Oh, How To Draw The Line Between Wrath And Mercy?

i have a lil canon divergent trans vanya story that’s been on the slow cooker in the back of my mind, here’s what i’ve got so far. his name is ivan bc vanya is a diminutive of ivan and also ivan is a cool name that slaps hard

- he sits down to write the book and does actual introspection for the first time in his life and he’s like ohhh my god im not a girl. idk for sure what i am yet but it sure as hell isn’t a girl. so he calls up diego and is like “hey so you’re trans” and diego is like “…….hello to you too” and ivan’s like “okay so fun fact! so am i” and diego is popping bottles

- diego comes over and mayhaps they both get a little drunk and diego’s like so what’s up? and ivan is like “okay so i was writing this tell all memoir about our childhood-” and diego goes i’m gonna stop you right there. no you absolutely are not. so the book doesn’t get written, ivan and diego get a lot closer, and ivan doesn’t burn bridges with the rest of his siblings

- after a while ivan is like fuck it……hrt time. he goes to the doctor and the conversation goes a lil like this: doctor: are you on any prescription medications? :) ivan: uhhh yeah 500000 milligrams of fuckshit, take twice a day and supplement as needed :) doctor, picking up the phone: okay so we’re checking you into the hospital right now immediately. also i think you need to fire or maybe kill your psychiatrist 

- so he gets off the meds way sooner! this has two major impacts: he learns about his powers, and he gets more in touch with his emotions. his powers scare the hell out of him but he’s got diego, and klaus too when he’s reachable (he/they solidarity)! klaus is the one who puts it together that allison must have rumored him and it’s a good thing she’s on the other side of the country bc in that moment ivan may have killed her. but she’s not, and he has time to calm down and process how he feels about it.

- he gets a lot more confidence and self esteem and starts going to Real Therapy. he becomes much closer with his coworkers at the orchestra, he gets second chair, the kids he tutors LOVE him. one day he and allison are able to have a (mostly) civil talk about it and they start rebuilding that bridge together, allison even invites him to a couple movie premieres. there are still setbacks and bad days and things aren’t perfect but they’re getting better and god they could be so much worse 

- so all in all things are going pretty well! the Conflict would come from reginald somehow realizing that ivan’s off the meds but like i don’t actually have any more details, i just think it would be interesting

- i think the apocalypse could still happen, but it would be a result of reginald himself trying to contain ivan rather than what actually happens in s1. it would be interesting though bc five wouldn’t have ivan’s book in the future and wouldn’t know anything about what happened after he left 

The people in the Mental Institution after getting Diego’s joke:

The people in the Mental Institution after realising that Star Wars hadn’t come out yet and he predicted the Kennedy assassination:

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.

Vanya’s Room:

Ok so Vanya’s room is actually pretty interesting. Sadly we really don’t see much of her room in the show except for this tiny shot and it’s kinda hard to see anything besides the basics (bed, chair, books, violin, and so forth)

But!

Thanks to bts pics, we actually can get a better look at some of the props inside.

This is pretty much just a clearer/closer shot of the hallway scene, but I can see:

Some wall art

A completely white suitcase in the corner? (Maybe for extra storeage/clutter?)

A teddy bear on top of the suitcase

A clock and a small/book journal on the nightstand

There’s other little stuff on the nightstand and in the cubby below (like a little box?) but I can’t really tell what it is.

There’s a small stack of books on the radiator and some more on the floor next to it. 

I think there’s some stuff under her bed too

Now for the other side of her room that never actually appears in the show.

We have:

A wall mirror

Some hooks for clothes

Sheet music stand

Some books propped up in the corner on the floor?

A dresser behind the door

On the dresser:

A little metal cat statue

A white bowl with some stuff in it?

Some plain white books (I really like how they added in the white details, I think it’s a nice nod to her powers/alter ego)

There’s some other stuff on there, but I can’t really tell what they are besides more books and maybe a little picture?

There’s also a shelf above her dresser, but again, I can’t distinguish much of what’s on it besides:

Even more books

A little red box thing that’s sticking out

And a metronome! We also see a metronome appear on her character poster.

There’s also another very interesting detail about Vanya’s room, it eventually becomes apart of Klaus’s room.

If you watch the flashback scenes vs the 2019 scenes, you’ll notice Klaus’s room (which is right next to Vanya’s) is much bigger in the present than it was when they were kids in the 1x03 flashback.

That’s because at some point Klaus expanded his room and took down the wall (on the right) between his and Vanya’s.

Notice the gray bricks and the black radiator in front of the window.

You can also see the divide where the wall used to be (and that Klaus’s bed is still in the same spot)

I’m not really sure when it happened. One theory I had was that perhaps it happened because Vanya was sent away to school like in the comics?

But on the other hand, it looks like Klaus’s room had already been expanded in the 1x10 flashback where Vanya destroys the house. (And we know Vanya was still living there at least when Ben died at age 16.)

However, that flashback is *technically* a splice between the past and the present (because Vanya is remembering things but she’s also looking at their rooms in the present) so perhaps it doesn’t give us an accurate time frame? I’m not sure. 🤷‍♀️

But either way, I think it’s a very interesting detail. Vanya lost her room at some point and it’s kind of sad because the rest of the siblings still have rooms to come back to and even use them over the course of season 1...but Vanya doesn’t.

Five’s first kiss. He can brag he’s made a girl faint over a kiss.

 Feeling cute. Might start an apocalypse (or two) later, idk.  

let me just die over this picture for a bit

☂️  the umbrella academy:

allison & vanya reacting to men saying wild and unexpected shit

Lgbt Umbrella Academy Icons