23 | ♑︎ | jze/it/xe/they | i am cringe but i am free | literally only here to spam reblog stuff i barely use a tag system like its all unorganized (sometimes i do use #basqueuebol tho)
Extra Ordinary: My Life as Number Seven - Transcript
(note that there is a lot of random placements & repeated paragraphs. I've tried to connect as much of it as possible, and cut out repetitions to make it flow a little better. Hope this is enjoyable/interesting!)
as much content as I could find from Viktor's book transcribed in one post, picture credit to the TUA Prop Auction:
EXTRA ORDINARY
MY LIFE AS NUMBER SEVEN
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
VANYA HARGREEVES
Vanya Hargreeves is well known for her virtuosic skills as a violinist. Less understood is the role she played as one of Reginald Hargreeves' adopted children, standing alongside - but never counted among - the famous Umbrella Academy super kids.
This is her story, in her own words.
"An incredible read... a revealing portal into the amazing life of Vanya Hargreeves and the life she has lived. I couldn't put it down!"
-Gerard Way
Vanya Hargreeves is well known for her virtuosic skills as a violinist. Less understood is the role she played as one of Reginald Hargreeves' adopted children, standing alongside - but never counted among - the famous Umbrella Academy super kids.
This is her story, in her own words.
Extra Ordinary: My Life as Number Seven is a tell-all autobiography by one of the central figures of Reginald Hargreeves experimental and tragic team of heroic children, collectively know as the Umbrella Academy team.
In this book, Vanya, ready to expose the truths behind the Academy's operation prior to it's disbanding in the mid-late 2000's, goes all in.
With stories and anecdotes from her many years in the shadows.
Vanya Hargreeves pulls no punches. No stone is left unturned, and no other member of the team is left unmentioned, for good or for ill.
Chapter One
Our parting was sad, but natural in the end. I think about the circumstances of out vastly different births all the time. I've read the newspapers. I've seen the evidence. But at the same time I can't believe any of it. Even if Allison, Luther and all the rest of them were born and collected like the papers say, how did I become a part of this extraordinary family? Was I a dud, an unfortunate super-child who wasn't set up with the right circuitry? Or did I even come from the circle of miraculously born children at all? It made the most sense of any of my theories: a young mother, terrified by a future with a child she couldn't afford, saw the world-wide birth announcement, followed by Hargreeves' request and reward sum. I went through life cursing my mother, determined she was a money-grubbing con artist who sold me away to an eccentric, cold man who couldn't even use me for the purposes he set out. I was carted off like cattle and sequestered to a young life of self-doubt, all because my mother had wanted a payday more than she wanted me.
I only sought out my birth mother once. All these news stories kept the identities of the traumatized mothers tightly under wraps, of course, but those were in the upstanding
publications. I believe that any detail about human history, if salacious or powerful enough to cause harm, can be found with the right kind of determination. I found a list of names, and scoured each for signs: did she have a boy or a girl? What had she done with her earnings from Hargreeves? Had she had other children? Where was she now?
Two of the women could have lined up with my birth: Allison and I were the only female babies "found" by Hargreeves. It was easy to narrow down once I found pictures of them both: the woman with my hair, and my nose, lived in a small town off the Southern coast of Russia. At least, according to what I could find. I convinced Hargreeves that we needed to take the team there to train, after extensively researching the area's high mountains and secluded trails. It was perfect, and miraculously, he agreed! Thinking back, I wonder if he knew exactly what I was up to and wanted to help. We stayed for five days, and as the others sweated and trained, I kept records, and occasionally went off on my own. For any of the academy members to question Hargreeves' strict schedule or participate in non-approved "free" time would have been unacceptable. But as for me, I wasn't on the schedule in the first place.
We spent enough time in Russia for me to track my birth mother down. I took buses, spoke what broken Russian I could to locals, and finally came to the house where I had been told she would be. We spent enough time in Russia for me to learn that the mother I had spent years searching for had died. The family of hers, and I guess of mine, who greeted me there invited me in. They seemed harmless and even kind. But I couldn't stay. Whether my mother knew I wasn't special or not, I realized I didn't want to know. I didn't want to hate a dead person any longer. Now I knew she was gone, it seemed pointless anyway.
I've found that focussing on the past can only hurt me further. It's not worth spending any more of my time on the people who have all but forgotten me. I haven't gotten a call
from Allison in years, Diego's out fighting crime, Klaus has been partying himself into a stupor ever since we left the house, and Five is gone. Luther's the only one of us who stayed. I envied him for so many years growing up: Number One, the group's true leader. But now I pity him. Luther could have been anything: he could have had the fame Allison did. He could have gone wild like Klaus. He could have taken to the streets and fought against evil himself like Diego... but he stayed to become Hargreeves' pet.
In the end, there was nothing really connecting the seven of us. We weren't related. We were nothing alike. We were just seven strangers living under the same roof: destined to be alone, starved for attention, damaged by our upbringing, and haunted by what might have been. We all wanted to be loved by a man incapable of giving love. Our father never missed an opportunity to remind me that I was ordinary - a hard thing for a little girl to hear. But lately I've started to wonder - what's so bad about being ordinary? From the second we're born we're told to reach for the stars. To accomplish great things. But there is a value in life lived quietly. Going about our days, little by little. Finding contentment in small victories - a promotion, a friend, a beautiful day. Sometimes, the simple things are extraordinary.
so-called rumours about Allison and Luther, no pun intended, I can't say for sure. I'd like to think that what they have transcends words - when we were kids, it was just obnoxious. They spoke in code, swapped whispers. They were part of a world in which we weren't allowed. But as we got older I realised it wasn't some fantasy world they were playing in. Their minds were off somewhere else together. They shared looks and gestures that were meaningless to the rest of us... save maybe Klaus, who can be oddly perceptive when you least expect him to. But as for a romantic relationship between the two of them, that's none of my business. Frankly, I don't want to know. Adopted or not, if it were two of your siblings, would you want to picture that?
Their secret conversations were the first sign of what was to come: watching the two of them so happy together, and acutely knowing I could never belong would become an intimate feeling in my life. Soon, they were together on missions. They were training all afternoon. And they were playing games I couldn't learn the rules to. It was all too obvious that there was a club for children with superpowers, and ordinary children like me were decidedly barred.
I would say it was Dad who implemented all of this. He caused my alienation through procedures, through harsh rules that we all followed for fear of the alternative. And to an extent, that's all true. I can't forgive what he did to me - but sometimes I wonder where Dad's actions ended and my siblings' began. When you consider what a mind, especially a young mind, will absorb and harness when put into dire situations, it's not at all difficult to believe that my siblings learned cruelty from Dad until they eventually made it their own. It wasn't just the rules keeping me out of top-secret meetings anymore. It just made sense that I should sit at the end of the table, so Diego could help Five's technique, or so Allison could paint Klaus' fingernails. I became accustomed to sulking and watching them from afar - most of my morning oatmeal went uneaten and but thoroughly picked at.
Meals became the one time of day we were all forced to be together - and I met them with equal parts anticipation and dread. Would today be the day I engaged Allison? Could I stand up to Diego's taunts? Maybe I'd show Five the musical piece I'd been working on for weeks.
Though prone to arrogance and outbursts, even more than the average preteen, Five was my sole confidante in the years before he disappeared. It almost seemed fitting that of all the siblings to leave us, it would be him who I fully trusted, and who fully trusted me. Five was almost always one step ahead of Dad's manipulations, and he didn't play into the games of favourites like my other siblings. Five always told me that ego was man's most unattractive weakness - he thought himself above competing for fatherly love and prizes. Even then he was beyond his years.
I think about Five often, and where he is now. The others say he's dead, caught in a terrible accident, or shredded up in the time space continuum. But I know Five, and I know he was too smart for that. Reckless, maybe, but he's brilliant. I wouldn't be surprised if he were living it up in the seventies now... but hippie hash wasn't really his style. For all I know he's gone to the future and never looked back. If he has, and he's happy, then I am happy for him. I'm sure none of us can say we never had a moment where we wished we could escape. Not just run away, but also go somewhere where Dad couldn't track us down and pull us back into his web.
Surprisingly, I only ran away once. Despite everything, it took so much for me to believe I could belong anywhere else but the home in which I was abused. Shortly after Five dissappeared, I took his lead. It was about time I saw what's out there. But I knew nothing other than what I had been taught about myself and my life: I was simply not special. But I asked myself on that day: What if I was special, to somebody else? The rest of the world was ordinary. Maybe the real world was where I belonged all along.
One morning, I left the Academy - my bag stuffed to the gills with clothes, snacks, and mementos I couldn't leave behind. I think I even brought a dream catcher, for fear of nightmares from home following me wherever I went. I only made it to a bus stop, and I sat there all day long - and strangely, for the first time in my life, it hit me that I was completely alone. I had thought I was alone my entire life, but this was something new and entirely different. I was afraid of what I didn't know, and would choose Dad's torment any day over the endless dark that stretched down our street. Buses came, but I waved the kind drivers away. That night, I walked back through the front doors, and no one knew I had ever left in the first place. I wonder how long it would have taken them to realize - the extra girl they never needed was absent. Would it have made a difference? To this day, I'm not sure. The next time I left that house was when we all did. After what happened to Ben.
Our everyday existence was full of evidence that Dad had stepped into treating us like experiments. Not as children, but like animals. And what happened to Ben was the last straw that finally shattered the illusion for the others. I regret that though I knew all along what they realised that day, I didn't have the spine to leave on my own. It wasn't until Allison took off for Hollywood and Diego cursed out the old man for good that I realized we were, ultimately, a broken family.
I had always kept up hope that my family would accept me into the fold. I thought that as long as there was a club to belong to, one day they would notice me and invited me in. Everyone would apologize: Vanya, we can't believe we wasted so much time without you, you're our sister after all.
But it was then that I realized something massive: there was nothing for me to aspire to be anymore. It was liberating - the life that I had wanted for as long as I could remember was had finally fallen apart. Without "The Umbrella Academy," I had the freedom to be whomever I chose. Suddenly, my violin playing wasn't stupid - it was something that made me special in the real world. It made me enough money to afford an apartment - it's small but it's mine. It got me into an orchestra, a position I got all on my own talents. This meant I could teach young people how to be special for themselves.
Teaching became my passion - my own, personal super power. I treated my students how I had always wished my father had treated me: I trained them, I listened to their problems, and I made sure each of them felt loved in their own, special way. Teaching may seem such a small profession to many, but it became the best part of my life.
Both the article and the tweet are disingenuous. Jenna Ortega never praised Hamas, but she also didn't say "Palestinians deserve to live" either.
Her exact tweet was "decolonize Palestine" which holds very different connotations. Implying that Palestine has been colonized in turn suggests that Israel is a colony and not a sovereign nation state.
Are you seriously surprised that some Israelis are not happy with people telling them that their country doesn't deserve to exist?
“In turn suggests Israel is a colony and not a sovereign nation-state” hey quick question how come the Palestinian population in Palestine went from 1,300,000 to 156,000 in one year?
[ID: Three images. The first is a screenshot of a tweet by J Jennifer Espinoza @/sadqueer4life which reads, "transphobes love to be like 'you can't transition because your life will become too difficult due to the way i am going to treat you'". The second is a highly edited image of a subway sandwich with captions in all caps that read, "transphobes be like 'transgender people have a very high suicide rate' my brother in christ that is your fucking fault". The third is a screenshot of a tumblr post reblogged by @/ein-kleiner from @/transmechanicus which reads, "cops love to be like 'you can't smoke weed because it'll ruin your life when i send you to prison for it'". End ID.]
A fish trying not to get eaten wouldn’t slow down when the “predator” slows down. It also wouldn’t constantly swim in a circle near the edge of the tank; It’d try hiding. Also a fish in a tank in a a public place that is constantly filled with people is not likely to see people as predators.
yeah that fish is absolutely playing with that kid, if it really wanted to escape it would just dive into the reef in the center of the tank!
(Moorish Idols are reef fish and naturally will seek shelter in the nearest nook or cranny if they get scared.)
many people don’t realize this, but fish aren’t stupid animals! most of them are on par with mammals like mice and squirrels in terms of intelligence, and they absolutely do play.
Hi! Professional marine biologist and aquarist here- fish absolutely play, and not only that, can be trained.
I accidentally trained a fish once through playing.
Let me explain.
The small-time aquarium I worked at about 4 years ago had a decent sized female Sheephead. Sheephead are bright red with the males sporting a black head, and get big. I’m talking almost 1m long at full maturity (and may or may not transition from female to male depending on the number of males present). Point is, even though not fully matured, this Sheephead was a bit of a heavyweight in her kelp forest tank with a length of about 1ft making her the resident Biggest Dog In The Yard. And she absolutely knew it. She would bully her tankmates if she wanted to steal their food.
The thing about this Sheephead- let’s call her Red- is that she had one heck of a ‘tude. Red was known to splash aquarists whenever they fed the tank, and at almost a foot long with a wide tail, her splashes had quite a bit of heft and would soak you from the torso down. We were advised to bring a towel or two to protect ourselves from most of the drenching. When it was my go-around to feed Red’s tank, I was fairly new to the little facility, but I had been warned in advance of Red’s penchant for food thievery. I noticed she would follow my hand movements, so I slowly moved to drop her food in a far corner, and fed her tankmates directly from my hands or by tong if they were too deep. I always made sure Red had plenty to eat, but I didn’t want her to associate the food with bad behavior, so I treated her to a bit extra food whenever she didn’t steal food. One day, she made a beeline to the surface so fast that she did a small jump, her entire head breaching the water. She wasn’t bothering her tankmates or doing anything remotely dangerous- and full disclosure, it was cute seeing a fish jump for joy- so I laughed and gave her another piece of food.
Naturally, positive reinforcement led to her connecting the dots that jumping at the surface, even the tiny jumps she was doing, meant she got more food.
This started to become an everyday occurrence, whenever I was assigned to feed Red’s tank. She would jump, just enough for her head to pop out, then she’d wait patiently for me to give her the treat she CLEARLY earned. It even got to the point that she’d open her mouth and I’d drop the food right into those massive jaws- this was preferable to her Kenghis Khan-ing her way through a shower of chopped squid like the Tasmanian Devil, as there was less risk of her accidentally (or purposefully) biting a tankmate that got too close. Red became a polite eater for the first time.
It wasn’t until I noticed she followed me around outside of feeding time that I realized Red was playing with me.
I never got splashed by Red even once. My coworkers, however, received quite the dunking whenever it was their turn to feed the kelp tank.
easiest explanation i have for pronouns that "don't make sense" (neopronouns, he/him lesbians, etc) is that a person's pronouns are basically just a nickname we use for that person so we don't have to constantly say their name when talking about them. a person's pronouns also tend to have an association tied to them, which is usually an indication of their gender. that said, much like how your nickname can mean whatever you want it to mean, your pronouns can mean whatever you want them to mean. and, with enough practice, if you can remember that someone has a nickname, you can also probably remember their pronouns too (no matter what they are)
One time this man approached me in a bar talking in Spanish. So I assumed he was Spanish and we started speaking, we had a whole ass conversation and at some point he was like. So what part of Spain are you from? And I said well I’m Italian actually. What part of Spain are you from? And he was like. I’m Greek.
One time I was in Argentina and I was so tired of trying to speak Spanish because I’m not very good at it lmao so I broke into exasperated English and the retail seller girl quickly understood me and engaged me in conversation. We talked for a while, she introduced me to a makeup brand, and then I decided to buy it. While she was packaging the purchase, she asked me if I were from the US or perhaps the UK and I just said “oh no I’m Brazilian hahah” and she looked me straight in the eyes and said, in clear Portuguese, “I’m Brazilian too”
When my dad went to China on a work trip, his Mandarin speaking wasn’t great but his listening was fine (his first language is Cantonese) and he encountered a German guy who had moved to China to work. My dad knew how to speak German because he studied it in university (but wasn’t great when it came to listening to new vocab he hadn’t studied before), and the German guy knew Mandarin because he lived and worked in China, so they had a conversation where my dad spoke to the German guy in German and the guy responded in Mandarin. I’m sure it confused a lot of their coworkers who just saw the Asian guy speaking German and the white guy speaking Mandarin.
Some years ago, I worked for a manufacturing company that had a service depot in China. One of the engineers from the main office here in the US spent most of his time at the depot. The problem was that he didn’t speak *any* of the various Chinese languages, and no one at the depot spoke any English.
They all, however, spoke Spanish.
I was working at a fast food restaurant and a very lost Sikh man showed up in a turban. He was a bit overwhelmed by the food choices.
One of the ladies from the kitchen nudged me away from the cash “I got this”, and another lady quickly took over at the grill. Lady at the cash was… Tamil? Maybe? The lady at the grill was Nepalese. They chatted with the Sikh man, told him what food options met his dietary/religious constraints, and reassured him that the food was made properly. He left feeling happy and welcome in my city.
After he left they told me that they were all speaking Hindi, which was a second/third language for all of them.
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vaporwave
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