoms, and i actually think klaus is a realistic portrayal of that. while it’s never outright said that it’s dissociation he deals with, i think a lot of survivors could probably see it in him. he’s always seemed to feel a disconnect with himself, with his own body (for example – and this is a small one – when he told ben “you’re not getting in this body,” rather than my body). his identity is something transient, something that shifts drastically sometimes depending on the situation he’s in, which is a common experience in people with dissociative symptoms – we’re like “chameleons.” 

he forgets key things regarding his trauma: that, or his brain will twist the events to make them more palatable to himself. he didn’t remember being killed as a child, even though it happened multiple times. and despite not remembering anything, he still has visceral reactions when it comes to being confined. he may not consciously remember every event, but his body does, and so he reacts accordingly, as if the threat of being killed again were a present one. because the body remembers the loss of control, it remembers the autonomy that was once stolen. then there’s “bus ball.” obviously, it was an objectively shitty, terrifying thing, being once again murdered, multiple times by your own father and abuser – and as an experiment, no less. despite that, the events were portrayed as something that was for the most part fun, almost. and when he vaguely recounted said events later on, he referred to it as “bus ball.” like it really was nothing more than a game. that’s another common dissociative symptom, and a common trauma symptom: being so disconnected on a certain level from your own trauma that you’re able to talk about it like it’s nothing. that you’re able to remember a skewed version of it so that you don’t have to internalize any of the real terror.

touch is another one. klaus is a very tactile person. he communicates well through touch. but he often doesn’t like being touched, unless it’s from someone he knows, loves and trusts.

he startles easily, too. will jump back at sudden movements or words, gets frightened by loud noises and will cover his ears.

his need for connection is relevant here, too. he has a hard time being alone with himself, and so he finds people to cling to, or finds people that will cling to him, just to stave off those feelings and to ground himself, almost. sometimes it spirals out of control, like with the cult. but his constant need for connection stems from feeling disconnected.

one of his passing comments to luther in s1 (”I remember my first time… oh no. i don’t”) hits hard, too. it’s not uncommon for trauma victims to experience hypersexuality as a result of this loss of autonomy. and then, to not even remember some of these encounters (obviously, the drugs/alcohol likely play a role in this not remembering. but hey, what’s addiction often a symptom of? oh yeah. trauma.)

this disconnect he feels from his own body is also why he was able to have certain encounters even with people he didn’t like. keechie comes to mind. he didn’t like keechie, that was made clear. but it sounds like he still had no problem having sex with him, despite this. it’s common, when you have dissociative symptoms, to feel this sort of disconnect. you don’t always care what happens to a body that doesn’t feel like yours, hell, you can enjoy it, sometimes – even if you don’t like the person you’re doing it with.

it’s why he gets off on torture, too. klaus being a masochist was clearly portrayed in episode four, but then was referenced again two other times. (”if i see a boner, i’m out” when he was being tied up, and, “i’m going to beat you, and not the way you like it.”) when you grow up tortured and become accustomed to it it’s easy for the brain to say “hey, this is unbearable so actually we like this thing now. that’ll make it bearable!” i mean, obviously it’s a little more complicated than that, but that’s the gist of the situation. 

you often find comfort – or even pleasure – in familiarity, even when familiarity isn’t safe. we see that in klaus.

and that leads me back to my main point: klaus searches for answers, he searches for purpose in the same places he lost them. if he can give up his body to anyone who will take it, then maybe he can take back autonomy, is what he might think. if he can have a say in his own destruction, whether it’s addiction or reckless behavior, then maybe he can take back control. 

but that’s never truly how it plays out. a trauma survivor will never find what they’re looking for this way. i believe that klaus is starting to realize this, even if he does run into setbacks, and even though he will continue to run into setbacks. if he wants to find control, and if he wants to find purpose, he will have to reroute that energy into a path of recovery rather than destruction. it’s a hard hill to climb, but we know he can do it.

i could say more about this, but i think this says enough, for now.

“I think fanfiction is literature and literature, for the most part, is fanfiction, and that anyone that dismisses it simply on the grounds that it’s derivative knows fuck-all about literature and needs to get the hell off my lawn. Most of the history of Western literature (and probably much of non-Western literature, but I can’t speak to that) is adapted or appropriated from something else. Homer wrote historyfic and Virgil wrote Homerfic and Dante wrote Virgilfic (where he makes himself a character and writes himself hanging out with Homer and Virgil and they’re like “OMG Dante you’re so cool.” He was the original Gary Stu). Milton wrote Bible fanfic, and everyone and their mom spent the Middle Ages writing King Arthur fanfic. In the sixteenth century you and another dude could translate the same Petrarchan sonnet and somehow have it count as two separate poems, and no one gave a fuck. Shakespeare doesn’t have a single original plot—although much of it would be more rightly termed RPF—and then John Fletcher and Mary Cowden Clarke and Gloria Naylor and Jane Smiley and Stephen Sondheim wrote Shakespeare fanfic. Guys like Pope and Dryden took old narratives and rewrote them to make fun of people they didn’t like, because the eighteenth century was basically high school. And Spenser! Don’t even get me started on Spenser. Here’s what fanfic authors/fans need to remember when anyone gives them shit: the idea that originality is somehow a good thing, an innately preferable thing, is a completely modern notion. Until about three hundred years ago, a good writer, by and large, was someone who could take a tried-and-true story and make it even more awesome. (If you want to sound fancy, the technical term is imitatio.) People were like, why would I wanna read something about some dude I’ve never heard of? There’s a new Sir Gawain story out, man! (As to when and how that changed, I tend to blame Daniel Defoe, or the Modernists, or reality television, depending on my mood.) I also find fanfic fascinating because it takes all the barriers that keep people from professional authorship—barriers that have weakened over the centuries but are nevertheless still very real—and blows right past them. Producing literature, much less circulating it, was something that was well nigh impossible for the vast majority of people for most of human history. First you had to live in a culture where people thought it was acceptable for you to even want to be literate in the first place. And then you had to find someone who could teach you how to read and write (the two didn’t necessarily go together). And you needed sufficient leisure time to learn. And be able to afford books, or at least be friends with someone rich enough to own books who would lend them to you. Good writers are usually well-read and professional writing is a full-time job, so you needed a lot of books, and a lot of leisure time both for reading and writing. And then you had to be in a high enough social position that someone would take you seriously and want to read your work—to have access to circulation/publication in addition to education and leisure time. A very tiny percentage of the population fit those parameters (in England, which is the only place I can speak of with some authority, that meant from 500-1000 A.D.: monks; 1000-1500: aristocratic men and the very occasional aristocratic woman; 1500-1800: aristocratic men, some middle-class men, a few aristocratic women; 1800-on, some middle-class women as well). What’s amazing is how many people who didn’t fit those parameters kept writing in spite of the constant message they got from society that no one cared about what they had to say, writing letters and diaries and stories and poems that often weren’t discovered until hundreds of years later. Humans have an urge to express themselves, to tell stories, and fanfic lets them. If you’ve got access to a computer and an hour or two to while away of an evening, you can create something that people will see and respond to instantly, with a built-in community of people who care about what you have to say. I do write the occasional fic; I wish I had the time and mental energy to write more. I’ll admit I don’t read a lot of fic these days because most of it is not—and I know how snobbish this sounds—particularly well-written. That doesn’t mean it’s “not good”—there are a lot of reasons people read fic and not all of them have to do with wanting to read finely crafted prose. That’s why fic is awesome—it creates a place for all kinds of storytelling. But for me personally, now that my job entails reading about 1500 pages of undergraduate writing per year, when I have time to read for enjoyment I want it to be by someone who really knows what they’re doing. There’s tons of high-quality fic, of course, but I no longer have the time and patience to go searching for it that I had ten years ago. But whether I’m reading it or not, I love that fanfiction exists. Because without people doing what fanfiction writers do, literature wouldn’t exist. (And then I’d be out of a job and, frankly, I don’t know how to do anything else.)”

— “As a professor, may I ask you what you think about fanfiction?” (via meiringens)

The Umbrella Academy Season 4 (Deleted Scene)

                        — ’ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴡɪꜱʜ ʜᴀꜱ ʙᴇᴇɴ ʜᴇᴀʀᴅ ʟᴏᴜᴅ ᴀɴᴅ ᴄʟᴇᴀʀ’ —

      ༶•┈⛧┈♛ ʜᴀᴘᴘʏ ʏᴀᴛᴏ ᴅᴀʏ❢ (ᴀᴜɢᴜꜱᴛ 10) ♛┈⛧┈┈•༶

An important PSA to remember!

[ID in Alt]

The thought of losing Aziraphale hurt as much as the thought of losing the stars

Polytheist asks!

To spice up the end of your Yuletide season ^^

Were you born into your faith? If not, how did you discover it?

What draws you to your Gods? What do you like about them?

Is your practice more ritualistic or casual? What does it look like?

How do you picture the universe? What is your idea of its cosmology?

Do you believe in spirits, angels or demons?

Are there Gods you willfully don’t follow? What are the reasons behind this choice?

What does your ideal altar look like?

What are some of your stronger UPG’s?

Do you have a patron/matron? How did you choose them?

If you could have a direct conversation with your deity/deities right now, what would you tell them?

Do you pray? If so, what do your prayers look like?

How important is mythology in your practice? How much credit do you give it?

What are some devotional acts you actively engage in?

How would you define your Gods? (have fun with that one)

Are you faithful to one specific pantheon or is your belief more eclectic?

How do you communicate with your deities the best?

Do you associate certain Gods with specific songs? Share them!

What are your thoughts on godspousing?

How have your Gods affected your life?

List a few of the deities you worship and associate each with a quote your think represents them best!

Feel free submit any of these questions in my ask box too, I do want to share in the fun! 🥺

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