PLAYER NAME: Emily CONTACT:iluvroadrunner6 | iluvroadrunner6#1178 | iluvroadrunner6 | iluvroadrunner6@gmail.com HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: Sheep sent me.
CHARACTER: Allison Hargreeves CANON: The Umbrella Academy (show) CANON POINT: End of S2, before they arrive back in 2019
In terms of abilities, Allison is trained in various forms of combat, as part of her growing up in the Umbrella Academy. As a child with an active power, she was conditioned to be a superhero by her father and still can handle herself pretty well in a fight. She also is a professional actress, so she is both very charismatic and a good liar.
However, for her actual powers, this is where things get dicey. Allison can somewhat bend reality to her whim. All she has to do is say the words “I heard a rumor…” and supply the way she wants to alter reality. For example, “I heard a rumor you punched yourself in the face” which subsequently led to her brother punching himself in the face. These are very mature siblings. That being said, there are hints that Allison could do more with her abilities. Should she choose to unleash them fully, she could even go so far as to blow some minds, literally. For shorthand’s sake, this ability will be referred to as “rumoring.”
Allison rarely likes to go around rumoring people unless absolutely necessary (there will be a permission post and what not), and I as a player, have no intention of breaking the game. Obviously she cannot rumor herself home, but if you’d also like to add NPC immunity or something similar, I’m totally fine with that! Just let me know.
PERSONALITY:
Allison may be the most well-adjusted of the Hargreeves children. But in all honestly, that’s a very low bar to clear.
Given that they were all raised by the same neglectful, hard-line father, Allison competed for her father’s attention, pushed herself to the limit and became the best little soldier she could be. That she came out of it with even a modicum of emotional intelligence is to be commended. Allison is one of the few members of the Hargreeves to form positive connections with the outside world and attempts to reason with their siblings and try to connect with them on an emotional level to mixed results. She is the one most likely to call them on their bullshit effectively, as well as look out for them to the best of her ability when she’s around.
That being said, Allison has not completely escaped her father’s damage, and has her own flaws and missteps for the way she deals with people. Initially narcissistic to a fault, Allison has a tendency to make things about her, be selfish about what she wants, and lie, both to other people and to herself. She constructs the life and relationships she wants for herself in her mind, pretends that things are okay, even when they’re not, and occasionally tries to force things that aren’t earned. And a lot of it comes down to her power.
The third in Reginald Hargreeves collection of superpowered children, Allison’s power, allows her to shape her world to her whim, and give her the attention she felt she deserved. When what you want is as few as five words away, earning things or building genuine relationships doesn’t come easily. Allison is all about instant gratification, even when she’s not being a superhero, having rumored her way to the heights of Hollywood. In the end, Hollywood, like most things for Allison, was about attention, wanting to be the focus of any room—something her father was never willing to give her. As she grew older, however, she saw the cracks in veneer she’s created for herself, and used her powers to where she lost her daughter and needed to attend family therapy in order to be part of her life.
It doesn’t help matters that from a young age, Reginald Hargreeves steered her to use her power to do away with things that were inconvenient. She’s the one responsible for making Vanya believe she didn’t have powers, as Reginald instructed Allison to rumor Vanya in order to keep her extremely powerful abilities at bay. This came back to bite her later, and particularly damaged her relationship with Vanya, when it came out that she had powers all along. Vanya lashed out at her sister, cutting her throat before Allison could use her powers on her again and nearly killed her. Still, Allison is self-aware enough that she recognized that this is something her hands aren’t clean in. While their brothers attempted to lock Vanya up, treat her like a weapon or something to be stopped, Allison was trying to save her, defending her sister’s actions, and wanting her to be free. She’s also the one who stopped Vanya without killing her, by blowing out one of her eardrums to affect the way she processes sound.
(This also…subsequently caused the end of the world, but she saved her sister. That counts for something, right?)
These powers haven’t shaped all of her relationships, though. Even though Luther is her brother, his attention and affection she’s never had to rumor. While it doesn’t seem like Allison cares for Luther as much as Luther clearly cares for Allison (she’s married other people twice), she’s never spurred or dismissed his advances, basking in how he cares for her. She likes how Luther makes her feel, and it’s one of the few real, genuine relationships she’s had, even if it’s never progressed to a physical level.
In some ways, however, it took losing her powers to learn how to make a life for herself. After landing in 1961, with no voice and no resources, Allison built a life from the ground up, making real friends, falling in love in a real way, and finally having something that wasn’t tainted by her ability to mess with reality. In some ways, what she built was still a lie—she didn’t tell any of them about her abilities, where (or when) she came from and how she got there, but in the end, she eventually came clean, and became even closer to her husband.
However, living in Texas in the 1960s as a black woman was not an easy feat, and when her voice returned, there were certain moments where she used her powers to her advantage. Allison has a lot of justified anger at the situation she, her friends and husband dealt with under segregation, and there are moments where she lashes out and occasionally goes too far. For example, after showing off her abilities for her husband, she forced a racist white diner owner to scald himself with hot coffee in retaliation for the brutality she and her husband had received a few days earlier, and Ray had to stop her before she went even further than that. There can be a coldness to her when you’ve crossed her, and he’s not afraid to do what it takes to protect the people she loves.
When Allison arrives in the game, she will have just left behind her husband amicably, as he still has more work to do in the sixties, while Allison needs to get back to her daughter. She and her family are on a united front (for once), and while she is sad to leave her life behind, if they stayed where they are, they’d keep triggering the Apocalypse, so it’s really for the best. Also, she can’t test her new resolve for things that are real if she doesn’t go back to her biggest temptations. She’s going to be very much less than pleased to not be home, but with Five and Vanya there, she will stick with her siblings to find a way home and the rest of their family. So she won’t buck too much.
allison hargreeves | the umbrella academy (show)
CONTACT:
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: Sheep sent me.
CHARACTER: Allison Hargreeves
CANON: The Umbrella Academy (show)
CANON POINT: End of S2, before they arrive back in 2019
BACKGROUND: A wiki page
ABILITIES | POWERS:
PERSONALITY:
SAMPLE: Some musebox shenanigans.
INVENTORY:
NOTES: N/A!
IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO? Plot heavy is fine by me! Throw me in the deep end.