seeing youtube ads means seeing a ton of grammarly ads & you Know the like "hone the tone of your emails :)" application means envisioning a version that's pitched to one specific ass situation where two high schoolers are trying to make their fake emails even sound like connor

Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E111 (Redux! Oct. 13, 2020)

Gooooood evening good evening good evening, all! I started the VOD late for this recap and somehow the first four or so minutes of the show have a Twitch audio copyright claim, so I am reduced to only reading Brian's lips when he asks if we're on the internet. Hilariously, Marisha's background room is a comfy-looking blue/gold fabric wall with a ceramic colorful abstract lamp and a yellow silk scarf over the lampshade, and Taliesin's is an industrial looking games room in grey and black with multiple monitors, overhead speakers, and mysterious metal fixtures behind him. What a treasure this group is, honestly.

Tonight's guests: Marisha Ray & Taliesin Jaffe, discussing episodes 110 and 111 again. I wildly speculate once more about what might have caused their absence: jury duty? Sam appearing on The Masked Singer? Something to do with the animated show? One day, we’ll know, one day... (One day this “copyrighted audio” section will come back from the wars, too. Ugh!) Finally! The audio comes back to reveal Brian discussing the endless reality of digital meetings and Marisha talking about (I think) her glare-reducing glasses she’s wearing. Welcome to the New Age (welcome to the New Age, to the New Age).

Announcements: Marisha suggests checking out Dimension20, another live tabletop gaming group, which premieres live on Wednesdays at 4pm (CollegeHumor). 

Brian immediately wants to know how they feel about the revelation that Molly is alive. Taliesin’s personal reaction: he “knows some things” he can’t talk about and is aware of several possibilities that might be going on, but had a sneaking suspicion that there would not be a body for them to find. He says it’s almost all there for anyone to see in past material. Marisha’s personal reaction: she just wants to know how she’s doing with her theories, & was trying to block Tal’s face out deliberately as she was going off on her theories in the last episode. Taliesin says he thought her ideas were pretty good!

Cad has no clue what to think - it’s like listening to your friends talk about Buffy. Marisha thought it was a 50/50 Molly would still be there, but Beau had no idea. Not that it mattered, because as soon as Matt went through with it the reveal still blew their minds. Tal laid out his plans for the character with Matt during Campaign One (towards the end) after they all got their VM tattoos.

It is a “horrifying and gross” thing to dig up a body, and Beau was pretty reluctant to do it. Tal, as Cad: “Sometimes dead’s better.” The moral quandary of trying to speak with a dead friend was very different here than the frequent occasions they used the spell in C1.

Taliesin says his poker face is very bad, so it’s easier for him to over-react and let it all play out. The only other player he can see very easily from his place in their current setup is Travis, and because he knows Travis doesn’t watch TM, tweet, or participate in social media, he admits he thoroughly enjoyed watching Travis freak out at his freaking out. He says he only knew about 20% of what Matt described at the end of that episode. He was picking things to mug to increase Travis’s surprise. I love this so much.

Taliesin provided the table left leg shake; Travis provided table right. Ha!

Beau is really accepting her role in the Cobalt Soul. It’s good when “as a person, you feel like you can settle into your calling. Sometimes you can do more from the inside than fighting from the outside.” It’s a mirrored but opposite path of Keyleth from C1; Beau felt like she was too good for her duty, while Keyleth thought she wasn’t good enough.

Caduceus is not a big believer in jumping to conclusions. He does have an idea/notion of the “city of the undead” and thinks all this necrotic energy must come from somewhere, and wonders if this is the “capital of anti-death.” He’s willing to believe whatever he sees. This is one of the few things that trigger a bit of loathing and disgust in him. It was terrifying that the Wildmother didn’t know anything.

Beau is pretty confident in her Charlie Day impression laying-out-the-research last episode. She enjoyed taking the things that were known & extrapolating around them; this is a huge facet of Marisha’s own personality and she really enjoys it, so she built a character this time that would allow that kind of puzzle-solving. It’s also why she repeatedly notes when Beau journals, so she can avoid metagaming. Trent’s mention of Vess Durogna’s tomb raiding was completely circumstantial, and the only reason she’d made the connection to the Tombtakers was because she’d recently reviewed those notes for a separate unannounced project. Sometimes she tries to make connections and Matt is like, “It was...just descriptive. Just flavor. The curtains were red...” and she has to discard a paragraph of notes. She feels like it’s still something they have to do because of “look at what he does! Look! It’s totally valid!”

Cosplay of the Week: @kitsunstudios with a gorgeous Caduceus with a very intricate silk vest.

Caduceus’s takedown of Trent! One of my favorite moments in the entirety of C2. Taliesin felt Trent was an asshole; Caduceus felt sorry for him because of how dumb he thought he was. Caduceus’s response was "this is the dumbest man I’ve ever met in my life. He’s so dumb! Is nobody going to tell this guy how dumb he is? Oh, they’re all freaked out. Somebody needs to tell this guy he’s an idiot before somebody gets hurt.” (Marisha: “Before?”) Tal says it was the product of several years of therapy and many drunk conversations with Whitney Moore. It was from a genuine place of concern from Caduceus. “How are you allowed to have this much power and be that dumb?”

Brian loved how funny it was to watch everyone tiptoe around Trent and then Caduceus bulldoze through the end of the meal.

Taliesin: “Damage doesn’t make you interesting or better. It’s not what makes you good. Character isn’t found in damage. Just recovery.”

Brian & Marisha commiserate going through the stage where believing surviving something automatically made you a stronger person, better for the pain; instead it just meant you had to pick up the pieces after. Marisha talks about how strength through survival may be true for some people, but it shouldn’t be considered a necessity. Taliesin talks about how he used to think he had to be miserable to write. Brian talks about how believing he liked reading and writing miserable things only limited him for years.

Marisha feels it’s a C2 theme that almost all the PCs have someone trying to handwave or take credit for their accomplishments or explain their pain as being for their own good (Trent, Beau’s dad, Obann). She thinks it’s interesting to see all the various ways people try to take credit for your work/delegitimize you as a person. She loves that RPGs allow you to explore these odd moralities in interesting ways. The only way to fight it is to have a sense of your own self-worth, which is a problem a lot of the M9 started with.

Caduceus likes everyone, and really likes people who appear to need role models (Eodwulf). “With the right friends and the right bar and the right attitude, I think he’d be okay. Come over here where it’s so much better. That seems like an exhausting friendship that you have there.”

Marisha loves the mix of personalities in the M9; Veth, Cad, & Jester were all “we kind of like them!” after the dinner, and she immediately made eye contact with Travis and they both shook their heads. She knows Beau has to go along with it for Caleb’s sake for now, but she & Fjord are pretty sus of Trent’s proteges.

Beau is less concerned about Artagan’s relationship to Jester because “he showed his ass--she’s less worried about Jester now because a little of the magic is gone.” It’s a little like becoming an adult and realizing your parents are also just adults & human. Caduceus wasn’t suspicious of the Traveler for a long time until they got to the island. Aside: Taliesin loves the pantheon in D&D. “The notion of attempting to apply common Western conceptions of religion to a world where you have a pantheon of interventionist gods as baseline makes no sense to me. Everyone admits that every other god is there and doing shit; it has more in common with ancient Rome than anything else.” Now that he knows it was a con, he feels the wind had been taken out of it. He does have a sense that Jester’s gotten back together with an ex: “I hope that I’m really happy for you.” They’re both interested to see how Jester navigates the new relationship.

My internet goes out, of course. I panic for a second, thinking I’ve lost everything above, but all is well! Thanks, Form History Control addon!

Marisha loved punching Artagan, but regretting rolling so poorly. “I miss violence.” Dani lets us know it’s been about four episodes since the last battle.

There’s no way the Cobalt Reserve doesn’t have a single document on the Eyes of Nine. Beau believes “there are no real secrets” because people are just bad at not writing things down. For there to be no information at all seems really suspicious for her.

Fanart of the Week: @oddalchemist on twitter with some awesome Beau conspiracy red-thread boards overlaid a distant shadowy Molly walking away.

Caduceus feels a little guilty for really enjoying his time right now with the M9 and not wanting to go home. He’s starting to suspect that he’s going to go home very different than when he left. “He has the softest problems. I don’t know if I want to move back in with Mom & Dad.”

Beau is trying to get comfortable with the idea of being happy. Jester is probably Beau’s first real best friend & one of the first healthy female friendships she’s ever had. As long as she still has Jester in her life, she doesn’t care. For Yasha... “At the end of the day, Beau is a lonely person and has always been a lonely person. And I think you kinda reach this point where once you’re not lonely anymore, you can kind of come out of the fog and realize that was horrible! And terrifying! And is even more terrifying now that I know what I could have, and I don’t want to go back to that. At the end of the day Beau doesn’t want to be lonely anymore. There’s always been that flirtation with Yasha, but everyone had to figure their own shit out. And now it feels like it’s coming out a little bit of that haze, maybe this actually could be...” There are a lot of ways they complement each other & are good-different from each other. Marisha believes people can be attracted to more than person at once.

Caduceus doesn’t think nature turned against him on Rumblecusp, it was just a reality of nature being dangerous and violent. “He has a complex relationship with nature.” He doesn’t expect special treatment.

Thoughts on the mansion: “Man, it’s nice to be seen.” Marisha: “I don’t know how I ended up becoming the Scanlan of this campaign, but I’m living for it.” It felt like an echo of “I’m better for having known you.” They compare Marisha taking specific notes on the campaign to Liam taking specific notes on people’s favorite tapestries, comics, etc.

They talk about missing theme parks and daydream a park version of the mansion in CritRoleLand. It’s lovely.

Taliesin never expected Divine Intervention to work; he just wanted to roll some dice. He’s still processing what he saw/heard. They all agree it was very useful in the Vokodo fight.

Vilya! Marisha: “Ah! Ah! Ah!” As a player, Marisha was so deep in Beau’s eyes she didn’t pick up it was Vilya at first (especially since Matt really emphasized they should not be looking for C1 NPCs). Marisha’s brain melted. She bawled her eyes out on the ride home after that episode. Right after it ended, Laura told Marisha “Keyleth finally gets her happy ending,” and it makes Marisha emotional again since Keyleth’s story ended so bittersweetly. She talks about the very real feelings of “just wanting them to be happy, though!” She went back and listened to all her old Keyleth playlists. Everyone was teary after the episode. “Everyone has these 100% real memories of being these characters and having these good times.”

And that’s that for that! Thanks for your patience, all, and is it Thursday yet?

“One November Eve”

One stormy eve, when Dream Flow mysteriously doesn't show for their meet up, Skychaser heads to his friend's home to find out what's keeping her. What he discovers isn't quite what he expected.

Feat. Skychaser, Dreamaria Flow

Related Chapters: Little Monster, Newcomer, Impasse

~Destinyverse Archive~

Skychaser isn't usually one to fuss when it comes to Dream Flow's occasional tendency to arrive late to their hangouts.

He's long accepted it as an on-and-off habit of hers, oversleeping or losing track of time. It's not like they've ever been in a rush, so it's never truly bothered him. Besides, it's easy to imagine her getting caught up in a busy, tiring schedule as an Emotion Counselor.

The latest he can remember her ever arriving was about thirty minutes past their designated time, and even then she came to him apologizing profusely before insisting on treating him to make up for the tardiness. He can tell that she's since made a more conscious effort to be more punctual, despite his assurance that he really doesn't mind.

An hour and twenty-two minutes late...now that's just plain out of character.

It's nearing 6 PM now, and it won't be long before they'll have to officially reschedule their sauna day for another time. Sky is still sitting at a cafe table, tapping his hoof against the wooden surface, the vibrations causing his long empty cup of mint chocolate chip ice cream to shake. 

He'd been looking forward to relaxing within the embrace of hot steam on a chilly autumn day. More so than that was his eagerness to behold Dream's first heavenly sauna experience, as a mare who apparently had never even known of their existence until a week ago. She had mirrored his excitement, giving him a date where she'd be completely free. But that's all quickly becoming rather trivial compared to his growing bewilderment.

'Did she go on a last-minute errand run?? What is going on?'

It's only when a large droplet of rain nearly jabs his eye that he knows that the fall thunderstorm Ponyville ordered for the sake of building atmosphere towards Nightmare Night has begun. And it's at that moment that Sky knows he has a time limit before the rain starts pouring. So with a frown, he swiftly makes his way to a new location...

By the time he's in front of the door to Dream's house, the boughs of leafless trees have begun groaning and Sky's thick mane might as well be mauling his face, thanks to the whipping winds. Honestly, if it wasn't for the sheer absurdity that was the concept of being "stood up" by Dream of all ponies, he would have thought to arrive sooner to check on his friend. But looking at the house, the windows are completely absent of any light, and that becomes even more prominent with the darkening grey sky above him as the sun dips away and the clouds prepare to-

-drench him. Just...all at once. A waterfall-like sheet of rain crashes onto him, and he hisses a curse as he instinctively tries for the doorknob, despite knowing it won't open.

Except it does, and Skychaser has to blink a few times at that.

'Guess she went out and...forgot to lock it behind her...?'

A flash of lightning and Sky all but scrambles inside and shuts the door before the accompanying boom of thunder can deafen him.

As he enters the threshold, and his eyes adjust to the brief lightning flash followed by the interior darkness, he almost swears a separate faint light catches the edge of his vision. But it's gone before he can fully acknowledge it, and it leaves his mind as soon as he winces at the booming thunderclap.

"Hokay then..." Sky mutters. He shrugs off his hoodie and hangs it on the nearby coat rack. Having visited Dream's house numerous times before, finding and flicking on the closest light switch isn't too difficult. The warm lighting reveals the large, decently furnished living room he's grown quite accustomed to, as a place to spend time with his friend as well as a safe space for a few of their counseling sessions together: television and couch set up to the left, first-floor bathroom to the right, her open kitchen towards the very back, next to the polished curving staircase... "Wait for Dreamers it is..."

At least, he hopes Dream isn't still trying to make it to their sauna day. Once she realizes he's not at their meeting spot, she'll either look for him at the Cutie Mark Sanctuary if only to frantically apologize like the sweet doof she is, or she'll make the better call and head back home in this weather.

Unless she's forgotten their plans entirely. Then well...at the very least, she'll absolutely return straight home and they'll figure it out from there.

'Unless...an emergency...?'

Sky vigorously shakes the worrisome thought out of his head, only to flinch and curse again when water droplets fly everywhere and cling to the nearby wall. This isn't the time to go into Anxious-Brother-Mode™ when he should be hunting down a towel unless he wants to create a puddle in the middle of Dream's living roo- oh, a puddle's already forming, goddammit.

He carefully maneuvers himself towards Dream's towel closet on the right-most wall, right beside her bathroom door. But he sighs and gives up midway on tip-toeing when he realizes he's leaving a trail of rainwater anyway, making a faster beeline for it. Without pause he yanks it open and pulls out a fluffy towel with cute little sea motifs, aggressively drying his cursed sponge-like mop of hair; the true perpetrator of the puddles...a symbol of freedom and majesty now fallen from grace. For shame.

He sighs with relief once he feels sufficiently...less wet, albeit his feathers are sticking in almost every direction and his inner pegasus shrieks at him to preen- which, speaking of, is it weird to preen in your friend's house when they're not there?

Shower Thoughts with Skychaser.

Sky lets the towel hang around his neck and grins to himself over his dumb mental joke- but upon closing the closet door fully, something he hadn't noticed before immediately greets him.

A single orange sticky note, attached to the door at eye level.

He's genuinely confused at first, but once his eyes flit over the words written on it in black marker, he near-instantly recalls the counseling session he'd shared with Dream not even a month ago. In this very living room, funnily enough:

"Sticky Note Affirmations" she had called it, suggesting it to him like many other forms of therapy they've given a go through the course of their friendship. He remembers her explaining it as a method of using positive affirmations in one's daily life, to "move the mind away from persistent negative thoughts" and "set in a more positive way of thinking".

"Positivity takes practice!" he can practically still hear the confidence in Dreamaria's voice from that day, her beaming face forming in his mind. "We may be our own worst critic, Sky, but we're also the one person in life who can be our most faithful supporter. So try cheering your future self on!"

It sounded a little silly at first, the idea of sticking notes around his room and expecting them to do anything. Dream Flow did say the results varied for everyone.

Now, Sky has a small collection of post-it notes that have given him just the slightest boost needed to help deviate that self-deprecating corner of his mind; more often than not, at least. Who knew that reading something as simple as "I Am Worthy" on his bedroom door every morning could make a difference in his outlook for the day? He sure didn't.

But maybe Dream being the source of the idea made her feel a little present within each of his notes, believing in him just as much as he was encouraging himself.

Dream specifically offered the idea of writing down kind compliments for himself. There were also reminders and encouragements for daily tasks, saved for the heavier days where such chores often felt impossible or pointless. Now one particular note near his comb encourages him to brush his mane each day because otherwise, he'll deal with knots that resemble a pile of tangled earbud cords - or worst...Astral Dusk's spikes - and risk shaving it all off in frustration (Monochrome would have a field day).

Anyway, that aside, the note on Dream's towel closet reminds him of that sort of encouragement:

"Because a hot shower organizes thoughts and helps warm the soul!" it motivates, in curvy writing that he definitely recognizes as Dream's.

It shouldn't be a surprise that Dreamaria would practice her own suggestions, maybe to test the effectiveness for herself; but at the same time, how effective could testing it be? In his friend's case it felt hilariously redundant, like a mere flashlight's beam merging in with an already blinding sunray of optimism. Or...something. He's not as poetic with words and comparisons as Eventide.

Point is, the living embodiment of positivity just setting up more positive inspiration for her "future self" is incredibly funny to him and wholesomely endearing.

Skychaser backs his way into the middle of her living room, bumping up near Dream's couch there, and gives the room a good squint - and to his delight, his eye catches the pastel colors of more sticky notes dotting the mare's kitchen.

Well, at least he has something to distract himself with while he waits on Dream Flow. And if there's anypony he'd love to read some encouraging wisdom from, it'd have to be the counselor herself.

So he starts at one end and slowly saunters through her kitchen space, from one note to the next, feeling his grin and amusement growing with each one.

"Because an uncluttered sink helps with an uncluttered mind!" a pink note above her sink declares, where a few glasses and plates have been left to sit.

"Use me! Because you've come so far as a cook, and I exist for a reason!" the green note on her spotless stovetop-oven all but shouts.

"Because your body deserves nourishment, and Uncle wants you to eat well. Don't forget to keep a full fridge!" one blue sticky note insists on her refrigerator. Skychaser slyly opens the freezer door to better gauge the sorts of things his friend prefers to indulge in, for the noble cause of future birthday bashes (he genuinely half expects a compartment full of ice cream). His eyebrows fly up when he sees it's empty besides a tray of ice cubes.

'She REALLY must have gone out for some serious grocery shopping, geez...'

Now that he thinks about it, it's curious, really. Because while Dream's session on the notes had been held a month ago, Skychaser had visited just a week before and he's certain these little reminders hadn't been present that day. But the folded corners and slight creases on the notes suggest that they aren't recent either...?

Huh. Weird.

Sky hears the rain audibly thrum harder on the roof. He glances at the door, then at the time on her microwave.

6:42. Still no Dreamaria.

Hooves clacking across the tiles, Skychaser turns to leave the kitchen. In an effort to set aside his uncertainty, he considers what distractions he could find on Dream's T.V. That is until he finds himself pausing by the kitchen island.

Skychaser now notices that amongst a clutter of unopened mail envelopes, a single letter has been left out. Were it not for the rather official-looking white and blue mailer with a broken gold wax seal, or the fancy thick yellow parchment of the letter itself, Skychaser would have overlooked it.

He fights with himself, eyes flicking back and forth between the rest of the living room and the strange letter just...laying there.

...his need for answers wins over. Because surely a small glimpse and the quickest skim just to understand the subject of such an out-of-place letter couldn't hurt. It just may be the very clue he's been seeking as to the whereabouts of his friend.

'An emergency', his mind supplies nervously again, the feeling intensifying when he picks out on the envelope's face that the mailing address is from Reinsford; Dreamaria's hometown.

'Yeah, that's not comforting...'

So sure enough, he sets his now-folded towel onto the counter and leans over the parchment, giving the sentences a quick once-over. He searches for names, keywords, the last line of the letter-

He stops.

He reads the last line again. Then a third time, his eyes widening with each reread.

'Hold the fuck on, am I-?'

Sky swoops the letter up into his wings. He squints harder, darting his orange irises back to the beginning. Because maybe context would confirm whether he's crazy or he just read what he thinks he just read.

"Dear Madam Dreamaria Flow,

I hope this package and its contents have found you in good health. 

It has been a lengthy two years since your departure from our beloved coasts. Your absence has been profoundly felt by your fellow residents and myself, even to this very day.

While I would not dare to take up more of your time than necessary, I first wish to extend my deepest apologies for not reaching out to you sooner. Your uncle has shared a tale or two of your exploits in Ponyville, and though I am sure you have found success and a great sense of fulfillment in your new career - a hearty congratulations to you, may I add! - I have felt that a hefty debt was left unpaid the day you left this town.

It is only right that I follow through on my word. It took some time, but after vowing to properly reward you for your unforgettable deed, I am happy to announce that I have made great use of my authority to finally deliver:"

Halfway through the letter, the storm outside gives another bright flash of lightning, followed seconds later by a booming crack of thunder that almost shakes the air. A barely present corner of his mind registers something...slightly different about it; like a subtle sparking undercurrent of sound had joined in for just a second. But right now he's focused on this letter, too immersed in speed-reading the sentences to consider it as anything but a one-off:

"Enclosed is your very own Reinsford-sanctioned Certification of Arcane Excellence. Please do brandish this certificate with pride as a prior member of Reinsford's community. I believe such high credentials could prove useful and bode well if presented and proven to Princess Twilight Sparkle herself.

While losing someone as gifted and valuable as yourself thoroughly saddens us, we are quite pleased knowing our talented Dreamaria is still putting her skills to good use.

Remember that this town will always be your home. It has been far too long since we have last seen you. Never hesitate to visit, and if anything goes wrong, know that we will gladly welcome you back with open arms."

And then finally, he reaches that line again. Except he isn't sure if context has at all changed the amount of bewilderment and awe his discovery has brought him.

"Nonetheless, Reinsford will continue to miss its - official, as of this letter - dear Wizard, and its citizens whole-heartedly wish you well with your personal endeavors.

With gratitude, Mayor Bight"

A thunderclap of merciless lightning shatters the sky, and in that very instant, darkness falls around him.

The blackout startles Skychaser enough that he drops the letter and braces against the kitchen island with a soft yelp. He's thankful that the nearby streetlamp is managing to stream in just enough light through the windows to allow him the vaguest visual of his surroundings; shapes and desaturated colors and shadows, more than anything.

But now there is an eerie, deafening silence, with the background whirring of every appliance coming to a complete hush. The rain, the slightest shifts of his body, and his breath are suddenly much louder, almost reverberating through the room.

Whatever sense of confusion and wonder over Dream's letter has momentarily fizzled out, replaced by goosebumps and an immense sense of vulnerability. He feels small and uneasy - a single breathing body in an expanse of black and greys.

'Maybe I've uh...outstayed my welcome... If preening in your friend's empty house is weird, standing around for them in the darkness of their home may deserve a restraining order.'

He'll just have to table his questions and intrigue for another day, as exasperating as it is to have even fewer answers now than before.

For the sake of his boggled mind, he settles that Dream is out shopping. Or doing awesome-secret-wizard-shit, if this letter and her disappearance aren't just some strange, elaborate prank Dreamaria has set up just for him. Unlikely, yeah, but he's also learned that Dream Flow is pretty up there in terms of surprise factor.

Maybe he'll see enough faces on his way back to the Sanctuary to ask around about his friend. But before that, if he wants to even make that journey, he decides that a borrowed umbrella might be a good idea right about now. Or ooh, a cute, tiny raincoat he can drape over his head as he elegantly races through the streets before ducking underneath an awning and meeting his soulmate? Surely Dream had one or the other around somewhere.

The attempt to lighten his own mood somewhat works as he's able to blindly locate her letter, replace it on the counter, and urge himself forward through the low lit room. The air has been quick to drop temperature without its heating unit, only adding to the strangely oppressive atmosphere.

Thankfully the street light bounces off of the far wall - the one he had previously borrowed his towel from - preventing him from running face-first into it. If he's remembering right, and he traces the wall towards those curving stairs in the back corner...

The wall stops short. Tucked into the large alcove that follows, he finds his sought-after mystery door right near the foot of the stairs.

While aware of its existence, he admittedly has never seen the room's interior nor ever had a reason to check it out. He's only ever assumed it to be some sort of coat closet, so naturally, any form of raincoat or umbrella would surely be stored within. Most likely??

But as he steps up to the door, all too ready to prepare for his leave, he yet again is brought to a halt. He makes out a familiar small square shape in this shadowed corner of the house, attached to the door a little higher than the usual eye level.

'Oh. Even here?'

He almost chooses to ignore the sticky note with his priorities at hoof. But something about it draws his eye - and he realizes that, even in this lighting, he can faintly make out words. It's due to the writing itself, displaying neat and meticulous letters, as opposed to the other affirmations that were more hastily scrawled.

'"Because"..."you"...?'

Sky has to lean in until the bridge of his scrunched muzzle is just inches away from the note. His eyes have adjusted to the dark, so he's able to read the bleeding inky words:

"Because you'll prove them wrong."

.....

Skychaser allows himself a moment to give the note a good, long stare.

Maybe it's due to his current circumstances: the storm, the week of Nightmare Night, Dream's absence, standing alone inside a dark, deathly still building on a cold November eve. But the sharp change in tone from Dreamaria's previous notes definitely forces Sky to acknowledge just how unsettled he feels.

One step back and he's boring his visible eye into the closet door before him. That eye then falls to its silver door handle.

...this....is a closet that he just found that note on. Right?

Sky very quietly, very weakly laughs to himself. He moves to turn the handle before he can overthink it.

'Maybe this is where Dream keeps all the dead bodies.' he jests, pushing the door open a sliver.

It creaks under his hesitant grasp. With that crack, Sky notices a light source within, out of sight, in a room bigger than he honestly pictured; faint. Orange. ...pulsating?

BANG!

Sky releases an indecipherable shout right as the door in his grasp SLAMS back in place in one explosive movement. He stumbles backward but he doesn't get far, because in a whirlwind there are glowing blue lights flying around him in literal ribbons, erupting from the floor, grabbing him, coiling around him so rapidly that he doesn't get a chance to even unfurl his wings as he rears up, because now they're being tied to his back and his forelegs are bound up securely against his chest-

He's lifted, hoisted right off the ground and jostled about in the process of being turned. At this point he's stopped thrashing and has kept his eyes squeezed shut and his teeth painfully clenched. Upon the movements stopping, he cracks his eyes open to look down at himself.

Instead, his irises flash to his lower left, where the end of one ethereal ribbon is gradually creeping around his neck without actual contact: a silent threat. He can't control the pitifully strangled noise he lets out, desperately leaning his head as far away as possible, which isn't far at all.

'What the fuck, what the FUCK, I WAS FUCKING JOKING-'

He would be breaking down into hysterical laughter right about now if he wasn't so shaken. The only reason he hasn't entered a full-blown panic is that the ribbons have completely ceased their motions, and while tight, it's not enough to restrict his breathing. He's fine. He's okay.

Look at him. Those positive thinking exercises have been working...haha. ...coping with humor at a time like this probably isn't the healthiest, though, even if it's working to keep his sanity intact.

Maybe it's not fully hitting him. It all feels too unreal, like some realistic fever dream-

Violently swishing fabric rolls through his ears next, too pitched and harsh to be born from his imagination. Skychaser jolts, because in a single blink, the safe beams of the streetlight filtering in from each of the house's windows have been cruelly snuffed out. The curtains have all been pulled shut in one sweep. He's been left in true, absolute pitch darkness.  

And then he sees it.

A set of white, glowing pinpricks of light, waiting in the shadows straight ahead.

Staring right back.

Watching him. Sky registers that this is real.

Body and throat seized up in terror, he doesn't even scream. He can't find his voice, only listening to his own labored breathing while those two glows eerily sway and grow closer. He catches the sound of slow, careful steps. Hoofclacks.

As his mind processes, the glowing orbs stop just outside of the light from his radiant restraints.

And they speak.

"...state your business."

The voice is low. Soft and husky, yet it carries in the quiet amongst a backdrop of rain. It's formal, frigid, and completely foreign to him.

Skychaser shivers.

"I-I..." he struggles out, his own voice hoarse but miraculously coherent despite his scrambled brain. "I was...l-looking-"

He snaps his mouth close when he hears a sharp inhale in front of him. It's followed by a much gentler, far more familiar tone.

"...Skychaser?"

Sky's eyes bug open, only for him to cringe away when a flash of light nearly blinds him. He blinks against it anyway, urging his pupils to focus in on-

Dream Flow.

The tip of her horn is illuminated with a small beacon of magical light - a beacon that closely resembles whatever the hell she's done to her pupils, filled at the centers with the very pinpricks of white that had shaken him previously.

The unicorn looks thoroughly dumbfounded. Wide-eyed, mouth open, head pulled back. When she seemingly confirms his identity for herself, her eyebrows knot even further.

"...you're...my intruder?" she slowly sounds out. "How did you...why are you here?"

Sky's remaining brain cell has long fizzled out by now, so he sputters at first before he exclaims back;

"Me?? I came here looking for you! You didn't show for our sauna meet! Where in Equestria have you been?!"

Cogs seem to turn in his friend's head for a few seconds before realization settles in.

"Oh." She murmurs, blinking owlishly at him. "That...yes. You're right. I...oh..."

More beats of silence pass. Sky shifts uncomfortably in the ribbons' grasp. Before he can even ask, the motion has Dream breaking out of her stupor. As if just realizing the state he's in, dismay flickers across her face. And yet she lets out a laugh, one he can only describe as stressed in this context.

"Oh Celestia, what a horrible...horrible misunderstanding!"

With a blue spark of her horn, Skychaser watches as the magical ribbons begin to shimmer and dissolve away, gently lowering him down as they do. He turns his head about at the rather pretty display, with sparkles left behind in the spell's wake before those dissolve in thin air too. Skychaser doesn't get to admire for long as he clumsily has to catch himself with his front hooves those final few inches to the floor.

He shoots her a perplexed look, but he doesn't think she sees it, because she's too busy aiming a secondary laugh at the floor. In his gut, he has the distinct impression that she doesn't actually find this humorous. Not with the way her shoulders have gone rigid.

"I am...so terribly sorry, Skychaser. I genuinely thought someone had broken into my house and...well, I was prepared for a confrontation!"

"I noticed!" he wheezes out, half-exasperated, half-jokingly. "You also look ready to shoot lasers out of your eyes, and I nearly peed myself because of it."  

Dream winces, then squeezes her eyes and sets her horn sparking blue again. When she reopens them - thank God - her actual pupils have returned. The spectrum of colors in them are discernable again too - downcast, he discovers that the azure in her irises appears more pronounced. Or maybe it's the low lighting.

"They say intimidation leaves an impression," she quips, the corner of her mouth barely quirking up. She's still not looking at him. "Guess it worked, huh?"

Sky mouth pulls down into a deep frown, his gaze roaming over his friend. Dream's blue mane is unusually unkempt from what he's used to. The mare's form hasn't even moved an inch from its tight, almost closed off stance in the past minute or two - a significant contrast to the conversational cadence of her voice.  

He doesn't think he's ever seen Dream so...physically withdrawn before. In a way, it was understandable in the aftermath of what's looking more and more like one very awkward, very startling mix-up. But it's also not like she hurt him.

"Hey, Dreamers, it's okay. You freaked me out, sure, but I'm WAY more relieved to see you. I was starting to think something serious happened."

Shortly afterward, Dream finally meets his eye, but only to offer a sad smile.

"I apologize for that! It seems I just..."

"Overslept?" Sky grins humorously, only to pause when Dream's expression dips into guilty. "Wait what?"

"I'd only meant to close my eyes for an hour or two at most-" she confesses, glancing up towards her stairs. "-and take a short rest before meeting up. But the murky weather must have lulled me." A chuckle bubbles out of her and she shakes her head. "I think my sleepy haze made me forget everything else once a 'threat' entered the picture. But that's no excuse. I won't let something this careless happen again, I promise."

Sky rubs his forehead. Not because he has a headache, but because the small puzzle pieces he now possesses are struggling to mash together. "So...you were actually upstairs? This whole time?"

Dream nods. "Yes, I woke up when..." Her eyes trail over towards the front door.

She goes quiet. Almost as soon as that answer fades out, another question begins. "....Sky, how did you get in anyway?"

"Your door was unlocked...?" he provides, letting the question in his tone voice his own confusion. "Which I thought was weird."

Dream answers with a short, disbelieving laugh. "Oh wowy! Seems I didn't lock it behind me when I got the mail today..." she breathes out a sigh. "I'm glad you got out of the storm, but I'll need to be more mindful."

Mail.

An opening presents itself to him. A way to find answers and ease tension, he hopes, as his buried intrigue and curiosity rises from the depths.

"Hey, don't sweat it! But I gotta say...that was a preeetty cool trick you did back there," A knowing grin spreads across his face, and he leans his head forward with a conspirational whisper. "Miss Wizard~"

Dreamaria doesn't respond right away. It takes her one steady beat before she slowly turns her head back towards him.

A blank stare greets him.

"...what?"

"You're a Wizard, Dreamy!" he chirps, bouncing between his hooves. "Congratulations! Even I couldn't believe it when I spotted your letter, but all that fancy-shmancy magic you did sure confirms it." He taps his hoof to his chin, humming playfully. "It sounds like you've had a bunch of snazzy spells up your sleeve for a while! Why'd you never-"

He's so lost in his giddy mental world of excitement and thrill that he almost misses the way Dream stiffens. Almost.

Because her smiles are gone now.

"You...read my letter."

It's less of a question and more a statement she's allowing to sink in. Caught off guard by her abrupt monotonous tone, he finds himself self-conscious in his reply.

"Yeah it was...lying on the counter, and I thought it could be a...clue...but um..."

With each word, Sky begins to recognize the breach of privacy he had committed and how weak of an excuse he really had to snoop on a clearly personal letter. Even if it felt justified at the time. It's his turn to wince guiltily. "Yeah no that...sounds pretty bad actually."

Dream doesn't react, gazing back vacantly in a way she's never done before. It makes him retract a hoof, an uncomfortable knot forming in his stomach. "...Dream?"

She inhales, almost painstakingly slow and deep. The breath is held for a few seconds longer.

Then, after an exhale that's just as prolonged, the smallest smile ghosts across her muzzle.

"I see. You were worried and it just kind of happened. Right? I'm the one who left it out and created this whole mess. So really, it's my own fault."

What? Sky insistently shakes his head. "No way, it's your house. I should've held off...I'm sorry."

Dream reaches out to touch his shoulder, smiling sweetly. "Apology accepted! What's done is done, eh~?"

Uncertainty lingers despite himself; to think he managed to elicit that response, out of Dream, which made it undeniably that much more nervewracking. Regardless, Skychaser wills himself to relax.

How Dream can consistently be that quick to forgive will remain out of his realm of understanding. Good thing, too...he didn't think he could handle impairing one of his most cherished friendships all because of his own ever-present idiocy.

"...can I ask...??"

Sky's a little dubious on where to put his footing down from here, but he trusts Dream enough to be forthright with him about where her lines lie. Thankfully the corners of the mare's eyes crinkle back cordially.

"Yes, Sky?" she invites.

"...does that mean you're like that one guy?" He leans back in, side-mumbling to her. "Star Whirl the Bearded or whatever-"

Dream laughs, loud and hearty. "OH, heavens no! Starswirl was an arcane prodigy. I'm nothing like that." Dream Flow turns away from Sky to walk towards her front door. Curious, Skychaser follows after her. "In fact, despite what that letter claims, I'm not a Wizard."

"What?" Sky laughs out, shooting the back of her head a doubtful raise of his brow. "But they gave you-"

She smiles back at him over her shoulder, serenely closing her eyes and shaking her head.

"I'm not a Wizard. Being a Wizard suggests that I'm some grand expert who plays with different fields of magic for a living! I'm just an Emotion Counselor who happens to have some extra prior study on the side." For some reason she begins to glide an absentminded hoof against the carved wood of the doorframe. "Reinsford legally naming me their pet Wizard doesn't change that."

...pet? "Now excuse me for a second!" Dream says, aiming her horn towards the entrance. "I really need to reset this before the mental buzzing gives me a headache."

Her horn illuminates - an odd mismatch of bright blue with tinges of her magic's usual orange - and Skychaser gapes as the unassuming decorative markings carved into the door's wooden frame begin to light up brightly, one by one, until it's covered with these glowing elaborate lines and shapes completely unfamiliar to the pegasus. Dream turns back to him, coaxing him with a nudge of her head towards the display.

"If you don't mind, Skychaser, could you please touch one of these runes? If I add in your magic signature, we won't have to worry about another silly mishap."

Sky has literally no idea what any of that means. But Dream looks composed and attentive, so he follows her instructions. This "rune" he touches brightens, casting a warm halo of white light around his hoof. Then it all fades away, dimming the room back to just Dreamaria's light spell.

He glimpses at the unicorn and takes in the unexpectedly soft way she's looking at him.

"...thank you for trusting me." She expresses with warmth, placing a hoof over her chest in some form of relief.

"I mean yeah, always, but that was...?"

Dream perks up. There's a playfulness to her demeanor as she casually shrugs.

"A magical alarm. Just in casies. You activated my runes when you walked in," she giggles. "That's what alerted me and woke me up! But now that I've included you into the formula, you're my trusted exception. No more false alarms if something like this manages to happen again."

Okay. Sky's mind is officially boggled.

"Wait, so you're over here trying to convince me that you're NOT a Wizard-" He gestures incredulously at the door. "But you can do crazy shit like that?!"

Her ears twitch back, enough to catch his attention. Just like that, she's back to averting her gaze.

"Ah...this isn't as complicated as it looks, actually!" Dream defends cheerfully, strain returning to the smile she's wearing. "The initial set up was more tedious if anything. But I appreciate the compliment!"

With that, she strides away from the front door and back into the house, presumably towards her kitchen. However, her attitude regarding the subject bugs him. It's not like he knows much about unicorn history and titles and whatnot, but still...

"I thought being called a Wizard would be like...the highest honor for a unicorn or something." He scratches his head, a little embarrassed over his own lack of knowledge. "So I guess I'm not getting why you're..."

"Being called a wizard is a compliment to a unicorn's abilities." Dream supplies for him, slowing her gait to a halt. She turns her head without facing him, choosing to speak into the air instead. "Being named a Wizard is different...just something silly they began labeling me one day." More jovial laughter shakes her shoulders. "It was a little much! So Ponyville became my home of choice."

Despite her light-hearted, almost whimsical tone, Sky's ability to read body language doesn't fail him. He sees tension retake her frame.

"So you don't want to be one." Sky notes with a frown, eyebrows pulled back. Hooves clacking against the hardwood floor, he stops just beside her to brush a soothing wing against her shoulder; something he realizes he's never had to do, because comfort has only ever been given the other way around. "Too much pressure?" He prompts quietly.

Dream Flow is staring off, a distant look on her face. There's a slight shift to her jaw.

"I...don't have time to..."

She's deep in thought. Contemplative. Choosing her words carefully as she lowers her head to one side.

"...humor their fantasy of me."

A tense silence follows, along with a creeping feeling of personal familiarity. Sky tries to work a response through his mind, but he doesn't get enough time to when Dream's gently pushing his wing away and beaming up at him. "But never mind that. This weather must be doing things to me. It's not like me to put a damper on the mood! I've never been the biggest fan of rain."

"It's not a damper..." Sky tries, because really, when has Dream ever opened up to him like this? It's never even crossed his mind that she even had things to open up about, as stupid as that was.

But it's clear to him that Dream's finished, with the way she holds up a hoof and how the curve of her lips eases. "I wouldn't want anypony getting the wrong idea about me here either, actually. So I hope we can keep this between us? No more ‘Dream the Magical Wizard'?"

Dream drops her pitch a few decimals just to exaggerate the title, and it's so out of the blue that it wins her a short laugh from him. "Of course." Sky answers without hesitation. If she's shared all she's willing to, enough to return to her usual self, he won't push it. That's how she's always been when it came to him, after all. "You're just 'Dreamers the Dork" to me."

A grin breaks across Dream's face at that. "I like that better, actually."

"Ooooh no, don't say that, or else I'll start greeting you like that. Everywhere we go."

Dream giggles and continues her trek to the kitchen with Sky in tow. He now sees that she's heading towards that little area directly beneath her stairway; a side room to her kitchen used for her laundry appliances.

...memory swears that the folding doors to this room were closed earlier.

"Okay, let's fix this..." she hums and steps into the crowded space, leaving Sky standing at the threshold. He never identified it until now, writing it off as some random metallic plate on the back wall, but Dream Flow snaps it open and reveals it to be a door to a breaker box.

Confused, he's about to stop what should've been a futile attempt at bringing back power, but just like that, Dream flicks the top-most switch and the house comes back to life around him. Light refills the room, the microwave lets out a beep of relief, and Sky meanwhile is whipping his head back and forth between the main room and Dream herself.

"Wait, I thought the storm took out the power, how did you??"

"Oh, no." Dream grins sheepishly, gesturing towards the circuit breaker behind her. "That was all me."

Oh, how the surprises never cease with her. When did she even get downstairs to pull this stunt on him?

Well, she could teleport. But even that made noise. How he never heard her even once is-

Oh. Thunder.

"This was...one elaborate plan, Dream."

"That's true. But when you've never lived alone before, you sort of...end up a little paranoid." Dream rubs her foreleg shyly. "I saw lights on downstairs, sensed someone I couldn't even see walking around, and had no clue what they wanted. Naturally I assumed a break-in, so I took the necessary precautions to keep safe and take action."

If Sky didn't feel bad earlier, he's certainly feeling it now.

"Damn...didn't mean to scare ya, sis."

"That goes for two of us..." Dream Flow sighs dramatically. "Causing fear in you...I'd never wish for that again."

"Hey, I'm just glad it wasn't anything paranormal!" Sky exclaims, backing up to let Dream join him in the actual kitchen. When she does, though, she turns her head towards her appliances.

"...oh. Well this is embarrassing." She says, looking straight at one of her sticky notes. "These were meant to be private, but wow does this explain why my 'intruder' was so entertained by my kitchen."

Skychaser snickers. "Hey, I for one appreciated your wise words. I think it's cute that you're messing around with affirmations yourself."

Speaking of...that reminds him.

"I was wondering, Dream," Sky motions his head back towards the very space their face-off had played out. "What's that room by the stairs? I thought it was a coat closet, but..."

He trails off, wondering if Dream will catch on.

"Oh, that? That's just my private study! I've stored a bunch of very personal memories from Reinsford in there." She smiles. "I take it you read my note. It's basically a little reminder for myself to keep moving forward."

Ah. Move on from a town of expectations? That made enough sense to him. And he sure was glad all of the wild threads tonight were finally ending with answers.

"And like everything else, I can only guess that creepy orange glow was you too?" he teases. "I only got a glimpse, but it definitely was a distraction before everything broke loose."

Dream doesn't say anything at first, as if waiting for him to continue or deliver some punch line. When he doesn't elaborate she gives him an inquiring eyebrow raise and a tilt of her head. "Wait, what glow?"

Sky stops. Just in case, he searches Dream's face, but she looks sincerely clueless.

"The...one inside the study?" He provides, hoping for any sign of recognition. "Something was glowing, but it was faint and I couldn't see anything."

Dream looks taken aback. Eyes darting sharply towards the door in question, she gives it one disbelieving look.

"'Glowing'...?" she whispers breathily, and the goosebumps that had long faded away are now returning to Skychaser's pelt. He blanches.

"Oh Gods it wasn't you..." Sky tugs at his hair and makes some sort of makeshift curtain to hide half of his face behind. "Oh Gods, what was that then?!"

Dream's multi-colored orbs snap back to him. "A-ah! Well-" her voice carries a slight tremor, one she catches and visibly swallows down (as if that'll hide how she's just as freaked out as he is, she's not fooling him). Then she laughs it off, giving him a playful grin. "It's probably not ghosts?"

"Probably?!"

"It's more likely some old runic project of mine! Responding to the electrical energy in the storm." She waves her hoof towards the ceiling. On cue, a rumble of thunder reaches them. "Elemental conversion and all!"

"Lady, I still don't get your magic talk, but if you say so..." He heaves out a breath. "Anything but ghosts...or dead bodies."

Dream gives him a quizzical look at that last comment, but apparently decides against asking. "Well hey! You know what'll lighten the mood?" Dream claps her hooves together, eyes glittering now. "The storm won't stop for another hour or two. So it's time for me to begin making it up to you, starting with a movie night! I still have popcorn in the cupboard and plenty of soda~"

Sky squints at her from behind his mane-wall.

"...'Dogs Don't Dance'?"

"A classic." Dream nods sagely.

"And you'll restock your dang empty freezer first thing?"

"Whoops...don't worry! I'll stop slacking and do that tomorrow~"

Skychaser carries himself to the DVD storage shelf her television sits on. It's thankfully on the literal opposite side of the room from Dream's private study, a place he's sure he'll now associate with tension and spooks after the events of the day. Keeping away is proobably for the best, especially right now. Because reassured or not, the pegasus doesn't think he'll be completely shaking off his jitters tonight. A scary movie would probably do him in at this point.  

Dream must be experiencing something similar, because after tapping the popcorn setting on her microwave, he sees her lean against the counter and restlessly gaze off towards that very door behind him. Warding off any surprise demons with her magic stare, he hopes.

But enough jokes. He leaves Dream to it, turning his full undivided attention on the vital task of sifting through DVD cases and finding his favorite comfort movie of jiving animated dogs. They both probably need it.

_________________________________________________________ This...this is a dense chapter and I'm kind of living.

I'm so curious to know what theories and thoughts people have drawn from it, so don’t be afraid to hyper-analyze. Nothing brings me greater joy... I recently fell in love with a few different writing styles and decided to play around with it myself here! I had a lot of fun with it, HEHEH. These probably constitute a whole separate lore upload, but for now, below will be a list of headcanons on Wizards in Destinyverse! For those interested!

-----------------------

Wizard/Sorcerer/Sorceress are all synonymous and are used based on preference. “Wizard” is the go-to gender-neutral term of the three.

The title of “Wizard” has altered throughout time. In pre-Equestrian days, when the Unicorns were all competing to understand magic and develop their power and prestige, the original Unicorn Royal Family were quick to employ the most powerful and innovative mages as advisors. These were the first Wizards - they were gifted high societal status and became the first nobles, whose wealthy descendants still live in the uppercrust of Canterlot to this day.

Thereafter, Wizardry became a profession that certified one’s expertise and allowed a unicorn to work alongside the most prestigious spellcasters and researchers (sometimes working for the crown, but not always). Aspiring Wizards then only earned their own title if they were lucky enough to have their talents acknowledged by the royal family  (in the special case of the mighty prodigy Starswirl himself), or by the authority of an existing Wizard (ie. the sorcerer Clover the Clever, first student of Starswirl the Bearded).

After the three pony tribes integrated into one society (and the Unicorn Royal Family abdicated for the reign of Celestia and Luna), unicorns stepped up in villages all across Equestria to offer magical consultation and arcane services to their fellow ponies. From time to time, an especially studied specialist with a wide range of knowledge would prove their skill or accomplish an incredible feat; thus began the practice of local governments certifying their very own Village Wizard for townsfolk to go to for any magical needs. Not all Village Wizards dedicated themselves to one singular town; in fact, it was considered an honor for a village’s Wizard to proudly represent their town and aid others across Equestria.

The decline of spellcrafting and spellcasting over the centuries has led to Wizards being few and far between. The desire to pass down arcane knowledge still exists, as seen with Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns; so these days, only those with a thirst for knowledge (or even rarer, the desire to pursue arcane advancement) study magic. Even fewer who graduate Celestia's school have gone on to become Wizards, either becoming professors at the princess' school or private tutors of upper-class Canterlot.

The modern Wizard is now defined as a certified practitioner of multiple fields of magic who is consulted for arcane services and/or researches for the sake of arcane advancement. Famous present day Wizards include!

Mage Meadowbrook and Mistmane (both once designated sorceresses of their respective villages). Meadowbrook was the very first non-unicorn to become a mage, and then named Sorceress for her potion-making and item-enchantments.

Starlight Glimmer (sorceress; professor at Twilight’s School of Friendship and occasional aid for Uni-Tech)

Sunset Shimmer (sorceress; royal scientist; founder of Uni-Tech who works for societal advancements in magitech)

Sunburst escapes the definition by a thin hair, due to not being an actual spellcaster or crafter. But he is a valuable magic advisor with his keen mind, and a proud member of Uni-Tech.

al horford sleeper agent

—————

anyway by now ive told basically everyone i care about but i had a life changing experience over the weekend. n it sounds dumb as shit but i met a real life dude who was basically a clone of nick from franz. weird hours. guess this is a thread

before we start i want to say i havent thought about franz in weeks. theyve gone away on their own finally but really i think my old obsessions just get replaced every few years and maybe it was my hard work in therapy or my new obsession with rap or

maybe it was just a realization or me growing up and maturing or something but i dont even want to work on my favorite fanfics anymore or anything. it’s just odd. i think im changing

and i don’t think about how my former favorite band members are doing or worry about them or check their socials n it feels really good. but i know there probably is or probably will be a replacement

ok that was a tangent. if they were replaced by anything they were replaced by new friends and the NBA. so there’s the exposition of this story sorted

anyway back to the weekend. the sleeper agent invited me to lunch. and that was the catalyst. god people are being so loud in here let me go to the art library

anyway i just kind of realized "huh i guess there's more out there." i went to lunch n shit. WE went to lunch n shit. stopped caring so much about my math homework. let myself be dumb and in love

that’s a very human thing. lunch. he spilled his stupid chipotle burrito all over his stupid bright green celtics jacket

he’s from italy. never even stepped foot in a chipotle. immediately clowned himself. some world we live in

we hung out all weekend. we went to lunch like two more times and we went to dinner. there was this big threat of leaving looming over my head the whole time. i made him walk like a mile on crutches and i feel very bad about it

i don’t know what’s wrong with him. it’s somewhere between a basketball injury and a chronic disability. either way that just made me feel even more emotionally attached to him. i never saw him without the celtics jacket

it was so cold that weekend. or maybe i just didn’t bring the right jacket. if he were a gentleman he would have offered me the celtics jacket. i didnt even hug him goodbye

and then of course he went back home. theres a million girls all over his instagram comments all the time. theres nothing special about me. he doesn't want to talk. i wrote my ap psych notes in green yesterday bc i was so in love with that stupid celtics jacket

im a sixers fan. the sixers and the celtics have been rivals forever. it was about to be war, except i want to move to boston. but really i want to move to dc. i wish the whole world was philly. things would be less complicated

im in love with a celtics jacket. a celtics jacket. of all teams. and i cant even talk to my basketball friends about it because they think im dumb shit for falling for some celtics fan with a million girls all over his instagram comments all the time

im not like those girls. i don’t think im like those girls. but i definitely exactly am

i have an economics test in fifteen minutes. i think one day ill drown in the atlantic ocean.

the test wasnt that bad. i thought about writing this the entire time. i would just zone out and stare and think about the phrase ‘al horford sleeper agent’

because he has to be. why else would someone put a diehard sixers fan right in front of a diehard celtics fan who looks exactly like the guitarist of their middle school favorite band

in reality i should be calling him a celtics sleeper agent because the whole point is that al horford is a sleeper agent for the celtics. but i hate al horford so i guess it’s more funny to include him in the title

i mean how can one player change so drastically like that? al horford was benched for the first time since his rookie season, like, two weeks ago after being traded to the sixers. how does that happen? why *wouldn’t* he be playing badly so his old friends win the title?

al horford’s gotta be retiring in like, three years, tops. he’s working for the celtics, i know it. and my sleeper agent is trying to convert me to a celtics fan

i understand why people make jokes, though. it’s a very human thing to want to go home. al horford just wants to go home. he lived in boston for however many years let me look it up

god whatever it was only three years i thought it was like eleven that just ruined my point

back to the matter at hand though that’s all we’re trying to do. we all just want to feel at home. we’re all just these little things trying to connect somehow. sometimes we are more desperate than others

i think im pretty desperate right now. sometimes i sit in my bedroom and im like damn when do i get to go home? but im home

i didn’t even want to leave dc. it was all star break and there wasn’t even basketball on. so there i was, in basketball purgatory, wizards territory for some god forsaken reason, losing sleep over a celtics fan and not wanting to go home

and when i say i was losing sleep you better believe me. i was so excited to wake up in the morning that i didn’t want to fall asleep. i wanted to be awake forever, endless, running through the city

i’ll get there soon enough. it’ll be with different people. college, yknow. all that. but sometimes i feel like certain things can’t be replaced.

and im acting like a different person lately. im using my phone at red lights just so i can check for a message from the sleeper agent. it’s always one word responses

yes. ok. maybe. some shit like that. a haha every once in a while. he’s not interested and i should stop trying

and then, INEVITABLY, i send something stupid back, a photo of my hand on the wheel or something, and i get left on read

and i know im stupid for it. everyone i know is screaming at me “disco, you’re dumb shit” but i just want to believe for a minute that im loved, im special

I want to feel like someone out there cares about me that isn’t obligated to, yknow? my mom can say she loves me all she wants but it doesn’t feel as good as some italian celtics fan saying it

some hot italian celtics fan mind you

even if he wasn’t hot or italian it would be nice. and actually it would be better if he liked like, ANY other basketball team

except maybe the knicks

but whatever. main point: i know im dumb shit and should stop trying. but it feels good to feel like if i keep trying maybe i’ll be wanted

sleeper agent is just one of those people tho. he’s magnetic and everyone always wants to be around him. dumb as hell in the most charming way ever. my friends are still all making fun of me

i started crying in a pizza place the other night because even the CONCEPT of italy sent me over the edge. i need to stop before i

wait what’s the word

i need to stop before i immortalize him? no, no

i need to stop before i deify him. soon enough he’s going to be a new canonical character in my head and i’ll start making up legends and stories to myself

we barely knew each other. if i deify him i’ll start telling people he offered me the celtics jacket when it was cold out. he’ll become a perfect gentleman. and he wasnt. he was just some stupid hot italian boy in a bright green jacket

im not going to deify him. it won’t happen. but i love the color green. i always say i love yellow more but i think that’s passed. i wear a green ring on my right ring finger every day. im not going to deify him and i still hate the celtics

overall, the celtics are winning the rivalry. i don’t think the sixers have ever truly been “great,” at least outside of philly. maybe allen iverson. wilt chamberlain. dr j? theyve never had like, a dynasty. idk. i don’t think you’d be able to get a sixers jacket in italy.

it’s his birthday today. i should probably text him. i should probably stop thinking about him. that’s just dumb shit, disco youre better than this what happened to a little self confidence every now and again

sure lets say external validation isnt necessary but also i think that’s something the mindfulness crowd made up to sell more planners and tote bags in 2011. it feels good to be wanted

never waste all your time on it sure. know youre still worth it even when you have no friends and there are a million girls all over his instagram comments. but it does feel good to hear “goodness disco i like how much you like the philadelphia 76ers”

my friends are all making fun of me for being on some romeo and juliet shit because he’s literally from verona and he’s a celtics fan and im a sixers fan god damn it disco why does this always happen

i never even read romeo and juliet but i saw the dreamworks adaptation so i guess ive got the story relatively right i know they die in the end. the gnomes shatter into little pieces i think

anyway tangents aside the sixers won tonight. philly is lit up green. why the hell is philly lit up green? the eagles were done like three months ago and the flyers are orange. why is philly lit up green

oh god, he just snapped me. a zoomed in photo of himself with caption that says “76ers” with like five exclamation points

here we go again, everybody

wish me luck

Run To Me; Part Ninteen

Summary: Dad!Mob!Tom. Sequel to BAK but you don’t have to read that one first. If you wish too, the link is in my bio masterlist!! Where old feelings arise but other things get in the way. Whether it’s kids, fears or things from your past coming back to haunt you.

Run To Me: Series Masterlist!

Words: 3.2k

Warnings: Guns and other weapons!! Both mentioned and used.

Notes: Thank you so much for blowing me awya with the feedback on the alst chapter after I pointed out the lack of!! it seriously means a lot :-) -

“Don’t scream, don’t reach for your phone and don’t try to fight back.”

Now, five years ago your first instinct would have been to fight back. You would have swung an arm back and ducked and then waited for a bang but this time around you stayed completely still, chest moving in and out steadily though your heart was accelerated and any more you swore it would have given out. Then there was the thought of Rosie in the other room. Alone.

A solid thirty seconds you stood there silently, suffering with every heartbeat protruding through your ears. Did that make any sense? Probably not. That was the level of fear that was radiating off of not only you but Aiden. He shook, the gun cold beneath his clammy palms. It was a heavy object, holding only so much power. A suffocating amount.

“Aiden,” You swallow, biting the inside of your cheek and keep your eyes trained on the patio door. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to deal with you.” You didn’t have to be looking at him to know that his grip tightened around the weapon as it shook, metal cold against your temple. “You didn’t think I’d stay away, did you? Not after I found out about you connection to Tom Holland. I can’t believe you broke his heart, that’s brave as shit.”

Your nails dig into the palms of your hands as you speak. “What do you want with me?”

“You’re his only weakness besides Rosie, that has to mean something, right? Plus, I’m not cruel enough to hurt a child.” You let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding it, feeling that Rosie was a little safer. “I know we were never really together… nor did we have the best ‘relationship’, but I actually liked you for a while and then Tom turns up and things go to shit? That’s not cool.”

“I don’t know what you’re thinking of doing or why, but just remove the gun and we can talk this out.” You plea. While you begged for one thing, your mind was on another. It was trying desperately to remember the training you’d done with Harrison, even just a few of the moves.

Aiden tuts and shakes his head. “So where’s Rosie, huh? Is she back at the house? Kids grow up so fast and I haven’t seen her in what? Three weeks, maybe a month so, I think. She’s probably grown a foot and a half in that time.”

“She’s not here.” You only prayed that she’d stay in the room, hidden hopefully in the closet or under her bed like she did when you played hide and seek. You hoped that right now wouldn’t be one of the moments where she tried to play hero. Just for once you hoped that your little girl could stay quiet and hidden.

“Damn, I was really hoping I’d get to see her.” He sounded genuinely disappointed and you had to prevent a scoff from escaping your lips. Because he was nothing more then a coward and a crook. “How is she? Stopped that little habit of hers yet? You know that was bad for her.”

“She broke her arm when she got hit by a car and you know that.” You hiss, nearly forgetting that there was a very dangerous weapon pressed against your head. You were simply being a protective mother. “She hasn’t been able to do much lately while it heals, but you know, that’s kind of your fault.”

Aiden wasn’t having it.

“She wouldn’t have minded though, not with her daddy around now. I hear he’s doing well with her, but not better then me, surely.” He taunted you with his words, despite the gun being right there.

The conversation was enough for you to keep a sound mind even if the thought of utterly freaking out was right there, begging you just to give up and give in. You swallowed your fears and the trauma that played your mind. It was funny in a way, because you’d spent so long begging Tom not to get killed, reminding him over and over to come home yet you were the one on the brink of death. The thought nearly made you laugh out loud.

Tom. God, you hoped he had seen your texts and for once– just this one had decided to be his overprotective self and do something.

A slim conversation fell between the two of you, not enough to keep your mind off of the inevitable or his mind off of the weapon but enough to drag out the time, giving Tom longer to check his damn phone and put on a rescue mission. The thought that something had happened to him did cross your mind, but it was simply too early- the mission surely hadn’t started yet.

You suck in a breath, chest shaking and you let a single sob slip, remembering what happened last time you were so close to someone so dangerous. It hasn’t ended well.

For a moment you swear you hear his voice in your ear, presence quite literally right next to you telling you to run- to fight back. You wished he was there, Alive and breathing guiding you through this but he wasn’t- not like last time. The blonde boy with a quiff was still underground and you were still alone in this. You only hoped that this time wouldn’t involve as much blood and as much pain.

So why do you do the opposite?

“Please don’t kill me.” You beg, chest moving in and out heavily. “Please don’t– I have a daughter, you know that, I need to stick around for her. I don’t want to die.”

You swore you felt sick begging him for your life. It wasn’t like you, and you knew that. But desperate times call for desperate measures. What you were about to say was even worse and you decided that you could have just bolted towards the hall and hoped that he wouldn't shoot, but that was too risky. You’d rather worm your way out of it with words.

“Shut up.” He spits, warm saliva hitting the side of your face and you nearly grimace. Your words may have made him angrier, but you felt the gun slip slightly, moving down the side of your face a couple inches.

You swallow, mouth suddenly dry. “I know you, Aiden Wilson. We celebrated Rosie's birthday together and we sat on that couch for Halloween.” You wince as he takes a step. Begging for your life wasn’t going to help, because Aiden couldn’t give two shits about yours. It was Rosie. “Rosie adored you, she appreciated you taking her out trick or treating when I couldn’t and showing up to her party, and all those times you took her to daycare. You remember that, right? She also needs me, I–I'm the only person she’s known since birth.”

“I could kill you right now and I wouldn’t care, I hold the power.” He taunts, but you had to ask yourself why he hadn’t just killed you yet. Of course, it was fear. It wasn’t necessarily the fear of getting rid of you, but the thought of ending a life and what would come after, what would happen to him. Pure selfishness.

The clock ticks away on the back wall, indicating every passing second. It had a hold of you. “I know you do, and that’s why I’m asking you to please– just let me go, no one needs to know about this. Not Tom and not Rosie. We can move on.”

“We can’t just move on and you know it, you’re still hung up over something that happened years ago. I need an escape route and you’re it.”

You don't necessarily understand his words but force back the tears that threatened to spill, holding yourself up with confidence despite the clear fright and anxiousness. There were years of breathing exercises, coping methods and trying to retain nightmares, years of therapy and improving your wellbeing only to put in near the same situation twice. It was like your fears were becoming a reality.

Breathe in, breathe out.

“Mummy?”

The voice is enough for your breathing to get caught in the back of your throat, a sweat forming above your brow and Rosie gently pads into the room, a fearful look her face. She took each step with caution, still not completely understanding the site ahead of her and if you were honest, neither did you.

She had heard some of the conversation from behind the door, tears filling her coffee brown eyes as she watched her mummy and the man she had grown to hate conversing. She felt betrayed because hadn’t her mum promised that Aiden wasn’t coming back? She had promised they were safe. The weapon only made it worse. Rosie new what a gun was thanks to numerous television shows and a movie her grandad once let her watch but maybe the full extent didn’t quite reach her because she stepped out anyway. She wanted to save her mum, to be a hero.

You shake your head, temples smacking against the barrel of the gun. She looked so pure standing there, so innocent with blown eyes and lips formed in a pout. You were damn near sure that she was her father's daughter, concluding that look came from him.  “Sweetheart– Rosie, get back. Go back. This is adult stuff”

“So you lied to me again? She was here the whole time. And to think I was going to spare your life.” Aiden butts in and you were close to tell him to butt out, to fuck off at that. He nearly tuts and beneath a heavy hand, one that was now gripping your upper arm, you visibly tremble.

Breathe in, breathe out.

“Just let us go– Rosie, leave.”  You beg, forcing your feet to remain still despite the urge to race over and scoop her up into your arms. You stop when she lets out a whimper, wanting more then anything to be in your arms.  “C’mon, at least move the gun, you’re scaring her.”

It was funny that, how only a few months ago she hated to be coddled and now she desired your utmost attention. She needed to have a hand on your arm or your shoulder, resting on your thigh or up in your arms. Sometimes she preferred to be laying next to you with her head on your shoulder or curls hanging over your face. She was growing increasingly clingy– afraid of separation.

“No! Let go of my mummy.” She shakes her head stubbornly, tears rolling down her flushed cheeks. Rosie was only four but easily understood when someone was in trouble. Though, maybe it was just that way when it came to her mother.

You hoped that somewhere, deep down, this guy had an ounce of remorse and good will. And that just for once he could do something good for your family. Still, Tom would have his head one way or another. You hoped that Aiden was at least partially sane– just sane enough to realize what he was doing soon because a lot of the men in your life hadn’t been. Everyone had alternative motives.

“Your mummy has done some very bad things, Roo. People have to pay the price and she hurt– Or Tom hurt me, he ruined me, but she’s the only one I can get my hands on.” He tries to tell your daughter, but no doubt she wasn’t listening to or processing what he was saying. She never did when it came to him.

You cringe as he calls her by the nickname you gave her.

“She hasn’t done anything wrong,” Rosie tells him, crossing her arm over her chest considering she couldn’t cross the both. “Let her go or I’ll… I’ll hit you.” It was merely an empty threat because no matter how stubborn she got, frustrated and angry she grew, she wouldn’t hit. Throw things at the wall and paint the carpet green maybe, but not hit.

“You know it’s not nice to use violence.” He tries to scold her. Keyword tries. ‘Says the one holding a gun.’ You wanted to say, but don't. The gun was still held to your temple with Rosie, your own daughter in the room and though it was closer to killing you, you still felt more worried about her life then her own. But wouldn’t anyone?

Breathe in, breathe out.

You try to distract Aiden from her, mind racing with every possible option. But you were slowly giving up hope that Tom was coming as the seconds ticked by, forming the decision that you’d have to get yourself out of this one.  “What do you want with me?

His beard– or whatever scruff he had rubs against the back of your head and you tense. “I just said it’s because Tom hurt me, right? He ruined years of work, took my life away and now I want to take his. I heard about the bust today from Dominic and he gave me full permission.” As he spoke, you noticed how each word dripped with venom– pure hatred for you still legal husband.

Maybe Tom had done some bad shit, maybe he was just trying to stop bad shit from happening in the future and maybe he was trying to protect his family but you knew one thing. Tom Holland had saved your life.

“You said he gave you permission, but it’s been at least ten minutes and you haven’t pulled the trigger yet. I know you don’t want to do this. You gulp, chewing the inside of your lip and keep the conversation going. Your eyes remained on Rosie who looked clueless, yet angry. “The drugs weren’t your life, you– you could’ve had so much more then that and you still can.”

“You don’t know about me and what I do– did. How the fuck do you think your bills got paid? That was drug money. If anything you should be grateful.” His grip tightens on your arm and you freeze, wincing at the feeling. This doesn’t go past Rosie who furrows her brows, storming forward.

Aiden's hand remains wrapped around the weapon, ignoring what you had said about him taking his time. Drawing out every sick and twisted second.

“Let her go!” Her little voice screeches, booties padding across the floorboards.

Your eyes widen in shock, nearly diving forward until–

“Rosie, NO!”

She hits him right across the legs with a grunt and Aiden lurches forward, the gun rattles and his finger hits the trigger but doesn’t apply any force– You barely heard her gasp, and didn’t have to see her small eyes widen in shock and fear as the two adults react quicker then lightning.

You spin around, taking the gun between your fingers and aim it twist his hand up until the barrel was no longer facing towards you or Rosie. It was a moment of pure adrenaline. Your heartbeat heavily in your chest and teeth were grit together to the point where your dentist would have scolded right before his eyes filled with dollar signs. Aiden struggled and grimaced under your grasp and struggled to get his hand on the trigger while you forget to keep it away.

Bang

You don’t even take a second to look for wounds on neither you or Aiden as you struggle to grab the gun that had only just clattered to the floor. The thought of if someone had been shot and what would happen to them was barely there, only just sitting in the back of your mind because your mind was on taking that gun and using it to your advantage.

His fingers brush the weapon, gasping and groaning as he collects it and closes his hand but it’s too late because you tug it out of his grip.

Desperate breaths escape your lips, hair was strewn over your face in nothing more then tangles and if you looked in the mirror, you wouldn’t have recognised the wild rage in each eye. You held the power now, every single ounce of it as he lay on the wooden floorboards, only moving to clamber up to his knees with his arms. up in the surrender position.

“Y/N–”

“Rosie, grab my phone off of the bench and call Tom or Sam– Tell them Aidens here, okay? And don’t come back in.” You don’t even turn to her as you speak, listening for her footsteps as she races towards the counter. Your gaze remains hard and on Aiden. “Don’t move you fucking asshole.”

Truth be told, all you wanted to do was take Rosie and promise her that none of this was real, wipe her memories and protect her from all of this– the things you spent five years protecting her from. But if it weren’t for Tom you’d still have Aiden living under your roof, Rosie wouldn’t know her father and you’d be wondering what could’ve been.

Now, Aiden Wilson sat on his knees below you with guilt in his eyes and the desire to plea for forgiveness that he surely wasn’t going to get, not this time anyway and if you thought the gun was shaking badly in his hand before, then it was surely clattering around now.

You only hoped that they– No, Tom would get here soon, before your complete and utter breakdown.

-

Tom paced back and forth in his office, something nagging at the very back of his brain though he couldn’t really put his finger on what. He assumed that it was due to what was, or was possibly about to happen. But everything was in place, Z and Jacob were at their posts and Sam and Harry were at theirs. But still, something didn’t feel right. He ignored it.

Before anything could continue– before he could leave his office and wait by his own post, he looked down at the paper that sat on his desk. It was a slim envelope, only three pieces of paper sitting on the inside and he cupped his jaw, breathing out a heavy sigh. Those papers contained everything he wanted to say, things he wanted to get off of his chest and things he just had to do.

His office. The second in his time considering they moved warehouses twice. It definitely wasn’t anywhere near as homely as his one at the mansion and it didn’t contain the rugs that made his feet tingle, and the warm in room heaters or the comfortable, plush leather chairs. This one was dirty and grimy and he preferred to spend as little time in it as possible. It was also his father's old office– the lunatic of a man who was nothing more then scum in the brother's minds.

It held memories of when he was a kid and he used to scribble on the walls that were now covered in paintings and other items of furniture. There was also the thin mat Tom used to have to sit on for hours and write on a scrap piece of paper or play with his dad's dog when she was in the mood. Tom hated it, (not the dog) really. Though maybe it was being reminded of his childhood that he so hated.

He took one last look, shaking his head in discontent. He felt as if he were wishing this room goodbye because thank fuck, he finally had a plan– a way out of this entire mess that’d work for everyone.

“Boss, they’re here.” Tom nods towards Z, craning his neck slightly to look up at the taller girl. “One of his men shot Miles and he’s uh, he’s dead but we have the man that shot him, Jacob has him.”

Tom peeks out of one of the windows, blinds between his fingers and he narrows his eyes on one of the men smoking a cigarette so naturally, rocking back and forth on his heels. In order for Tom to win this game, he had to take risks, do things he didn’t want to do to protect his family. He lets go of the blinds with a rattle.

“Have they surrendered?” He questions, mirroring Zendaya's hard gaze.

Zendaya sighs, the gun resting on her hip poking out between her shirt and jeans that clung to her legs like a second layer of skin. “They don’t know that we’re watching yet, they’re outside.”

Every second felt like minutes as they stood there, waiting for the right time for the rest of the plan to commence. Tom would break out, frightening his dad who they all hoped would act innocent or send them a devilish smile. There was a fifty percent chance of both occurring. Tom wondered if his hair was still short and stubby, if he still wore glasses and those horrendous looking suits that were usually slightly too big. He wondered if the man still cracked the same jokes and smiled wider then the sun on the odd occasion that he did so.

Before he can leave the room- before he can even grab his weapons of choice, footsteps break down the hallway and the door opens with a slam as it crashes into the wall, handle piercing the wall.

Harry stands by the door, hair wild and animal-like.

“You can’t go yet.” The boy takes a breath, gasping for air after racing through the entire warehouse– leaving his own post. Tom nearly protested before Harry finally spoke up again. “It’s Rosie.”

Tom quirks a brow and reaches for the phone, seeing the shock on his younger brothers face. “Rosie? How’d she get the phone?”

“I don’t know but it’s not good,” Harry says, hanging around the room like a fly. Though he’d struggled to understand the smaller girl, he picked up on a few words such as the name of the man that was near the top of the mobs most wanted list, and the fact that she sounded scared.

Tom brings the phone to his ear, coughing as he heads back over to the window to take another peek, making sure the men hadn’t moved. “Rosie?”

“Daddy?” She hurries out, and Tom hears the pitter patter of feet on the other end of the phone. Something was definitely wrong, he could tell that much straight away.

“Yeah, pumpkin, it’s me. What’s happening? Where’s your mummy?” He replies, trying to keep his cool.

“She’s hurt,” Rosie stops to sniffle, both hands gripping the cell phone. “Aiden’s here and he– he hurt her and she told me to call you.”

Tom hated that name more then anything. Not the name itself, of course, but the face behind it. It reminded him of things that he could’ve done– but didn’t. And the man that tried to be there when he wasn’t. Tom grabs his coat off of the chair, gritting his teeth as Rosie talks, more so murmurs.

“Okay, okay I’m listening. Where are you right now?” He asks, pressing the phone to his shoulder so he can write down notes for the boys. Z watched in silence, arms folded across her chest and Harry stands by the door. They watched the boy panic and act instinctively.

“Home, but not your home, old home.” She tries to explain, but she doesn’t need to because Tom understood easily. “We had to go to my ap– appointnent but mummy had to get stuff.”

“I’m going to come to get you two, alright? Just stay on the phone to me. “ He pulls the phone away from his ear for a brief second, hearing Rosie babble on the other end. ”Harry, I– fuck, I don’t know what to do.”

Tom knew he had a job to finish here, a father to deal with but he also knew that he had a family that needed his help. The decisions weighed on his shoulders and Tom knew the right thing to do here, it was clear. But a part of him still worried what the mob would think of him running out on responsibility once again.

Harry nodded his head towards the door once, patting his brother on the shoulder. Tom was antsy to leave, tapping a foot against the floor. “We can do this. Me, Harry, Z, Jacob and the rest of the mob. Go save your family, Tom.”

“It’s not your job to look after my shit all the time.” The older brother sighs, feeling guilty.

“Tom, your family is in trouble and you’re wasting time, go!” Harry shakes his head as Sam rushes in, nearly running right into his twin.

He slips his lip between his teeth, bringing the phone back to his ear and pats Harry on the shoulder and for once, he puts all his trust in the boy. “I owe you.”

“Yeah, you always do!” Harry calls as Tom leaves, rushing down the hallway. He claps his hands together, turning back to his crew for the day and smiles. “Let’s get this party started.”

Leave comments or asks, reblog if you wish!! let’s talk about this chapter

Pt.20

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Plot Summary and Analysis of Parasite

Plot Summary and Analysis of Parasite

To me, Parasite is a devastating, brilliant story about the dehumanizing effects and consequences of Capitalism gone to the max.  If you have not seen it, I cannot recommend doing so highly enough, and please stop reading here until you do because everything else will be spoilers.  

The Plot                Parasite begins by introducing an impoverished family in Seoul – two parents, Mr. and Mrs. Kim, crossing middle-age, and a boy and a girl, Ki-woo and Ki-jung, each about in their early 20’s.  The film shows the family scrambling to stay alive by folding thousands of cardboard pizza boxes, and struggling to stay, for lack of a better term, modern, by attempting to find spots in their basement apartment where they can siphon wi-fi from neighboring businesses.  Right away, this action creates an interesting effect – the kids’ desperate need to be internet-connected plays to a common stereotype of young people being phone-obsessed and spoiled by the excesses of the web, yet they do live, undeniably, in harsh poverty: hunger is a constant concern; their home is a small basement frequently pissed-on by drunken passers-by; their toilet is crammed in an elevated corner where one needs to crouch to use it even while seated; they leave the windows open during street fumigation to get free pest-extermination, despite breathing the rancid gas themselves. The mother too has an almost childish compulsion to check WeChat.  It immediately creates in the film an ambiguity, a set of complications that is never resolved – are we supposed to laugh at these people?  Cry for them?  Root for them?  It seems like all three and certainly the third, though they’re far from the type of Hallmark-perfect poor family one encounters in many dramas.                  The opening scenes also draw attention without straining in the slightest to show just how essential technology and access to it is for the survival of people living in poverty.  The mother reveals that she wanted to check WeChat because she thought the pizza company was going to message her about folding the boxes for a small amount of money.  Though no one says it outright, it seems clear that the pizza box job is extremely important for this family, and that if the kids hadn’t found a source of free wi-fi and gotten the WeChat message, the job would’ve slipped right on by to another just-as-desperate family.                  The event that begins the plot of the film is that Ki-Woo’s friend, Min, a college student, comes by before a semester abroad with two gifts: an encyclopedia-sized, jagged rock that is said to bring material wealth to the family in possession of it, and an opportunity for Ki-woo to take over for Min as the English tutor for the high school sophomore daughter of an extremely rich family in the city.  Min says that he wants to one day marry the girl, Park Da-hye, and knows that one of his frat-boy college friends would salivate all over her if they were her tutor, but that he knows he can trust Ki-woo.  Min also says that the mother is young, beautiful, and naïve – it seems like he is implying that Ki-woo might be able to seduce her, though it’s not stated explicitly.  It isn’t ever made clear why Min thinks he can trust Kim-woo not to make a move on Da-hye, the daughter, and indeed he successfully does so almost immediately, but my personal suspicion is that even Min believes there is some intractable divide between the true poor and the true rich, such that even if Ki-woo is pretending to be a middle-class college boy, as he must to get the tutoring job, there is still no real possibility of romantic connection between him and Da-hye. Of course, maybe Min and Ki-woo just have a friendship built on deep trust, but the film does nothing to establish that if it is the case.                  With the prospect of a high-paying tutoring job from Min and some forged documents from his technologically gifted and artistically inclined sister, Ki-jung, Ki-woo goes to the rich neighborhood of the Park family for an interview and trial tutoring session.  He is greeted through a gate-intercom by the Park’s housekeeper, who opens the gate for him where he sees that there are about a dozen sprinklers in the front yard, designed to make sure every inch of grass receives a perfect sprinkling whenever needed for a perfect lush lawn.  The housekeeper comes out and leads Ki-woo through an incredibly opulent and stylish home designed by a fictional architect called “the great Namgoong,” who seems to be the Korean equivalent of Frank Lloyd Wright. The housekeeper has to wake up Mrs. Park, who is dozing in the sunlit yard.  Mrs. Park then interviews Kim-woo in the house, saying she doesn’t really care about the documents (expertly forged by Ki-jung) that he’d brought, but puts stock in Min’s recommendation.  She notes, however, that if Ki-woo isn’t up to par with Min, he won’t be able to keep the job, and she insists on observing him for his first tutoring session with her daughter.  The stakes are thus laid out clearly as Mrs. Park leads Ki-woo upstairs for the session, and as an audience member, I was pulling hard for him: the elegance of the Park home contrasted with the squalor of the Kim basement makes it understood that even a six-hour a week job with the rich family would be life-changing for Ki-woo.  It is one of the most exciting and triumphant releases of the film when Ki-woo absolutely crushes the first tutoring session, providing Da-hye with a new, aggressive test-taking philosophy that establishes him as an authority to be respected by both the mother and daughter – so much so that Mrs. Park voluntarily pays him even more than she was paying Min, whom she spoke so highly of that one wonders if he had a romantic relationship with the mother as well.                  The exhilarating and comedic rush of Ki-woo’s first tutoring session continues for the next 40 minutes or so of the film as the Kim family unleashes a plot to get all four of themselves on the Park payroll. Immediately after the first tutoring session, Mrs. Park shows Ki-woo some crayon drawings which she calls “paintings” made by her son, Da-song, who’s about nine years old.  She expresses an absolute belief, groan-inducing for the audience, that her son is an expressive genius.  Ki-woo humors her masterfully and suggests that, with a bit of training, Da-song could become a generational artist.  Mrs. Park latches onto the idea, and Ki-woo has an epiphany when he remembers that he has a cousin who went to art school with a girl who had a true gift for cultivating artists, which excites Mrs. Park very much.                Ki-jung, Ki-woo’s sister, is, of course, this gifted artist and teacher who studied in the US.  She memorizes some biographical information that Ki-woo made up for her, does a bit of research into “art therapy,” and ad libs the rest.  Her vibe is quite different from Ki-woo’s when she enters the home. Whereas he was polite and deferential until the tutoring session began, Ki-jung is aloof and commanding right away, giving off an aura of self-confident control.  Though Mrs. Park attempts to demand to observe Ki-jung’s first tutoring session with the son, Da-song, Ki-jung shuts her down and says she never tutors in front of parents.  Mrs. Park obeys but is obviously unsure if she wants to stick with this new girl.  She gets the housekeeper to go up to Da-song’s room to see how things are going – the housekeeper isn’t a parent, after all – but Ki-jung is already done, sitting quietly at a table with the usually wild and unruly Da-song.  She then totally convinces Mrs. Park of her genius by asking if something happened to Da-song when he was in first grade, saying she gathered that he’d suffered trauma by a mark in the lower right corner of his drawing, which is where most artists store their trauma.  It’s a funny moment for the audience, knowing Ki-jung is just ad-libbing, when Mrs. Park breaks down crying.  She says something did indeed happen to Da-song, but doesn’t say what, and agrees to pay Ki-jung whatever she wants to keep leading her son through art therapy.                  Ki-jung then sets a trap to get Mr. Park’s driver fired, and she too is waiting with a recommendation for a new hire – who is, unbeknownst to the Park’s, her father.  Mr. Kim goes to a luxury car dealership to learn some of the features of such vehicles, meets Mr. Park, and immediately sets to work flattering him.  Mr. Kim drives well, garnering a compliment from Mr. Park on his “cornering,” and earns the rich man’s respect by stating that he’s been working as a driver for 30 years – Mr. Park says that he admires a man who sticks to one thing for that length of time, indicating a sort of socio-economic conservatism: Mr. Park likes people to remain in their place, and of course he does, because his own place is so incredibly high.                  The last person the Kim family sets out to replace, and the most difficult, is the housekeeper.  She was at the house before the Park family even lived there, and does an excellent job – the only complaint is that Mr. Park says she “eats enough for two people,” but a few dollars a day of food is nothing to him.  But with impressive ingenuity, the Kim’s manage to convince Mrs. Park that the housekeeper is infected with tuberculosis and must be replaced for the sake of the children’s safety.  And sure enough, Mr. Kim knows about an excellent agency that hires out maids and nannies and drivers, and within a few days Mrs. Kim is the Parks’ new live-in housekeeper.                  The sequence is funny but still disturbing and tense – at any moment, with any slip-up, it could go wrong and the Kim’s could be back to total poverty, and if everything goes right it still results in the driver and housekeeper being fired by no fault of their own.  It’s something the Kim’s wrestle with in a following scene, sitting together, having a celebratory drink in the Park’s living room while the rich family goes away for a weekend camping trip to celebrate Da-song’s birthday.  They note that the driver is young and has “a good build” so he will be fine, but they all seem a bit uncomfortable when thinking about the housekeeper, an older woman who’d been working at the house for decades.  They quickly pass that by and continue trying to enjoy themselves.                  They talk about Ki-woo’s relationship with Da-hye, how much she adores him, and the Kim parents get very excited at the prospect of Ki-woo marrying the rich girl.  No one seems to care that they would then have to live the rest of their lives in a constant lie – it would be worth it to have real and permanent access to such wealth.  They even discuss hiring actors to play Ki-woo’s parents at the wedding.  Ki-woo notes that it’s Ki-jung who really seems to belong in the upper class – the way she luxuriates in the bathtub being his strongest source of data, seemingly observing that the most important trait of the rich is fully and composedly enjoying their riches.  The Kim children then note how kind Mrs. Park is.  Mrs. Kim, in one of the few explicit acknowledgements of the way wealth influences behavior in the film by its characters, scoffs and says that she’d be nice too if she had that much money – that it’s much easier to be nice when you don’t have to worry about keeping a family fed and housed.                  The scene in the living room gets momentarily heated when the family disparages Mr. Kim in comparison to the successful Mr. Park.  Mr. Kim throws the liquor glasses off the table and acts as if he’s about to hit his wife for her insult, then bursts out laughing. The whole family laughs, and the audience is relieved, not wanting the family to start fragmenting just as they’ve all made it to a place of seeming stability, with four tethers to the Park family and all the money and comfort they represent.                  And then there is a ring at the gate-intercom.  Mrs. Kim gets up to answer it, as the only person who should still be in the house at that time.  It’s the old housekeeper, saying she really needs to get something out of the basement of the house.  Mrs. Kim, in an apparent act of pity towards the older woman, lets her in.  The housekeeper looks beat up, aside from being soaked by the pouring rain that becomes an important plot point as the night wears on – already stricken physically by the roughness of joblessness in a harshly capitalistic society.                  Mrs. Kim follows the housekeeper into the basement, where the housekeeper is attempting to move a heavy cabinet.  With Mrs. Kim’s help, they reveal a secret passageway that the housekeeper says the Park family doesn’t know about – that the architect had built in case of emergency.  It’s here that some audience members, who expected a horror movie, asked, “is this where the horror part starts?”                  The housekeeper and Mrs. Kim go down multiple flights of stairs to a creepy secret room with a man living in it.  The housekeeper embraces him and starts feeding him from a bottle, which he suckles hungrily, having been trapped down there since the housekeeper was fired.  It turns out that he is the housekeeper’s husband, and he lives down there because he’s hunted by loan sharks – he attempted to stake out his own living with a “King Castella” cake shop, a food craze that swept Korea and led to a huge glut of shops before the bubble burst and left thousands of hopeful business-owners in massive debt.  The man in the basement, Geun-sae, says that even after over four years in that secret room the loan sharks will still try to find him, and will kill him if he doesn’t have their money.  So he stays down below, waiting for his wife to bring him food (the reason she “eats for two,” from Mr. Park’s perspective), and thanking Mr. Park with devout reverence for his provisions via Morse code communicated across lamps that wire down to the room, representative of the admiration the poor have for the rich, cultivated largely by a society that makes the poor’s existence contingent on the decisions of the upper class. It’s revealed that the trauma Da-song had suffered in first grade had been “seeing a ghost,” which had been Geun-sae coming upstairs in the middle of the night to get some food.                Mrs. Kim is just preparing to call the police, completely unsympathetic to Geun-sae’s predicament if it’s going to threaten her own newfound security, when the rest of the Kim family, who had been spying on the scene from the secret stairway, tumbles into the scene.  The housekeeper quickly gathers that they’re a family and deftly records a video of the four and has it ready to send to Mr. Park – all she has to do is press send, and the entire ruse will be up.  Using the phone like a gun, she leads everyone upstairs, and she and Geun-sae take the couch that the Kim family had just been seated at, forcing them to kneel on the floor as they consider their next move and enjoy some of the Park family’s food.                  The housekeeper loses focus for just a second, and Ki-woo rushes her, knocking the phone from her hands.  All six characters begin fighting each other for the phone, Ki-jung even dumps a bag of peaches on the housekeeper, who is fiercely allergic to them – all possible regard for each other stripped away by the stakes of access to the Park family wealth.  As the Kim family gets control of the situation, the gate-intercom rings again. Mrs. Kim answers it, and it’s Mrs. Park calling from their car – she says they called off the camping trip because the rain had flooded the campsite, and would be home in eight minutes so could Mrs. Kim please make some Ram-Dan.                  In the ensuing chaos, the Kim family attempting to pull off a herculean feat of cooking, cleaning, and brutal suppression of two other people to keep their place in the home, the kids and Mr. Kim wrestle the housekeeper and her husband back down into the basement and sweep the mess that had been made before and during the fight under furniture while Mrs. Kim whips up “Ram-Dan,” a meal she’d never heard of.  Just as the Park’s are coming inside, the housekeeper, her feet tied up, comes hopping up the stairs to the kitchen, and Mrs. Kim kicks her down the stairs and shuts the door.  The housekeeper falls backwards down the stairs and her head slams against concrete with a sickening thud.  The scene cuts back to Mrs. Park sitting down to enjoy the Ram-Dan.  It’s only here that it really feels like things have gone too far, that the Kim family has truly allowed greed to overtake them as opposed to simply operating selfishly by necessity.  Before Mrs. Kim kicked the housekeeper down the stairs, there was a sense of scrambling “all’s fair in love and war (and late-stage capitalism)” improvisation, stressful but basically justified, a family trying to survive with guts and guile.  But despite this sudden sense of change, one is still left without a clear feeling of how and when to have pulled out of the lie – should Mrs. Kim, and would you, audience-member, have allowed the housekeeper to come up into the kitchen? It would have destroyed everything. The Kims would have likely been arrested, in an even worse position than before.  Or would you, too, have swiftly and almost mindlessly placed your foot in the chest of the bound woman on the stairs, not even thinking twice about her life to preserve yourself?                  There had been a sign before Mrs. Kim kicked the housekeeper down the stairs that something was becoming warped in the Kim family.  All four family-members on the Park payroll, they’d been in their basement apartment.  Mr. Kim toasted Mr. Park, the family thanking him for his success which allowed them to be so prosperous in turn, never considering that the type of lavish prosperity Mr. Park enjoyed might just be the reason that the norm for so many in their country was desolate poverty.  The same drunken man from the beginning of the film starts pissing on their house and the family groans.  Instead of just watching, as they had before until Min came along and told the guy off, Ki-woo grabs the rock that Min had given them and starts to go outside.  The audience barely has time to wonder if he’s going to scare the guy with the heavy, jagged rock or actually hit him with it, likely killing him, before Mr. Kim gives his son a bottle of water to use instead, diffusing the tension again. But when Mrs. Kim kicks the housekeeper down the stairs, it becomes clear that the struggle to attain comfort and stability in the harshly unequal society has demanded of the Kims not just cleverness and a certain disregard for others well-being, but also a ruthlessness, a brutality towards life itself, and it’s hardened them, this greed that’s come into their lives, symbolized by the rock and encouraged by capitalistic structures.                  The Kim’s have to continue to hide in the Park home until the family goes to sleep, but before they do, they hear Mr. and Mrs. Park disparaging the smell of Mr. Kim, comparing it to an odor of boiled rags.  It harkens back to another earlier scene, a tense moment when Da-song says that all four of his family’s new workers smell the same.  The observation gets laughed off, and later, back at home, Mr. Kim says they need to start using different soap when they shower. Ki-jung says it isn’t the soap that makes them smell the same – it’s living in a shitty basement apartment. The smell that Mr. Kim apparently carries most heavily, the smell the Parks laugh at and make fun of him for and sometimes plug their noses from, is the smell of poverty.                When the Parks go to sleep, Mr. Kim and his kids sneak out of the home and into the still-pouring rain.  It’s clear that it must be deep into the a.m. hours by this point, and the sequence from celebrating their infiltration of the Park payroll to the housekeeper’s revelations to successfully maintaining their ruse and escaping the house had been so tense and long that you feel exhausted for the family, these three that didn’t just possibly kill the housekeeper, hoping that they can get home and get some sleep.  However, as they get closer and closer to their poor neighborhood, the streets become more flooded.  By the time they get near home, they are wading through sewer water, flooding the impoverished.  People are using buckets to desperately and fruitlessly try to throw water outside. The Kim’s home is completely flooded, water up to their chests in a claustrophobic scene in which they go inside trying to save a few precious items.  Ki-woo grabs the rock Min had given them.  Ki-jung gets the envelope in which they’d been keeping their cash earnings, but it’s soaked through.  She sits on the toilet, the only thing in the apartment fully above water, sewage belching up against the seat and spilling over, and weeps.  It’s a striking image – this girl who just a few scenes previously had been luxuriating in the Park’s jacuzzi tub watching a flat screen television now crying on a shit-covered toilet gurgling over in a flooded basement apartment – and it makes one wonder what exactly the film is trying to say. That lies and greed cannot be kept down, that they will explode to the surface, impossible to salvage or scrub clean – a moral message to apply to the individual?  Or that the ills of a nation cannot remain buried, that they are beginning to boil-over, that the horrors of poverty that many wish to forget, including those who have been a part of it, still exist and cannot be ridden of by merely hiding from view – an indictment of society, an illumination of the most horrifically oppressed and ignored?                While the Kim’s salvage a few things from their flooding home, the housekeeper regains consciousness and hops weakly to her husband in the secret room in the Park house.  She unties him and repeats Mrs. Kim’s first name, telling him that she is about to die, but wanting him to enact revenge for her.  She then fades and dies, the hideous concussion she’d sustained in the fall overtaking her.                  In the morning, Mr. Kim and his children are awakening in a cartoonishly crowded gymnasium filled with thousands left homeless by the flood, an image that reminds Americans of Hurricane Katrina news coverage.  They all get texts from Mrs. Park about a party that afternoon at the house for Da-song in lieu of the camping trip.  Mr. Kim has to go help her buy food and party favors, and Mrs. Park talks about how the rain was irritating but afterwards it’s always nice – how it clears the air of pollution.  It’s apparent that Mr. Kim can barely hold back his anger at her privilege: that the rain was just an annoyance to her, when thousands were utterly ruined by it; the cramped homes and few possessions they did have destroyed by the sewage water, by a city that is designed to drain through the poor neighborhoods.                Ki-woo goes to the house and up to Da-hye’s room, where they continue their love affair and afterwards, he looks out over the lawn at all the party guests, how well-dressed and nice and elegant and perfect they seem, and he asks Da-hye if she thinks he could fit in with them.  It seems then that Ki-woo’s self-image is running against his dream of breaking, fully, into the upper class.  He expresses genuine doubt that he could ever really belong, wondering if his class is something deeper than chance and situation but something immutable, emblazoned on the soul.                  With everything set up, Mr. Kim waiting in the bushes with Mr. Park to stage a little skit with Ki-jung when she comes out to the yard with Da-song’s cake, Mrs. Kim finishing the food, Ki-woo heads down to the secret room to, it’s implied, kill the housekeeper and her husband, Geun-sae, with the rock Min gave him.  When he gets down there, he sees that the housekeeper is already dead, and then he is ambushed from behind by Geun-sae.  Ki-woo nearly escapes up the stairs but Geun-sae catches him in the kitchen and bashes him in the head with the rock.  It’s assumed that Ki-woo is dead, killed by the rock that represents material wealth, while everyone else at the party is out in the yard.                  Geun-sae wanders outside, the first time in over four years, face bloody, dead-eyed, holding a knife he grabbed from the kitchen, in back of the crowd of clean and smiling rich people, the brutalized lower class emerging into the sunlight to wreak havoc.  He sees the daughter carrying the cake and stabs her in the chest in front of everyone, momentarily frozen by confusion – is this the skit? – and then stricken with fear.  Da-song has a seizure, seeing the “ghost” again.  Geun-sae finds Mrs. Kim, after seeing Mr. Park and yelling, “Respect!”, and attempts to take vengeance for his wife, while Mr. Kim rushes to his daughter, trying to stem the blood.  Mr. Park screams at Mr. Kim to drive him and Da-song to the hospital, not caring about Ki-jung, and then screams for Mr. Kim to just throw him the car keys.  Mr. Kim does this, but the keys fall short.  Mr. Kim sees his son being dragged out of the house by a hysterical Da-hye, a huge gash in his head.  His daughter is dying in his arms.  His wife has been slashed by Geun-sae before she’d stabbed him with a meat-skewer sword.  The keys end up under Geun-sae.  Amidst this horror, Mr. Park comes forward to grab the keys on the grass and gags at Geun-sae’s smell, getting too close to that indelible smell of poverty that is so apparently pungent on Mr. Kim as well.  The pain of such indignity and callousness, in all this horror and violence, Mr. Park still has the nerve to be disgusted by the smell.  It drives Mr. Kim over the edge and he grabs the knife that Geun-sae had used to kill Ki-jung to stab Mr. Park in the chest.  The rich guests don’t do anything, they just stand there in absolute horror, paralyzed, having never experienced life-or-death crisis before on any level.  Mr. Kim simply walks by and leaves the property.               Mr. Kim’s reaction to Mr. Park’s gag is a curious moment.  Just moments earlier, Mr. Park had been quite nice to him – acknowledging that dressing up as a Native American for Da-song’s skit was demeaning but pointing out that he was being paid overtime for it. Geun-sae, of course, has just murdered Mr. Kim’s daughter and, unbeknownst to him, his son, and had attempted to kill his wife.  But when Mr. Park expresses his uncontrollable disgust at the smell of the man who had been hidden in the secret room beneath the house, the man who had looked up to Mr. Park with devout reverence, who had said “thank you” to him in Morse Code every night through the light system, the utter disregard by Mr. Park of Geun-sae’s humanity awakens a rage in Mr. Kim. Perhaps what is awakened is a rage of class solidarity.  Acknowledging Geun-sae as a brother in a struggle much vaster than any of them had previously recognized, even though on the surface he should hate the basement ghost with his whole being, negating Mrs. Kim’s previous refutation when the housekeeper called her “sister.”                  The denouement is narrated by Ki-woo, who survived the blow to his head after an extended coma.  When he wakes up, he can’t stop laughing, despite the fact that he and his mother are back to poverty, his father is missing, and his sister is dead.  One of the most heartbreaking parts of the entire movie is seeing Ki-jung’s grave – a cubby, like one might have had in grade-school, amongst thousands of others in a cramped basement, with a picture of her and a few small personal belongings: even in death, the poor get the bare minimum amount of space, just enough for the rest of society to be able to say, “here you go, now shut up.”                The only time Ki-woo doesn’t laugh is when he watches news coverage of the murder of Mr. Park and the disappearance of the killer.  The only time he can’t laugh is when he sees the events sucked into a larger narrative – the innocent rich, slaughtered by the evil, jealous poor.                Ki-woo goes up on the hill over the Parks’ old home, now housing a German family who didn’t know about the murders that occurred there.  He sees the light flickering, the light that Geun-sae had used to thank Mr. Park in Morse code.  Ki-woo writes down the sequence of dashes and dots and translates the message – it turns out, his father had went right back inside the Park house after killing the patriarch, down into hiding in the secret room.  Ki-woo vows to get rich – he daydreams about overcoming his class, making it all on his own, earning enough money to buy the house – his father walking upstairs and embracing him, going out in the yard, parents and son, triumphant and freed, into the sunlight.  Then the scene cuts back to Ki-woo’s reality – back in the basement apartment, in the poverty where the movie began, and ends.

Class and Self-Image                 The thing that struck me most about Parasite was the distortive effects that the intensely capitalistic society presented has on people’s perception of themselves and of others.  One of the most obvious examples is when Ki-woo doubts he could ever belong in the upper class, standing in Da-hye’s room overlooking the assembling party in the yard.  This doubt comes after weeks or months of lies and the previous night’s fight with the housekeeper and Geun-sae, after wading through sewage water in his flooded home and spending the morning in an overcrowded gymnasium full of refugees, after hearing his father’s resigned speech about the futility of making plans – a striking comment on the sense of instability and impermanency that suffuses the lives of the working poor.  Ki-woo seems to see himself as a stained person, in comparison to the rich visitors to the party.  Just the night prior, he had observed how nice Mrs. Park is.  Of course, and as his mother pointed out, the wealthy people don’t need to scratch and claw for every bit of comfort in their lives.  They are never faced with the choices and situations that have constantly come up in the Kim family’s lives – between being ruthless or being broke, between being duplicitous and violent or being hungry and homeless.  When such choices and situations are a part of one’s life, virtually everyone will become stained in the same way Ki-woo seems to see himself; they’ll get the smell on them like Mr. Kim; they’ll have to do things that the higher society would say are immoral, but that the higher society can avoid at far lower stakes.                  When morality and decency are divorced from consciousness of a society that makes adherence to individual values infinitely more difficult for the lower class, the people within that society will view it as a series of individual failures rather than a systemic failure when people in the lower class are systematically more likely to fall short of those values than those in the upper class.  This distortion comes from both the rich and the poor – from Ki-woo wondering if the rich are simply, immutably, better than he is, and from Mr. and Mrs. Park having no awareness that the smell of Mr. Kim might be due to anything other than his own individual grossness.  It’s part of the same distortion that leads to the Kim family and Geun-sae repeatedly thanking Mr. Park for amassing such great wealth that they can siphon a tiny piece from it to support themselves, never considering that the fact of his ability to have such inordinate wealth might be the reason they need to siphon in the first place.                Early in the film, when Min comes by and stops the drunken man from peeing on the Kim household, Mr. Kim states that college students have “vigor,” apparently unpossessed by the less educated.  Perhaps this too is a product of distortion, a sense put into the minds of the more privileged that a home is not something to be pissed on, but a sense withheld from the impoverished, because their place and their comfort and their recognition is always contingent upon what is most convenient for the more powerful classes (take Ki-jung’s grave-cubby as an example), and the society doesn’t want to give them any sense of entitlement whatsoever, even if it’s just entitlement to a home not covered in bodily waste; everything must be demanded, fought for – even charity isn’t possible when the would-be recipients are rendered invisible.                In this society which both favors the upper class, allowing them to be divorced from the material concerns of the rest of the population – for instance, the rain which flooded the poor neighborhoods but only posed a minor annoyance for the Parks – and leads to the distorted view that the rich are inherently better than the poor, lower-class fragmentation is an inevitable result. The fight between the Kim family and the housekeeper and her husband is a fight for who gets to have a spot on the Park payroll – which of these poor families is more worthy to have a piece of what the Parks, in both families’ minds, rightfully own?  It is the poor who are each other’s enemies, by necessity. From the very start, the film shows that there is little room for empathy within the lower class and the hard-scrabble lives they are forced to lead.  The girl who runs the pizza van that the Kim family folds boxes for probably has barely more wiggle room than they do, and so she must be tough on them, unsympathetic, dock their pay for a sub-par job.  The Kim family gives little consideration to the driver and housekeeper they replace and Mrs. Kim, when she finds out about Geun-sae in the basement, was going to call the police – the Kim’s recognize empathy towards the other working poor as a threat to the stable income they are fighting for.  The housekeeper even calls Mrs. Kim “sister,” appealing to solidarity, to common understanding of what it’s like to struggle, but Mrs. Kim, so nascently a part of the middle class, refuses this gesture. Attempting solidarity with the rich is more immediately profitable than solidarity with the other poor, and the situation of the poor is dire.               It is their situation that systematically forces the lower class to unscrupulousness, and the effects of this near-necessary behavior are felt by others in the lower class.  The effect is that the offenses people in the lower class recognize most directly are the ones enacted by each other, while the much larger oppressions carried out anonymously by the rich are diffuse and imperceptible.  It is like war: soldiers see the ones shooting at them as their enemies, because they are the immediate and visceral threat; they do not recognize that those people shooting at them don’t want to be shooting any more than they do, don’t have any more stake in it than they do; they don’t recognize that the people with a real interest in the outcome, who can profit by it, are nowhere nearby; that we see our enemies across from us when we should be looking up.                The distortive effects of class – the way wretched lives lead to wretched self-image, and good lives lead to the self- and external-perception of goodness, that all are getting what they deserve, is also brought to light through the very fact that the Kim family, especially Ki-woo and Ki-jung, have to lie about their credentials.  Ki-woo, who aspires to go to college one day if he can save enough money, is a legitimately good English tutor – the fact that he isn’t actually a college student has no bearing on that.  Ki-jung, posing as “Jessica,” a Korean-native who studied art and art therapy in Chicago, is extremely talented with art and digital media and is also the only character in the movie who appears able to control the unruly and bratty Da-song, despite being, really, an untrained girl from a poor family.  Both know that the Park’s would never give them a job if they knew the truth of where they came from, regardless of their actual abilities, of their actual merit. Just as the movie presents the way that class distorts peoples’ perception of themselves and what they deserve, it also shows the harsh truth that for those below a certain station, there is little opportunity to demonstrate any higher level of deservedness. They feel shame about where they come from and want to earn their way out, but to do that they have to lie, hid their true lives, which makes them feel shame as well.  There is a harsh paradox just on the edge of formation here – that for the poor to prove their worth, they will have to do things that will make them feel unworthy, or at least as though they are not living honestly.                The parents too are good at their jobs.  Mrs. Kim is an able housekeeper and an excellent cook.  When Mrs. Park calls and asks her to make “Ram-Dam,” a dish she’d never heard of, she makes a bowl in just eight minutes that Mrs. Park eats with satisfaction.  Mr. Kim gets a compliment from Mr. Park for his “cornering” as a driver (though he turns his whole body to look at the person he is driving in the backseat). Throughout the film we see evidence like this that the station of the poor is not explainable by lack of ability or intelligence.  This comes in comparison to the portrayal of the Park family.  Da-hye seems like an ordinary, angsty teen; Da-song seems like a pretty ordinary young boy – his parents’ absolute belief in his brilliance is used as a joke, but what that joke might represent is that misguided, even delusional belief in one’s exceptionality can be used to justify one’s place.  Mrs. Park is beautiful and sweet but brings little else to the table, as all characters seem to recognize, including her.  Mr. Park is authoritative but we never really get any indication whether he is actually good at his job, value-producing as a CEO, or is simply in control of capital and must therefore be bowed to.  To sum, the movie effectively portrays a situation in which, if there is actually a difference in ability between the rich family and the poor one, that difference is dwarfed by that of their comparative wealth, refuting perhaps the most pernicious myth of capitalist ideology: that our station in life is reflective of our deservedness; that the way things fall in “the market” are just and unquestionable.  That’s prosperity-gospel bullshit, and Parasite puts it right in the forefront how that ideology justifies the position of the wealthy and the poor, and how it convinces people in both groups to believe it.

Crossing the Line                Another compliment Mr. Park, speaking to his wife, gives Mr. Kim is that he never “crosses the line,” though he sometimes comes close.  We are never told exactly what crossing the line means, but there is one scene while Mr. Kim is driving Mr. Park which provides insight: Mr. Park says something about his wife, and Mr. Kim says, “but you love her, of course” (paraphrasing – I can’t remember the exact line).  Mr. Park’s mood darkens a bit and he narrows his eyes at his driver’s head before he allows the moment to pass.  Adding this scene to Mr. Park’s statement that Mr. Kim’s smell does cross the line, and we can build a hypothesis about what “crossing the line” is: things that threaten the illusion; that call into question the flawlessness of Mr. Park’s life or offend his taste; that, consciously or inadvertently or without any control on Mr. Kim’s part whatsoever, draw attention to any of the many realities constantly concealed by his wealth: that the Park’s marriage might be based more on money and beauty than love; that underneath that money and beauty might be emptiness; that poverty and suffering and death and that awful smell exist while Mr. Park lives in a massive and immaculate hilltop home and feeds his dogs Japanese crab meat.                The theme of suppressing poverty, hiding it from the rest of society, is a constant and powerful one in Parasite.  When Ki-jung first gets her job tutoring Da-song, Mr. Park has his driver take her home. The audience understands that he mustn’t see where she lives or the ruse will be up – he’ll tell Mr. Park she isn’t actually a successful art teacher.  Geun-sae is hiding in the basement of the rich family, and though he is no imposition on them down there, he still must be kept a secret – the housekeeper knows they would want him gone if they knew he was there.  Mrs. Park appears completely unaware of the thousands left homeless by the flooding when she comments on how the rain is nice because it clears up pollution – indicating that the media chooses not to bother its wealthier patronage with bad news about the poor.                  The suppressed emerging from below is foreshadowed by the image of Ki-jung sitting on the toilet as sewage spills out into her flooded home. The following day at the Park house, Geun-sae comes out of the basement to have his revenge – but his revenge, of course, is not on the loan sharks that forced him into hiding or the capitalist system that led him to invest his life in the “King Castella” cake market bubble. How could it be?  Enemies within this society become more abstract and diffuse and unfightable as they become more powerful and consequential.  But the Kim family, the matriarch of which killed his wife in a flash-panic mindless kick of self-preservation, is flesh and blood and right there.  And Geun-sae walks out into the sunlight, face wretched with his own dried blood, eyes betraying his madness, and kills Ki-jung in front of the horrified partygoers.                Da-song has a seizure at the sight of Geun-sae, the ghost that had appeared to him a few years before.  I don’t think it’s a stretch to see this as a comment on the fragility of the upper class’s sensibilities, the way they are protected, by their own class’s design, from knowledge of the reality of the impoverished, the suppressed, the buried.  Da-song, this spoiled boy, adored to the point of near-worship by his rich parents, was traumatized by the mere sight of this person that lives in the shadows of his home.  When he sees Geun-sae in the full light of day, he immediately begins convulsing.                  As Ki-jung is dying in her father’s arms after Geun-sae stabbed her, Mr. Park commands Mr. Kim to drive Da-song to the hospital.  Even at the doorstep of death, the expectation is that the needs and demands of the rich will trump over those of everyone else. Mr. Kim is driven into a rage by the immediately following indignity of Mr. Park gagging when he smells Geun-sae: at this climax, Ki-jung taking her dying breaths, Ki-woo appearing already dead as Da-hye and others carry him past, Mr. Park still had the nerve to express his disgust of this unwashable attribute of poverty.  Even if Mr. Park didn’t mean to gag, Geun-sae doesn’t mean to have the smell, and neither does Mr. Kim, and Mr. Park had joked about it earlier, quite on purpose and unnecessarily.  In this moment of terror, the poor men still didn’t have the privilege of just being people; they had to be, Mr. Park had to let him know they were, also, poor, old, disgusting.  To see Mr. Park gagging at the offense of his own sensibilities in this most humanity-shattering of moments – believing his children to both be dead or dying – was too much for Mr. Kim, and he lashed out, killing Mr. Park – and the news would say, nobody knew why.                  Mr. Kim goes back underground, taking Geun-sae’s place in the basement of the next rich family.  The symbolism is direct: for such wealth to exist as that in the immaculate home, there must be something below, struggling to survive, on the verge of starvation, miserable, unseen.  I think Mr. Kim recognizes this symbolism.  It’s why he goes down there.  He killed Mr. Park in a moment that seems like it could be one of sudden and complete class solidarity gone violent.  Recognizing a solidarity with the lower class, something his son misses, Mr. Kim takes position down below to wait – probably for the rest of his life.

The Delusion                We conclude with Ki-woo’s promise to become rich and buy the house and free his father.  The scene illustrates the perniciousness of capitalist dogma.  Ki-woo has hope that he can make it in the system – and likely, that hope is misplaced, and he will work himself to the bone to the profit of those above him.  But perhaps he will become rich.  Perhaps he will make it – some always do.  Because just as Geun-sae is replaced in the secret basement with Mr. Kim, so the Park family is replaced by the German family: in capitalism, there must always be capitalists; there must always be haves and have-nots, and there’s always the chance (or at least the illusion of one) of becoming one who has, otherwise the system would collapse in the blink of an eye.  But it’s that very hope that prevents so many of the have nots from collectivizing their power, recognizing that their holistic interest is in changing the power structure rather than participating in the rat race which will reward a tiny few of them but many many more of those that come into the society from a place of high privilege, as Da-hye and Da-song will. Perhaps even more sinister is the side of the dogma that says that success will come to those who work hard enough – if you end up poor, hungry, with unstable shelter and no opportunities, it’s because you didn’t work hard enough, and that’s proven by the fact that there are likely to be some people who succeed who came from a similar station.  If Ki-woo succeeds in his plan, he will become justification for the continuation of the same societal structure which led to his sister’s death, to his father’s imprisonment, to his own and his mother’s destitution, to the desperation that plagued the family throughout the film.  If he fails, it’s because he just didn’t work hard enough or didn’t have The Right Stuff ™.                  Ki-woo’s plan and the daydream of it succeeding comes shortly after his father telling him that making plans is pointless.  Mr. Kim, who so many times throughout the film beforehand had advocated for having a plan, is psychologically broken – or, one might argue, realizes the basic truth – after the flood.  He comes to believe that with poverty comes powerlessness, and plans only have value if one has some power to enact them and reap from their reward. He does not.  His family does not.  The lower class does not.  Ki-woo seems to feel bad for his father when he says this – Ki-woo still believes, still has hope.  Even after his sister is dead and his father is locked away, Ki-woo still has hope. Perhaps it’s simply youth.  Mr. Kim has suffered through poverty for much, much longer – tried to escape it many times fruitlessly.  And with this latest horror – the money they’d saved and their home being destroyed by flooding – he finally accepts that poverty is inescapable.  And in a sense, he is right – within capitalism, at least as it is practiced in the film and arguably most of the modern world, poverty is essential to the system – scarcity drives demand, drives profit, and just as wealth concentrates in a few, so does scarcity concentrate in a significant minority, defining their lives, their health, even their deaths.                  Maybe it’s Mr. Kim’s acceptance of this fact that makes his smell grow stronger – at least, the Parks seem to react to his smell more strongly after he comes to this belief.  It’s a belief rancid to those who would seek to justify and embrace the ideology of capitalism.  Or maybe the smell is worse because he spent the night wading through chest-deep shit-water. Who’s to say?                 I think Ki-woo doesn’t come to his father’s understanding even after the horrors he’s gone through by the end of the movie because of his head injury, the physical trauma that leaves him laughing at virtually everything. It was a deliberate choice by the filmmakers to end with a shot of Ki-woo’s reality, sitting in his family’s half-basement, in the same cyclical poverty where he was introduced, rather than in the triumphantly hopeful scene at the Park house, hugging his emergent father in the sunlight.  It’s a hammering home of reality – Ki-woo will NOT escape his poverty.  Not because he is dumb or inept or lazy, clearly, based on the events of the film thus far, but because he IS poor in a steeply hierarchical, late-stage capitalist society.  He’s fucked.  And even if (God, the perniciousness of hope) he does somehow make it out of the struggle and instability, most like him will not, they cannot, it is impossible for them to do so because of the structure of the society.  The stomach-drop moment of the film is not the shot of Ki-woo back in his basement, a statement that he will almost certainly fail; it’s Ki-woo sharing his dream of becoming rich.  That is the end of real hope.  We see then that Ki-woo is dead; we all saw it: we all saw the jagged rock smash against his head; Ki-woo was murdered by the rock, murdered by materialism: what’s left is a puppet, a parasite in his body.                   Ki-woo’s dream shows that he is looking right past the systemic inequities all around him at the golden image of utter prosperity beyond. He is looking right past all the others like him, all the other Kim families subjugated and oppressed and hidden, and if he gets a lick of power and wealth he will do nothing to attempt to bring justice to the system; he will give no regard to those in the position he came from; just as his mother rebuffed the housekeeper’s plea for solidarity in calling her “sister,” Ki-woo sees himself as a man on an individual’s journey, divorced from broader consciousness.  He’s brain-damaged, socket-blown, delusional, completely sold on the ideology of inequity, of the dream and the hope that keeps moving capitalism towards complete domination by the few over the many until the many actually join together and demand change.                       There was hope until Ki-woo shared his dream.  Hope that the horrors he’s seen caused by wealth disparity would light a fire in him to fight to shrink it.  But no, he wants to live above, in full knowledge that there will have to be others hidden, starving, suffering below.  If he makes it, he will abandon the overwhelming majority of the poor like him.  But he won’t make it, because he is poor.  

The Parasite                As I’ve already noted, I think the film’s title could refer to Ki-woo’s state at the end: animated by the hollow spirit of materialist dreams and pseudo self-elevation, the base of the ideology that keeps capitalism, as it is practiced in the film, alive.  Parasite could also most obviously refer to the Kim family, leeching off of Mr. Park’s wealth.  But that doesn’t seem quite right – the Kim’s are good at their jobs.  They haven’t caused any harm to the Park’s, other than perhaps Da-song’s art lessons being semi-fraudulent (though Ki-jung at least gets him to behave).  The Kim’s only caused harm to the Park family’s former driver and housekeeper, but that doesn’t seem a parasitical relationship, rather, a traitorous one.  Parasite could refer to Geun-sae, and then Mr. Kim, living in the basement off another family’s food.  That seems like a decent interpretation – they’re not doing any work for the Parks when they’re down there, and they’re eating some of their food (a lot of there/their/they’re in that sentence – very risky).  But really, what’s a few pieces of fruit or whatever to the Parks?  It’s nothing. So if that is the Parasite, it’s not really a danger to its host.                  The Parasite could also be the rich.  It could be the Park family.  They own huge homes that are pieces of art (and the housekeeper says they don’t even appreciate it) built by renowned architects while many of the essential workers of the city live in tiny half-basements; they have a dozen sprinklers watering their lawn; they demand the time and obedience of those of a lesser station; they feed their dogs Japanese crab meat while many others in the city struggle to afford decent food themselves.  And what did they do to deserve so exponentially much more than those others?  What will Da-hye and Da-song have done to deserve it?  The Park’s live luxuriously and spaciously atop a hill overlooking the rest of Seoul, where the people essential to the creation of their wealth and the material goods they buy with it live below, many in near-squalor, in unstable conditions, the little they earn with their work subject to the whims of the forces around them.  When the rainstorm comes, to the Parks, it clears the air – to the poor, it destroys their homes and all they had saved.  The comfort of the rich comes upon the backs and toil of the essential millions beneath them.  When Mr. Kim stabs Mr. Park, perhaps that was a moment of the host lashing out against its leech.  “Parasite” could be a description of a system in which advantage is perpetually increased, more blood continually taken, until the host takes notice and claws at it; demands restructuring, revolution.  

Conclusion                Walking out of the theater, one of the people I watched the movie with commented, “It just kept getting worse and worse for them (the Kim family).  It made me want to grab everyone and scream, ‘can we just stoppp?!’”  I think that’s exactly right, exactly what the film should do. From the high point of the Kims’ position, sitting in the Park living room at the start of what should have been a weekend celebrating their new life, to the end, things just keep getting worse and worse.  And it all makes sense: it all goes so terribly, logically wrong, and believably so. Of course the Kim family doesn’t get to keep having money; of course they fall even farther than they began; of course they are met with violence and death and despair; of course the family is ripped apart; of course Ki-woo doesn’t even take the right message from all of it, meaning the cycle will continue. When it’s laid out as clearly and poignantly as it is in Parasite, you do want to dive into the screen and make everyone stop hurting each other, killing each other, letting each other be hungry and homeless, lying and keeping secrets, recoiling at Mr. Kim’s smell, beg them to, beg them to just treat each other as goddamn human beings, is that so fucking much?  You really want it all to just stop, and you see how inequality is a runaway train towards destruction, compared to when you’re in it it’s made to just seem like the status quo.  The question is, can we make that impulse last?  Can we keep that consciousness, that vision, that empathy?  Can it survive the daily toil of our own lives, now that we’ve watched Ki-woo get shattered by the jagged rock?  Can we avoid letting ourselves and our own perceptions be warped by class?  Can our humanity survive when the jagged rocks are everywhere, all around us, being thrown at our heads by so many who benefit from what it represents?                  In the hours and days after watching Parasite, it seems clear what we must do.  We must denounce greed, denounce the myth that, in a wealthy society, poverty is justified by worth; we must come to Mr. Kim’s realization that a person’s gagging in disgust of the poor is truly disgust of humanity, an impulse towards insulation from the lives of others.  We must come together in empathy, and not lose sight of each other in dreams of individual elevation.  In this sense, the film is art as wisdom – learn from the mistakes of the characters on screen so our own real-life crucible won’t have to be so soul-crushing. It took death and horror and misery for Mr. Kim to learn this lesson: what will it take for us?  

Blood Red Heat prt 36

That night Lance’s heat rolled through again. Lance much more aware of what was happening, and much more... vocal about things. Keith being caught up in doing the do and not thinking about what it meant, meaning it took him until roughly lunch time to figure out that Lance’s heat waves were happening at an almost regular interval now. 5 hours apart, with about half an hour of building before peaking. He also found Lance seemed to like it better when he was sitting in Keith’s lap, and able to doze off cuddling into him, rather than spooned up Keith’s arms... Keith was “too cuddly when his tummy hurt”, the alpha learning his lesson after some gentle teasing finally coaxed the truth out of Lance.

Keith turned into a blushing mess when he found Lance started mumbling more and more when they were connected with him in Keith’s lap. He was also “unfairly handsome”, “a good leader”, the owner of a “monster dick”, and “amazing eyes”, should heat feverish Lance be believed. Each compliment made him feel a little bit bolder about complimenting Lance, only when he tried to, Lance would immediately kiss him to shut up him. Yeah, that took a while to learn. With destroyed self confidence, Keith could see how being complimented repeatedly and suddenly was uncomfortable, it’d been the same for him. The first time Lance actually complimented him, he was sure the fellow teen was mocking him.

*

The last day of Lance’s heat was the most pleasurable for both of them. Lance’s cramped muscles finally loosening. Keith had tried to concentrate on massaging his omega’s lower back given anything against his shoulder blades agitated his coughing. They were able to take things slow. Lance conscious enough to eat unaided, and unguarded enough to let Keith massage him from the shoulders down to his feet. Got his legs moving in simple exercises, got smacked for that, then promptly crawled back up next to Lance for cuddles when he asked him with a pout on his lips.

And the sex. Keith finally found what was good about spending a rut and a heat together. Their bodies moved instinctually, his knots not hurting as much when they flared, and Lance no longer reduced to pained tears made his heart feel so much fuller about them being together. The love in Lance’s eyes tore at his heart, Keith making dozens of promises to himself and mental plans about therapy for the both of them. He wasn’t okay. He’d carried the trauma of his childhood so long that it’d really messed him up. His mother had healed part of his heart, but he needed some kind of professional help with ways of combatting his own PTS and anxiety. Lance the first person he admitted this to, the omega immediately telling him how proud he was and that he wanted to be there for him.

Four more rounds, the last one simply because they wanted to feel connected even deeper with each other, Lance laid along Keith’s chest, purring softly as they held hands. Neither of them really needed to say anything, but Keith wanted to hear Lance’s voice again. Since Lance’s fever from nearly dying on them had finally pissed, they’d felt... felt almost as if they were already bonded. Warmth, love and pleasure blended together, Keith catching himself nearly purring with the contentment of existing like this with his omega. If this was what dating was, he’d never let something this precious go

“Lance, can I ask you something?”

“Hmm?”

Raising his head, Lance’s chin dug lightly into Keith’s chest. Keith’s heart giving a funny beat from the rush affection he felt

“Do... Will you accept my proposal to court you?”

Lance frowned. Heck, how had he never seen how cute Lance was when he was frowning

“What was all this if it wasn’t my alpha being there for me?”

“I want to be your alpha, I just want to ask you properly”

Lance perked back up in an instant, before deflating again. Right. Lance wanted to say yes, yet he’d be overthinking what that could mean

“I wanted to ask you properly again when you’re here with me and can understand what I’m saying. I want to do this right, because I respect you. Not simply as an omega and alpha pair, but you as Lance. Am I saying this right?”

“You are... I’d... really like to accept...”

God. Was Lance going to say no? Keith feeling like could burst into tears. Shakily he asked

“Is that a yes?”

“It is... but, I have a condition, I need to have a talk with you when I’m more coherent. My yes comes with the condition that you know you can rescinded your proposal after I’m alert enough to have that talk”

Okay. Okay. So they could work with that

“Noted, but I don’t see that talk changing how I feel. I feel like we’ve already bonded... I’m sorry if you’re upset I didn’t mark you permanently. I really do want to do this right”

Lance went and got teary on him. Biting his bottom lip, his omega hid his face back against Keith’s chest

“I don’t deserve this”

“This?”

“You... I’m sorry. I’m sorry for being such an insufferable arsehole to you... I just... even if you were mad at me, it meant you were talking to me. I really am sorry for how I acted”

“We’ll talk about it when you’re feeling better. We both have a lot to work out”

“Yeah... I supposed we do”

Lance’s scent shifted fractionally, Keith realising he’d taken what he meant wrong

“Hey, I mean we have a lot to work out together. We do make a great a team”

“We do...”

“We killed a fucking gargoyle. We are like the greatest team ever”

“I couldn’t let it hurt you”

“And I think I just came a little remembering how bad arse you were. “Get off my boyfriend!” will always be one of the greatest thing you said”

Lance groaned at him, Keith snorting. Yeah, Lance was a total bad arse.

*

This time when Lance wanted his pack, Keith was able to calm him down and agree to rest properly before they’d see everyone, with the provision that Coran gave him a check over and cleared him to be up and moving around. Lance would be weak for some time, which he admitted sadly as Keith helped him to the bathroom, but pushing the topic only made Lance clam up. Seeing they hadn’t exactly had a dozen garments each to their names, crumpled clothes were pulled on again, as their only other choice was Lance’s armour and an under suit for Keith.

For all his needing of reassurance, Keith hadn’t checked his comms, maybe because if he had looked for them, he would have found neither his nor Lance’s there. Both comms neatly placed on the dash in front of the pilot’s chair in Red. Keith steering Lance there, rather than having Coran in their space, or taking Lance out to see their pack before he was truly okay. Sitting down, Keith noted the way Lance’s breathing had become more panicked. The last time Lance had been seated there, they’d all been teasing him as he started to bleed internally. Turning the chair so he could fit, Keith squatted down before he ran his hands over Lance’s upper thighs, letting them come to rest on the side of Lance’s legs

“I know you’re feeling anxious, but I’m not going to judge you”

“You judging me is nothing compared to what I’m doing to myself”

It was disheartening to hear Lance acknowledge so easily he was being negative towards himself

“You have PTSD. You have anxiety. You have depression. None of that makes you any less valid in my eyes. I’m the same in my own way”

“I know. I mean, we all do to a degree. We all feel things differently and cope differently because of our life experiences”

“I’d say we’ve had a hell of lot of experiences lately”

Lance took a moment, closing his eyes he drew in a shaky breath, before exhaling slowly and opening his eyes

“When you were gone, I’d come to Red sometimes, just to feel that bit closer to you. With Blue I had a different bond. Not to say Red isn’t amazing, but Blue listened to a hell of a lot of my complaints. I never wanted to put that on Red. I wanted to be the Red Paladin you seemed to think I could be. I know I need help. Can you stay while Coran is here. I don’t want to burden him, but I do feel like I need to... to talk to someone older than us about this, even if he doesn’t get it”

“Lance, you have always been Coran’s favourite. There is nothing wrong with turning to him. I can be here, or I can wait outside. It’s about what makes you feel comfortable”

Pushing the palms of his hands to his eyes, Lance took another shaky breath, releasing it slowly once again

“I know. I know you respect me. I don’t respect me. I don’t think I ever have. I don’t want this just about me, when you’re hurting too. I know you feel betrayed because I didn’t confide in you. It... I was scared and when you were gone, you were like really gone. I wanted to reach out, but there was no reply, and I took that to mean that I would be burdening you to keep trying. I don’t want to drag you down. I want to support you. I want to see you achieve everything you deserve. I know we talked in game, but I want you to be able to be open about the pain you went through, and this might be me being selfish, but I also want to explain myself openly before you tell me. I was bound by the rules of the game... but that... not everything was...”

“I know. You wanted to be honest with me, but I had to work it out for myself”

Lance nodded, Keith sending a mental “fuck you” to Bob

“Yeah. I didn’t understand your character at first and then I realised he was all the things I admired in you. You are great leader. You care. You’re skilled like crazy with a sword. You’re quick witted in almost any situation. You’re dependable, and you push yourself to the limit to protect your pack. I was a rogue... because honestly I just wanted to disappear. I forgive the pack... but I’m ashamed of what happened... and I’m more ashamed of myself for knowing I wouldn’t have spoken up without the game’s intervention. I don’t doubt you or your sincerity. My omega is sad that you didn’t mark me, I don’t mean to be hormonal about it, but I’m happy that you respected me enough not to. I... have some things to tell you, but I know Coran is going to ask those questions. Just... just, know I will always have your back...”

Keith found now he was crying. Moving his hands up, the alpha forceful as he pulled Lance into a hug

“I don’t know what I did to deserve your faith, but I won’t abuse that”

“I know. Honestly, I am truly sorry. I was so jealous of you that I pushed this rivalry thing. I thought if I was a dick I’d get you to like me for me, instead of because of my part omega”

“It wasn’t all bad”

“I don’t think I’ll ever forget when we climbed up the elevator shaft to get to the pool”

“I don’t think I’ll ever forget being shocked that you and your big mouth jumped in to save Coran like it was nothing. Then waking up from being knocked out, you pulled off one hell of a shot”

“I was so desperate to prove myself back then... I didn’t do it to prove myself, I sort of did it without thinking”

“We both have impulse control issues”

“We do. I’m going to be sick for a while, aren’t I?”

Unfortunately that was more than likely

“Possibly. I’m sorry”

“You aren’t to blame. You couldn’t stop me dropping. You, Keith, are the future. I hope you see that”

Lance seemed so sad at being sick, but his omega was comforting him. That was so painfully Lance

“And I hope you see that I wouldn’t want anyone else to be the one I’m spending eternity with”

Lance snorted, leaning down he kissed Keith on the top of the head

“I’m not sure if that made sense. Can you call Coran, please? I’m getting tired, and I’d like to try and see the pack today”

“Our pack. You’d like to see our pack”

“Yeah. Our pack. You really do make an amazing pack leader”

Lance’s praise made him feel so guilty

“A pack leader that neglected you”

“You had more important matters”

“I messed up. I refuse to mess up ever again”

“Keith, babe, you will. You will and it’ll be okay because we’ll work through it when it happens. All of us make mistakes. I’m hardly one to talk”

Lance called him “Babe”. Lance called him babe and his heart was racing. He called him babe! As if Lance could sense his happiness, he chuckled before starting to cough. Drawing away, Keith snatched up his comms, Lance trying to sigh at him as he hacked up his lungs. The look in his eyes telling him he was being dramatic

“I know. You’ll be okay. Just let me have this one?”

Lance tried to look annoyed, but the coughing was getting worse. Keith thought he say part of a nod, and would say so in court if ever questioned. He was whipped, phlegm and all.

National Psychotherapy Day: Telling Our Therapy Stories

California-based psychologist Ryan Howes, Ph.D, is a big believer in the power of stories to transform how we see therapy.

“In a society where we still hear statements like ‘only crazy people go to therapy’ or ‘you need therapy!’ as an insult, it can be easy to think that psychotherapy is a strange and mysterious endeavor for other people,” Howes said.

However, when we hear personal stories from individuals of different backgrounds and circumstances—perhaps backgrounds and circumstances that mirror our own—we realize that therapy can be transformative for us, too.  

This is why Howes wanted this year’s theme for National Psychotherapy Day to be “tell your therapy story.” He said it’s “based on the idea that if everyone who had been to therapy broke through the perceived shame and talked about their experience, it would normalize it for everyone, and maybe some fence-sitters would give it a shot.”

The Shame Around Seeking Help

Sadly, there is a lot of shame and secrecy associated with seeking professional help.

“People are still much more willing to talk about their appointment with their dentist or physician or their yoga class than their therapy session, even though they’re all avenues for wellness and self-improvement,” Howes said.

British comedy writer Amanda Rosenberg resisted going to therapy for years because she was “embarrassed about how it would look to others.” She was also scared that it would confirm that something really was wrong with her.

Six years ago, Rosenberg was involuntarily hospitalized, and after meeting with a recommended psychiatrist, she was diagnosed with bipolar II disorder. She still sees the same psychiatrist.

When T-Kea Blackman, then a college student, sought therapy, she didn’t tell anyone. “Growing up, I heard people say that therapy is for crazy [people] or white people. And since I did not fit into those categories, I did not think it was for me.”

After graduation, her depression and suicidal thoughts peaked, and Blackman started working with a new therapist—and is still working with her today.

Caroline Kaufman was 12 years old when she started therapy. But it took a few years—and a few different therapists—for her to actually take it seriously. Even then, though, she was still embarrassed and skeptical.

“I would tell my friends I had a doctor’s appointment because I didn’t want them to know I was in therapy. I come from a town where so many people struggle with mental illness, and I now know a lot of them seek out therapy as well, but no one ever acknowledged it. I initially felt like it made me weak; that going to therapy meant I wasn’t strong enough to handle it on my own.”

For many people, societal stigma isn’t the only deterrent to seeking help. Another deterrent resides inside our homes.

“Being raised in an emotionally silent home, talking about feelings and issues was never addressed other than, ‘you don’t need to tell anyone your problems,’” said Marlon Deleon, a first-generation American and disabled Navy submarine veteran. He did seek therapy after several close friends, who knew about his “tumultuous childhood,” suggested it.

The Surprising Benefits of Therapy

 Taking the first step to actually get yourself into therapy may not be easy and it can be the start of something amazing—even if you don’t see (or feel) progress right away.

“In the early days, I expected to walk out of therapy feeling incredible every time but that’s not how it works,” said Rosenberg, author of the forthcoming memoir That’s Mental: Painfully Funny Things That Drive Me Crazy About Being Mentally Ill.

“Some days you leave feeling good, other days, confused, and there are days when you leave feeling like total shit. And it’s perfectly normal!”

Rosenberg noted that the benefits can manifest in surprising ways. “Instead of thinking in extremes as I’m prone to do, my mind would start to call upon tools I’d learned in therapy to tackle triggers that would otherwise ruin me.”  

Blackman, author of Saved & Depressed: A Suicide Survivor’s Journey of Mental Health, Healing & Faith, is surprised with how much therapy has helped her grow. “I am a completely different woman than when I started four years ago. I am proud of my progress. When I look in the mirror, I see a confident, tenacious, and beautiful woman who is constantly working to become a better version of myself.”

She noted that the biggest lesson she’s learned from therapy is setting boundaries. “Before therapy, I had a hard time saying ‘no’ and did things I did not want to do just to make others happy or to be accepted. I put too much on my plate by overextending myself and it led to the demise of my mental and emotional health.”

Therapy has helped Blackman to value her mental and emotional health, communicate her needs, and become comfortable with addressing confrontation.

For Deleon, having a regularly scheduled session to check in with someone who’s solely focused on him is “really nice. It allows me the ‘me time’ while also being heard.”

Certified peer counselor Zachary Orlov uses an analogy to describe how invaluable therapy has been for him: “I have sailed the treacherous waters of bipolar illness much of my life. I fully realize that I need help navigating the seas, adjusting the sails …I can’t keep afloat when I am ill. In fact, I can’t do much at all. I am stranded at sea. I must pass over the helm when I need to be off watch and rest my weary bones. My therapists have all come aboard my odyssey with the idea of keeping afloat and then back on course wherever that leads.”

Orlov also views therapists as “a seasoned crew with all the skills necessary, years of science, and training to keep our inner compass true.” After all, sometimes, “the storms of life are too much for us all.”

Blackman wants readers to know that therapy is “a safe space to be you. You do not have to worry about being judged but more importantly, your feelings and experiences will be validated.” It’s also a place where you can become more self-aware, learn new coping skills, and heal from past hurts, she said.

Being Scared and Shopping Around

“I always stereotypically envisioned the long leather couch and somebody with spectacles penning furiously onto a legal pad, but it really is like professional dating,” Deleon said.

To find the right therapist for you, it’s important to “shop around,” he said.

In fact, Deleon’s first experience in therapy was far from helpful. Thankfully, however, he returned to therapy years later, and is currently working with a clinician he likes.

Kaufman, author of two poetry collections, including When the World Didn’t End, wants readers to know that it’s perfectly normal to be scared about therapy. “We’re all scared! It’s a scary thing to do!”

“A lot of people tell me they’re nervous that it won’t work, but that just proves that you want it to work—you care about getting better and want to get better. And admitting that is one of the hardest steps of recovery.”

“Why I’m Still Here”

“Therapy is a big reason as to why I’m still here,” Rosenberg said. “It’s allowed me to systematically process years of trauma and has given me the space to unsnarl painful, and often dangerous, ways of thinking. Because when your mind is a time bomb, you need a safe place to diffuse it.”

Orlov noted that he’s worked with various wonderful therapists who’ve helped him “heal the mortal wounds of mental illness” and “saved my life, helped me regain meaning many times over.”

Therapy, Kaufman said, has given her the strength and motivation to better understand herself, work on herself, and truly care about herself and her future.

“It’s brought me a sense of peace I never imagined I could have just a few years ago,” she said. “And I don’t know where I’d be today without it.”

Blackman can’t imagine her life without therapy either. “It was like I was suffocating without it and therapy has become the air I need to navigate through life and be the best version of myself.”

Therapy can feel intimidating, and it can feel impossible to pick up the phone to actually make an appointment. But know you’re not alone. Howes hopes that National Psychotherapy Day encourages individuals to share their therapy stories so others can find what they need—“and reap the benefits” that therapy very much has to offer.

from World of Psychology https://ift.tt/2l0yMhc via IFTTT

Thrashed, Lost, and Found

Day 7 hurt as much as every day has. It still started out with a forceful morning workout, my cousin has asked me a couple of times if I’d go with her to her gym in the afternoon but working out is something I have to do alone. I know she can do her routine and I can do mine but even the commute needs to be a separate thing. I was dragged to church, even though it’s Catholic I went and listened to what the priest had to say. I kept getting lost in thought and spent time admiring the architectural brilliance of the church. I wanted to go out by myself, I thought it’s time to shave the beard and needed razors (maybe it was just the only excuse I had). I took the bus and we were robbed, even though I was scared I was still aware of how dangerous the state has become thanks to increasing foreign migration. I don’t mean to sound xenophobic and I’m not even blaming the South American migrants, I’m blaming the people that come from other states to those that had stable security in their endless turf wars or those from the capital that have become so wanted by their local enforcement agencies to flee and do what they’re doing here. Anyhow, this short guy in his mid 20′s comes into the bus and asks to hold on a moment before paying. The bus starts moving at this point because the buses are in a hurry. It’s not too packed which is great for my anxiety and I’m looking out the window because I’m a melancholic fuck that needs serotonin and sunlight helps with that. I see some people in front of me shuffle suddenly and it made me startle and grasp the situation... hey we’re getting robbed. I didn’t notice the guy in the back with the backpack collecting money, phones and jewelry until it was my turn. As confident I am of my self-defense abilities, I’m no match for a guy with a gun. My anxiety manifested in a form of angry annoyance instead of fear. I gave them my broken iphone (which thankfully I only took the spare one that I use as an ipod but also has whatsapp installed and all of my contacts... it’s too long a story to explain now), my wallet with an estimated equivalent of $10 dollars and my wired headphones. I could tell that backpack guy was somewhat disappointed in everything they gathered but what do you expect on a Sunday afternoon in a half empty bus that’s going AWAY from the capital. I applaud your efforts, you sad elementary school dropout but thieving doesn’t give participation trophies or a pat on the back (unless you’re a prison bitch, then I guess it’s more than pats on the back). They quickly pointed the gun at the driver and made him pull over by an empty lot, my mind went to “we’re getting executed” which made me angrier. The one that gets to kill me is ME, that much has always been decided and I don’t even mean that in a suicidal way. If I die because of a mistake I made or an action I knowingly took that sent me to my demise, I’d be okay with that. My point is, they ran away and I wanted to go after them but getting shot is not in my to do list. The bus driver had radioed someone to call the police, they came in what felt like 10 minutes-ish and a forever for their police reports. I told them everything I saw, I gave them all my necessary information and details of the items that were stolen. I didn’t see much point in cooperating since the police are famous for being useless in this country and the four that arrived reeked of incompetence and Sunday laziness. I walked back home after that, it was a 30 minute walk... always has been. I realized I took 2 and a half hours between all of that when I got home. I told my mother I went for a walk and got distracted, went to my room and that’s when everything started sinking in. I grew up in a dangerous neighborhood no matter where I lived, having a gun pointed at was something that’s never going to stop being terrifying but the impact lessens over time. After some time of empty staring, I got the phone my father sent a year ago and activated that one, it has less memory and all I really need is music but it’s the thought that counts. I saw a couple of messages from you asking if I’m there and looks like you wanted to talk. I told you I got robbed, you didn’t believe me but this isn’t one of those things to lie about. There’s nothing impressive about getting robbed at gunpoint. My anxiety didn’t go off the rails despite the lack of Xanax in my system, it was a strange feeling and did not know how to rationalize it. I tried to pass it off as being okay, talking to you makes everything easier. You told me you’re redoing the house and talking about your self-worth. Telling me to tell my therapist how strong you are and how beautiful you are and how you’ve shouldered everything for the past year. How fucking dare you, of course I have but I’ve also talked about how controlling you’ve been and the thing I don’t want to do is go from patient to psychologist trying to compare results based on notes and observations about you. Therapy is where I make me about me, it’s step one on a healthy dose of selfishness. So we talked about how you’re Marie Kondoing and suggested I do the same, I told you that I’m not in a head space where assessing joy is a good idea. We talked about how we both need the man I used to be, how tired you are and the things you deserve. I mentioned that my stepdad finally got himself together and I was very surprised, these past 10 years haven’t been very kind to us and he got lazy and complacent and irresponsible. After having been dumped by my mom was when he went back to being hardworking and providing for her and my brother. He’s been incredibly supportive of whatever this thing I’m going through is. We spoke in a way that can only be described like we needed to cheer each other on, and then another “I don’t believe you got robbed” stab. As much as I would like your support yet not seeking it because I’m respecting your space, I really don’t need your doubt. I told you I was looking forward to our monthly in-person meet, which you forgot and it hurt. That was probably the most crushing moment of our whole conversation but powered through it. Sometimes I think I should just divorce you because you’re too much of a coward to ask for it because that is what you really want and I want to work on this but won’t get the chance to get there. We had a nice conversation and cut it short, sleep was calling to me. I woke up late at night and saw that you texted again, I don’t know if you were battling with loneliness again and wanted to talk to me. A part of me wants to tell you to fuck off and seek solace in the Facebook friends you arduously ignored me for but I think you’re doing that and it’s not working as well as you’d hoped. I think we’re both fighting that codependency we have for each other, leading to struggles with our own loneliness. I can’t really speak for you and can only assume. I just told you I went for my late night drink of water. We texted a little on Day 8, sent you a funny ad I got on a website while working. I’m still worried that you’re not eating well and haven’t found someone to pay to cook for you or deliver a healthy meal to you. I spent all of Day 8 hating myself out loud because I had the house to myself and trying not to text you. I also spent it playing GTA 5 and watching how Michael lost his family and is slowly getting them back in their own organically dysfunctional way while having Chicago’s “if you leave me now” playing on the radio station of the car he got in. Rockstar, you’re not fair to me right now. After so many years and changing availability, I still haven’t finished the game but it’s hitting so many sore spots for me right now. Great job, me, you’ve replaced your dependency from Xanax to video games and enjoy neither. I’ve helped my stepdad clean his car during the weekend, Hank sees me near the car and he behaves like we’re going back home. He scratches my leg, getting permission to get in but doesn’t see that it’s just to clean it and not to make a 2 hour trip back to a place we thought everyone was happy in. You sent me a philosophical quote about healing, I looked it up and thanked you for it. I went on to spend my night playing mindlessly, reading on and off about endogenous depression because I stumbled upon a paper I was reading about it in my closet here. Grad school B paper, no easy feat. I spent my night torturing myself internally. Weening off Xanax to help me sleep has not been kind, I’m down to a quarter a day again.

Day 9. I’m proud of myself for not reactivating my Facebook to stalk you since Friday-ish or Thursday. I needed one of the links I had saved and checked your posts since I was already there. Still, I need to stop. I’m getting everything out in a public way while maintaining myself anonymous and you’re getting everything out in a more “everybody, this marriage has been so shitty despite having my husband change jobs and work outside the house in order to pay for everything”. Yes you did the housewife thing and you did it great, I just needed you great and not a clean house or a highly elaborate meal but that’s what I came home to and a wife that had just enough energy to kinda eat. Your mother and my father did come to our rescue one too many times before we got married and while I started my new job. When you said you were told about Stratus, I encouraged you and said I wanted you happy but whatever floats your boat. Day 9 is just starting with sarcastic clients and a very annoyed me. If parting is such sweet sorrow, I don’t have many assets but I’m still meeting an attorney this Friday to set up a will. Just in case.