#tua ships

[just-b-wilde]

The Umbrella Academy: the concept of second love, finding yourself, a little controversy and loss

I've noticed a very similar concept recurring with characters in TUA, and I'd like to break it down for each character individually. I'll take them by their numbers.

#1 Luther

First Love: Allison

Controversial relationship (adopted siblings)

Partially unrequited love - he was never as important to Allison as she is to him + later manipulates him (a sign of toxicity)

Still, she's very important in the development of his story and they have some nice moments and she's important to his character development, though mostly it's about him agonizing over his love for her (he falls for Sloane all the more quickly in my opinion, as he thirsts for true love)

Second Love: Sloane

Romantic relationship, despite the obstacles their feelings for each other are very pure and they have some very cute scenes together

Luther has found in her someone who understands and accepts him for who he is

Found and lost thanks to the time jump (reboot)

#2 Diego

First Love: Eudora

Ex-partner

Partial cooperation

Tragic loss: Eudora's death - partially helps his character development

Second love: Lila

From his point of view, an initially casual yet intense relationship

Controversy: Their relationship is built on Lila's lies and manipulation (she was interested in him because it was her mission, kidnaps him to the Commission and later lies to him about "their son")

Even though they are later married and have three children together, their marriage is dysfunctional

Relationship loss: Lila wants a break because she is unsure about their marriage, later falls in love with Five

#3 Allison

First Love: Luther

(Yes, it's probably appropriate to mention Patrick, but he was never really in the plot, so I won't mention him even though they were married and had a daughter together.)

More of a childhood crush

She valued him most when she didn't have anyone else around

(See Luther's points)

Second love: Raymond

Her true love

He knew the truth about her and accepted her

Found and lost thanks to the time jump

#4 Klaus

First "love": Alcohol and drug addiction

An unexpected and controversial choice? Perhaps, but this "love" was very devastating and made Klaus do many crazy things

His eternal affairs can't be considered love.

Second love: Dave

The only man Klaus loved more than himself (his words)

Found and lost thanks to the time jump

Klaus got rid of his addiction thanks to him (which then came back thanks to him, but he was definitely able to help him from his "toxic love")

#5 Five

First Love: Dolores

His fantasy created through loneliness and trauma

She helped him through his years in a post-apocalyptic world

Despite not being a "healthy relationship" it had a place in Five's story and was important to his development (among other things, it foreshadowed how sensitive Five could be when he fell in love)

Second Love: Lila

His first true love

Lila was the only one who ever truly understood him and understood what he was going through + he had the happiest moments of his life with her (finally)

Controversy: she was still his brother's wife at the time, yet we know that, given the circumstances, she hadn't been with Diego for years (and wanted a break before that)

Love found through being lost in time and "lost" through going back in time

Tragic ending: erased from existence

#6 Ben

First love: Jill

One-sided crush (Jill didn't really know Ben existed)

He had partially distorted ideas about her

Jill reminds me partly of Dolores, since Ben as a ghost had very limited options

Second Love: Jennifer

A fateful yet devastating love

Feelings affected by other circumstances (Marigold and Durango)

Tragic ending: death

#7 Vanya/Victor

First "love": Leonard

A relationship built on a foundation of manipulation and lies

Yet Vanya herself mentioned the feelings she had for him, even if they were based on lies

Killed by Vanya, part of the reason for the apocalypse

Second Love: Sissy

Her/his true love

Controversy: A married woman with a family

Found and lost thanks to the time jump

Part of the reason for the apocalypse (Harlen)

#8 Lila

First Love: Diego

Their relationship had a very toxic foundation, from my perspective it was also based on Lila's rebellion against The Handler

An intense relationship, especially sexual

Their relationship gave her the family she wanted

See Diego's points

Second Love: Five

A romantic relationship

A collaborative partnership

Controversy: the killing of her family (who later live again)

Concept: enemies to lovers

See Five's points

It is very interesting from my point of view that their relationships often have common points. Usually the first loves carry a trace of a certain toxicity and only the second love is the real one (though this point is slightly moot with Diego, as his healthier relationship was definitely with Eudora and Ben wasn't entirely lucky in that regard either).

Also, they all found their loves based on the time jump and also lost them based on another time event. Death is also a very common part of the story.

I also find it interesting that most, for the sake of their relationships, opposed their family (in various forms) no matter what it brought - everyone would be very selfish for their happiness.

What do you think about this?

[countlessimagines]

Hi! If your still doing the ship requests great, if not that’s Totally fine! (I think these are so fun lmao) I’d like to request one from umbrella academy (anyone but five.) and stranger things please! (My favorites are Klaus, Ben, lila, Eddie, and Robin if that’s important)

I’m bi, afab, and gender-fluid. I like to believe I’m more androgynous but fem leaning most days.

Blue eyes, ginger (groan I know) and I have kind of a cross between a shag and a long mullet. I love punk fashion and trad goth fashion (as well as the music!) my favorite genres are goth, punk rock, riot grrl, metal, and I vibe with almost any rock or alternative (favorite artists are sisters of mercy, mommy long legs, queen, Melanie Martinez, ramones, Bauhaus, siouxsie and the banshees, David Bowie, cheap perfume, and bikini kill!)

I’m a Leo! And For personality I think my sense of humour is pretty good, I’ve been described as confident, I’m pretty sarcastic but in a good way I think. I love art, drawing, and sewing <33

I ship you with…

KLAUS HARGREEVES

And…

EDDIE MUNSON!

(Sorry for the incredibly late response, I have not checked my inbox for years)

[meet-me-at-our-place]

Just a note… I’m opening all my ship requests for other fandoms just for October so any types can be for any fandoms until the 31st that being said I’m busy with a fic and uni so the Halloween ones may be delayed but please request Halloween is free for all!

If this works out I might open up a sideblog for other ships and fandom writings , so let me know if it’s something you’re into

[tumblingghosts]

abigail: should i break up with reginald? or cause the apocalypse? which would be easier…

luther and sloane match each other’s freak to a degree that the public find very cute

diego and lila match each other’s freak to a degree that poses a genuine threat to the public

allison and ray match each other’s freak to a degree that endears the public

klaus and dave temporarily match each other’s freak to a degree that makes the public cry in saddened outrage

five and delores match five’s singular freak to a degree that worries the public

ben and jennifer match each other’s freak to a degree that inevitably brings about the violent death of the public

and viktor and sissy match each other’s freak to a degree that has the public cheering with overwhelming enthusiasm

bonus: reginald matched abigail’s freak to the degree that not only poses a threat to the public but also frightened abigail so much she ended the world over it

[my-special-place-in-hell]

tua fandom rn

[sevenyearstrawberries]

2.03 vs 4.05

[tumblingghosts]

#klaus and dave#allison and ray#ben and jill#viktor and sissy#and yeah lila isn't *from* the '60s but it's where they've met#luther was being busy processing his 30 years of daddy issues while working for jack ruby#and five has been in crisis mode for a few weeks

If I had a nickel for every time one of the Brellies fell in love with someone in the 1960's, I would have five nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird it happened five times

[dennythemenace]

One of my favorite older theories from the Umbrella Academy fandom will always be that Commision killed Dave. It adds even more tragedy when you think about it, and it makes sense. Klaus only came back when he died. He was fully prepared to go live out his life about 20 years before he was even supposed to be born. And well, that would certainly fuck with the timeline.

[countlessimagines]

Since Tik Tik is down, does that mean I gotta focus now on writing my millions of drafts?! You mean I can’t procrastinate anymore?!

[monfivela]

Just do the maths and listen to reason (and above all the heart, please).

I just realized that Lila and Diego only knew each other for like 20 days before they got married because of her getting pregnant. Add in the after S3 timeskip and the subway stuff, Lila has technically spent more time with Five than Diego in canon considering she was with him 24/7 during the subway adventures.

I'm not sure how long Lila was in the asylum with Diego (I think in the show they say he's been there for over seventy days). But otherwise, definitely yes. They had known each other for a very short time when she became pregnant. Although she has been with him for over six years, the question is how much time they were really together.

But she was with Five for literally seven years in a row, not much can compare to that. Five knew her absolutely differently and more deeply than her husband. There is also the question of how much Diego really knew her. Because I feel like he never really understood her...

[ffuscous]

Thought I'd bring him round, show him the sights

[laurrelise]

number five hargreeves has 2 dads and it’s robert sheehan and david castañeda

[pepperf]

I'm a little puzzled by a few takes I've seen along the lines of, Lila was such a great wife and mother and Diego took her for granted! Because I don't think the show gave us that at all, and I think it relied heavily and lazily on societal norms to get the audience to make that leap. It also ignored previous characterisation, which is why I plan to disregard the season as a whole - because if the characters had been like this from the start, I wouldn't have fallen in love with them.

So, what I mean is: the whole time we see her as a parent, Lila is basically phoning it in. She seems to view her kids as one monolithic, sticky entity sent purely to ruin her day (distinct shades of the Handler there). They're just a list of chores - diapers, dentist, ballet, cake, piñata... And I'm not underestimating how much parenting really is a list of chores to be done - but that's all we see, no love, no fun. She's eager to get away from them, and she's only - finally - desperate to be with them when it's convenient for the plot, at which point we're supposed to buy the idea that her kids are her sole focus (not the relationship that they spent the past two seasons building up). And even then, the focus is not on the reunion with the kids, it's on all the awkwardness of the surprise love triangle. Hell, one of the kids doesn't even get a name.

Their intent might have been to have Lila be the better parent, but like much of this season, it's all tell and no show. We're working off a couple of brief conversations from the points of view of two frustrated, tired, biased individuals who are already at odds with one another, plus the evidence of what they actually do. They show that they’re not communicating well, but they don’t show how that happened, how long this has been growing, if one of them really is more at fault. All we know is that he complains a lot, and she’s sneaking out at night to play secret agent. They tell us that she loves her children (eventually, after seven years apart), but they show her being annoyed and/or bored in every normal, non-apocalyptic interaction. They have her (and Five) tell us that Diego is a bad husband, but they show Lila sniping at his weight, his way of running a birthday party, rolling her eyes at his efforts to impress her and regain her attention - and they show him dadding at everyone (he will turn this van around, so help him), the comfortable love and affection between him and his kids, the Punjabi he learned to speak fluently to his in-laws, him looking for ways to fix his marriage...

Take the bracelet thing, for example. "You hate bracelets," says Diego. "I gave you one for Valentines and you traded it for a Dyson vacuum." I think what we're supposed to take from that is a) Lila stopped wearing the wooden bracelet (uh oh, signs the honeymoon period has worn off!), b) Diego gives thoughtless, stereotypical gifts, and c) he doesn't understand what she really wants.

But an alternative reading is this: a) Lila stopped wearing the wooden bracelet (could not be a clearer or more loaded 'fuck you' to Diego), b) Diego tried to find another way to win her affection (on his pay as a delivery driver, with a wife and three kids to support, he managed to buy a bracelet that was expensive enough to trade for a Dyson?), and c) she rejected that gift as well, without any deeper explanation than 'I hate bracelets'. She's shut down all communication between them and is not telling him what's wrong. She has shut him out so comprehensively that she's got a whole undercover life - for which she apparently has the time and energy! - and yet we're supposed to think that oh it's all on Diego. Why? Lila is not a shy and retiring flower, and she and Diego have been shown before to have some very sincere heart-to-hearts about their relationship. Something changed, okay, fine - but why would we assume it was Diego that caused that?

I think our expectations about What Women Are Like are doing a LOT of the heavy lifting in how the show wants Lila to be perceived. She's a woman, and therefore she's automatically a good wife and mother - that she's emotionally intelligent, the organiser, she'll love her children and would do anything for them, she'll tried the hardest to make her marriage work, just...because boobies, I guess. This is not how you write good parents, or good female characters, TUA! A truly astonishing amount of people actually ARE women, and they know that it doesn't automatically confer any kind of maternal or wifely abilities! These things have to be worked on!

(In real life, women are often socialised to be better at these things, this is sadly true. But an awful lot of us do not have an innate talent for it, and there's no shame in that. And, more relevantly to this post, this is not real life, and Lila is not your average person. She's not normal, and I love that about her. She was raised to be a weapon. Do we really think the Handler installed the 'homemaker' module? Lila herself said that she was scared that she wouldn't know how to be a mother, because she had no good example to base it on.)

I also think the show assumes that, when you get married and have kids, you're automatically granted a house in the suburbs, a bunch of in-laws, and enough money from just the husband's job to get by. And I think that is an incredibly privileged and blinkered assumption. Frankly, unless her parents are financing them, they should be struggling a lot more. None of that is explained, and for me it was a real gap, because these are the arguments that Lila and Diego should be having. Lila caring for the kids versus getting a job. Living with family versus striking out on their own. Diego sticking at a job that makes him miserable and difficult to live with, or taking the huge financial risk of trying to find something better. These are the real life issues they should be facing.

Listen, I think the characterisation of Lila as a parent and spouse in this season is horseshit. I think she would be so much better than they showed - of course she's going to have some low times, she's going to struggle with her own upbringing, but I think she would try her damndest to get it right, and I don't think she'd be defeated so easily. But if we're dealing with what canon actually shows us, she's, uh, kind of mediocre as a mother, and really not that great as a partner.

And yes, I'm sure Diego is no angel, either, he's obviously wrapped up in his problems, and he's probably not much fun to be around when he's fixating on, uh, *checks notes* wanting a more fulfilling job (the fiend). But honestly, he's not that far removed from the Diego we've seen all along, the one she fell in love with. It takes one conversation for him to realise how incredibly fortunate he is, and to convince him to try to work harder on his relationship and stop focusing on the unobtainable. The idea that he's the only one who is failing at this whole gig - the chief culprit in the failure of their marriage, the only one who needs to make an effort to fix things - is bizarre. And it's pretty obvious why they've done it: to justify her thing with Five later and make it all seem more palatable. But there's no real substance behind it.

tl;dr: this season was badly-written, takes some incredibly antiquated attitudes towards the role of women that are inconsistent with the characters they themselves established, and some incredibly classist attitudes towards manual labour, and just hopes that you'll either take it at face value or read the fuck into it, to better sell you a shitty romance that added nothing to the plot.

[monfivela]

My Enemies-to-Partners-to-Friends-to-(star-crossed)-Lovers ship 😭

Traditional VS digital

[weirdwildwonderland]

Whatever you do, don't think about Allison's almost-dead body in the back of the car that night. Whatever you do, don't think about the aftermath. Don't think about the bathtub that Viktor gets into and don't think about Leonard guiding him with a smile on his face. Don't think about the film of Allison's blood on the tepid water or the way it crusts under Viktor's fingernails. Don't think about how Viktor keeps replaying it over and over. And whatever you do, don't think about the smell of fresh blood in the back of the car. Don't think about the churning in Five's stomach as he goes 20 over the speed limit in silence. Don't think about Luther sobbing and Allison's glassy, unfocused eyes, or Diego cradling her head, holding back tears, and fixing her hair so it doesn't get too matted and bloody, because if she wakes up she'll be so pissed if she has to chop it all off. Don't think about Klaus's shaking hands and tear-filled, terrified eyes as he keeps turning around, grabbing the dog tags and praying please God, please don't let me see her ghost tonight. I've already lost so much. Don't think about the way he keeps pinching his arm and biting his tongue almost compulsively, trying to avoid another panic attack. Don't think about how helpless Ben feels, watching Five and Klaus trying to keep it together. Don't think about how his heart hurts seeing Luther and Diego cry in the backseat with Allison sprawled across them.

And don't think about the eerie silence of the car, save for the sounds of Luther's crying and Diego trying to hold it in, trying to whisper hold on Allison, we're almost there, but the words won't form right in his mouth so he settles for putting the pressure on the wound and keeping her hair out of her face. Don't think about how Luther keeps trying to check her pulse. Don't think about how Klaus has to cover his ears and pinch his eyes shut, and don't think about how Five feels like crying but holds it in. They all get blood on them that night, especially Luther and Diego, and all of them remember how warm it is. You don't forget that type of warm so quickly.

None of them ever talk about it again.

[thefudge]

haven’t watched s4 of the umbrella academy but i know five and lila kissing there omg if only every tv show and book have listened to our weird ships…

okay so i spent the last few hours speed-running through this season and OH MY GOD not only did they pay attention to our weird ship, but it's like INCREDIBLE levels of fanfic!!! like, the YEARNING alone??? like, okay, the writers did the "stuck in a time bubble together" bonding/romance storyline, but what i loved about it is they planted the seeds early in the season with lila not only feeling stuck in her marriage but sneaking out and running into five and having fun with him sleuthing just like in past seasons!!! like, it's not just "we're only now seeing each other's potential because we're stuck in the subway" it's more like "we've always been kindred spirits and now we have some down time to really let that sink in". it feels like the culmination of their evolution from enemies to frenemies to friends to lovers??? like all that friction from past seasons finally coming to fruition. hell, at one point five even straight up tells her diego can't give her what she needs??? like, they're admitting they're happier together and fit better together, in and outside of the time loop!!! and i love love LOVE the writers for not doing the super tired switcheroo where, once lila returns to diego and her family she suddenly realizes the whole thing with five was a fever dream. NO!!! no no no, all the feelings are still there like AAAAH it's such good angst, because she keeps exchanging loaded and uncomfortable glances with five while diego is trying to hold her/kiss her??? and five looks SO upset??? it's ao3 levels of delicious drama!!!! diego even asks her if she loves five and she CANNOT deny it, and her whole family and kids are right there but!!!! they still have these feelings and i love how shameless the show is about it!!! one of the big subplots of the final episode is lila having to give up her family to sacrifice herself, but it's also framed as her choosing five and just sort of collapsing in his arms telling him she hates him for this??? and he says "i know"??? HELLO??? also just the yearning and pining even mid-apocalypse!!!! five can't focus on anything else except her, literally they're all about to die but their lil drama is still going on!!!! (complete with diego and five punching each other and rolling on the floor fighting over lila!!!!) it's SO good. also props to the five actor for truly LOCKING IN and just leaning so much into the yearning. every second he looks at lila it's like she hung the moon and he is dying to be with her. i JUSTTTTTTT and the fact that lila hates bracelets and she didn't wear the one diego got her for valentine's, but she wears five's???? and loves it??? and he made it out of all the scrap metal for her???? soooo many little moments like that!!! when he says "i aim to please" kneeling in front of her????? when he says "you know why" when she asks him why he kept the notebook with the escape plan from her!!!!! he just wanted to be with her forever in the greenhouse timeline GAAAAAH. like, this is now gonna be my standard for "non-canonical ships that didn't seem like they could ever have a chance but became canon anyway"!!! cuz usually we clock the chemistry and the banter and the connection but we have to make do with our lil AUs because we know the writers wouldn't dare. but they did!!! they did it this time!!! GOD BLESS i feel so validated in this chili's tonight!!!