#coherent? no. but that's future kim's problem
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anyways time to talk about sakura’s xingese heritage and family while living in amestris and also how this ties in to her modern verse + her familial relationships, under the cut as always for length. art cred.
to sum up one of my earlier posts on sakura’s heritage, i personally headcanon that xing went through periods of political instability as a direct result of the heir deliberation that rival clans competing to get their heir chosen as the next emperor could and did have adverse consequences on the population of xing. this would cause native xingese to leave the country for safer territory and, knowing that there did at one point exist a trade route between amestris and xing, many xingese would have escaped into amestris when the country was not yet closed off. in amestris, the xingese would form a close-knit community that offered protection and support for each other.
once amestris locked down and unleashed its full xenophobic and racist face, many xingese and other minorities would have either fled the violence, or settled deeper into society, trying fervently to blend in. once the trade route was destroyed, the xingese in amestris likely had no other option but to hide their cultural identity, maintaining links, but otherwise spreading out to avoid detection from the amestrian dictatorship.
i headcanon that sakura’s paternal great-grandparents were one of the last xingese to come into amestris before the borders were locked down. on both sides, her family maintained links to their xingese culture, but outwardly presented strong amestrian display.
sakura’s parents met and married in amestris, and outwardly presented a fiercely patriotic, dogmatic stance in the amestrian military prompted in large part by their residing in central, which had the largest military presence and strongest anti-foreigner stance. there had been discussion of moving elsewhere in amestris, but their livelihood was tied in large part to the restaurant owned by them; without guarantee of income, success elsewhere seemed unlikely.
many xingese born in amestris were given traditionally xingese names, and more traditional “amestrian” names to blend in. sakura’s parents were kizashi and mebuki haruno, respectively; they adapted the names “hiram” and “margaret.” this is keeping in with the jewish influence in the fma universe ( hiram being a reference to the king of tyr and the ally of king david, margaret being of both greek and persian origin. )
notably, kizashi and mebuki chose not to give sakura an amestrian name, choosing instead to keep her xingese name entirely. the elder harunos were notably terrified of the amestrian military and went out of their way not to provoke them, so the naming was unusual; nevertheless, their daughter didn’t fit any whitewashed namesake, and it felt like a small, safe rebellion in an overly complicated and painful dictatorship.
sakura was raised in private xingese faith and cultural practice she was fluent in xingese, and lived as both a xingese woman and an amestrian. she experienced a bit of a distance from her heritage as she grew older; part of it out of natural caution towards the amestrian military, but a part of it prompted too by the death of her mother. mebuki was, in many ways, sakura’s foil and her twin flame; both of them immensely stubborn, both of them loyal and bound by their bonds, both of them driven to succeed. mebuki, who had sacrificed so much of her own identity to stay safe and keep her family safe, irked sakura as a child; as an adult, sakura could fully grasp just how much her family had suffered to live here, and to give her a start.
living on her own in dublith, sakura’s cultural ties to xing become reduced to small habits she never thinks about brewing tea like her mother did, her grandmother’s kimono kept safely in the attic, swearing under her breath in xingese when she burned herself on the stove. her heritage is placed on the backburner; she did not, strictly speaking, look fully amestrian, but she did not present as “foreign,” and her medical skills were such that anyone who might have asked questions chose to look the other way. protected by both her own amestrian upbringing and her valuable skills, sakura simply responds to anyone foolish enough to ask that she and her family were amestrian, born and raised, no other identity possible.
when the war in amestris ends and the xenophobic practices begin to fall away, sakura finds herself for the first time free to celebrate her heritage and culture. her father, still cautious after so long, never manages to discard his “hiram” identity, but he delights in having grandchildren who learn their old language, and xingese no longer being a dirty secret to hide.
sakura remains in touch with much of her family, both maternal and paternal, and writes to them on occasion, but also forges new bonds as she opens her practice in dublith. doctor marcoh becomes a surrogate father to her as they travel amestris; discovering his betrayal is something that shocks and infuriates sakura worse than her own mother’s death. sakura also becomes close with izumi and sig curtis, who live just a few blocks down. originally helping out as a doctor for izumi when her regular physician is off, sakura becomes a surrogate daughter to the curtis’, who gleefully accept her growing family as their own ( including greed, whom izumi never lets forget broke her hand. )
ultimately, sakura chooses to embrace both aspects of her identity ethnically, culturally, and racially, she is a xingese woman, but she also firmly identifies as amestrian, albeit an amestrian that she defines.
this translates over to modern verse, where sakura is a japanese woman born and raised in america. her father was first generation american, and her mother was born in japan and moved to america; sakura often navigates the divide of being a japanese-american, and the frustrations that comes with. although her family does not hide their japanese heritage, sakura is encouraged to embrace american identity politics, to give her an equal chance in a still prejudiced and racist society. sakura is far more open and proud of her heritage, but she does not like to be defined solely as a japanese woman: like being a woman, or a doctor, or having green eyes, these are parts of her, but not the entire identity.
#✧ — you have swallowed the sun / to become fire. */ about.#✧ — strength from the ashes / of your despair. */ headcanon.#ask to tag //#long post //#coherent? no. but that's future kim's problem#mentions of canon aligned racism / xenophobia#i know her parents get like ... three mentions in the nart manga#and one of them is an au where they both die lmao#but for any of my n/aruto mutuals i keep sakura's parents as civilians#they have no shinobi training they're just chilling
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PART 12 {Finally! Yay. Sorry for the long wait. Hehe. Enjoy reading y’all~ :)}
“Sung Eunyoung!”
Now it’s her turn.
She was in the middle of checking and signing some papers in her meeting room fresh from a meeting as she expects the thunderous intonation of Jang Taeyoung’s frustrating stance barge in. “What was that, huh? I’ve been seized as a CEO of my own Casino Hotel?! And when the hell did you become friends with that f*cking prosecutor?! Shit! What are you up to, woman?”
He was even pointing a hand from the direction of her glass walls implying the said person whom he actually stumbles upon on his way to her. Continuous grumbles, posing hands on his waist and vigorous stomping of steps back and forth. She can really see his distress indeed. But the hell she cares. She just going to do her thing comfortably sitting on its comfy chair.
Thy woman in front of him doesn’t even give a flinch and was just right there crossing a leg from where she’s seated, unbothered by his menacing presence. He was pissed. But still tried to control his blazing anger. Taking a suppressing breath, pressing his lips into thin line. Gripping on the headrest of her chair while the other on the opposite vacant side. Domineering eyes finally went open gazing onto her.
“Talk to me.”
Thus a resonating sound of her pen being rest down field their silent tension. As her boring gaze landed through him. “As much as I don’t have time for your petty complaints Mr. Jang, fine I might just entertain you for the last time. So what do you prefer to clarify first, then?”
His jaw tightened. It was as if they went back from where they started. Two risk takers who had just met for the first time. “Eunyoung.” His stern announce of her first name as if letting her remember that they aren’t just like the days back then. Yet she did not stir even a bit. Concluding her own assumption instead.
“I’ll take the in order it is.”
“Sung Eunyoung.” It was his warning this time. “The first one then. As far as I remember Mr. Jang, Casino Hotel is entitled under my name. Given that I possess the largest stocks in it. Per se that decisions will only be made by me and mine alone. So I can’t seem to seek where you belong when the last thing I know was that I am still the rightful owner. Am I right?”
She obviously continues her own as she even clasps her hands after. While he was now clenching from his grip. “Sung Eunyoung, please.” His hoping plead still. “Second. Mr. Kim? Oh. I never realize he could be much helpful for me with you as a proof. I should have done shaking his hand earlier.”
“Sung Eunyoung!”
With the defying slump of his palms on the meeting table, he burst out totally. “Is this about the matter of not telling you the reason? Huh?” His cold words to her already, yet the considerate her is nowhere to be seen that only nonchalant eyes been offered for him. “Guess my explanation won’t be needed for your third complaint then, Mr. Jang. You had just answered it by yourself.”
“Then the hell did I just tell you to f*cking trust me, Sung Eunyoung?! TRUST ME, bullsh*t!”
“And you really think I can just accept a petty excuse over a serious business Jang Taeyoung?!”
With a thud of her fist on the papers she had checked, standing up with the same intensity as him. She can’t help to erupt indeed. But the moment she senses the number of stares of her employees by the glass walls, she obliged to calm down. Taking a deep breath as she sits again as if what happened was like a casual thing to do. And If weren’t for the soundproof feature of her meeting room there’s no doubt their loud exclaims were long been a news already.
“Mr. Jang, I bet you also forgotten who I really am. BUSINESS is my obsession. And you dare tell me to trust you? Oh, come on. I’ve been in this industry more than you do, met different alligators all my life only to get stirred by a scavenger who can’t even give a mere valid reason? Tss. I don’t think so.”
A gritted teeth came after him finally as he starts to rest his hands on the table bending a bit of his body forward while arrogantly tilting a head to level their faces. “Scavenger? So I am being addressed as a scavenger now, Sung Eunyoung? Fine, I’ll accept that. But business? Isn’t the pretend fiancé a business to you as well, Ms. Sung? Then how can you compromise the damage when you’re betraying your husband-to-be, huh?”
His threatening tries of words just to be surprised by her sudden shift of emotions as she caressingly cups a hand on his cheek. From lovingly looking at his face as if memorizing every inch of it. To a concern weary eyes staring at him like forever. He was tamed and he can’t deny it when considering the closeness of their faces isn’t helping as well. Not until…
Before a snorted intimidating laugh came in. She even starts tapping his jaw as if astonished by something beyond her imagination. “God! I can’t believe a fearless Jang Taeyoung can be too absorbed by his own role. Or shall I say, am I really that good of an actress for you to get stirred up this much?”
Letting go of her hand from his face then to later cross arms on her chest, leaning comfortably again to its seat. She proceeds. “My apologies Mr. Jang, but Amilia tolerated you enough for her to get tired already. Don’t worry, you do know that I’m a greatest venturer, aren’t you? So yes, I can manage.”
“Enough, Sung Eunyoung.”
Just his cold remarks then to obviously not considered by her. “Betrayed? Oh wow, you’re kidding right? You did it first. I’m just returning the favor Mr. Jang. You with my Nightclub and I with your supposed to be Casino Hotel. Win-win with a twist. Isn’t it exciting?”
“Shi---“
He was halt from cursing indeed when she eventually slaps him hard before he can. “Shitty b*tch? Tsk, tsk, tsk. Jang, you’re too late to realize it, really? You thought I’m just dealing with you without a spare on hand? Jeez. I didn’t know you were this reckless, I pity you.”
He can clearly hear her insults surely for his head was still sided from her slap. He’s truly near of his limit as he can foresee it to later. Closing his eyes as the last hold back turning his face towards her again. He sternly speaks. “Stop. Provoking me. Or you would not like what I might going to do to you next, Sung Eunyoung.”
Only to be answered by her mockery. “Aww. As if I am Jang Taeyoung.” She even dodges his pointing finger by her hand, standing up afterwards diligently stuffing her things, stepping to the direction of her secretary who was now waiting outside. “Anyhow, Mr. Jang. I still have an outside appointment to attend. So if you’ll excuse---“
And that’s it!
He exploded absolutely as she was forcefully pinned through the wall, gripping hands tightly holds into her wrists. And so there’s nowhere for her to escape. She was trapped not like literally but from the piercing stare of the man who caused it as she gives the same coldness he was.
“You don’t know anything.”
“Then you should have told me.”
“You assured me.”
“Well, I can’t remember.”
“Sung Eunyoung!”
With another thud from his gripping hands she flinches, as she felt the much tighter hold he did. But the hell she would fall. She managed to regain her domineering composure indeed. “You would not like to add another evidence for your future interrogation as well. Right, Mr. Jang? Assault will be much a problem you know.”
Understanding what she meant as he can also see the nosy reactions from the outside, he obliged to let go yet for some reason he can’t face her this time. He avoided her gaze by only glancing to the other side. He doesn’t like to accept but he become defeated.
To later felt her hand cupping his cheek again, urging him to face her. Right there they stared in each other’s eyes, cold. So cold as an iceberg can be, little unaware of her next move. She sealed him a kiss. A kiss which for her was something yet for him is nothing. It was deep, that she has to cup another hand with the other to pressed their faces much more and he could have excited him but no, it was empty. He was kissed by a numb lips and he was just being stiffed.
“Consider that as my last gift. Goodbye, fiancé.”
Her bid of goodbye like there were other meaning from it. He wouldn’t know. All he knew was that he was already left alone with the same paralleled event he once did to her, that the only thing he could do is to pass his anger kicking a thing near him.
~
“Let him be for a while.”
Her secretary knew instantly what she meant without further details. “Yes, ma’am. Are you alright, perhaps?”
“Don’t bother.”
They’re halfway through passing the corner aisle of the employee’s desks when she remembered another one. “Oh, and one more thing.” She purposely scrutinizes her eyes to her employees who’s as well attentive of her presence before turning to her secretary, adamant words she intended to order with conviction.
“Please fire everyone who’s present here if I would hear coherent rumors upon what happened just now. Are we clear, Ms. Yoo?”
Her secretary only bowed at her to later tends to the mass of employees’ sudden gasps, frightened by the possible jeopardy which may come upon them. “You all heard it, right?”
A crystal clear warning of her secretary and it only takes a second before a simultaneous bow of heads as well as a chorus of words they needed to utter can be heard by her ears, dominantly walking the rest of the aisle she takes.
“Yes, ma’am!”
#kim soo hyun#kimsoohyun#seo ye ji#seo yea ji#korean actor#korean actress#ko mun yeong#realkoreanmovie#real#nightlife ventures#moon gang tae#psycho but it's okay#it's okay not to be okay#itsokaynottobeokay#psycho but its okay#jang tae young#jangtaeyeong#sung eun young#by quantum physics#quantum physics#hyunji#hyunjicouple
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Seokjin Drabble- he slaps you during an argument
Request: Can I request Jin angst where he has a huge argument with Y/N and he accidentally slaps her because of anger? Thanks. :)
Warnings: angst, violence and swearing.
Author´s Note: Hello yet again :) How´s quarantine going? Feel free to talk to me if you are having any emotional problem (goes for all readers), It´s good to help each other!!! As regards my masterlist, I´ve had some problem with it but I´ll try to update it soon...
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“Jin we can´t keep having this conversation”-you sighed.”You shouldn´t be taking that many pills through one day, it´s not healthy”
“Are you my doctor now?”-he answered. He was shirtless on your shared bed, going through his cellphones as the light of the silver moon shone over his bruises and bandages-” The last time I checked you were my girlfriend/boyfriend”
By now, you didn´t understand if he was being funny or he was mocking you. Seokjin was not aggressive nor sarcastic. In fact, he was the most comprehensive and sweet man you had ever met. Of course, he could be sassy whenever he felt like it but all those time were with an entertaining purpose, not to hurt anyone. However, lately, he had been a little bit too impulsive-” That's why I have every damn right to be looking after you”
“ I´m a grown-ass man, Y/N”-he hissed. He had pushed his torso upwards, propping his bodyweight on his elbows. His glare burnt with exhaustion as it pierced your whole body with strength. You felt like trembling, quivering legs begging you to drop yourself to the floor, but you stood tall, not even daring to give him the satisfaction-” You don´t act like one, Seokjin. Actually, if you are indeed a responsible adult, you would understand the risks you may suffer if you keep asking your body things it can´t simply do”
“ Are you telling me I´m useless?”-he huffed and you rolled your eyes. Was he serious?
“ Oh, don´t put words in my mouth that I didn´t even say!”-you snapped. He bit his bottom lip as if knowing you were right but if he was regretting his statement he didn´t act on it. By now, you had marched towards the bed and had sat down In front of your boyfriend. He was fully incorporated now, legs crossed over each other like a small kid. Your eyes roamed his now tensed muscles and tired body posture. You were just worried, you weren´t trying to be an obsessive bitch. You loved Kim Seokjin and you wouldn´t know what to do if something serious actually happened to him because of his hardworking self.
“ Look, Y/N, I don´t need a babysitter”-he murmured-” I just need you to leave my career out of our relationship. You don´t have to worry about that”
“ But that´s what you love doing the most. When I accepted being your partner, I fell in love with you; everything you´re passionate about and even your faults. So don´t push me away now”-you whispered extending your arm to caress his cheek. He leaned into your soothing touch yet his rage made him pull away, swerving his head from your tender skin. He appeared to be having a mental debate on whether to explain everything to you or to just yell at you. He grinned, frowned and blinked repeatedly so as not to cry. His palms began to shake and you discretely started backing away. You trusted him but this person was not your boyfriend.
“ I don´t need your fucking pity”-he laughed-” Everyone is always saying I´m the less talented, the worst dancer, the most overrated among the members. They all pity me because I´m the eldest and I can´t do what Jungkook does or that I try to show myself in order for anyone to notice my poor self-”
“-Nobody says that, Jin. I always read ARMYs comments and tweets, they love you and are so thankful that you´re part of-”
“-YOU ARE NOT FUCKING ME, Y/n”-he screamed as he crawled towards you. His face was near you and his hand was grabbing your wrist with abnormal strength. His eyes held mortifying rage, staring at your frightened orbs. A small sob accompanied your laboured breaths, sensing how your demeanour made him even angrier but not at you, at his own self. He was driving himself mad-” You don´t understand what´s comparing yourself to others. What being an idol brings about. Look at me for God´s Sake! I´m a mess!”
“We can solve this together, Seokjin”-you chocked out. His nose flared and you pushed your fear away to blurt out-” Just let me help you”
“Help me?”-he asked sardonically-” You´re fucking useless. You think you can help everyone and turn them into some perfect shit of sorts. Let me break it down for you, that´s not even possible”
“ You´re not being coherent, Seokjin”-you mumbled-” This is not like you!”
“ What makes you think you know me?”-his grip on your wrist tightened unpleasantly as he stretched his neck from side to side. His actions were anxious and ragged, warning you about future dangers. Yet you needed to at least try.
“ I know you because I love you and you love me. You let me into your heart and allowed me to see how amazing you´re...”
“Shut up”-he whispered.
“Jin”
“SHUT UP!”
Slap
Your vision wasn´t fast enough to catch his hand approaching your face. Your skin was still not really perceiving the burning and pain of his aggression. Just the sound of the sudden contact echoed in your ears as you stared motionless at Seokjin. His anger vanished abruptly and some glistening tears began pouring down his cheekbones. His frozen lips turned bone-white as his expression morphed to one of utter disbelief-” Y/N I-I´m...”
For once, you didn´t wait for him to finish. Instead, you stood up and left the room while Seokjin yelled his regret from the bedroom. You paced through your apartment gathering different items into a backpack, tears blurring your vision as you attempted to snatch some pain-relieving pills from the tiny basket in the bathroom. As you pushed everything into your improvised luggage, a small medication box slipped to the floor. You picked it up and unintentionally read the side effects.
You scanned the brief paragraphs, words like impulsivity, aggressiveness and lose of control sticking harmfully in your mind. You knew something was off, Seokjin wasn´t like that. The pills he took were causing that tornado of emotions inside his soul.
Not knowing what to do, you wrote down a little message for him to read when he had calmed down and left the apartment. You decided to ask Yoongi if you could stay in the dorms since you had no relatives in Korea and he was the closest friend you had. As soon as he opened the door, his eyes widened as he examined your red swollen cheek and purpling skin-” What happened?”
“Yoongi I need you to tell me what the fuck is happening to Seokjin”
#BTS request#bts x reader#bts x you#bts x army#bts x y/n#bts reaction#seokjin x reader#bts seokjin#bts kim seokjin#seokjin fanfic#seokjin scenarios#kim seokjin x you#seokjin X y/n
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1109: Yongary: Monster from the Deep
The first time I saw Yongary was when I was on a Kaiju Eiga binge over Christmas break one year. It was on YouTube, with the sound removed for copyright infringement, and no subtitles. At the time, this didn’t bother me much. I thought I’d seen enough weird monster movies that I could guess what was going on from the visuals. It turned out I really couldn’t. Even now that I’ve seen it with sound, I’m still not sure what happened in this movie.
Korea’s top astronaut has just gotten married when he’s called off to a space emergency – somebody is testing bombs in the middle east and they need a guy in space to watch it. The bombing causes earthquakes that cross the globe until they reach Korea, where the ground cracks open to reveal, what else? An oddly rubbery and humanoid monster! Yongary proceeds to devastate the land, as oddly rubbery and humanoid monsters do, feeding on oil and taking an occasional nap, until the astronaut’s very much younger brother (I think) Icho and future brother-in-law (again, I think) Ilo discover its one weakness: itching powder.
So yeah, there’s a lot to unpack here.
If Yongary has a visual aesthetic, it’s empty pockets and boundless enthusiasm. The production appears to have had very little money and they spread it very thin, resulting in effects that are shoddy and unconvincing across the board… and yet, the people who created them went all-out, absolutely determined to wring every last jeon out of their budget. The monster suit never looks like anything but a monster suit, but they never shy away from showing it. The model cities are large and elaborate, even as they lack detail or realistic lighting. Shots showing earth from space look like a seventh grade science fair project. The matte shots are bad. The itch ray is just light reflected onto things with a mirror. It all looks terrible, but their hearts were in it.
Unfortunately, not half so much effort appears to have gone into the script, which wanders from character to character in a series of events that are connected only by the monster, and sometimes only barely. A number of things are set up as if they’re going to be very important and then are simply dropped, leaving the impression that they were only there to fill time.
What, for example, is the point of the space sequence? They drag the astronaut (whose name I never caught in the movie, and IMDB is no help) away from his honeymoon to observe this nuclear test. Some kind of failure on the spaceship, perhaps related to said test, puts him in danger but after much worry he reaches the ground safely. Wow! Our hero is a great pilot with nerves of steel! Surely this will be very important later. Maybe he will be called to do something dangerous to defeat the monster! Maybe something he saw from space, while he was out of touch with the ground, will be key to saving the day!
Uh, no. He’s not even in the rest of the movie, really, and we certainly never hear tell of the space program again. As far as I can tell, the only purpose to any of this was establishing the nuclear test (because everybody knows those create monsters) and then trying to have some tension before Yongary actually emerges. The whole sequence was filler.
Then there’s the itching ray, which first appears in the hands of little Icho as he plays a prank on the newlyweds. Exactly why Ilo has invented an itching ray, I don’t know. Was it intended to do something else and just ended up being itchy? When Icho swipes it again to use on Yongary, I figured maybe a souped-up itch ray would turn out to be what kills the monster but again, no. The itching ray doesn’t even set up anything important. I think it’s foreshadowing that itching is Yongary’s weakness, but the ray has nothing to do with the chemical allergy that brings the monster down, besides manifesting a similar symptom.
The fact that itching appears in the movie in more than one context probably makes it a motif. Why, out of all the possible themes and symbolism you could put in a movie, the makers of Yongary chose itching, I have no idea. Perhaps it represents something below the surface trying to break free, like the monster itself? If that’s the case, then it’s fitting that the source of the itching is always externally imposed: the ray and Yongary’s allergy induce itching, and the nuclear test makes the earth ‘itch’ so that Yongary breaks out. Whether this means anything deeper than that, I honestly cannot say.
Itching brings us to Icho. I’m pretty sure Icho is the actual main character of this story. He’s there at the beginning, he’s there at the end, and he’s the one who realizes what the monster’s weakness is. He even has a bit of an arc, I guess… he’s nothing but an insufferable brat at the beginning of the film, and while he continues to be bratty throughout he does develop a more mature outlook, coming to understand the need for Yongary’s destruction while still feeling sorry for the monster.
Icho is clearly supposed to have some kind of emotional bond with Yongary, but this is completely one-sided and even less justified than Kenny’s supposed friendship with Gamera. Whereas Gamera saved Kenny from falling to his death, I don’t think Yongary ever even notices Icho – which is probably all for the best, since Icho is doing things like turning off his food supply and zapping him with itching rays. Icho’s defense of Yongary is also a little more realistic than Kenny’s of Gamera. He never insists that Yongary is good and gentle, only that the monster didn’t mean to hurt anybody. This is probably true. Yongary is not presented as a creature with a personality or intentions, he is merely a force of nature, doing what giant rubber monsters do. He does not seem capable even of understanding that he is causing suffering.
What’s kind of interesting about this is that it makes it clear that Gamera, rather than Godzilla, was the primary inspiration for Yongary. The monster emerges as a result of a nuclear bombing that is never mentioned again. It eats oil and is strengthened by fire. Annoying little kids like it for no readily apparent reason. As an attempt to create a Kaiju franchise in 1967, when the genre was already well-established, it was probably inevitable that Yongary would look like a ripoff of something, but the choice of Gamera for a model seems particularly weird when we consider the ending. At the end of Gamera, the monster was sent to Mars where he would presumably continue to live without bothering humanity. This is pretty cool and appeals to children.
In Yongary, the monster dies of internal bleeding while Icho watches. This doesn’t seem to have bothered Icho but it sure disturbed Jonah and the bots, and once I saw it in a context where I understood what was happening, it made my jaw drop, too. When I think back on the deaths of monsters in Kaiju Eiga, they tend to be fairly quick affairs: in Godzilla, King of the Monsters, the oxygen-destroyer pretty much instantly skeletonizes things. Even bad-guy monsters tend to die or be driven off in one final blow or finishing move, as when Gamera throws Gaos into the volcano. When the monsters visibly suffer, like Gamera with the baby Jiger inside him, or Anguirus when Godzilla rips his tongue out, it’s shocking and unpleasant. Maybe this is because we think of these movies as being for children, or perhaps it’s the unavoidable anthropomorphic shape of the creature suits. Whatever the reason, Yongary’s death is a major tonal departure and the ‘happy ending’ that follows it makes it even weirder.
I know basically nothing about the geography of Korea, but people who do have apparently written a great deal about how important the landscape is to Yongary. According to critic Steve Ryfle, Yongary emerges in the northern part of Korea, near where the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed in 1953 – this makes him perhaps symbolic of aggression from the north, marching inexorably down the peninsula towards Seoul. Korean critic Kim Songho noted that Yongary destroys the old Seoul Capital building, a symbol of the Japanese occupation of Korea before and during World War II (the building was knocked down in the 90s for this reason).
Using your giant monster to make a political statement, particularly an anti-war or anti-colonial one, is nothing new, but I don’t think the makers of Yongary intended a unified one by this. The two political messages in the landscape seem opposed to each other: one paints Yongary as a semi-foreign force of aggression, the other as a native being destroying a symbol of foreign aggression. This isn’t a problem for me, the non-Korean viewer, and the two ideas work fine when they’re each considered in isolation, but they do speak to the overall lack of unity in the script.
That lack of unity is probably the biggest single obstacle to enjoying Yongary for what it is, rather than the ironic amusement people like me get out of bad movies. The jarring ending, the space program that is set up and then not used, and the inconsistent symbolism all make Yongary: Monster from the Deep feel like something assembled from parts rather than being a coherent whole. All movies are made by committees, but a good movie shouldn’t feel like it was.
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Hello, can please writte about RFA, V and Sarean reacting to MC being rich? Thanks 😁
Hey! ^^ Yes, of course! I hope you like these HCs!
RFA + Saeran reacting to a rich MC
Zen
Even though you know there’s a lot more to his quarrel with Jumin than just Zen’s problem with how much the CEO-in-line relies on money, there’s a part of you that believes the actor is gonna leave you as soon as he finds out you were born into a rich family as well.
So naturally, you don’t tell him this tiny detail about yourself until keeping that secret starts seriously eating at you.
As much as you want to do this properly and explain to him that even with all that money at your disposal, you’ve always tried to rely more on your own strength and abilities than anything else, you get nervous and blurt it all out one evening while you have dinner at his place.
At first, he’s confused. You were so nervous to tell him that your words formed a giant mess instead of coherent sentences, so he couldn’t quite catch what you’ve just said.
Still, he sees you’re visibly upset and anxious, so he takes your hand into his and starts rubbing circles on it in an attempt to calm you down.
When you finally feel as ready as you can be to share your secret with him, you take a deep breath and tell him.
He’s taken aback at first, but recovers quickly, a wide, reassuring smile on his face.
“You’re still you, the girl I’ve fallen head over heels for. Nothing will change now that I know you were born into a rich family. I know you’re a hard-working person with a big heart and I love you for that, sweetie!”
Yoosung
As much as you try not to place emphasis on this part of your life, it’s hard not to do it when Yoosung is so interested in learning more about it.
Of course, he has no ill intentions. He’s just genuinely intrigued by that aspect of your life.
Loves hearing stories about your childhood, especially the ones about visiting new places with your family. His wish is one day to be able to take you again to some of those places and create new memories with you there. With his job as a vet, he’s sure he’ll manage to save enough money to do that in the not so distant future.
Still though, he prefers to keep this a secret, his special surprise for you.
You know he loves going to college, and after he graduates, to work, in your fancy cars, so you occasionally spoil him by calling in your driver to come fetch you two early in the morning. Yoosung’s blushing face is always an endearing and most welcome sight to you.
He always returns the favor by preparing your favorite meal for dinner or giving you a nice, thorough massage before going to bed. It’s a win-win situation.
Just like you’ve never made him feel uncomfortable because of the difference in your social status, he’s never made you feel bad about having way more money at your disposal than him.
Simply loves you for everything that you are.
Jaehee
You never intended to keep it a secret from her, so you tell her as soon as you feel things between you are starting to get serious. Oddly enough, she doesn’t seem surprised at all by the shocking revelation.
You wonder if you’d hinted at it in a chatroom or in a casual conversation while enjoying your morning coffee, but when nothing of significance comes to your mind, you simply ask her.
Giggling, she scoots closer to you. “Ah, I can see why my reaction would make you wonder. I assure you, it’s nothing you’ve said before. I’ve spent enough time with Mr. Han… ah, I mean Jumin, to notice your mannerism is almost identical to his, so I thought you might have been brought up in a similar environment.”
It’s your turn to laugh now, but as the implication that she’s closely studied your quirks and habits settles in, a faint blush creeps up on your cheeks.
Money is important to Jaehee as it means a stable and secure future, but she never, ever resorts to yours, even if the cafe operates at a loss during the holidays at the end of the year.
She takes pride in her hard work and never accepts your offers to help her stabilize her business. As much as her stubbornness drives you crazy, you can’t help but be proud of how resilient and positive she is about her dream.
Jumin
No wonder your name sounded familiar when you first introduced yourself in the chatroom. As the daughter of one of his longtime business partners, your name has come up in a few casual conversations, but he never really got to meet you in person.
Now that he thinks about it, he does remember, albeit vaguely, seeing a photo of you in your father’s office. Of course, you must have still been in high school then, but the delicate features of your face and the soft look in your eyes haven’t changed.
Despite coming from a rich family, you’ve always tried to distance yourself from your parents’ money and work to make your own, something Jumin greatly respects about you.
Even if you’ve managed to make quite the fortune on your own, he can’t help but worry about your well-being since your schedule is even more hectic than his. That’s why he often insists on spending a few hours at the spa whenever you two have some free time, or traveling more often to quiet places. And if you feel like staying home, he’ll prepare a hot, bubbly bath for you and give you a soothing shoulder massage.
Insists on paying for everything whenever you two are out shopping, or having a fancy dinner, or planning a trip together. That trait of his will never change.
707 // Luciel // Saeyoung
He found out you were brought up in a rich household while he was doing his research on you, but never really said anything about it in the chatrooms. Still, you told him soon after you joined the RFA as a way to show your trust in him.
To this day, he still remembers the photos he saw of you and your family online in the few articles he read. You looked so pretty, so angelic, divine even, that he fell for you immediately, even if it took him a while to realize it.
Money is important to him as it gives him freedom and provides his brother and him the much-needed security of staying out of their father’s tight grip. Yet, he’ll only ever resort to your money if push comes to shove and yours and his brother’s safety are on the line.
Likes to make lighthearted jokes about the similarity in social status between Jumin and you.
“Honey~ Do you think that if we combined the money in our bank accounts we’d turn out to be richer than Juju?”
His antics make you giggle, but you play along anyway. “Mmm, maybe… But we’ll have to sell your cars.” The way he throws his hands in mock horror never fails to make you laugh.
Still, you’ve never really relied too much on your family’s wealth, instead focusing on finding your own path in life. Saeyoung is extremely supportive of your projects and will always make time for you if you need his help.
Ray // Unknown // Saeran
Saeran doesn’t really put much value on money as it is something that he has never coveted.
“Money is the root of all evil.” While he doesn’t like generalizing things, he has to admit it was one of the reasons his mother was the way she was. This is the other reason he doesn’t want to think or care too much about money. It brings back painful memories of his past, ones he wants to forget.
So once you tell him you come from a rich family, he just accepts it as a part of you and moves on. Adding extra weight on that fact seems unnecessary to him.
He never makes you feel bad about it, though. He knows you are a kindhearted girl that relies on her own strength more than on her family’s wealth and it makes his chest swell with pride.
Still, you two need money to survive and he realizes that, but it’s never seemed like an issue to him. As long as you two have each other, he feels like money will never be a problem.
He loves the idea of you two opening a flower shop and making money while doing something that brings joy to both of you and hopefully, to your customers as well. In the end, that’s what really matters to him.
Making plans about your flower shop late at night while you two are snuggled close to each other under the warm blankets fills his heart with excitement about the future and gratitude towards you, his kind and gentle angel.
Jihyun Kim // V
Your family has had close business relations with his for as long as you can remember, yet he didn’t seem to have recognized you once you joined the RFA. It’s not like you two have ever said anything other than polite greetings to each other, but still, at least your name should have struck a chord with him.
Once you get to know him better, you realize his attitude towards money has changed over the years. The boy you once knew has now become a completely different man, humble, understanding, accepting, and very kindhearted.
You decide to talk about your family to him after dinner on a warm summer evening. Instead of just telling him about it, you show him an old photo from an article the local newspaper wrote about your families’ new business.
His breath hitches as he realizes who you are, eliciting a soft giggle from you. “I’m so sorry I never realized that was you, MC! You have my most sincere apologies!”
Once you assure him there’s no need to apologize, he visibly relaxes. You two spend the evening on the couch, cuddling and trying to remember all the times you’ve seen each other before.
You never really mention your families’ business relations after that, since both of you have long become independent from their wealth. The more important thing is that you both remember what brought you closer together - your wish to be able to express yourselves freely.
Masterlist || Ko-fi
#mystic messenger#saeran choi#saeyoung choi#jumin han#jihyun kim#v#hyun ryu#zen#yoosung kim#jaehee kang#mysme#mysme headcanons#natsumioshiro
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Gifts of Deceit – Chapter 6, Minions and Master
▲ Richard Nixon with Sun Myung Moon during the Watergate crisis
Gifts of Deceit (1980) by Robert B. Boettcher pages 144-186
Chapter 6 – Minions and Master
An army of obedient servants would have to be recruited and trained to restore the Kingdom of Heaven to earth under Sun Myung Moon. They would have to work as people had never before worked because there had never been such a great mission. They would have to go wherever Moon sent them to raise the $300 million he needed for making his project worldwide and the billions more he needed to control the wealth of the planet. But Moon did not have shiploads of chained tribal people at his disposal when he arrived in America in 1971. Involuntary servitude was against the law. Could he make people think they were actually willing to be slaves?
He got the answer he wanted from idealistic American youth. He and they were ready for each other. They were people in the age group eighteen to twenty-four, in transition from adolescence to adulthood, student to professional, getting in or getting out of school, family life to life alone. For one in search of a coherent view of the world, college had the effect of making things more confusing by presenting so many different approaches to life without identifying one as altogether right. In the “real” world, problems abounded, from family disunity to the threat of nuclear destruction. At best, things were in disarray; at worst, life was chaotic, depressing. Such minds were fertile soil. Their idealism was the key. Describe how happy people would be if discord could be turned into harmony. Show how this can be done through unified love for God. Then play on the distance between what a person thinks he is and what he wants to be. Hold up ideals and make him ashamed of not living up to his own standards. Instill ideas of self-worthlessness. Make him feel guilty about putting concern for himself above group unity. The burden of guilt could be lightened by working as a family with others who believe the ideals can be attained here on earth. The family has a father who will lead the way. The harder one works for Father, the closer one gets to achieving the goal. Follow Father. God has shown him alone the path to perfection because he is the Messiah.
Moon taught a clear strategy for attracting prospective converts. Until the prospect is converted, he must not know that a strategy is being used. Later he will appreciate being deceived because the motive was his own salvation. First, all church members must make as many new acquaintances as possible. Befriend them by taking a personal interest; do not disagree with their views, whether right or wrong. Do favors. Find the right style to use on each kind of person. Classify his personality. Introduce him to a church member with a similar personality, but don’t reveal that he is a church member. Meet together like that two or three times. Get into conversations on current issues, ethics, or morality. Then say, “I know where there are many serious young people talking about things like this,” or “I have heard of some lectures about a new philosophy, very sincere, very interesting, talking about the problems of life. I would appreciate it if you would go with me so I can get your opinion on it.” The prospect will pay attention to the lecture because he has been asked for criticism. When he says it was wonderful, say, “Oh, I don’t know. Not necessarily so.” But suggest going again in order to learn more about it.
Significance Of The Training Session
Reverend Sun Myung Moon
Third Directors’ Conference
Master Speaks May 17, 1973 Translated by Mrs. Won Pok Choi
“Good morning! Sit down!
I am going to speak about the significance of a training session like this. Master’s intention is to have the State Representatives, Commanders, and the Itinerary Workers pass the examination, getting at least 70 points. I will continue this until the last one of the responsible members has passed the examination.
For fallen men it is their duty to pass through three stages of judgment! Judgment of words, judgment of personality, and judgment of love or heart. All through history, mankind has been in search of the truth, true words. The truth is the standard by which all the problems of mankind can be solved. We know man somehow fell in the beginning, and to fall means to fall into the bondage of Satan. So, in order for us to return to the original position, we have to get rid of the bondage of Satan. For fallen people, there is no other message which is more hopeful and desirable than the message of restoration to the original position, To be restored is, in another sense, to be liberated from Satanic bondage – and this is the gospel of gospels for fallen men.
Then what is judgment? Judgment is the measurement of the standard on which all our acts are judged. If our acts cannot come in accordance with the original rule or measurement, we must be judged or punished.
…
Through 40 days you will have six cycles of Divine Principle lectures. If you study hard, after the sixth cycle of lectures – or in the course of them – you can imagine what will come next when the lecturer gives you a certain chapter. You can even analyze or criticize President Kim’s lecture. You may think, “The last time I came he gave a dynamic lecture, but he is tired this time; when I give the lecture I will never be tired,” etc. In your own way, you can organize your lecture. In order for you to be a dynamic lecturer, you must know the knack of holding and possessing the listeners’ hearts. If there appears a crack in the man’s personality, you wedge in a chisel, and split the person apart. For the first few lectures, you will just memorize. But after that, you will study the character of your audience, and adapt your lecture. If he is a scientist, you will approach him differently than a commercial man, artist, etc. The audience as a whole will have a nature, and you must be flexible.
At least two weeks – you must experience flower selling – two weeks to 30 days. Whether in two weeks or in one full month, until you raise 80 dollars a day; then you go to rallies, witnessing, and then if you cannot bring in three persons in one month’s time, you cannot go. That’s the formula you have to go through. Twenty people are now going through flower selling. They were supposed to go to New York Center to help in witnessing to the people; but since time is limited, they will have to go out in place of those who will come for training. Commanders on the mobile teams, the rest of the people who are here for the conference, will have to go through those stages – even though the time will be shorter. If you attain that standard in passing the examination on the Divine Principle, and if you make that amount of money per day, then witnessing and bringing people in so many days, then you can go out. If you accomplish it in more days, your time will be prolonged. People will be circulated like that. If you fail in doing that, you will have no foothold.
In this way, I am going to elevate you to the same standard. Then, I will assemble future leaders from all over the world and do the same to them and with them. Do you understand? Be ready to go through that. Each and every one of you. Either toward the end of June, or very possibly the first part of July, I may have to go back to Korea via Europe before coming back this fall. I cannot leave unless I have made 400 mobile team members.There are many things to be straightened up by me in Japan and Korea, so I have to go back, but then I will return.”
http://www.tparents.org/moon-talks/sunmyungmoon73/SM730517.htm
Chris Elkins was president of his fraternity at the University of Arizona when John Shea, a recent acquaintance, invited him to attend a lecture about something called the One World Crusade. What he heard was philosophical, nonreligious, and interesting. So he went again each week for a month or more. The One World Crusade was explained as a movement encompassing all aspects of life. He was impressed by the magnetism of the lecturer, Dr. Joseph Sheftick. He and his fifteen or twenty followers had an aura of confidence, friendliness, and sincerity. They related well to his own interests and seemed warmly concerned about him. As the lectures progressed, a Korean named Sun Myung Moon was mentioned as a great teacher, but the main stress was on the coming of a Messiah to build heaven on earth. It dawned on Elkins that Sun Myung Moon must be the Messiah in question, although no one had said he was. During dinner with the group one night, he stated that observation. Dr. Sheftick raised his head, sat up straight, and announced, “We have a new brother: Chris Elkins.”
Elkins did not affirm Sheftick’s declaration, nor did he deny it. He simply went along for the time being. In fact, he was seriously considering joining. The goals were so noble: peace and brotherhood at all levels. Fund-raising didn’t appeal to him, but he could swallow it because he felt he and the movement really belonged together. And the people gave him so much love and attention that he couldn’t just say no. His best friend tried to dissuade him. When his family protested, Dr. Sheftick warned that Satanic forces work best through those most loved.
Euphoria prevailed during his honeymoon period with the Moon cult. Then the atmosphere became more serious. Elkins didn’t like fasting and staying up all night praying aloud with the others. After a couple of weeks, it all seemed too heavy. Driving back to Illinois to visit his mother in the hospital, he was in a daze. He tried to think things out. What had he got into? Was this the life for him, separated from the rest of the world? The love . . . the concern . . . heaven on earth. . . . What if Moon was really what they said he was? Could he risk losing what they offered? From Illinois, he called the group. It felt good to hear their voices. He would return.
He resigned as president of the fraternity. The Moonies sent him to Phoenix to fund-raise by selling peanuts on the street. He was still restless because Satanic spirits were at work inside him, so he was grateful that another member was by his side at all times. His parents wanted the car back, but a leader chided him: “Who needs it more? Your parents or the movement?”
He was learning. The great crusade required everything he had. The attachment to Father must be total, as Father said:
“Your whole body, every cell of your body, every movement, every facial motion, even every piece of hair, every ounce of energy must be directed to this one point.”
Just as other members were always with him physically, Father was always with him too:
“You must live with me spiritually all the time—while you are eating, while you are sleeping, while you are in the bathroom, while you are taking a bath, taking a rest, even in dreams you can be sitting with me and discussing with me. That’s the only way. This is the secret of our movement. Whoever has that basic, fundamental attitude and that spiritual power will perform miracles.”
Spiritual regeneration required mental somersaults. What once seemed true was now false. What once seemed unreal was now real. The world Elkins had known since birth was the product of original sin. The fall of Adam opened the floodgates to Satanic spirits, which had inundated the lives of Elkins’s ancestors. If he gave himself to Moon completely, he could rid himself of that awful heritage and be restored:
“You will rearrange the mechanism within yourself in good order so that you will feel in the right way, think in that way, say things in that way, and act out in that way. So you are your body, but your mind is my mind.”
Chris Elkins had sung in choirs before, so he was told that joining the New Hope Singers was something he might like to do. Rehearsals were held at the Belvedere training center in Tarrytown, New York, purchased after a nationwide candle-selling blitz had yielded about $800,000.
▲ Belvedere from above
The schedule at Belvedere was rigorous: get up out of the bunkbed at 6:00; exercise at 6:05; clean up and get dressed at 6:15; pray at 6:35; eat oatmeal and water at 7:00; do chores at 8:00; attend training sessions at 8:45; eat bread, butter, and jelly sandwiches at 1:00; tend the grounds at 1:45; shower at 3:30; attend training sessions at 4:00; eat casserole with flecks of meat at 7:00; attend training sessions at 8:00; go to team meetings at 11:00; do individual study at midnight; go to bed at 1:30. There was no free time, and everything was done in groups supervised by a leader.
The three functions in the life of a Moonie—to be indoctrinated, to fund-raise, to recruit new members—required so much time that only a few hours were left for sleep. Working with limited rest was a purifying act of self-sacrifice that proved one’s allegiance to Moon. The timetable for achieving his goals was short. In three years’ time he had to have thousands of servants “marching the main streets of the capital of each nation.” And by 1981, Communism was to be defeated. To keep down individual dissatisfaction about sleep, he whipped up group thinking in his training speeches:
MOON: Would you prefer to sleep seven hours instead of six hours?
CULT: NO!
MOON: Would you prefer to sleep for seven hours or five hours?
CULT: FIVE!
MOON: Would you prefer to sleep five hours or four hours?
CULT: FOUR!
MOON: Would you prefer to go to work without sleeping or sleeping?
CULT: WITHOUT SLEEPING!
MOON: I don’t want you to die, so I will let you sleep barely enough to sustain your life. What I’m thinking is that although you get thin like ghosts, with big eyeballs, skinny all over and stooped down like this in walking, stuttering—but if by your doing that, by your being like that, we are successful in God’s providence, I would prefer to have you do that.
Commitment was total. Cult members should commit suicide rather than fail in their duty to Master. They were even made to practice wrist-slashing techniques.
And there have been suicides.
April 3, 1975: Bill Daly went down to the railroad tracks near Moon’s seminary, took off all his clothes, placed his neck over a track, and was decapitated by an oncoming train. Friends, ex-Moonies, say the cult’s constant hammering about guilt had gotten to him.
June 6, 1976: Allen Staggs fell twenty stories down an elevator shaft to his death in the old New Yorker Hotel, which, under Moon’s ownership, was renamed the “World Mission Center.” The Moonies said it was an accident. A policeman who investigated the incident was surprised that Staggs’s fellow church members acted as if they didn’t know him and appeared “annoyed that their schedule was being interrupted by the whole thing”; “they didn’t seem to care.” The police closed the case without ruling whether the death was an accident or suicide.
August 23, 1976: Kiyomi Ogata, a Japanese Moonie, plunged from the twenty-second floor of the New Yorker.
August 23, 1979: Junette Bayne, again the New Yorker Hotel, from the twenty-first floor. Her estranged husband, not a Moonie, said, “If she wasn’t pushed physically, she was pushed psychologically out that window.”
Health problems were a nuisance Moon could not be bothered with. If the spirit was strong, the body would follow. If the body was weak, there must be spiritual problems. A girl with a broken ankle was told to pray and drink ginseng tea. She fund-raised for three days before getting treatment at a free clinic on her own. Another girl was left with permanently impaired eyesight after an emergency operation for a detached retina. The doctors said she would have been all right had they been able to treat her months earlier when she skipped the appointments her father had made. Listening to lectures on the Divine Principle was more important, cult leaders had said. She almost went blind. A Moonie from Kansas suffered a nervous breakdown. When Chris Edwards finally went to a hospital and was told his infected hand might have to be amputated, he felt ready to welcome the loss as justifiable “indemnity” for his sins.
Across the road from the training center, Moon and his family lived at a $600,000 estate—East Garden. Master had fresh sheets put on his bed every day and his clothes were washed three times before wearing. He told the cult his estate and fine car were necessary in order to show the world something other than the miserable side of life.
With the New Hope Singers, Chris Elkins accompanied Moon on the twenty-one city “Day of Hope” speaking tour during the fall of 1973. The tour began with three nights of lectures at Carnegie Hall in New York City. An advance team of one hundred to two hundred spent two weeks in each city at fund-raising, putting up posters announcing Moon’s appearance, luring dignitaries to a banquet for Moon, and saturating the local media with press releases. Among Moon’s tour trophies were appointments with governors and mayors (always with a Moonie cameraman in tow), keys to cities, and many “Day of Hope” proclamations and telegrams from unsuspecting officials—including New York Mayor John Lindsay, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, Washington Mayor Walter Washington, Ohio Governor John Gilligan, and Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia.
Chris Elkins had become an accomplished fund-raiser. He had learned to vary his sales pitch. Depending on the kind of person being solicited, he asked for money for drug rehabilitation, a youth center, or a new choir called the New Hope Singers. Connection with Moon or the Unification Church was not revealed. All the money was turned over to church leaders.
Elkins made a good impression on Neil Salonen, the president of the Unification Church in the United States. Salonen also headed the Freedom Leadership Foundation, one of the political arms of the Moon organization, and he thought Elkins was suitable for use in the movement’s expanding political activities in Washington. Elkins welcomed the transfer. It would relieve him of what he liked least—fund-raising—and involve him in Father’s exciting new campaign to save Richard Nixon: Project Watergate. When Nixon’s image was rehabilitated with Moon’s help, Elkins was told, Nixon would be forever indebted to Moon.
Moon was standing on a mountainside in Korea one day in November 1973 when he and God agreed it was up to him to rescue Nixon from Watergate. No one else could do it. Moon, in the position of Adam, must help Nixon the archangel. On the lower level of America rather than the universe, Nixon was an Adam, to be supported by his wife in the position of Eve and by the American people in the position of servant archangels. Since the people did not perceive this divine relationship, it was Moon’s responsibility to show them. In the 1972 election, God chose Nixon to be President for four years. Since God had not given the people a different message in the meantime, they had no right to impeach him. God’s command to America, through Moon, was “Forgive! Love! Unite!”
The day after returning from Korea, Moon began publishing full-page Watergate statements, featuring his picture, in fifty-one major newspapers. It was his first personal political act in the United States. Until that time, Americans had known him only as a vigorous evangelist with an unorthodox theology. Now, he initiated a forty-day prayer and fast period under his newly formed National Prayer and Fast Committee headed by Dan Fefferman (whom he had also designated to be Prime Minister of Israel when the time came). Moonies handed out leaflets, marched to state capital buildings dressed as Americana figures, prayed in public places, and collected 75,000 signatures for Moon’s Watergate declaration. The drive was geared for maximum news coverage. Praying on camera was stressed, with “medium prayer” recommended as most effective (although one girl got high marks for being filmed crying as she prayed because she pulled it off with an appearance of sincerity).
Wherever Nixon traveled, a contingent of Moonies was sent to rally for him. Elkins was a point man, making sure the Moonies were up front with pro-Nixon signs so bystanders and spectators would appear to be a crowd of enthusiastic Nixon backers. Father had said they must act to make ten seem like ten thousand. Sometimes it was too much even for Nixon’s White House. When Elkins went to Nashville for the President’s visit to the Grand Ole Opry, the secret service asked the Moonies to tone it down since it was Pat Nixon’s birthday.
They planned a big splash for the 1973 National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony. The D.C. Armory was rented for a closed rehearsal to turn the tree lighting into a Nixon support rally. Salonen divided 1,200 people into twelve “tribes” and choreographed them to lunge forward with a “spontaneous” cheer for the President. In a side room at the Armory, six hefty Moonies, dubbed the “Horse Team,” were organized for an additional plan, kept secret from the others. On Salonen’s cue, the six were to converge on Nixon and hoist him up on their shoulders. The stunt was rehearsed several times with Salonen playing Nixon’s part.
A White House aide called the Christmas Tree Lighting “a fiasco.” Traditionally, it was a quiet, quasi-religious event. Nixon had no desire to inject Watergate into it, pro or con. It was to be one of those cherished occasions when he could just be President. A choir sang, a minister offered a prayer, and the President read a little statement about Christmas. Just as Nixon—along with a Boy Scout—moved to press the button to light the trees, a large crowd of people tore down the fence and came rushing forward to the edge of the platform cheering and waving banners that read God loves Nixon! and support the president! News cameras flashed. Nixon hurriedly exited by the rear of the platform. The Horse Team was unable to get to Nixon because he did not leave in the direction Salonen had expected. The Moonies recongregated in Lafayette Square across from the White House, still cheering and waving banners in the bitter cold. Salonen told his flock he had faith the President would appear.
Inside the White House, Nixon was furious over the Moonies’ conduct at the tree lighting. On the other hand, he thought, they were a well-organized group supporting him all the way. He would need them in the coming months. He decided to go outside and shake a few hands. When Nixon crossed Pennsylvania Avenue, they rushed him again. The Horse Team—still obsessed with hoisting Nixon—tried to get close enough to grab him, but he was surrounded tightly by secret service men. The “horses” were disappointed that the secret service stood in God’s way.
When the President was ready to leave, the Moonies joined hands in two lines across Pennsylvania Avenue to block traffic. One Moonie said, “We stopped the world for him and he passed between us.”
Paradoxically, Moon’s effort to save the President of the United States was run by Koreans and Japanese. The same was true of all activities of the Moon organization. Salonen was a figurehead and legworker, rarely brought into important policy discussions. The Japanese handled the money and the Koreans made the big strategy decisions. Moon’s word was final on any matter, and he involved himself to a surprising degree in details. Above the Americans was a power clique consisting of Bo Hi Pak, David S. C. Kim, Choi Sang-Ik (Papasan Choi), Takeru Kamiyama, and Osami Kuboki. It was in accordance with the Divine Principle. America was only an archangel while Korea was Adam and Japan was Eve.
As nationality dictated one’s function in the cult, so did race. Orientals were to make “spiritual” contributions. Whites should put their “analytical” abilities to work. “The talented area of black people is in (the) physical aspect,” said Moon, mentioning basketball as an example.
The man behind the scenes in Moon’s pro-Nixon drive was Dr. Joseph Kennedy. Kennedy had been hired by the Moon organization as a consultant to help with the “Day of Hope” program in Atlanta. He also had good connections in the White House. Whatever the exchange between Moon and God on that mountain in Korea, it was Kennedy who planted the basic ideas in Bo Hi Pak’s head. In Atlanta in early November 1973, he had expressed concern to Pak over Nixon’s Watergate problems, mentioning an essay by Lincoln about praying and fasting in times of national crisis.
Splendid, thought Pak. Moon thought so, too. This was what they had been waiting for. Moon could make his American political debut with the hottest issue in the country by giving it a religious slant. Unity of religion and politics was what the Divine Principle was all about. When Lincoln wrote that essay, God had tucked it away so He could bring it out for Moon a hundred years later. Moon and Pak picked up the ball and ran with it.
Dr. Kennedy, pleased with the activity for Nixon, had complied with Pak’s request to have the cult admitted at the Christmas tree ceremony. He had also obtained a seat for Moon at the President’s National Prayer Breakfast at the Washington Hilton to be held in January 1974. Moon’s planned presence drew criticism from Congress and the clergy, so the White House stressed that he would not be sitting at the head table. Moon had to be content merely with attending alone, although he had wanted to bring along an entourage and have hundreds of his followers flood the hotel switchboard during the breakfast with calls to Forgive, Love, and Unite.
Dr. Kennedy was able to set up a meeting between Nixon and Moon the day after the prayer breakfast. The White House handled the matter quietly. The appointment did not appear on the President’s published schedule for the day. Moon was ushered into the Oval Office. He shook hands with Nixon, prayed aloud in Korean, then urged the President “not to knuckle under to the pressure.” Nixon thanked him for the support and gave him a pair of cuff links and a tie pin.
Moon told his followers the meeting was absolute proof that Nixon would survive Watergate.
Why?
“This is the equivalent to the Roman Emperor having invited Jesus and welcomed Jesus in the past.”
It was no accident of history. It was a dramatic event of the highest importance, an act of God. And Nixon realized it, said Father. When they bowed their heads and prayed together, Moon was sure Nixon knew there was only one person on earth who could save him: Sun Myung Moon. Nixon and Moon achieved spiritual unification.
From that moment forward “the Unification Church and the White House where Nixon resides can be very close places.”
At the Freedom Leadership Foundation, life for Chris Elkins was less arduous than before. His days were not as regimented as they had been when he was on the streets or in training. At first he felt uneasy about not having someone keeping a close watch over him. But now he was able to read newspapers and sometimes even watch television. Religious indoctrination continued. Salonen made sure he spent a couple of hours each day studying the Divine Principle in a group. At work he stayed busy with Watergate and foreign affairs on Capitol Hill. The Moonies were doing a lot of lobbying to drum up support for South Vietnam, the Lon Nol government in Cambodia, and, most important, South Korea. Using phony letterheads of ad hoc committees fabricated for the occasion, Elkins worked all night sending letters to Congressmen.
Inside Congress, they were helped by unsuspecting people in the cause of anti-Communism. David Martin of the Senate Internal Security Committee staff furnished names of Senators and Congressmen to be lobbied, obtained the Senate Caucus Room for a Moonie political meeting with the press, and expedited Moon’s permanent resident visa. (It was issued by virtue of his wife’s permanent visa. Hers had been obtained by Bo Hi Pak’s listing her as an employee of the Korean Cultural and Freedom Foundation.) Congressman Richard Ichord obtained the House Caucus Room for a Moon meeting, and Senator Strom Thurmond continued to help the Moonies on the Hill. When Moon was having trouble getting into the country in 1971, Thurmond had intervened and Moon was admitted.
Congress was a keen concern to both Moon and the Korean government. This was particularly true in 1974 because of Watergate and the $93 million cut in military aid to South Korea resulting from Congressman Fraser’s hearings. Moon and the Korean government lobbied intensively, separately but coordinately. As early as 1971, Moon had organized teams called “PR sisters” under Mitsuko Matsuda. She was Japanese, as it should be, since the archangel Americans could return to their original position only though Eve. The duties of the “PR sisters” were to cultivate friendships with members of Congress and staffs, explain the Unification Church and dispel negative attitudes, and urge full support for South Korea. Moon would thus be able to impress the R.O.K. government with his influence in the United States. Later, he issued a call for “many good-looking girls,” planning to assign three to each Senator: “One is for the election, one is for the diplomat, and one is for the party. If our girls are superior to the Senators in many ways, then the Senators will just be taken in.” (In fact, several Congressmen were entertained in a Washington Hilton hotel suite rented by the cult.) Everything they learned about Senators and Congressmen was to be entered in the cult’s confidential file, including details of personal lives.
One such girl was Susan Bergman, a regular morning visitor to Speaker Carl Albert for two years. She prepared ginseng tea for the Speaker and his secretaries when they arrived for work. The Speaker wasn’t interested in her talk about religion, but he did find her pleasant and attractive. She liked to impress others with her close relationship with him. Showing a fellow Moonie around the Capitol one day, she picked up a telephone, dialed a number, and said, “Hello, Carl, how are you? I wanted to know if you got my flowers.” On another occasion, she got a long-distance call from Albert while she was at Moon’s training center in Barrytown.
President Park Chung Hee did not have to ask Moon to take up Nixon’s cause, although he favored it. Moon didn’t need the encouragement. Like Tongsun Park, he was self-propelling for his own purposes as well as for those of the government. Park Chung Hee viewed him as an asset for Korean influence in the United States. The Moon organization remained a key element in the influence campaign (as intended ever since the original plans were developed at the meetings in the Blue House in 1970).
While the Blue House meetings were still going on, Bo Hi Pak had rushed to Seoul with an appealing project: a letter to be signed by President Park for 60,000 Americans who had contributed to Radio of Free Asia (ROFA). The mailing served the purposes of both the influence campaign and the Moon organization. In it, the R.O.K. government personally reminded Americans that the Communists were “increasing the hostilities” against South Korea; ROFA was endorsed and the contributors thanked; and Bo Hi Pak was credited by name with having informed the President about the contributors’ service to anti-Communism. Without asking for money, the letters generated more contributions.
A few months later, Pak was ready with another project. A public relations man for ROFA, Donald Miller, was writing a biography of President Park. Visiting Seoul with Bo Hi Pak, manuscript in hand, Miller received the President’s approval during a personal appointment. The book was never published, but no matter; the Moon organization was making the right impressions on the Blue House.
Like Tongsun Park, Moon had developed extensive contacts on Capitol Hill and was using them to support the Korean government position. Like Tongsun Park, Moon had successful businesses in Korea and the United States, with operations in a number of other countries. Both Moon and Tongsun cleverly cultivated powerful and wealthy Americans. Both were strong supporters of Park Chung Hee, cooperating closely with his senior officials, including the KCIA director. Bo Hi Pak had been the willing conduit for Prime Minister Chung Il-Kwon to transfer money into his personal bank account in the United States, and other government officials had been so favored as well.
While Tongsun Park’s service was both profitable for Korean officials and helpful with important members of Congress, Moon beamed his activities to a mass audience. The Little Angels were a propaganda bonanza for the government. Moon’s anticommunist campaigns, such as the 1970 conference of the World Anticommunist League (WACL) in Tokyo and Radio of Free Asia, helped keep the world mindful of the North Korean menace at a time when the United States was more interested in negotiation than confrontation with the Communists. The attraction of American youth to Moon was seen as a welcome offset to the disturbing leftist student activities of the late sixties.
In Korea, Moon was providing anti-Communist indoctrination to government personnel at his training center at Sutaek-ri outside Seoul.
▲ Sutaek-ri Training Center
Each year the government sent thousands of officials to Moon’s school from local, provincial, and national agencies. Moon was permitted to stage large demonstrations in Seoul—pro-government, anti-Communist, and pro-Nixon—in the tightly controlled climate of the Park dictatorship. Industrial components of the Moon organization were awarded lucrative government contracts, including the manufacture of military weapons. KCIA Director Kim Jong-Pil’s decision in 1962 to utilize Moon’s fledgling church had stood the test of time.
For Moon, that was fine as far as it went. But he was bigger than the KCIA and Park Chung Hee, as he often told his cult. As he saw it, he was organizing and utilizing the R.O.K. government, not the other way around. The government officials indoctrinated at his school would be led to the Divine Principle by way of anti-Communism. Building military hardware under government contract would make the government dependent on him while providing funds for him to expand worldwide. The government was indebted to him for the cultural propaganda he had generated through his Little Angels. If he could save Nixon, his power would overshadow Park Chung Hee, and ruling the Adam country would be only a step away. He could assume his rightful position. He reminded the cult that what he was doing in Project Watergate was far more significant for its impact in Korea than in the United States.
On Capitol Hill, Project Watergate brought some early results. In January 1974, a two-day lobbying blitz for signatures on Moon’s Watergate declaration yielded about a hundred Congressmen and some ten Senators. The lobbyists concealed their affiliation with the Unification Church from legislators.
Several months later, anti-impeachment leader Rabbi Korff and Nixon aide Bruce Herschenson appealed for another Moonie display of mass support for Nixon. They valued Moon’s help because he could mobilize large numbers of people anywhere on short notice and with good results. Moon was cool to the request. He said no. Korff and Herschenson asked again and again, but Moon kept turning them down. The Lord of the Second Advent wanted homage from the President. Nixon should repent to Moon for his failure of leadership; then Moon would rally the troops. Salonen was caught awkwardly in the middle. He had no decision-making power. All he could do was transmit messages back and forth between the White House and Moon’s Korean-Japanese, Adam-Eve hierarchy. Korff and Herschenson offered no possibility of Nixon’s kneeling before Moon. Ultimately, Moon decided to hold a three-day fast on the Capitol steps—independent of White House appeals, he insisted.
It was July of 1974. Things were grim for Nixon. It was time for a miracle. If anyone could deliver, Moon said, it was he.
Chris Elkins helped staff the fast on the Capitol steps. Placards and posters were designed; literature was prepared and distributed; a press corps was set up. They hoped to get Nixon to address the fasters in person. Six hundred Moonies were shipped to Washington to do the fasting and praying. That number was chosen so as to have each Moonie pray for one Senator, Congressman, and cabinet member, with Salonen and his wife taking President and Mrs. Nixon. They prayed for releasing God’s power to turn the heart of America toward forgiveness for Nixon. Nixon did not appear: he sent a telegram instead. At the end of the third day, Moon came, accompanied by Rabbi Korff. He addressed the fasters, telling them they had completed their mission successfully. It was the only time Chris Elkins ever heard Father bestowing full approval on his followers.
On the day Nixon resigned, a small group of Moonies went to the White House. Bruce Herschenson talked to them at the gate briefly. After the resignation, the members of the Horse Team from the Christmas Tree Lighting felt a heavy burden of guilt. Failure to lift Nixon up on their shoulders, Father had said, had doomed him to decline and fall.
Neil Salonen had an unusual assignment for Chris Elkins. Around breakfast time on the morning of September 14, 1974, he was told that he and four other Moonies were to throw eggs at the Japanese Embassy. A car would take them there at noon. If possible they were to hit the car carrying the Japanese ambassador to lunch. If the ambassador did not appear within thirty minutes or so, they would pelt the Embassy building and run to a car waiting to take them back to Unification Church headquarters. It was important, Salonen explained, that the timing of the incident coincide with a street demonstration by the Freedom Leadership Foundation (FLF), which was to divert police attention from the area around the Japanese Embassy on Massachusetts Avenue. A large group of Moonies, representing FLF, were to march with placards from Dupont Circle to the White House protesting the Japanese government’s position on the assassination of President Park’s wife in Seoul the previous month. The assassin was a Korean resident of Japan with pro-North Korean sympathies. A major crisis in Korean-Japanese relations had resulted because the Japanese government refused to take responsibility for the killing as demanded by Korea. President Ford was scheduled to visit Tokyo in November with no plans to go to Seoul. The South Korean government and the Moonies saw Ford’s itinerary as an indication that the United States was siding with Japan in the dispute with Korea. The Moonies’ anti-Japanese demonstration and egg-throwing were designed to show the support of the American people for Korea’s position and convince Ford to visit Seoul.
The eggs were bought. Elkins and his colleagues were ready to go. He had never been told to do anything like this before. But many of the things he did for Father were new. Father worked in new and different ways and there had never been anyone like him before.
About 11:00 a.m. Salonen went into his office to call Moon for the final approval before dispatching the egg team. Fifteen minutes later he reappeared downstairs where they were waiting. Father had learned that President Ford had decided to make a stop in Seoul between Tokyo and Vladivostok, he said. That would show more than enough American support for South Korea, so the egg attack would not be necessary.
What Elkins did not know was that the KCIA had initiated the whole thing. According to U.S. intelligence reports, the KCIA had paid Moon thousands of dollars and used him to stage demonstrations at the United Nations and elsewhere to show American support for the aims of the Korean government. Moon was willing when others were not. In September 1974, KCIA headquarters in Seoul ordered anti-Japanese demonstrations in Washington, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco on the occasion of a visit that month by Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka. Kim Sang-Keun, a KCIA officer in the Korean Embassy, had been unable to find local Korean residents who were willing to demonstrate, so his chief, Kim Yung-Hwan, arranged for Moon to stage demonstrations at the White House and the Japanese Embassy. At the last minute, the U.S. government learned of the plans through intelligence sources and objected. Kim Yung-Hwan told the Moonies to cancel the operation.
With an eye on protecting its tax-exempt status, the Unification Church insisted it never engaged in politics, especially election campaigning and lobbying for legislation. After Chris Elkins spent almost a year lobbying Congress, he was sent to Westchester County, New York, to campaign for Charlie Stephens, who was running for Congress against Richard Ottinger in the fall of 1974. The entire staff of the Freedom Leadership Foundation was mobilized. In order to keep the Washington office running, pairs of persons were rotated in and out of the campaign. Stephens was a close ally of the Moonies, having organized American Youth for a Just Peace with Allen Tate Wood in 1970. While Elkins was busy electioneering for Stephens, the New Hampshire Moonies were fully engaged in Louis Wyman’s Senate campaign. Success in these two states was important because with one more state, Moon would be on his way to taking over:
“If we can turn three states of the United States around, or if we can turn seven states of the United States to our side, then the whole United States of America will turn. Let’s say there are five hundred sons and daughters like you in each state. Then we could control the government. You could determine who became Senators and who the Congressmen would be.”
He was disappointed that there were only fifty states. With seventy, it would be easier to divide and conquer.
Chris Elkins liked politics, and he was looking forward to a job in Wyman’s Senate office. Wyman had promised to give a church member a job if he won the election. Salonen and Dan Fefferman picked Elkins because he had more political experience than the Moonies in Wyman’s campaign. The prospect of a congressional staff job was exciting. He would be serving Father and fully enjoying it for a change. Events were holding promise for Father’s prophecy that:
“Some day, in the near future, when I walk into the Congressman’s or the Senator’s offices without notice or appointment, the aides will jump out of their seats, and go to get the Senator. They will get their Senator or Congressman, saying he must see Reverend Moon.”
When Wyman lost the election, Elkins was transferred to the Columbia University campus to work in Moon’s college front organization, the Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles (CARP). Father had said the Communists were stirring up trouble at Columbia.
It was unfortunate for Joe Tully that Takeru Kamiyama didn’t happen to like him. Being on the wrong side of Kamiyama meant trouble for a Moonie. Kamiyama was part of the Korean-Japanese power clique close to Moon. Although Tully held the position of state director of the Unification Church in New York, no one questioned Kamiyama’s seniority. Tully was only an archangel.
Kamiyama set up a meeting with Moon to dispose of the problem. It was a kangaroo court. All of the New York leaders were there except Tully. Kamiyama accused him of not being able to unite with church members. Tully was arrogant and individualistic, he explained. The New York leaders gave automatic agreement. No one but Father could dispute Kamiyama. If Tully couldn’t unite with members, that meant he couldn’t unite with Father.
Moon asked Kamiyama what he proposed to do about it.
▲ Sun Myung Moon and Takeru Kamiyama in the 1970s.
“Joe Tully is a good lecturer, so you could send him to Barrytown,” suggested Kamiyama.
Moon laughed. “Great! That’s what we’ll do. We’ll give him to Ken Sudo in Barrytown.” Everyone joined in Father’s hearty laugh over pawning off the state director.
Tully, trying not to show disappointment, was shipped off to the training center. His final humiliation was Moon’s choice of a wife for him: a Japanese girl who even Kamiyama thought was “a crazy fanatic.” (Moon often warned cult members he might marry them off to someone ugly or unlikely.) Moon needed to marry his foreign cult members to Americans to avoid deportation. The Immigration and Naturalization Service was bearing down on them. Tully’s punishment was his “indemnity” for arrogance and individuality: he would pay a price in work and suffering.
Obedient leaders were essential to Moon’s totalist system. If leaders had a slave mentality themselves, they would be better slaves to Moon. All the brainwashing notwithstanding, Moon had serious doubts that more than a few hundred of his cultists would really be willing to die for him. He saw America as the land of greatest opportunity for scaling the heights of the power he craved. If he could do it here he could do it anywhere. It would be difficult, though, because Americans had a disturbing tendency to go their own way.
When Moon moved to the United States in 1971 he was appalled by the individuality he saw. During the first months he said he was sorry he had come to America because he found no one prepared to do his work. He thought of relocating in Germany, where people “were trained in totalism,” so it would be easier for his mission. He launched a crash program to tighten organization, instill discipline, recruit more members, and raise money. It was successful. Some former members recall that Nazi films on organizing Hitler Youth were shown as examples to Moonie leaders. Nothing was more important than developing a cadre of strong leaders totally subservient to his will.
Steve Hassan was such a leader. He was not only prepared to die for Moon; he felt capable of killing his own father for Moon. Bright, energetic, young, and, most important, idealistic, Hassan was perfect Moonie material. He was drawn into the cult at nineteen while a student at Queens College, having concluded that all college had to offer was memorization by rote. The Unification Church offered an ideology for bettering the world with a clear-cut path straight to eternity. After successfully completing forty days of isolation and indoctrination, Hassan was put to work. He started the Queens College chapter of the Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles, served as assistant director of the Unification Church in Flushing, lectured on the Divine Principle, managed transportation to the Moonie demonstrations in support of South Korea at the United Nations, prayed and fasted for Nixon on the steps of the Capitol, and fund-raised. He had worked loyally and hard, and he became one of Kamiyama’s favorites. Kamiyama adored him so much that when Moon moved the national headquarters of the church to Manhattan from Washington, Hassan was placed in a newly formed church unit inside the national headquarters for the purpose of setting an example for Salonen and the others to follow. Kamiyama wanted them to demonstrate “the Japanese standard of sacrifice and devotion.”
Hassan experienced feelings of great achievement. His life had a new worthwhile purpose. In less than a year he had come so far, yet he was still so young. And it was recognized by those he had come to respect most.
Hence, he never expected to hear what Kamiyama said to him at a meeting with all the regional commanders assembled: “You are having spiritual problems now. It’s better you go out fund raising.”
Spiritual problems? What had he done wrong? He lived by the Divine Principle. It was his guide for every thought, word, and deed. All questions left his mind after not more than a split second. As he bowed his head in reverent obedience, his only remaining thought was, “Dear God, not as I will, but as You will.” “It’s all right,” Kamiyama said. “You don’t have to fund raise.” He then turned to the regional commanders and stated, “This is your model for sacrifice and devotion.”
It was a test like God’s test of Abraham’s faith when He had ordered him to sacrifice his only son Isaac. Hassan had passed— and he felt joy, not relief. Kamiyama was right. Hassan was a model. The cult had fully conquered his mind.
When Hassan did go out fund raising again several months later, it was a promotion, not indemnity for spiritual problems. He worked in Manhattan, Pennsylvania, and Baltimore as head of a model fund raising team whose proceeds went to special projects picked by Moon exclusively. As always, a special Japanese “team mother” was sent to live with the group, to cook, sew, clean house, and encourage cohesion. Her real purpose was to spy for Kamiyama by writing him detailed reports regularly. Hassan’s fund raisers were out hawking flowers or candy from dawn until midnight, or later if quotas were not met. They worked the streets, supermarkets, parking lots, offices, airports, gay bars, straight bars, discotheques, factories, and house-to-house. They identified themselves as whatever seemed likely to elicit cash from a person’s pocket. Sometimes a more direct approach was used by crawling along the floor in a bar or restaurant, popping up at a table to pin a flower on a woman’s dress, and saying to her escort, “That will be two dollars, please.” A surprising number of people paid. If the man became angry and called a waiter, Hassan made a quick dash across the floor to a far corner so he could keep working if not caught and ejected. If thrown out, he tried to slip in again and take up where he left off.
Change was sometimes hard to get once money was in a Moonie’s hand. If a Moonie was handed a $10 bill, it could be a $10 contribution even if unintended. Ancestors, acting through the contributor, were paying indemnity.
At the airport, one Moonie got a dollar for pinning a flower on a nun. Discovering the solicitor was a Moonie, the nun’s niece returned the flower and demanded the dollar back. There was no refund. The niece had another twenty minutes before her plane departed so she followed the Moonie around the airport, telling people: “Don’t buy anything from this girl; she just stole a dollar from a nun!”
Hassan’s team took in about $1,000 a day. Twice each week he took the cash to a bank and wired it directly to a Unification Church account at Chemical Bank in New York. He was never told what the money was used for, or how much was raised nationwide. He has since estimated conservatively that on the basis of a thousand Moonies collecting $75 a day per person, the annual gross would be about $28 million. A thousand fund raisers and $75 per day are low base figures, however; $100 was the minimum expected per fund raiser per day, and one-third of the Moonie membership is supposed to be out fund raising all the time.
Money is important to Moon but only as a necessary means for achieving what he wants most: power. The cult’s businesses in Korea had made him a millionaire before he began his American mission. Moon enterprises were worth at least $15 million in the early seventies from manufacturing and selling ginseng tea products (Il Hwa Pharmaceutical Company), stone vases (Il Shin Stoneworks), titanium dioxide (Hankook Titanium and Dong Hwa Titanium), lathes, boilers, air rifles, and parts for military weapons (Tong Il Industries). Members of his cult were directed to set up “missions” to sell ginseng tea and stone vases in 120 countries by April 1975. One of his first American companies, Tong Il Enterprises, began marketing his tea and vases in 1973, and later became involved in his tuna fishing businesses. When the first shipments of tea arrived in America, he told his followers he planned “to explore a worldwide market for this heavenly product, along with the worldwide spread of unification principles for mankind.”
Il Hwa ginseng tea, made and marketed by Moon, is on sale at most health food stores in the United States.
By 1979, Moon’s world business empire included weapons, newspapers, banking, tea, chemicals, candles, vases, folk ballet, candy, fishing, movies, shipbuilding, sound recording, food processing, travel agencies, furs, jewelry, restaurants, and large real estate holdings.
In order to ensure “that the currency will be freely coming back and forth,” Moon informed the cult he would establish “an international bank” by pooling the money made from his businesses. An opportunity came within a few months when the Diplomat National Bank was being organized by Charles Kim, a Korean-American businessman in Washington who was not a Moonie. Kim approached a number of Asian-Americans, including Bo Hi Pak, about buying shares in the new bank. It was another godsend. Pak arranged for Kim to meet Moon, who invested $80,000 from a $555,000 time deposit (transferred to a personal checking account at Chase Manhattan). Kamiyama put in $75,000, coming mostly from Moon’s time deposit, stated as loans to Kamiyama from the Unification Church. Neil Salonen’s $30,000 investment also came from persons in the church. Jhoon Rhee, the wealthy karate master who turned over all his earnings to the cult in the early sixties, invested $100,000. Bo Hi Pak bought $75,000 of stock for himself, $18,000 for his housekeeper, and $738,000 in the names of thirteen Moonies. He arranged loans for investments of $5,000 each for two of his employees at the Korean Cultural and Freedom Foundation, Judith Lejeune and Gisela Rodriguez, instructing them to make their monthly loan payments by taking money from cash donations to the foundation. Pak even furnished the funds for bank chairman Kim’s own investment of $100,000, again from cult money. Moonie money thus bought 53 percent of the bank’s total stock, an investment of $1.28 million. The Diplomat National Bank had been organized under a requirement by the U.S. Controller of the Currency that no individual stockholder have an interest in more than 5 percent of the bank’s total stock. Also, banking laws prohibit any organization from owning more than 25 percent of the stock in an American bank.
The day after opening for business, the bank approved two loans totaling $250,000 for Bo Hi Pak without a meeting of the loan committee, a violation of the bank’s own rules. Two months later, the Controller of the Currency told the bank the loans were “in contravention of the intent of the law.” Pak’s two loans then had to be considered as one, with the amount reduced so as not to exceed the bank’s lending ceiling.
The Moon organization was one of the bank’s largest depositors, with over $7 million going into the account of the Unification Church International between December 1975 and March 1977.
Getting into the media business was important to Moon in order “to guide the academic world, including professors, the communications world and then the economic world.” He told the cult it was time to start a newspaper with mass appeal. The News World, published in New York, began operating in December 1976. Running a deficit of over $200,000 per month, it was supported by $2,700,000 from the Unification Church International account at the Diplomat National Bank. A conscious effort was made to make it appear to be an objective, legitimate newspaper like the Christian Science Monitor. Some non-Moonies were included on the staff and actually paid salaries, and the paper printed material from the major wire services. The editorial board, however, consisted almost entirely of cult members and prominent coverage was given to issues of importance to Moon, such as accusing Congressman Fraser of being a Soviet agent and suggesting that the Internal Revenue Service was harassing the Unification Church. The New York newspaper strike in 1978 was seen by the Moonies as an act of God: it shut down the competition in order to bring the Divine Principle into the homes of New Yorkers, many of whom—thanks to Heavenly Deception— did not know at first that the paper was an organ of the Moon cult.
Besides newspapers, Moon’s media business included movies. He told the cult in 1974 he was forming a movie company in Japan. He was looking for the right script for a film on the life of Jesus, but was open to other subjects also. He could produce films to serve his unified three-pronged purpose: religious propaganda, political propaganda, and business profit. Mitsuharu Ishii, a Japanese Moonie, became president of One Way Productions with offices in Tokyo and Los Angeles. One Way’s main project was to make an anti-Communist war spectacle on General MacArthur’s landing at Inchon in the Korean War. Money and actors were to come from Korea, Japan, and the United States.
At Times Square in July 1979, New Yorkers were treated to neon lights advertising the News World and a movie being filmed in Korea, Inchon!, starring Laurence Olivier, Jacqueline Bisset, Ben Gazzara, David Jansen, and Toshiro Mifune.
Moon’s drive to dominate the American fishing industry was perhaps his most ambitious business undertaking. International Oceanic Enterprises was incorporated in Virginia in November 1976, along with a subsidiary, International Seafood Corporation, located in Norfolk. Bo Hi Pak was president. The company engaged in operating fishing boats and processing and selling seafood products. With the Unification Church International pumping millions into the business, International Seafood was able within a few weeks of its incorporation to disburse monies to other components of the Moon organization, including $200,000 to Tong Il Enterprises, and $400,000 to U.S. Marine Corporation for buying 700 acres of waterfront property in Bayou LeBatre, Alabama. U.S. Marine Corporation was yet another Moonie concern. Its shipbuilding affiliate was appropriately named Master Marine. In Richmond, Virginia, housewives could buy fresh seafood at a store named Father’s Fish. Moon’s fishing and seafood tentacles spread to San Francisco; Gloucester, Massachusetts; and Kodiak, Alaska. He had a built-in competitive advantage—abundant capital flow from church sources and negligible labor costs using cult manpower. He envisioned a food crisis in the future when the world would come begging to him.
Making and selling M-16 rifles made sense both economically and politically. In public, Moon and the cult denied being involved with the M-16, the basic infantry weapon of the South Korean army. Moon conceded to Newsweek magazine that Tong Il Industries produced armaments for the Korean government but would not say which weapons, claiming the information was classified by his government. However, information from the U.S. State Department and American and Korean businessmen in the arms field shows that Tong Il Industries makes parts for the Vulcan anti-aircraft gun, the M-79 grenade launcher, the M-60 machine gun, and the M-16 rifle. One American businessman was shown the machinery used to make the weapons during a tour of Tong Il’s plant near Busan.
▲ Vulcan M61 pod anti-aircraft gun
H. P. Stone, vice-president of Colt Industries of Hartford, Connecticut, learned how close the operational ties are between Moon and the Park regime. His experience left the impression that with respect to the M-16 rifle, the Moon organization and the Korean government were one and the same. Colt holds the patent for the M-16 and has a co-production agreement with the R.O.K. government approved by the American government. The agreement allows the R.O.K. Ministry of National Defense to make the rifle in Korea for the R.O.K. army. Stone got a letter from Tong Il Industries in September 1977 asking for approval for Tong Il to produce the M-16 for export. Stone answered in the negative, saying his company did not have authority to approve and he was certain the U.S. government would be against the Koreans’ exporting the rifles.
In October, Stone cabled the Ministry of National Defense on another matter. Since the U.S. State Department had approved Korea’s request to make another 300,000 M-16s, Stone offered the Ministry a new extended contract. For several weeks there was no reply. Then, to his surprise, an answer came not from the Korean government but from Tong Il Industries. Tong Il said it would send representatives to Hartford in December to discuss the extension of the M-16 production contract. The discussions took place as scheduled, with the president of Tong Il, Moon Sung-Kyun (Master’s cousin), negotiating for a contract between the R.O.K. government and Colt Industries. When Stone asked if Tong Il was formally representing the Korean government, Moon Sung-Kyun smiled and said, “If you ask the Ministry of National Defense, they will say no.”
Father has also promised to buy Pan American World Airways and the Ford Motor Company. When the time comes, he intends to buy the Empire State Building to commemorate the restoration of Manhattan Island under him.
The manpower in Moon’s business, political, and religious enterprises has been interchangeable and unified, perfectly reflecting the totalism of his ideology. Just as money flowed freely among the various parts of his empire, so did people, whether leaders or laborers. A sample of the interlocking leadership:
Sun Myung Moon: chairman, International Cultural Foundation; director, International Oceanic Enterprises; chairman, Tong Il Enterprises; investor, Diplomat National Bank; director, One Up Enterprises; founder and chairman, Unification Church International; founder and director, News World.
Mrs. Sun Myung Moon (Hak Ja Han): director, Tong Il Enterprises; director, Unification Church International.
Bo Hi Pak: president, Korean Cultural and Freedom Foundation; president, Little Angels; president, International Oceanic Enterprises; president, Unification Church International; director, International Cultural Foundation; investor, Diplomat National Bank; director, One Up Enterprises; president, U.S. Foods Corporation.
Neil Salonen: president, Unification Church of the U.S.A.; secretary general, Freedom Leadership Foundation; director, International Oceanic Enterprises; director, Tong Il Enterprises; investor, Diplomat National Bank; director, International Cultural Foundation; director, One Up Enterprises.
Michael Young Warder: director, Tong Il Enterprises; secretary general, International Conference for the Unity of the Sciences; director, International Oceanic Enterprises; director, Unification Church; director, One Up Enterprises; president and publisher, News World.
Takeru Kamiyama: director, New York Unification Church; investor, Diplomat National Bank; director, Tong Il Enterprises; director, International Oceanic Enterprises; director, One Up Enterprises.
Osami Kuboki: president, Japan Unification Church; director, International Cultural Foundation.
Judith Lejeune: secretary, International Oceanic Enterprises; director, Korean Cultural and Freedom Foundation; incorporator, Unification Church International; secretary to Bo Hi Pak; investor, Diplomat National Bank.
Mitsuharu Ishii: president, Toitsu Industries (Japan); president, One Way Productions; officer, International Cultural Foundation; president, Sekai Nippo (World Daily News) of Japan; financier for investments in Diplomat National Bank.
R. Michael Runyon: president, One Up Enterprises; president, U.S. Marine Corporation; vice president, International Oceanic Enterprises.
Kim Won-Pil: president, Korea Unification Church; director, Unification Church International; director, International Cultural Foundation; president, Il Hwa Pharmaceutical Company (Korea).
Moon himself acknowledges his system as totalist. Oneness pervades, even in nomenclature: Unification Church, One World Crusade, Unified Family, One Up Enterprises, Tong Il (“unification”) Enterprises, One Way Productions. To members of the cult, this is perfectly natural. They are reminded every day that there is only one way and that is Father’s way. Father had all the answers straight from God and they covered everything.
He has promised to accomplish what the saints and sages have failed to do for six thousand years. In his lifetime, he will bring total heaven to earth at last. Adam had failed. Jesus had failed. Even God had failed.
And when Moon succeeds, God will say: “ ‘Reverend Moon is far better than me, the Heavenly Father.’ ”
In dealings with the outside world, however, the cult has denied the unity of Moon’s family. The non-Moon world was in the position of Cain. The Family was in the position of Abel. Abel the good must deceive Cain the evil to reverse the sin of original deception and restore perfect goodness. The “petty” laws of the United States were the laws of Cain, so they must not interfere with Father’s mission. Heavenly Deception was the way to get around them.
Accordingly, the Unification Church was granted exemption from taxes because the Moonies swore it did not engage in political or business activities. Cain’s government could not be permitted to take more than a bare minimum in tax money from the Family. Hundreds of foreign Moonies were imported to work in the Family businesses, entering the United States on short-term visas as “students” or “religious trainees” and then staying for years. Millions of dollars were transferred from tax-exempt church accounts to Family business accounts and vice versa. Money moved freely from country to country. Moonie investigators gained access to the legitimate press corps by posing as journalists. Moonie money from foreign countries bought a controlling interest in an American bank without regard for banking laws and securities regulations. The Moonies lobbied for the South Korean influence campaign in Congress and staged political demonstrations, ordered and reportedly paid for by the KCIA, without registering as agents of the Korean government.
The Family not only denied any wrongdoing, it insisted defiantly that to question any of the cult’s activities was an infringement of First Amendment rights to freedom of religion. From that point of view, it made perfect sense. In Moon’s totalist system, everything can be religion: owning a bank, working for the KCIA, selling weapons of war, brainwashing, destroying families, buying the Empire State Building, taking over the world.
The press, the Fraser Subcommittee, and federal, state, and local investigators began exposing illegal and deceptive activities of the Moon cult in 1976. Salonen and Bo Hi Pak, as the chief spokesmen, were models of Heavenly Deception. Fund raisers in the street would have done well to emulate them: Moon “never received KCIA money, not one red cent”; Moon had nothing to do with running the Unification Church in the United States; the components of the Moon organization were completely independent of one another; the Korean Cultural and Freedom Foundation and the Unification Church had nothing to do with each other; the Little Angels and the Unification Church had the same founder but nothing else in common; the money for the Diplomat National Bank stock came from a long-established “Unification Church Pension Fund International” for family assistance to elderly church members; there was never any plan to throw eggs at the Japanese ambassador; Bo Hi Pak was a private citizen who had nothing to do with the Korean government; listing Moon as “chairman” or “founder” of corporations and having him sign corporate checks were merely symbolic gestures. (Concerning this claim, a New York judge wrote, “Such contentions strain the credulity of this Court.”)
In the North Korean prison thirty years earlier, Mrs. Ho had ignored Moon when he told her she would be set free if she denied her revelations from God. She was killed instead. Salonen and Pak would not make the same mistake.
Moon was not cowed by the bad publicity. He welcomed it. It was part of his strategy to shake the world. He needed opponents besieging him from all directions so he could be “a lightning rod.” That would be “the quickest strategy to take over the rest of the world.” His opponents—the established churches, the Frasers—were striking out at him because they feared him, he said. He saw the negative press as a definite plus. Without it, he would get only an inch or two of coverage now and then; with it, the world knew who the Reverend Moon was.
With all the controversy over Moon in the United States, President Park Chung Hee felt it best to give the outward appearance of putting himself at a distance from the New Messiah. Park’s own image was at an all-time low in America and was still sinking. Ambassador Hahm issued a statement in Washington saying the R.O.K. government and Moon had nothing to do with each other. It was similar to statements made about relations with Tongsun Park, except for the inclusion of some emphasis on freedom for all religions in Korea.
Moon understood. Both he and the government had to conceal their close working ties in the influence campaign. It came easy to him. Whatever Park Chung Hee and Ambassador Hahm had to do for the sake of appearance, Moon and the government continued to work hand in hand. And he told the cult the Korean government was strongly on his side, “begging for our opinion and actions.” The banquet held in his honor in Seoul in 1975 was a good sign, he said. It was attended by a host of dignitaries including Chung Il-Kwon, Speaker of the National Assembly and former Prime Minister. Other things, not told to cult members, revealed even closer ties, such as Bo Hi Pak’s reported access to the secret telecommunications facilities at the South Korean Embassy.
Thomas Scharff wanted to know what had happened to his son’s life. It had been a year since Gary dropped out of Princeton and moved in with the Moonies in Louisville. Increasingly, Gary had become a stranger to his father and mother, especially after three months of indoctrination at Belvedere. He was living in Philadelphia as the Pennsylvania state director of the Unification Church, apparently not at all interested in going back to college. W. Farley Jones, then president of the Unification Church, had assured the elder Scharff that Gary would return to Princeton in the fall. If his son could just get back in school away from the cult’s controlled environment, Scharff thought, maybe he would begin to lead his own life again. Scharff wrote to Moon demanding to know what had been done to his son.
Moon couldn’t be bothered with parents. Who were they to question the Lord of the Second Advent? He ignored the letter and had it returned unopened. When another letter came, it got the same treatment. Scharff then angrily threatened to “expose Moon to the world.” David S. C. Kim of Moon’s inner circle moved to head off a possible problem by talking to Gary.
“What would it take to appease your parents?” Kim asked. “Oh, they’d be satisfied if I went back to school, even though I’ve made it clear that’s not what I want.” Gary had important work to do for Father.
“Well, you had better go, then. They could cause trouble if you don’t. But they will burn in Hell for insulting the Messiah.” Gary graduated from Princeton the following spring after writing his senior thesis on the Divine Principle. Every spare moment during the school year was spent with the cult, working at the Philadelphia center, demonstrating for Nixon at the Christmas Tree Lighting, lecturing, and setting up a speaking engagement for Moon at Princeton.
Parents had no right to resist Moon’s control over their children. They were only “physical” parents anyhow. Moon and his wife were True Parents, to be revered and obeyed absolutely as Father and Mother. The members of the cult were their children, all brothers and sisters in the Unified Family. There was no question of choice between the Unified Family and the physical family. Moonies had a divine duty to deny parents, brothers, and sisters. Hold fast to Father. Cling to him. If parents try to drag you back to the outside world of Cain, stand against them firmly and say: “ ‘I’m the son of God before being your son.’ ”
If they insist you are a member of their family, tell them: “ ‘I want to be a member of the Unified Family, rather than of this small family.’ ”
Ties with enemies must be severed and, said Moon, “Your utmost enemy is in your family.”
Steve Hassan lay helpless on the sofa at his sister’s house with his leg in a heavy cast. His father had taken away his crutches. People kept coming in saying terrible things about the Family, and there was no way for him to escape to the nearest Moonie haven. He would still be fund raising in Baltimore if he hadn’t fallen asleep at the wheel of a church van and run into a truck after three days with no sleep. Now he was captive to his father’s conspiracy to turn him away from Master. He wanted to strangle his father, but decided it wasn’t necessary since he was determined to get away somehow soon. He told his parents they were wasting their time with him. He was Kamiyama’s model of sacrifice and devotion. This was another test of his faith and he was sure he would pass just as he always had. Father had taught him to withstand the temptations of the Satanic world. The deprogrammers’ arguments seemed feeble. They tried to prove faults in the Divine Principle, but he knew Father’s teachings better than they. After eight hours of talk the first day, he went to sleep contentedly. This was going to be easy, he thought.
After breakfast the next morning, he was moved to an unfamiliar apartment in Queens because the deprogrammers had learned the Moonies were on their way to rescue him from his sister’s house. Disabled with a broken leg, and his family having eluded his brethren, he agreed to stay for a week, no more.
As the harangues continued he was told he had been suckered, manipulated, and used by the cult. Impossible. How could he believe he was exploited by someone he had committed everything to? At first he refused to let himself think about it. Each night he went to bed repeating to himself, “I cannot leave! ... I cannot leave! ... I cannot leave! . ..” He remembered a showing of The Exorcist, held on Moon’s orders, and Moon’s stern admonition that the movie was a prophecy of what would happen to those who did not stand firmly with him. But after three or four days Hassan was saying, “I cannot leave! ... I cannot leave. ... Why can’t I leave?” He was forced to consider the possibility that Moon might not be the Messiah. As he listened to each negative point raised about the cult, worse points entered his mind that he could not counter.
By the fifth day, he had found himself again. He realized the cult had robbed him of all reference points. Having been manipulated to believe Moon’s goals were desirable, he had had to believe they were true also. If they were true, then all the degradation and deceit had to be desirable. He felt he had been riding on a slave train that never stopped.
Free from the cult, Steve Hassan began to think for himself again. In the absence of mind control, he was unsure of himself at first and had to rely heavily on his family and friends for help. It took about a year for him to fully regain his former confidence.
Chris Elkins left the cult, too, in a rare instance of voluntary departure after two years as Moon’s slave. Gary Scharff also got out, having been rescued by his parents.
There were others not so fortunate. Moon’s devastation of Wendy Helander and her family still continues after more than five years. She was taken by the cult suddenly during her first semester at the University of New Hampshire, a month after her eighteenth birthday. Spending the 1974 Christmas holidays reluctantly with the family in Guilford, Connecticut, she said she was happy being a member of the Unification Church. But she cried every day. Her parents wanted to know more about the movement that had caused her to drop out of school and move in with other members only a few days after she had been invited on a weekend “camping trip” with them. It was so unlike Wendy. She had always excelled in class and a variety of activities. In high school she had been a cheerleader, played flute in the band, and loved arts and crafts. A fluent speaker of French, she had visited France twice. Her only answer to her parents’ questions about the Unification Church was to invite them to a three-day training workshop at Barrytown.
▲ UTS Barrytown
Elton and Carolyn Helander found a strange world at Barrytown. When they arrived, Wendy and about forty others were in a pandemonium of frenzied prayer, shouting over and over out of unison: “Dear Heavenly Father, forgive my sins! You have suffered so much for me; now I will sacrifice everything for you!” In another ritual, a group faced toward Korea with hands in the air and cheered for Master and the Fatherland: “Mansei! Mansei!” When the Helanders felt the urge to get up and leave a training session, the lecturer’s eyes locked on theirs and they stayed in their seats. One young man left his seat and attempted to walk out. They were shocked to see him dragged back, yelling and kicking, by five leaders. Later they were to learn that another trainee, Bill Giannastasio, was able to escape from a weekend workshop only by jumping out of a second-floor window.
The lecturer for the weekend was one of the cult’s best, Gary Scharff. Skillfully weaving Moon’s convoluted logic, he emphasized points by gliding his open hands outward, repeating, “This is true. . .. This is true. . . . This is true . .. ,” softening each repetition until the last was a whisper. He was like a hypnotist.
The Helanders were the only parents among the seventy-two trainees that weekend. On the one occasion when they were allowed to have a meal with Wendy, Gary Scharff was there to chaperon. She was happy, she said, and would stay.
Elton and Carolyn Helander were horrified by everything about the cult. The inexorable “love” bombardment was overbearing and phony. There was no such thing as free will at Barrytown.
The cult had taken control of Wendy’s mind. The Helanders were determined to give her the chance to make choices for herself again. An opportunity came when they heard about deprogrammer Ted Patrick a few days later. The following Sunday, Wendy was allowed to spend the day with her parents. She remained with them and was then “deprogrammed.” She seemed happy to be free after two months of enslavement. Her sense of humor began to return, and she busied herself redecorating her room. But the cult would not leave the family alone. Wendy’s sister Holly was frightened by a Moonie who entered her college apartment, set his suitcase inside the door, and threatened to spend the night unless she put him in contact with Wendy. Vans were seen cruising slowly past the Helanders’ house. Moonies wrote letters and came to the door. They appeared in town fund raising on the chance of meeting Wendy to intimidate her with the warning that she would die within a year unless she returned to the cult. Wendy was worried about her own vulnerability, so she made a sworn statement. It requested “immediate action by the authorities to come and physically remove me from the cult” if she were retaken because “regardless of what I may say or do, I will not be acting of my own free will.”
Wendy went out to do some shopping one afternoon, saying she would be back in a few minutes. That evening her brother found the family car abandoned on the Connecticut Turnpike. The cult had enticed her back after only a month.
The FBI reported she was in Washington. With the authority granted by Wendy’s affidavit, the Helanders expected no serious problem in freeing her. They were wrong. She did not appear in court when ordered by a writ of habeas corpus. Instead, Moonie lawyers played a tape of Wendy’s voice: speaking in a monotone, she said she was acting on her own free will and wanted to stay in the Unification Church. The judge dismissed the case on September 23, 1975, for lack of evidence. The cult touted the decision as legal proof that there was no brainwashing. For Wendy and her family, the nightmare continued.
The family heard nothing from Wendy for weeks. Then in November she invited them for a visit to Barrytown. Her parents managed to walk alone with her to the edge of Moon’s vast estate. There they were met by their two sons with a car in which to rescue her.
For the next three months the entire family lived away from the house in Guilford. The harassment had been so heavy before that they feared for their own safety this time. Elton Helander and son Joel moved in with a relative. Forrest, Wendy’s younger brother in high school, lived with a neighbor. Carolyn Helander and Wendy moved around through seven states trying to elude the cult’s searchers. In the meantime, the neighborhood in Guilford was again harassed. Vans cruised regularly and neighbors got phone calls asking probing questions about the Helanders. When some Moonies were apprehended by police in Warwick, Rhode Island, for prowling around the house of another ex-member, they were found to be carrying photographs of Wendy and her parents, a Japanese wooden sword, a can of Mace, and a Bible containing a devil mask used to frighten defectors into returning. The same van had been seen in the Helanders’ neighborhood a few hours earlier.
After three months the Helanders received a summons to appear in court. Wendy was the plaintiff in a suit charging them with false imprisonment. She knew nothing about it but recalled having signed something at one time or another; she now realized it had probably been power of attorney for the cult.
Numerous ex-Moonies had been helping to rehabilitate Wendy. It was therefore not unusual when Richard Conrad visited the home where she was staying in Ohio in February 1976. He seemed such a nice young man, so Mrs. Helander did not object to his suggestion that he could help best by talking to Wendy alone. He reported good progress and after three days took Wendy out for a walk. They never returned.
Six days later Michael Runyon, an official of the Moon organization, proudly announced to the press that “a young man from the Unification Church pretended to undergo the deprogramming, and after gaining the confidence of the deprogrammers, brought about the escape.” Now that the cult had her back, the false imprisonment suit against her parents was dropped.
For ten months the Helanders tried in vain to contact Wendy. In September they journeyed to Washington, hoping to see her at the big “God Bless America” rally Moon was mounting. They plied through the mass of Moonies with no sign of their daughter. Then they caught sight of Richard Conrad among uniformed cult members in white jumpsuits emblazoned with Moon’s emblem.
“What happened on the short walk?” asked Carolyn Helander, controlling her anxiety.
“It was extended,” Conrad replied casually.
“How could you do such a thing?” cried Wendy’s mother.
Conrad pointed skyward and smiled. “Only one person knows.” He turned to walk away.
“Don’t back off!” exclaimed Mr. Helander. “Where’s Wendy? How is she?”
“I don’t know.” Conrad shrugged and walked away to tend to Master’s work.
Former Moonies had reported that Wendy was in poor condition emotionally and physically. Because of her parents’ previous efforts to get her out of the cult, she was being kept from sight, held like a prisoner. The Helanders were contacted by a stranger who told them Wendy wanted to escape but was afraid to try. They went to New York to meet her at a hotel where she was to have been brought by someone in the cult supposedly concerned about her. She did not appear.
In May 1977, Wendy Helander filed a $9 million lawsuit against her parents and the deprogrammers for kidnapping and forcibly violating her right to freedom of religion. Her parents countersued the cult for abducting their daughter. The suits were dropped in September 1978 by mutual agreement. Wendy agreed to restore close relations with her family; her parents agreed not to interfere with their daughter’s “religion.”
The Helanders have had no personal contact with Wendy since February 1976 when she was enticed back to the cult by Richard Conrad. She and her parents have seen each other in courtrooms, where she appeared sad and frightened, her chin quivering, seated between the cult’s lawyers, Richard Ben-Veniste and Jeremiah Gutman. She seemed a robot in her movements and statements. The Helanders well remember, in the courtroom, the lawyers coaching Wendy constantly and even insisting successfully that a United States marshal be positioned, as Gutman said, “so the parents will not kidnap her again.”
The Moon cult has controlled Wendy from the age of eighteen well into her twenty-fourth year. She has become a national cause célèbre in the cult’s drive to use freedom of religion to serve Moon’s megalomania. The Moonies have paraded her out as a “show” witness at hearings in state legislatures, flanked on either side by her leaders, where she mouths the cult’s position in a lifeless tone that seems alien to the person she used to be. Having performed her public function, she is then returned to isolation from non-Moonies. Neil Salonen, Unification Church president, explained the purpose for using her: “The Wendy Helander lawsuit is designed to set a legal precedent against deprogramming.” Normal life has become an illusion for the Helanders. Carefree relaxation at home is a thing of the distant past. In terms of money alone they have been hit with more than $60,000 in legal bills. With the cooperation of their church, a group of friends started “The Wendy Fund” to help pay. Far worse than the financial drain are the feelings of anguish and frustration. If money could save their daughter, Elton and Carolyn Helander say, they would be willing to give up their house. Although they know money can never restore the free will of Wendy’s former self, they do not know what can.
NOTES
Chapter 6 MINIONS AND MASTER
144 “$300 million”: Master Speaks, Nov. 17, 1974 (KI Appendix C-223).
144-145 Description of the kind of person Moon succeeds in taking in: interviews with former Moonie leaders, including Steve Hassan.
145-146 “Moon taught a clear strategy for attracting prospective converts”: Master Speaks, “On Witnessing,” Jan. 3, 1972.
146-148, 151-153, 156, 161-164, 181 Chris Elkins: interviews with Elkins.
147 “Your whole body”: Master Speaks, April 14, 1974 (KI Appendix C-216).
147 “You must live with me spiritually”: ibid.
148 “You will rearrange the mechanisms within yourself”: Master Speaks, Jan. 1, 1973.
148 “your mind is my mind”: Master Speaks, April 14, 1974 (KI Appendix C-216).
148 “$800,000”: interview with ex-Moonie leader Allen Tate Wood, who ran the candle factory in Upper Marlboro, Maryland.
148 “The three functions”: interview with ex-Moonie leader Gary Scharff.
149 “Moon: Would you prefer to sleep seven hours”: Master Speaks, Sept. 22, 1974 (KI Appendix C-221).
149 “Cult members should commit suicide”: Allen Tate Wood’s testimony, June 22, 1976 (SIO-II, p. 21); interviews with former Moonies; “Mass Suicide Possible in Moon Church, 3 Say,” New York Times, Feb. 20, 1979, p. D-14.
149-150 Deaths of Moonies: New York Daily News, June 7, 1976; New York Times, August 24, 1976; Detroit News, August 16, 1979; New West magazine, January 29, 1979, p. 63; interviews with police officials and former Moonies.
150 Health problems: interviews with ex-Moonies; Crazy for God, by Christopher Edwards, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1979, pp. 82-92.
151 “Among Moon’s tour trophies”: Day of Hope in Review, Part 1, published by the Unification Church, 1974.
151-152 “Moon was standing on a mountainside in Korea”: interviews with ex-Moonies giving Moon’s story of the origins of the support campaign for President Nixon.
152 “full-page Watergate statements”: Day of Hope in Review, Part 1, published by the Unification Church, 1974.
153 Moonie preparation for the Christmas Tree Lighting: interview with Gary Scharff who was a member of the “Horse Team.”
153 “A White House aide”: John Nidecker, in testimony before the Fraser Subcommittee, June 1978 (KI Part 5, pp. 15-16).
154 “We stopped the world for him”: “From Korea with Love,” by John D. Marks, in the Washington Monthly, Feb. 1974.
154 “power clique”: interviews with ex-Moonies identifying the core of Moonie leadership.
154 Moon’s comments on racial talents: Master Speaks, July 29, 1974 (KI Appendix C-218).
154-155 “Dr. Joseph Kennedy”: KI Report, pp. 340-341.
155 “He . . . urged the President ‘not to knuckle under to the pressure’ ”: Day of Hope in Review, Part 1, published by the Unification Church, 1974.
156 “This is the equivalent of the Roman Emperor”: Master Speaks, Feb. 14, 1974 (KI Appendix C-214).
156 “the Unification Church and the White House ... can be very close places”: Ibid., Feb. 14, 1974.
156 “David Martin”: interview with Chris Elkins.
156 “his wife’s permanent visa”: KI Report, p. 402.
157 “Congressman Richard Ichord”: interview with former House Speaker Carl Albert.
157 “Senator Strom Thurmond”: KI Report, p. 402.
157 “PR Sisters” and “many good-looking girls”: KI Report, p. 342; Master Speaks, Dec. 29, 1971 (KI Appendix C-209); untitled speech by Moon, May 7, 1973 (KI Appendix C-321); interviews with ex-Moonies, one of whom reported having visited the Washington Hilton suite and being shown photos of Congressmen and Moonie girls with their arms around each other.
157 “She was Japanese, as it should be”: In Master Speaks, July 26, 1974, Moon said, “Eve has been working really hard in places like this, and in the future everybody will follow this pattern.”
157 “one for the diplomat” presumably means one to function as a diplomatic persuader in a Senator’s office.
157 “The Speaker wasn’t interested”: interview with former House Speaker Carl Albert.
157 Susan Bergman’s telephone conversations with Albert: interview with an ex-Moonie who was present on both occasions.
158 Barrytown: Not to be confused with Tarrytown; Moon has large facilities for training at both villages on the Hudson.
158 “Park Chung Hee viewed him as an asset”: interviews with former Korean and American government officials.
158 President Park’s letter to ROFA contributors: KI Part 4, p. 185. After American officials complained about the letter, Bo Hi Pak obtained a letter from Senator Strom Thurmond to the effect that the State Department had no objection to “courtesy contacts” by heads of foreign states with American citizens. Although this letter did not say whether the State Department was referring to the ROFA mailing, Bo Hi Pak claimed the letter vindicated his role in the mailing (KI Report, p. 365, KI Part 4, pp. 187-188).
158 Donald Miller’s book: KI Part 4 Supplement, p. 468; KI Report, p. 365.
159 Bo Hi Pak as a conduit for Prime Minister Chung Il-Kwon to send money to the United States: KI Report, p. 366.
159 Moon’s anti-Communist training center: KI Report, p. 352.
159 Manufacture of military weapons: KI Report, pp. 83, 326, 352.
160 “He reminded the cult”: New Hope News, a Moon publication, April 21, 1975; KI Report, p. 342.
160-161 Project Watergate, activities in Congress, role of Rabbi Korff and Bruce Herschenson in the three-day prayer fast: interviews with former Moonies.
161 “Failure to lift Nixon up”: interview with Gary Scharff.
161-162 Chris Elkins and the egg-throwing plot: KI Report, pp. 343-345; Elkins’s testimony before the Fraser Subcommittee, Sept. 27, 1976 (SIO-II, pp. 44-49).
162-163 “According to intelligence reports”: declassified summaries of intelligence reports and testimony by Kim Sang-Keun (KI Part 5, pp. 71-72). The intelligence summary, approved for public release by the originating agency, said, in part: “The head of the Washington KCIA arranged with Reverend Moon’s group for demonstrations in front of the Japanese Embassy and the White House. The KCIA had used Moon and members of the Unification Church to stage rallies in the United States in support of Korean government policies and aims, and on at least one occasion Moon received KCIA funds for that purpose. Due to State Department objections, the planned anti-Japanese rallies had to be called off at the last minute by the KCIA chief through one of Reverend Moon’s subordinates. The thousands of dollars already expended on the aborted demonstrations had to be written off to good will.”
163-164 Chris Elkins’s political activities while a Moonie: testimony of Chris Elkins (SIO-II, pp. 45, 46, 51-53).
163-164 “If we can turn three states of the United States around”: Master Speaks, Mar. 24, 1974 (KI Appendix C-215).
164 “Some day, in the near future”: Ibid.
164-168 Based on interviews with ex-Moonies, including Steve Hassan.
165 Tully’s wife: ex-Moonie Steve Hassan recalled Moonie leader Takeru Kamiyama having described her as “a crazy fanatic.”
165 “if leaders had a slave mentality themselves”: Elaborating on this point, ex-Moonie Steve Hassan said that by taxing leaders with impossible goals, Moon endeavored to suppress the ego that might emerge if goals were accomplished. Early in 1975, Moon levied a requirement on Kamiyama to recruit three thousand new members. Hassan’s quota for the Flushing, New York, center was four hundred. Neither goal came near being met. After an all-out effort, Hassan’s group was able to bring in only about thirty.
166 “appalled by the individuality he saw” and “Germany, where people ‘were trained in totalisin’ ”: Master Speaks, Jan. 3, 1972.
166 Showing Hitler Youth films: interviews with ex-Moonies.
168 Annual gross from street fund raising: Former Moonie leader Allen Tate Wood gave a higher estimate than Steve Hassan. After testifying in the Manhattan Supreme Court in connection with a case involving the Unification Church’s tax-exempt status, Wood said on the basis of 2,000 Moonies fund raising every day, the average per person is $150 to $300, for an annual gross of $109.5 to $219 million (New York Post, May 16, 1979).
168-175 Moon’s business activities: KI Report, pp. 325-332, 372-376; confidential interviews.
169-170 Moonie interest in the Diplomat National Bank: Findings regarding stock purchased with Moonie money are based on sworn testimony and subpoenaed bank records (KI Report, pp. 377-378); loans to Bo Hi Pak (KI Report, p. 382); ruling by Controller of the Currency (letter at KI Appendix C-252); $7 million in Moonie transactions (KI Report, p. 382).
169 “that the currency will be freely coming back and forth” and “an international bank”: Master Speaks, Feb. 16, 1975 (KI Appendix C-224).
170 “to guide the academic world”: Master Speaks, Feb. 16, 1975 (KI Appendix C-224).
172-173 M-16 rifle negotiations: KI Report, pp. 367-368, 83; KI Appendix C-34-39, 41-45.
173 Moon’s plans to buy the Empire State Building, Ford Motor Company, and Pan American World Airways: Master Speaks, Nov. 22, 1974; interview with a former Moonie leader.
175 “ ‘Reverend Moon is far better than me, the Heavenly Father’ Master Speaks, July 31, 1974 (KI Appendix C-219).
175 The “petty” laws of the United States: notes taken by a Unification Church member at a meeting with Moon in Barrytown, N.Y., June 1, 1977. The subject of the discussion was the newspaper, News World.
176 International movement of Moonie funds: KI Report, p. 337; the Fraser Subcommittee said “there was massive evidence that (the Moon organization) had systematically violated” U.S. currency laws (KI Report, p. 388).
176 Visas: KI Report, pp. 335-336; summary of Immigration and Naturalization Service investigations of Moon (KI Appendix C-212).
176 “never received KCIA money”: testimony of Bo Hi Pak (KI Part 4, p. 666).
177 “Unification Church Pension Fund International”: Pak’s testimony (KI Part 4, p. 308); KI Report, pp. 380-381.
177 “a New York judge”: George D. Burchell, Justice of the Supreme Court of New York, Westchester County, in a ruling on a tax dispute between the Village of Tarrytown and the Unification Church, August 14, 1979.
177 Bad press as a “lightning rod,” and “the quickest strategy to take over the rest of the world”: Master Speaks, Feb. 23, 1977 (KI Appendix C-227).
178 Moon organization’s closeness to the R.O.K. government: KI Report, pp. 351-355; interviews with government officials, present and former. An unexplained hint of ties with the KCIA came, surprisingly, from an attorney for the Unification Church, Michael Golden. During a conversation with one of Congressman Fraser’s investigators on Nov. 4, 1977, Golden said in response to a question about his client, “You know who makes the decision. It’s made in the Korean CIA office.”
178 “begging for our opinion and actions”: Master Speaks, Sept. 22, 1974 (KI Appendix C-221).
178 Gary Scharff: interviews with Scharff.
179 “ ‘I’m the son of God before being your son,’ ” and “ ‘I want to be a member of the Unified Family’ Master Speaks, Nov. 17, 1974 (KI Appendix C-223).
179 “Your utmost enemy is in your family”: Master Speaks, Feb. 14, 1974 (KI Appendix C-214).
179-181 Steve Hassan: based on interviews with Hassan.
181-186 Wendy Helander: confidential interviews.
184 “a young man from the Unification Church”: New Haven Journal-Courier, Feb. 23, 1976.
186 Neil Salonen’s comment on the lawsuit: New Haven Register, June 20, 1978.
Gifts of Deceit: Sun Myung Moon, Tongsun Park, and the Korean scandal – Chapter 2 – The Lord of the Second Advent
Gifts of Deceit – Chapter 12, Dueling with the Moonies
Gifts of Deceit – Chapter 13, The Menace
Moonie “Dirty Tricks” against Donald Fraser
United States Congressional investigation of Moon’s organization
Moon sought to influence the American political agenda by pouring more than a billion dollars into media.
Politics and religion interwoven
Sun Myung Moon: The Emperor of the Universe
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Golf Technique & Hitting Backstops
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on the double // mark tuan
+ stunt double! mark
+ fluffy!! and a pinch of angst
+ 3.8kwords
+ summary: when you have more chemistry with your co-actor’s stunt double
You walked onto the set, your manager and stylist tailing behind you as you scanned the crowds for the director, intent on getting a better gist of your character and the relationship you should have with your co-actor. After catching a glimpse of him surrounded by the staffs, you walked briskly towards him, your script in hand as you prepared your mind to take in as much detail a possible. Although this drama wasn’t your first, you took it upon yourself to treat every single one of your projects with care and ensure you put in as much effort as you did on your first. You weren’t in the top list of actresses for nothing.
“Ah, Ms (Y/N)! It’s been a while since we’ve worked together but I hope we can make this drama another hit,” He smiled, patting your should as you displayed your best smile. “I’ll try my best Mr.Park. Also what is your idea of the relationship between Kim So Ra and Geon Min Jeon?” You asked sincerely, your pencil already prepared in hand, but as to look as professional as possible, you waited for him to fully explain his idea, his words connecting the dots as you nodded with furrowed brows, your focus reaching its peak.
“You always work hard Ms (Y/N). Hopefully I’ll see you more in my works,” he chuckled, as you thanked him sincerely before walking off to the side where your own personal chair was set up. You greeted the staff one by one, your smile never faltering as you sat comfortably in your seat. “Ah Yeong, is it just me or my co-star looks like he has a stick up his ass,” You whispered to your stylist, eliciting a few giggles from her as she nudged you playfully.
“Watch your mouth, we haven’t even began filming the first scene and you’re already badmouthing him,” She sighed, a little too familiar with your behavior as she curled your hair carefully in sections, the end product always amazing you. “Also has Jinyoung arrived yet? We should be filming scene 3 together today,’ You mumbled carelessly as you scanned the crowd, recognizing a few familiar faces from your previous projects but your main focus being on finding your best friend. The both of you had been best friends since high school, and since you guys worked in the same industry and frequently in the same projects, you got close to him naturally, him being like a brother figure to you. “Sheesh, missing me already?” A familiar chuckle echoed into your right ear as your head shot to the right, startling Ah Yeong as she quickly pulled the hair curler away from your face. Jinyoung smiled as he pinched your cheeks, a way of him greeting you as he took the empty seat next to yours.
“When will you start filming?” He questioned, fetching out his script as you checked the director who was still busy instructing the technical crew on what to do. “Hmm maybe in about ten minutes? Also have you seen my co-star? I know we’ve gone to the script reading but looks like his true colours are showing,” You scoffed, your eyes trailing to the opposite end of the set, your co-star, Jaehyung, was too busy ordering his manager around while he sat with his legs widespread. “He seemed like a nice guy during our first script reading,” Jinyoung shrugged, his eyes following your line of sight as he squinted his eyes to get a better look. “Try not to gag when you film the kiss scenes with him alright?” Jinyoung teased as he flipped through his script. You punched him in the arm as you scowled at him, not looking forward to the kiss scenes that were too happen in about a week’s time.
Finally, one of the staffs called you out for your scene as you walked onto the set. As expected of a an action romance drama, it was already filmed with action scenes in the beginning, his stunt double standing alongside Jaehyung while you were prepared to do your stunts on your own. Most of your moves simply included rolling, jumping from a high element and faking your punches. You wanted this to seem as realistic as possible but since Jaehyung had to act as a professional assassin, his moves were far more complex, which included cart wheels and gymnastics that only professionals could handle. You eyes his stunt double, his features being sharp but his emotionless expression seemed soft towards you. He could be a model if he wanted to, you thought to yourself, admiring his tall and strong yet lean stature. But your eyes soon averted when he stared back, curious as to why you couldn’t keep your eyes to yourself. Maybe he looked entirely different from Jaehyung, which was totally understandable, but his height and body structure was near to identical to his - the only thing that mattered to a stunt double.
Scene 1 required you to to be caught by the waist by Jaehyung’s co-star as he jumped off the high building to run away from the police. But before you were to be sweeped off of your feet, the stunt double had to do a cartwheel, throw a few punches and kicks before he ran straight to you, grab you by your waist, and jump. Your role seemed the easiest, but to make it seem as if you weren’t prepared to be caught was far more difficult than you expected. After a few more attemps and a dissatisfied look of the directer, he decided to dismiss everyone for the day, calling both you and his stunt double to the side while the rest pack up their equipments and wardrobe.
“I know it’s the first scene and it’s already chaotic but I hope the both of you can work something out to make it seem more live-like, natural - that’s my aim for all my action scenes. Understood?” He sighed before patting the both of you on the back as he continued to issue instructions to the assistant directors and crew. You looked to the side, Jaehyung’s stunt double had his eyebrows knitted together as he chewed down on his bottom lip, he seemed even more upset about the outcome than the director. Your guilty conscience towered over you as you walked over to him, fingers fumbling with each other as you attempt to form a coherent sentence.
“Sorry, it was my fault back there. What’s your name?” You questioned him, hoping to be able to form some sort of an arrangement with him to sort out the problem at hand.”It’s Mark,” Was all you got as you stood there, a part of you feeling defeated while the other part of you stood firm and strong. “ So Mark, I hope it’s fine with you but could we meet at the gymnasium tomorrow morning to test things out?” You suggested as you tilted your head, his eyes averting your gaze as his emotions remain cold and distant. “Sure,” He replied after a minutes of hesitation. “Uhm, let’s exchange phone numbers then, I’ll pass to you the location and everything,” You smiled as he slowly and reluctantly handed his phone over to you. You punched your phone number into his phone and saved it under your name with an additional ‘from Locked’ ; the name of the drama the both of you were currently shooting. You called your number on his phone and ended the call, just so that his phone number would end up in your call log. “So I guess I’ll see you tomorrow morning?” You smiled, burshing off the fact that Mark wasn’t reciprocating your cheerful attitude as he replied with another short and monotonous “Sure,”.
It was in the early midst of dawn as the both of you struggled to achieve the director’s orders. “Maybe I should just keep in position until you catch me. Will that look more realistic?” You asked not only Mark but yourself as you scratched your head in frustration. “Let’s try that,” Mark huffed, his moves were more energy-consuming as he wiped of the beads of sweat trickling down his forehead with his towel, before throwing the fabric to the side to start all over again. The both of you did as what you had suggested - but instead of it achieving your wanted effects, it was difficult to transition from your stiff posture to a relaxed one as your legs were firm and widespread, the stance you had to do as you held your gun. “ Nothing is working,” You huffed, walking to the side as you reached over towards your bottle. But air was knocked out of your lungs as you felt a strong arm wrapped around your waist, a familiar feeling of his touch you had gotten used to from the several times the both of you had practised. You were soon put down gently as a small smile threatened to crawl onto his lips, while yours were as wide as the cheshire cat’s. “ That actually felt better, maybe I should just continue throwing punches and I’ll trust you to sweep me off my feet,” You were extremely enthusiastic at this point, finally relieved to know that you and Mark were making progress, no matter how small it was. Your eyes gleamed like a child in a toy store as your mouth continue to blab on about newer suggestions for future moves while Mark watched on, an unknowing smile already plastered on his face. At the sight of him, you gasped in surprise. You didn’t know Mark could look even more charming when he smiled. And now you did.
“What?” Mark was confused. What had gotten you so surprised? Was there something on his face? Or did the both of you miss a move for scene 1? “You smiled! I thought I would never get to see the day that you do,” You exclaimed, your mouth still agape as your thoughts replayed the precious moment of him. “You smiled! You can smile!” You cheered as you watched him with amazement. At your sudden outburst of happiness, your contagious happy vibes tickled him as he let out a little chuckle. “You can laugh too!” Your jaw was now hitting the floor as Mark walked closer to you, with a raised eyebrow yet the smile never leaving his lips.
“What do you take me for? A robot?” He teased as he lift your chin with his index finger, closing your gaping mouth. But that wasn’t your focus. You concentrated on his brown mesmerising eyes and flawless skin that had a part of you getting jealous. And then your eyes trailed to his pink lips that were stretched into a smile you never knew you would like so much. The index finger under your chin traveled to your forehead, brushing your stray strands to the side for him to get a better view of your face and features that got him wrapped around your finger. He inched closer, the space between the both of you close to extinct until you felt his hand snake around your waist, causing you to jolt from the his intoxicating touch as you stepped backwards instinctively.
“I-I’m sorry, I h-have to go uhm... pet my dog- I mean walk my dog! I’ll see you next week,” You chuckled nervously, your trembling hands struggling to get a hold of your bag until Mark walked to your side. “Let me help you with that-” He offered, taking your things as composed as he had always been as you snatched it away from him, afraid that any form of contact would send you tumbling back into his arms. He’s your friend, and a colleague as well. What were you going to do if things didn’t end well even before the final shooting? You had to be professional for your sake and his.
You rolled around your bed, the thoughts of the recent incident sending you into a spiral of anxiousness as your hands brushed through your hair. Did it really not affect him? You rewinded back to the time he was as emotionless as before, his casual behaviour igniting a fire in you as you scoffed at the thought. “Who does he think he is? Jae’s probably a better kisser than he is so missing out on that will definitely not mkae me regret. Regret? Don’t know him,” You spat as you plopped back onto your bed with frustration, curling up under your blankets in hopes that the insanely soft duvet would lull you to sleep. But not all dreams come true.
“Geez, what’s with the bags under your eyes?” Jinyoung grumbled as he took the seat next to yours while Ah Yeong began adjusting your hair and make up for the first scene of the day. “Don’t even mention it,” You hissed, causing Jinyoung to sneer as he sipped on his cup, relishing in the cold morning breeze, as if being frozen to the death was nowhere in his mind. Not only were you exhausted from not getting a wink of sleep last night, but you were also shivering from the merciless cold that you had to endure for at least three scenes that day. And during those painfully long scenes, Mark tried his best to recover whatever he had done the night before. In your eyes, he seemed calm, unfazed even and that honestly sent a sharp pang of pain straight through your chest. Did the kiss mean nothing to him? Nothing at all?
He knew you needed some space, or at least he took notice how you almost always sneaked away when you weren’t needed on set and ensured you were at least a few meters away from him. And honestly, everyone around you found your behaviour to be odd. The both of you used to joke about something that wasn’t hilarious at all but now words were hesitantly tumbling from your chapped lips. Lips - Everything seemed to remind you of that night and the way your lips threatened to crack under the merciless weather was not helping at all. Not even your chapstick could save you.
After hours of filming and painful sips of your hot chocolate, the day finally came to an end as you bowed incessanty towards the staff, thanking the for their hard work while the food truck you and Jinyoung had booked waited patiently with a variety of foods. “Wanna go grab a bite? I made sure they had your favourite,” Jinyoung asked while he nudged you playfully with his elbow. Without having to ramble on and on about your problems, your best friend could easily sense the uneasiness from you. And it was also because you were never that silent when he was around.
“I could really eat 3 whole plates. I’m starving and shivering and dying,” you muttered, sneaking your hand to link with his while you stole his warmth while the both of you took off towards the foodtruck. “If you really were dying, I would’ve left your body to die in the snow, it’ll stink less that way,” He joked, earning a hard pinch to his bicep while you grumbled.
Once the both of you arrived, everyone had already taken their seats on portables chairs and benches, most of them gorging on food from the stamina they had sacrificed the entire day while others took the time to plan for the next filming day or simply catch up with friends and their personal lives. But your attention was all on Mark, the way he sat with Jae while the both of them enjoyed their warm steaming dinner for the day. Why did your chest feel heavy everytime your eyes laid on him? Why can’t he stop looking so handsome for fucks sake.
You quickly averted your eyes when his head moved towards your direction, your heart racing a mile a minute as you conjured some kind of plan to avoid him as much as possible. “Let’s take the seat at the corner, it’s much more quiet here,” you smiled, dragging Jinyoung towards the a vacant table in a corner while he refused to budge.
“But it’s colder down there, why don’t we take the other corner, it’s much more covered by the tent that way,” he pouted, eyebrows raised as he rebeled against your opinions. But you couldn’t. The only table that was vacant there was the one exactly beside Mark’s and he was the last person you wanted to talk to. With a nervous shake of your head and the way you were putting all your strength to pull Jinyoung towards your ideal spot had given away your intentions. Jinyoung looked towards you with furrowed brows, his lips curling into a disappointed frown while he obliged to your silent whining. And you just knew, that Park Jinyoung would talk your ear off from then on out.
But... he didnt’t. Instead, he took your shivering hands in his, his eyes staring you down just like your mother would whenever she gave you those life lectures, and gave you just a few words to wake you up. To burst your little safety bubble and urge you to do something you were less than comfortable doing. “Is running away from your problems going to solve them?” With a little sigh, he patted your head endearingly,and you just knew. Jinyoung read you like an open book and it was as if you had told him the entire story without the use of words, with no words at all. After he sent a small smile your way, he excused himself to get your usual orders while you pondered in your seat, mind full of numerous things that had sprouted from a single question. It felt like hours had gone by until he came back with steaming hot foods in his hands while your mind had come to a conclusion. You had to confront your own problems. And it had to be on the double.
“You sure you’ll be okay going home alone?” Jinyoung questioned you with worry evident in his eyes. But you brushed him, ruffling his raven hair with a small confident smile playing on your lips. “Don’t worry, I don’t think I’ll be entirely alone,” you reassured him as you waved him good bye, his manager dragging him by his wrist due to the tight schedule that awaited them the next morning. With Jinyoung gone, you breathed in shakily, your confidence being teared down little by little as you made your way to Mark’s car. It was now or never.
When you spotted the blondie packing his things in the boot of the car, you waited patiently by the corner to recollect your mess of a mind and muster the itsy bit of courage you had left. Once you heard the soft shutting of the boot, your eyes followed to see him approaching the driver’s seat until he stopped in his tracks to see you, the way your eyes held so much anxiety and worry that they could crack any moment.
“Do you... need something?” he asked warily. He fully aware of his attempts to make up for his actions were pushed away and that maybe you would feel better once you were given the space. But that was until you were standing right in front of him, not a meter away, and not avoiding his soft gaze. You stood a feet away from him, your fingers giving away your anxiety levels as they fumbled with the hem of your shirt while your gaze remained firm on his.
“We need to talk,”
This wasn’t what you planned. You hadn’t planned for the ride to be this silent, to be this uncomfortable that you felt like crawling right out of your skin and scream for help. Your first words were ‘to talk’ but those were also your last as the both of you sat in the car, soft music playing in the background but all you could hear was the pounding of your heart against your chest and the screams of your conscience for you to do something, anything. But you were beaten in the chase.
“So what did you want to talk about?” Mark spoke up as he looked at you through the sideview mirror.
“It’s about the...the k-kiss,” you allowed the music to drown yourself out while heat began to rush to our cheeks and colour them in hues of pink. You silently thanked the dark night for hiding your rosy cheeks, even if it was just a little. But Mark let out a little ‘oh’ and you couldn’t help but let your heart to sink and a lump to grow in your throat. Before you could tune out the noise for the upcoming rejection, Mark let his hand to hover over yours, and when he was given silence, he took it as a ‘yes’ to let him hold onto yours.
“Is this what you’ve been nervous about all day?” He questioned. There was no hint of teasing and instead, his soft and calming voice brought your nerves to a quieter place while your fingers stopped fidgetting and that you could finally look at him without your thoughts screaming at you. “How did you know?”
“Your body was tense when we were doing the scene we’ve rehearsed. And you were a little hesitant in jumping into my arms,” he softly chuckled while your cheeks grew fiery. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have let it get to my head. If I didn’t mistaken your actions, maybe we could still be friends or something I don’t know I just-” Mark tightened his grip around your hand before interlacing your fingers with his. “Why do you mean by ‘still be friends’? ‘mistaken my actions?” He questioned once more. “it’s because you don’t feel the same way as me, dummy,” you huffed, attempting to unlatch his fingers off of yours, but he tightened it even more as a playful smile was plastered on his face. “Your the dummy for even thinking that way, love,” and the nickname sends shivers down your spine while your eyes grew large. Was he...?
“I like you too, (y/n). What else could I mean?” and this time he let out a loud laugh, eliciting a smile from you. “But you didn’t kiss me back, dumbass. How would I have known?” you huffed, folding your arms even though your interlaced fingers limited you. “How could I when you did it out of nowhere? You would’ve been off-guard if I did it to you too,” Mark slowly stepped onto the brakes as the traffic light turned from green to red, allowing him the pleasure of seeing your face in the red light.
“No I wouldn’t-”
Your words were caught of by his lips on yours while you sat in your seat, frozen and unable to move. You could feel his lips turning into a smug smirk as he detached himself from you to give attention to the road, the red light now turning green, along with your shortcircuited brain finalling realizing what had happened before you.
“You’re lucky you’re driving,”
“Why?
“Because I really want to kiss your face,”
“Then I’m not very lucky, baby”
A/N: wow this was in my drafts like a month ago and I finally got it done today (and again at 4am I really need to get my shit together) hope you guys liked this while I go hibernate real quick
#got7#igot7#mark#mark tuan#imagine#scenario#writing#fanfic#fanfiction#kpop#imagines#writings#scenarios
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The DUFF
the duff au // college au // future smut // humour // basketball player jungkook // dancer jimin // best friends jin + taehyung
Your annoying neighbour and childhood friend, Jungkook, strikes a deal with you to help you get the attention of your crush, Jimin, if you help him pass his philosophy class.
warnings: sexual content, drinking, swearing, use of the words ‘fat’ and ‘ugly’
@hobijoon @baepsaetan @rimuslymoony @lordofassgard
Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4;
Part 1:
It was no secret Kim Seokjin and Kim Taehyung were two of the best-looking humans to ever grace this godforsaken campus, and it was no secret that they were your best friends. The three of you were practically attached at the hip or rather… hips. See, the thing is, neither Jin nor Taehyung were always sex gods. In fact, Taehyung was bullied by an upperclassman for a little while in preschool and that upperclassman happened to be Jin, who turned out to be projecting his own experiences onto the little nerdy tater-tot that was the young Taehyung. It was after class that you heard a yelp coming from the boys’ bathroom and, being young and pure at heart, you didn’t hesitate to check it out- finding Taehyung shoved up against the sinks, Jin holding him by the collar.
“Hey!” You remember yelling.
“What are you doing in here, yucky girl?” Jin taunted, letting go of Taehyung.
“What are you doing with Tae-Tae?”
Anyway, long story short, you’ve been best friends ever since then. They’ve always had your back and you’ve always had theirs. The fact that they were practically angels on Earth, with features that looked like they were painted by the masters, didn’t really have any affect on you. You never felt like an odd one out or anything… you just felt normal. Of course, in high school, the occasional person made a comment about you being out of their league, but mainly people wanted to be on your good side to get to them, hiding their intentions with great skill while momentarily making you feel special. There are countless examples of girls befriending you to get closer to them. Those things almost always ended up the same way, with them in Jin or Taehyung’s bed. You were always too ashamed to tell either of them how used you had felt and they were both too oblivious to see it as that.
In university, however, you didn’t have a problem with any of that childish shit. Everyone here seems so much more… ‘chilled’. Even Taehyung chilled out, only sleeping with one, maybe two, girls a week and limiting his alcohol intake to the weekend only… usually. Your relationship with him has also… evolved. Occasionally, and you mean occasionally, the two of would hook up, but that’s because you’re both now mature adults and, as Taehyung told Jin, you are both capable of ‘handling that shit’. Not to mention how undeniably good it is, which is why you both come back to it. But when the morning comes, it isn’t a big deal for him to roll out of your bed and pad tiredly across the living room to his, well, to his room. They aren’t just your best friends; Taehyung and Jin are now your roommates, too.
At first, you and Taehyung tried to keep it a secret, knowing how Jin would react, you always planned on telling him, the three of you practically shared everything and it was always a three or nothing dynamic. You still recall his lecture after he walked in on you and Taehyung cuddling naked in your sleep in Taehyung’s room.
“What is this?” He asked in a shrill voice.
“Oh, fuck,” Taehyung grunted after realizing what Jin had just walked in. He sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes to clear the sleep.
“Jin?” You asked after you managed to force your eyes open.
“I swear to god I’ll move out if you ever, and I mean EVER, keep me up with your gross sounds and shit.” He exclaimed, throwing his hands around passionately, his face getting red. He suddenly disappeared, leaving you and Taehyung sitting there with the blanket over your bare chests, watching the door in confusion. “Absolutely DISGUSTING,” You heard him muttering to himself. “Here!” Jin yelled, throwing a bunch of condoms from various labels over the two of you after he returned. “I fucking hate you both.” He whined loudly, slamming the door behind him.
But, truthfully, the thing between the two of you did nothing to interfere with your friendship, if it did, you would have ended it long ago. Hell, neither of you blinked an eye when the other one brought a person home, unless it meant an interruption to your movie night or something. Taehyung was fucking infamous for forgetting plans. In fact, Taehyung was probably the most active supporter of your big ass crush, constantly urging you to talk to him or shoving you in his direction whenever you saw him around campus… which was pretty often due to your shared classes. And it wasn’t even that often that you hooked up, only every couple of weeks when you found yourselves alone at the apartment and were both in the mood. Usually you’d just take the opportunity to watch Bachelor in Paradise because Jin would always veto it, giving some sob story of how it brings back memories of the terrifying world of high school dating and being pressurized to be with someone within a pretty shitty circle of people. The story never failed to make you and Taehyung roll your eyes. So yeah, usually, you’d both just revel in the chance to catch up on the admittedly terrible show that, somehow, had you both addicted. Sometimes you’d pause to give him a blowjob or because his cuddles turned too touchy, his hand slowly falling to your breasts, his long fingers slipping under your shirt to give your boob a squeeze, but you never failed to finish the episode.
“Taehyung!” You yell, smoke coming out of your ears, your footsteps loud as you stomp angrily to his room. Swinging his door open you are faced with a familiar sight of him sharing his bed with a beautiful girl, usually you’d spare a friendly ‘morning’, but right now you are way too angry.
“Morning, sunshine,” Taehyung teases, the snarl on your face obvious to the freshly woken prick head.
“Shut the fuck up,” You snap, “sorry.” you smile at the girl apologetically, realizing, while this is normal for this household, it may not be very normal for her.
“No proble-” She says softly but gets cut off by Taehyung’s raspy morning voice.
“If you’re looking for your portfolio, it’s on the toilet in my bathroom.” He tells you, noticing the way you are looking around his room like a mad woman.
“Your bathroom? You know what, I don’t give a fuck,” Your voice trails off from him as you disappear into his bathroom. “I told you to get this back to me last night!” You yell loud enough for him to hear you, then appearing in the bedroom again. “I’m fucking late, ass bag.”
“Have a good day!” He shouts happily so that you can hear him after you leave his room, the door banging loudly behind you, causing Jin to yell from his room.
“Hey! Shut up, you pigs!”
6:30 am. You were already 10 minutes late. You practically kick open the fifth door of the morning as you exit your apartment in a frantic rush, your body vibrating with nerves and three cups of coffee and no food. But instead of stepping into the passage of your apartment building, you step into something, or rather someone. You walk straight into a hard chest, fumbling backwards and hitting your door, the pages from your portfolio flying everywhere. Looking up, you finally manage to see who the person is. Jeon Jungkook.Your annoying ass neighbor who literally followed you from your hometown to a university you chose specifically to get away from everyone except Jin and Taehyung. He was the typical charming boy who won over every parent’s heart. The boy who turned out cute but was too daft to form a coherent sentence unless it was to get into a girl’s pants, the boy who became a high school jock, leaving you and your once decent friendship in the dirt to hang out with the ‘cool kids’ and smoke weed in the locker rooms.
“Shit,” He mumbles under his breath, immediately crouching to start collecting your scattered pages.
“Of course the reason you followed me across the country was to do things like this. Why is it you get such pleasure from fucking up my life, Jeon?” You ask, your body now also crouching, close enough to his to get a whiff of his fresh cologne while you rush to collect your work.
“Oh come on, Y/N,” You prepare yourself for the comeback you can already hear in his tone, “you know that’s not the reason.” He hums in disappointment making you look up and into his daring eyes, dark and playful as always. “I couldn’t survive without you as my neighbor, you give me confidence.”
“What’s that even supposed to mean?”
“You make me look good, babe.” He winks.
You scoff at his underhanded jab. Please, as if. You? Making Jungkook look good? Jungkook could barely make himself a bowl of cereal while you were working towards one of the top positions in your major.
“Whatever,” You hiss, grabbing the pages from his hands as you stand up. “Just try stay out of my way. Alright, Jeon?”
You don’t wait a second for his response before you’re rushing down the hall, stumbling over your feet as you try to organize your mess of work. Jungkook smiles fondly to himself.What a weird girl.
“You know I can’t stay away from you, Y/N!”
Seeing Jimin on campus took you by surprise, causing you to stumble back into the person behind you on the way out of lecture hall.
“Jesus Christ, woman,” The person grunted, shoving himself passed you. You couldn’t even get yourself to say sorry; you were way too focused on the head of blonde hair and the angelic smile that went with it.
What was he doing so early here on a Friday morning? Not that you’d worked out his timetable or anything… You shuffled behind one of the big shrubs just outside the door and watched as the boy walked across the quad from the opposite side, throwing his head back as his laughter rang itself all the way to your ears like a choir of church singers. He parted ways with the group of people he was walking with and started walking right in your direction. Realizing he was literally walking towards you, you dropped down in a panic, hiding from him before he could get a chance to see you. He, however, was soon enough standing beside you, clearing his throat. You slowly lift your head to look at him, your cheeks burning with desperate embarrassment. He smiled down at you with curiosity on his features and a slight tilt of his head.
“Oh, uh, Jimin! Hi!” You rush, standing up to your feet and dusting off your skirt, “I was just, uh, just relaxing after my lecture.”
“I’d say you’ve found a good spot,” He starts, his face friendly, but then he starts to reach one hand out to your face, causing you to get stuck on a breath. “But it looks like this bush wouldn’t like that.” He finishes in a joking, endearing tone, picking a leaf from your hair and flicking it to the side.
“Oh,” You laugh, hoping to god you don’t sound as awkward as you feel, and rake your hand through your hair to see if there are any more leaves.
“Hey, so I gotta run, but I came over here to ask if you wanted to come to a party tonight?” He asks, sliding his hands into the pockets of his chino shorts, which he matched with a white button up and red sneakers.
“A party? Yeah, I like parties. Go to them all the time.” You mentally slap yourself as soon as you say that.
Jimin chuckles, “Yeah, yeah, I’ve seen you and the boys around the town,” He smiles, his tone still interestingly jokey. You didn’t realize how airy he could be in actual conversation. “So yeah, my frat is throwing a party and… wait, you know my frat, right?”
“Yeah… I think so. Alpha Nu, right?” Of course you know his fucking frat.
“Yeah, that’s the one!” He grins and you get butterflies knowing you made him smile that way. “It starts at 7 but I’d recommend you only pitch around 9? That’s when things actually start getting fun,” He tells you, but cuts himself off, “that’s if you even wanna come, of course.” He smiles sheepishly. He’s so cute your heart might explode.
“Of course I do!” You let slip and clear your throat, “I mean, I’ll probably check it out after this other… thing… with, uh, Tae.”
Jimin’s eyes show a glimmer of excitement. Is this seriously happening?
“Awesome! See you there.” He smiles, squeezing your shoulder briefly before spinning around to leave. “Check you around, Y/N.”
Y/N, Y/N, Y/N. He knows your name.
Your smile practically splits your cheeks in half as you pull your phone out of your pocket and start walking. You start typing a message on your group chat with Taehyung and Jin when you walk into something hard again. And, telling from that voice you hear in your nightmares, it’s Jungkook again.
“We’ve really gotta stop meeting like this,” He smirks, his hands on your upper arms to steady you. You shake out of his grip (when did he get so tall??) and roll your eyes.
“You know,” You begin, “at first I was just kidding when I called you a stalker, but now I’m really starting to get weary about you.”
Jungkook laughs, turning his head to the side and, you’re pretty sure, checking out the ass of the girl who just walked past you. “Um, excuse me?” You click your fingers in his face. “Good to see your attention span hasn’t increased one bit since high school.”
Has she always been this funny? “I’ll have you know, my attention span has always been fucking great. I could look at that ass all day.” He says, tilting his head to get one last glimpse of the girl.
You scoff and roll your eyes again. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”
Not really, he thinks, but he isn’t quite ready to walk away. “Why were you smiling like an idiot at your phone when you walked into me?”
You think for a second if Jungkook is worth the story, the words will probably slide down the water slide in his mind and right out his ear. But still, you can’t help but talk about Jimin whenever you get the opportunity. “I’ll have you know, I was just asked out by a very cute guy.”
“Jimin?” Jungkook frowns.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“What’s what supposed to mean?”
“That look on your face. You’re not always that ugly.”
Jungkook laughs like you’re a friend, teasing him like friends do. Which only has you rolling your eyes for the third time in the course of 3 minutes. “Just tell me, fuck head!” You punch his chest lightly.
“Ok, ok,” He raises his hands in defeat. “It’s just, I’m pretty sure he has a thing for Jin… I think he was talking to you because you’re the D.U.F.F.”
“What the fuck is ‘the D.U.F.F’?”
“You’re not serious are you? You’ve been the D.U.F.F since those friends of yours hit puberty.” Jungkook says, looking genuinely confused.
“I’m being serious, Jungkook, what is that?”
“The designated ugly fat friend,” He reveals, his tone normal as if he didn’t just say what he did.
“Excuse me?” You ask, bitterness on your tongue as you boil over with anger.
Jungkook immediately starts to look defensive, his hands coming up into the air once more in surrender. “Look it’s not a big deal it just means-”
“It’s not a big deal that you just called me fat and ugly?” You yell whisper as a professor walks past you.
“No, I didn’t call you that!”
“That’s exactly what you said, Jean Fuckhead.”
“The D.U.F.F is just the least attractive friend in a friend group,” He says like that makes the whole thing mean nothing.
“Oh, so you’re just saying that I’m the ugliest one amongst my friends?” You ask spitefully.
“Yes, yes, that’s all I’m saying!” He smiles, relieved you finally ‘get’ what he’s saying. But when he sees your face contorting with even more anger (which he didn’t think possible at this point) he realizes how that, too, came out. “No, I mean, you’re not ugly, you’re just not as attractive as Jin and Taehyung.”
You stay silent for a little bit. It’s pretty much impossible to be more attractive than Jin or Taehyung. “Ok… so, that has nothing to do with Jimin asking me to his party.” You try convincing him and yourself. Of course, it is very much public knowledge that Jimin is bi, and… Jin is obviously very hot… and he tutors Jimin… But then why would he ask only you? Why wouldn’t he ask you to invite Jin as well?
“Y/N,” Jungkook sighs condescendingly and you want to kick him in the nuts, “that’s what the D.U.F.F does… they’re the gateway friend to their hotter friends”
“Shut up, and would you stop calling me the fucking D.U.F.F?” You push yourself past him. “That isn’t even a thing.”
Jungkook stops you with a strong hand around your wrist. You let out a breath and turn to look at him, “What?”
“I wasn’t trying to insult you-”
“Save it, Jeon.” You wiggle your wrist from his grip and turn to walk away, putting both your middle fingers up to flip the dickhead behind you off.
Jungkook smiles, funny.
You unlock your phone again and see the message you started typing:
To ‘mains’:
JIMIN JUST INVITED ME TO A PARTY!!
You groan and delete it, stuffing your phone back into your pocket grumpily.It was always a mystery to you how Jungkook managed to be so popular. Like, college is full of people. Thousands of them. It’s pretty difficult to manage to get people to give a shit about you, yet, here he was. Apparently he was ‘hot’ or something. To you, it was all bullshit. You reckoned someone like Yoongi, the overwhelmingly talented music major and Jungkook’s friend (he never could be friends with guys his own age, could he?), should be the name everyone knew, not someone who could bounce a ball on a court and had abs and was… ‘good looking’.
“Good looking my ass,” You grumble through a mouth full of salad.
“Who’s licking your ass?” Jin asks, faking a face of utter terror as he plops down next to you at your tiny kitchen table.
You laugh, already feeling a sense of relief from your otherwise shitty day. “No one’s going near my ass with a ten foot poll, I tell you.”
“Oh, don’t lie,” Taehyung suddenly chimes in, entering the kitchen to scour the fridge.
“Yeah, we both know you’re kinky as fuck, dude.” Jin agrees.
“Have you met yourself??” You throw yourself around on your chair to ask Taehyung.
“Hey, I’ve never denied I’m kinky.” Taehyung says casually and takes a gulp of his water before joining you at the table.
“What are your plans for tonight?” You change the subject.
“Gotta tutor,” Jin tells you, he looks sad about it so you give his hand a sarcastically reassuring squeeze.
“At least you’re making money. You, Tae?”
“We’re going to the opening of that art show,” He reminds you.
“Oh shit…”
“Oh, how the tables have turned,” Jin shakes his head with a shit eating smile. “Finally, Taehyung shall feel the burn of being forgotten by one’s so called best friend.”
You laugh but stop when you meet Taehyung’s eyes and realize he’s serious. “Is there something important that’s come up?”
“Uhm,” You stutter, trying to figure out how to tell him the boy you’ve liked for months invited you to his party and that it completely took up all your thinking capacity… that and Jeon Jungkook’s stupid face. Pffft, ‘the D.U.F.F’. What does he think this is? High school?
“Cat got your tongue?” Jin muses.
“Not the time, Jin.” You sing, not sparing him a look as you let Taehyung’s slow burning glare eat you alive.
“Spit it out, Y/N, at least be honest.” Taehyung says plainly, his words leaving a sting.
“See, the thing is,” You twiddle your thumbs on the table, “Jimin may or may not have invited me to a party at his frat tonight…”
“JIMIN?!” They both exclaim at the same time, well, Jin more squeals, but anyway.
“Yes,” You whisper, trying but failing to contain your smile.
“Permission granted,” Taehyung grins.
“Like you don’t ditch us all the time,” Jin says in your defense, hitting Taehyung over the head.
Taehyung has no witty response so he just moves on, “What are you gonna wear?” He asks excitedly, the crazy fashion major side of him shimmering across his eyes.
“Oh, no, no, no,” You quickly dismiss that notion, “I am not getting all dolled up.”
“So basically you’re gonna go out with your crush, the one you’ve liked since practically day one, in mom jeans and a faded shirt?” He asks with crossed arms.
You look down at your pale blue shirt and paler high wasted jeans and then back at Taehyung who is judging your outfit obviously.
“Yes,” You say simply.
“That’s what you’re going to the party in?” You seem to hear a fly or something of the sorts buzzing behind you as you walk down the passage towards the elevator. Jungkook sighs, “Y/N, don’t ignore me, Jesus.”
You throw your head back and let out a groan loud enough for him to hear. “I’m not really up for one of our fun games of ‘insult Y/N.” You say, turning around to come face to face with Jungkook.
You take a secret glance down at what he’s wearing- a cameo jacket that comes down to his hips which he wears over a slightly longer grey shirt that comes down over his black jeans, slightly baggy towards the thighs and go skinny into his black Doc Martins. Not bad,you think for a second before remembering who you’re talking to.
Jungkook laughs, “Relaaax, babe. You look… nice.” He lies.
“Look, I know that living opposite one another means it’s inevitable we’ll run into each other, but three times a day is a bit excessive, don’t you think?” You question.
“You’ve been counting,” He winks.
You give up and turn around to continue your way to the elevator but hear his jogging footsteps behind you, and he is walking next to you within seconds. “You’re going to Alpha Nu’s party, correct?” He asks.
“Yes,”
“Great! I can give you a ride.”
“Uh, I’m ok thanks.”
“I’m not getting drunk, I promise.”
“Fine,”
The song playing off Jungkook’s phone in the car reminded you of your childhood, it was the one that played at your first high school dance. Jungkook had already started hanging out with the cool kids, but he hadn’t completely started ignoring you yet. You remember standing at the back of the hall, watching everyone else dance. You felt so awkward. Jungkook had come up to you and asked if you wanted to dance as this slow song started playing. That was before he’d gotten tall and buff and good at sports, that was before he became an asshole who spent his days insulting you despite being able to do literally anything else. You doubted Jungkook even remembered this song. He probably doesn’t even remember that night.
“You really think this outfit is that bad?” You ask.
He glances your way for a second and smirks, his face being lit up by passing streetlights. “I mean, it’s not great. You’re going to this party to impress Jimin, right?”
“’Impress’ is a strong wor-”
“The least you could have done is put on a black dress or something like that, black dresses drive guys crazy, especially with red lipstick.”
“I’m not trying to sell myself to him,” You cross your arms.
He laughs, the veins in his hands visible as he changes gears. You look out the front window instead. “You always take things so seriously. I’m not saying you should ‘sell’ yourself to him. I’m saying you should work on how you present yourself to him.”
You silently take in what he’s saying, but you don’t give him the satisfaction of letting him know you internalized what he said.
“You do that?”
“We all do,” He answers. “I mean, like us normal sexually active people.” Of course he had to add that.
“Excuse me, I’m sexually active.” You laugh awkwardly; knowing full well the last time you got laid was 1 month ago when you climbed into Taehyung’s bed at 4am after studying all night. You were 100% sure you had chocolate all over your mouth and were wearing your old gym shirt from high school and your period underwear and he was wearing those strange posh silk pajamas. So that doesn’t really count. Taehyung doesn’t really count. And the last time you hooked up with… someone else… was 3 months ago…
“Oh yeah, when was the last time you got laid?”
“Recently,” You lie. “Look, I don’t know what your obsession with me is all about but-”
“You know what, I’ll help you,” Jungkook suddenly announces proudly.
You stare at him as he busies himself parking about a block from the frat. “What?”
He turns the engine off and turns to you with a look of pure self-satisfaction on his face. “I’ll help you get Jimin’s attention.”
“I don’t need your help,” You scoff.
“Yes, you do. Come on, Y/N,” He almost sounds like he’s pleading. “You know I know what I’m doing. Jimin won’t know what hit him. I’ll teach you everything you need to know.”
He can’t just want to help you from the goodness in his heart. He doesn’t have a heart. “Why the fuck are you being so weird, Jeon? What do you want from me?”
He looks like you’ve just insulted his entire family tree and brings his hand to his chest in pain. “Can’t I just help you out… as a friend?”
“Oh please,” You scoff. “friend is a very strong word.”
“What do you mean, babe?” Jungkook frowns, “We’ve been friends since primary school.”
You roll your eyes and don’t answer. “Why do you want to help me get Jimin’s attention, dude? Why are you so weird?”
“Nice to know this is how I’ll get treated when I try and offer help-” He stops when he sees your unamused face. “Ok, I may be struggling a bit with my grades and I know you know your shit so, like, I was thinking you would… help… tutor me, or something, I don’t know…” He rubs his neck awkwardly.
So that’s it. “I see,” You hum. “How interesting.”
“Oh, come on, don’t give me that look,” He shakes his head. “I’m kind of in shit at the moment. I was just thinking we could do a friendly a trade. I’ll help you get dick and you help me up my grades before the end of term.”
“For the last time, I don’t need your help getting dick!”
“Yeah but what about Jimin’s dick?” He tries to convince you. Is he that dumb? Does he not understand humans at all?
You’re about to tell him to fuck right off when someone bangs against the window next to Jungkook making both of you jump. Jungkook looks down for a second after seeing who it is and you hear him mutter ‘fuck’. You don’t see whom it is but he takes a breath and turns on the engine to roll the window down.
“Hey, baby,” One of the prettiest girls you’ve ever seen says sensually and takes his head into her hands and you notice her perfectly done yellow nails with small cherries on them. She places a lengthily smooch on his lips and you nearly puke. She finally lets go of him with a smack of her lips just as you were about to get out of the car and avoid the sex scene as well as your conversation with Jungkook.
“Why were you sitting in the car for so long?” She pouts and then finally notices you. “Who is this?” You kind of want to laugh out loud.
“Oh,” Jungkook rubs his neck, “this is one of my friends. We were talking.”
“Ok, well anyway,” She completely brushes you off and opens the door to literally pull him out, “can we go now?”
Jungkook sighs, “Hana, I’m having a conversation right now.”
You watch them but the car cuts off their heads but you can practically hear her scowling. “Whatever.” She says and walks off back towards the party. You laugh to yourself as she flicks her long red hair over her shoulder.
“She seems like she just walked out of a high school movie,” You can’t help but say as Jungkook climbs back into the car.
Luckily he doesn’t get insulted, he just laughs but it sounds tired and not like his usual boyish laugh. “Tell me about it.”
“Your girlfriend?”
Jungkook closes the window and door and turns the engine off again before answering, “Ex.”
“Ah,”
He turns to you and smiles, “What do you think about my proposition?”
“We still on that?”
“Y/N, you’re literally wearing a shirt with a zombie on it.”
“Everyone loves zombies,” You say like it’s obvious.
“Ah yes, and the very sight of the gruesome and oddly large breasted creature will definitely cause Jimin to pop a boner from the other side of the room.”
“That’s the plan,” You say sarcastically and open the door to finally walk away but you hear Jungkook opening and closing his door and once again he has no trouble catching up to you.
“Ok, here’s the deal. How about you see how things go tonight and if my idea at all entices you, you know where I live. Sound good?”
You reach the lawn in the front of the big house and start making your way through the scattered crowds of people.
“Y/N,” Jungkook puts his hand on your shoulder and makes you stop to look in his eyes and he actually looks sincere. “Sound good?”
“Yeah, yeah,” You smile, knowing you aren’t promising him anything except to think about it.
“Do you want me to get you a drink?” He grins.
“I’ll survive.”
Ever since Jungkook brought up the stupid concept of the D.U.F.F, you feel like that’s all you can see. You haven’t seen Jimin since you got here. You’ve greeted people and taken one or two shots with some friends from class, but you find yourself leaning against one of the walls in the large living space. You watch the groups of people bitterly.
Stacy from English? The D.U.F.F.
Adam on the basketball team? The D.U.F.F.
Jimin? The person people go through D.U.F.Fs to get to.
Jungkook? The person people go through D.U.F.Fs to get to. Also the man you currently want to kill.
Seriously, how could someone be so immature? With those big teeth and his cocky smile. Did he stop growing in the first year of high school? Well, obviously not physically because he’s tall and strong and has a thick neck and a nice jaw… and he’s dumb. Very dumb and right now you hate hi-
“Y/N!”
Jimin. Shit, you forgot you were even here for him, your brain was so consumed by all this D.U.F.F shit. It’s better than brooding over not getting any attention from the man that invited you, you reckon.
“Hey, Jimin,” You smile, suddenly worrying if you look normal or like a sad, drunk girl as he leans himself against the wall next to you.
“Enjoying the party?” He asks, his eyes piercing as a small smile plays on his lips. His arms are crossed, the lighting dim on his sharp features and his hair slightly curled and hanging over his brows. Shit, he’s sexy.
“Uh, y-eah,” You giggle. Why the fuck are you giggling?
“Let’s go get a drink,” He announces, grabbing you by your hand and pulling you through the people. You watch where your bodies are connected in wonder, your skin is burning.
He let’s go as soon as you reach the kitchen and you catch yourself nearly reaching out to take his hand back into your own. His smile is blinding as he spins around to grab a bottle of vodka.
“Why do we get drunk so often?” He asks then laughs, bringing the whole bottle to his lips. He puts his hand on your shoulder; his eyes glisten with something foreign and distant, but happy nonetheless. “Isn’t everything pointless?”
You don’t know how to respond, he didn’t exactly say the lightest thing, and his angelic face and sparkling eyes contrast to the dark concept, but he waits for you to say something. “Wow…”
Jimin takes your answer well and soon he’s grinning again and thrusting the bottle into your face. “You know,” He starts as you take a sip of vodka, “there’s something about you that makes you easy to speak to.”
His unintentional compliment makes you blush, even though he’s only said 10 words to you. Suddenly he’s taking the bottle from you and taking your hand again, pulling you out the kitchen door and towards the steps, causing you to almost fall down them. He sits down and drags you down with him, his warm hand still holding onto yours. The evenings are getting colder and his long exhale turns into a subtle white cloud. You shiver and rub your arms, you obviously get nervous around Jimin, but right now you might explode.
“You know,” He sighs, “I’m not sure if drinking while I’m sad makes me feel better, or if it just makes things a thousand times worse.”
Your eyes widen and you straighten your back, “You’re- you’re sad about something? What’s,” You clear your throat, “what’s up?”
“I want to dance, Y/N. I want to dance so bad, that’s what I want to do with my life, but I don’t think my parents will ever talk to me again if I do something as ‘reckless’ as that. Plus, there’s something else driving me a little crazy right now-”
“Jimin, get your ass in here,” A man emerges from the kitchen, pulling Jimin up by his shoulders, causing his hand to fall from yours. He’s pulling Jimin inside and he only spares you a glance to share one of his dazzling smiles before disappearing from you.
So quickly, so quickly was he here and then he was gone. How could you ever expect him to want to spend the night with you? How could you let yourself get your hopes up like that? You’re just one of the many people he invited to his party. You groan and look out over the lawn and watch as some people stumble down the relatively empty street. From the corner of your eye you spot figures, when you look you see a man pushing someone up against a tree, engaging in some intense make out session. When you notice the familiar tall, firm frame broad shoulders, you know it’s Jungkook. You nearly puke. Of course it’s him. He looks like he’s swallowing the poor girl whole.
You push yourself up from the steps and make your way over to him, it takes a few pats on his shoulder for him to even notice you’re there.
“What?” He groans when he sees you, his breath coming out in pants from suffocating the girl unfamiliar to you.
“Ok,” You say.
“Ok?” He frowns, looking impatient, his hands still playing with her breasts. You visibly gag and that makes him chuckle. He squeezes them and grins, “What?” Squeeze. “What do you want?”
“I agree to the,” You glance to the girl who is occupied with kissing his neck, you whisper, “deal.”
“Seriously?” He looks excited and he looks cute with his eyes all-wide like that.
“Yes,” You say already turning around to walk away.
“Wait, Y/N!” He calls after you. “Where are you going?”
“Home!”
Jungkook looks down at the girl he has pushed up against the tree, he looks at her large breasts and groans, “Look, I gotta go.” He steps away from her rather unapologetically and runs after you.
When you see him next to you, you let out a noise of annoyance. “Can’t get enough of me?”
“I told you I’d be the designated driver.”
#jungkook scenario#bangtanbuds#bangtanwriters-net#busanboysnet#kwriterskollection#jungkook smut#jimin scenario#jimin smut#bts scenarios#jungkook imagines#jimin imagine#featuring:#taehyung#jin#hoseok#yoongi#namjoon
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Some Predictions, 2018
I had the thought this morning that I might be better off thinking about the future adversarially, as if I were wrestling with a shadowed but immensely strong and fanged opponent, instead of looking out on a rolling plain filled with slowly ambling herbivorous events and interactions. Alfred North Whitehead said
It is the business of the future to be dangerous.
And maybe I should approach it from a different angle: maybe I should visualize my work as a futurist more like storming a castle than opening the mail.
Some of my predictions have been made in Twitter, already, while others are seeing the light of day for the first time, here. Others have been modified from 2017 predictions or other sources.
I placed these in four broad categories: Technology, Politics, Economics, and Climate. I’ll leave Arts and Culture for a separate post.
Politics
Democrats will regain control of the US House of Representatives, taking a/ all the seats in counties that voted for Clinton now held by GOP reps (23), b/ holding all the Dem seats in districts that voted for Trump (12), and /c targeting districts with retiring moderate GOP reps, districts with close races last election, and some wildcards adding up to 24 wins. It’s going to happen though, I bet. (see great graphics on this at WaPo). Bannon is a big factor, accelerating the splintering of the GOP.
Democrats will take the Senate, even though the Dems have 26 Senate seats up for grabs, while GOP has only 8 seats up for reelection. Bannon is a big factor, accelerating the splintering of the GOP.
Despite campaign rhetoric, Trump has maintained or expanded the wars that he inherited from Obama. Trump has achieved none of his major foreign policy goals. I predict 2018 will just get worse. (via twitter)
European populism will continue to expand, as detailed by Yascha Mounk and Martin Eiermann.
Mueller will find clear signs of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, and will indict campaign officials, including Donald Trump Jr., but not Donald Trump. Pence will resign since he was the leader of the transition team when it all came down, and Trump will appoint Nikki Haley as Vice-President, the first woman and Asian-American to hold that office.
Iran will be struck with on-going protests as a result of a cascades of social and economic problems: drought, water, unemployment, high prices, welfare cuts, corruption, and government policies. The government will start out trying to moderate the protests, but will ultimately ramp up the use of force. The country will move to crisis which will not be resolved in 2018.
Putin will win reelection.
Concerns about Brexit, populism, and anti-EU sentiment in Europe leads to more unstable governments there, and internal policy changes on Chinese debt lead to slowing development there. Both of these trends have negative impacts on the world economy.
Drought and heat wave in Asia, Africa, and india lead to enormous disruption and policy challenges. Nationalist and populist governments of Europe and Asia close their borders to new migrants and climate refugees.
GOP offers of 2018 bipartisanship fall apart after infrastructure discussions reach an impasse: GOP wants to use private-public partnerships, basically granting large sums to major developers, while Democrats favor a broadly-based jobs program coordinated with State governments. As a result, nothing gets done prior to 2018 elections.
#MeToo continues as a potent cultural force with significant impact in the political realm, with an on-going stream of male politicians brought low.
The Syrian civil war will come to a negotiated end, with an agreement for war amnesties for al-Assad’ government and the rebels, excluding ISIS forces. A complex multi-stage approach to the creation of a new government is proposed, but not solidified in 2018.
The standoff in Catalonia will continue into 2018, without a resolution. Rajoy was been massively weakened by the growing perception of intransigence, and his lack of a real resolution to the Catalonia crisis. Meanwhile, the separatists in Catalonia can't rally around a coherent plan for independence in a European Union that seems adamantly opposed to fracturing of member countries, despite the growing movements in Catalonia and other regions.
The UK and EU come to agreement on a timetable and logistics for Brexit, although myriad details remain to be tacked down. However, the possibility of an amicable and close relationship -- not as close as Norway -- but an agreement that allows for Britain to participate on trade in the EU as a slight disadvantage but under EU law while limiting free immigration.
North Korea fires a low-yield (5 kilotons) nuclear missile to the middle of the Pacific and detonates it as 'proof that North Korea is a nuclear power that can't be trifled with', says Kim Jung-un. This is less than half the yeild of the Hiroshim bomb, and causes no direct injuries. Trump rattles his saber, but ultimately the world accepts the notion of a nuclear-armed North Korea joining Pakistan, India, Israel, Russia, China, France, UK, and US.
Israel's aggressive stance toward annexation of West Bank territory leads to international condemnation, but Trump's administration does little aside from calls for moderation. Many critics begin to call the Israeli model Apartheid, and European support for Israel, in particular, plummets. The US blocks UN resolutions calling for sanctions against Israel.
Technology
Amazon will pick Denver or Toronto as the site for its second HQ.
Amazon will acquire Slack for $15B. Work chat will continue as the dominant theme in work technology in 2018, although they is considerable pushback on its negatives, too.
Apple will acquire Tesla for $75B. Tim Cook will retire, and Elon Musk will become CEO of the merged Apple/Tesla, to be called Apple.
Microsoft will buy Salesforce for $100B. Benioff will retire to philanthropy.
Driverless fleets by various companies will be launched in 2018 – GM in NYC, Lyft taxis in Boston, Ford, Waymo in Phoenix.
A growing number of major corporations will deploy AI intended to augment or replace frontline and middle managers, leading to tens of thousands of managers being reassigned or let go. This will be the result of AI-to-AI communications, where narrowly- and deeply-focused AIs will collaborate with other complementary AIs at a pace that humans can’t keep up with. Employee engagement rises.
Amazon Alexa technology dominates the home, with Google a strong second, and Apple as a distant also-ran.
Netflix acquires Spotify for $10B.
The ability to run Android apps on Chromebook devices will lead to growing migration from Windows, Mac, and iOS devices.
Google will acquire Twitter for $20B. Jack Dorsey will step down, and Google will redesign Twitter in a crowdsourced process, looking ahead to integration with Google Photos, Google Maps, Youtube, AdSense, DoubleClick, Google Home, and Google Assistant.
Facebook, Twitter and other social media systems will mobilize a combination of human and AI-based filtering to counter the deluge of fake news directed by Russia and other malefactors during elections in 2018, having increased but not perfect success.
Google will acquire Medium for $2.5B.See 10, above.
Amazon will release Alexa Glasses, which allow wearer to communicate with Alexa services by voice, and get audio response by bone conduction and video response projected on the glasses. They will sell millions.
Economics
Major stock indexes will continue their growth of recent years, led by technology stocks, like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and others. However, the rate of growth will slow in the fall, as concerns about Brexit, populism, and anti-EU sentiment in Europe leads to more unstable governments there, and internal policy changes on Chinese debt lead to slowing development there. Both of these trends have negative impacts on the world economy, as does the drought and heat wave in Asia, Africa, and India.
Growing instability in Europe, due to the rise of nationalism and populism, will lead to a decline in European growth, and the return of problems with overly indebted countries and central banks.
China’s growth rate will slow because of internal and external concerns about deep debt overhang.
Sustainable energy will continue to drop in price, forcing energy systems to shift to battery systems to capture excess. As a result, coal and oil will continue to trend downward, and the energy sector will shift investments to sustainable sources.
Automation will increase worldwide, but the productivity paradox -- where those investments do not lead immediately to increase in productivity -- will continue, although many occupations (like financial services, IT, and retail, not just manufacturing) will start to see a decline in jobs.
Creative and freelance workers will begin to unionize as a means to counter the precarious nature of work in the gig economy, mobilized in part by the #MeToo, #Resistance, and #fightfor15 movements, and the leftward lean of the Democrats in the 2018 elections.
The concepts of ‘flexicurity’ and ‘fluidarity’ begin to form a central aspect of a new US labor movement.
Climate
2018 will be the hottest year on record.
The US will be hit with a record number of hurricanes.
Asia will be hit with a record number of typhoons.
The atmospheric levels of CO2 will reach a new record in fall 2018.
Africa, Asia, and India are confronted by extreme heat and drought, leading to famine, disorder, and heightened tensions. Hundreds of millions attempt to migrate from stricken regions, leading to reprisals, border wars, and growing catastrophe.
Puerto Rico is hit by several hurricanes, and its power is again knocked out. An additional million citizens emigrate to mainland US.
New York City is hit by a hurricane and large portions of the city’s already straining subway system are flooded. The prognosis is grim: it will take years and tens of billions to recover.
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Some answers for the question list prompt.
What’s the most important thing to know about you?
What subjects do you know about most?
What are the most important things you’ve learned in life?
What routines do you have?
How do you decide what to post on tumblr?
What do you post about on tumblr? How did you gain this knowledge about it?
Are there any artistic/literary/musical works you’d want people to see/read/listen to?
Who are the people you admire most?
What are the most important concepts for people to know?
What is your favourite characteristic in people?
Which artists do you listen to?
Which non-fiction authors do you enjoy? Which fiction authors do you enjoy?
Would you change anything in life if you could redo it?
What areas would you like to learn more about?
What are your hopes for the future?
What would you like to change about yourself?
What are your main interests?
What are some works which can take us into your mindset?
What’s the most important thing to know about you?
I want you to come away from our interactions feeling better than you arrived. Very seldom am I acting in bad faith.
Also, I will read anything you recommend (more often than is healthy for me).
What subjects do you know about most?
Cooking, cycling, sys admin and programming, and distributed computation.
What are the most important things you’ve learned in life?
How to be disappointed. This is not a joke answer. You'll make plans that won't work out due to external factors and you have to roll through that to the version of you that isn't phased by the setback.
Over communication is better than under communication. This one may be idiosyncratic but perseverance in the face of communication difficulties pays off more often than it hurts.
How to ride a bicycle. This made me functionally independent from a young age and I would give every kid the same freedom if I could. How to be safe on a bicycle.
How to have an opinion on everything. How to refrain from sharing your opinion when its not appropriate. This means you're able to enter any conversation or relationship with something to offer and also means you're not an overbearing ass when you do.
Coordination is hard.
What routines do you have?
Every two months, I break the caffeine dependence.
How do you decide what to post on tumblr?
There are three main categories of post. What I'm reading and some analysis to keep me honest, quality posts that resonate with me, and any post from someone I'm following where I have a response that seems relevant.
This is generally a place to dump my writing - only slightly better than a journal because some small amount of time it gets a response.
What do you post about on tumblr? How did you gain this knowledge about it?
Most of my knowledge is from recreational reading and some of it from life experience.
When I post, I try to strip identifying information out since I'm of an age to appreciate op-sec in identity on the Internet.
Are there any artistic/literary/musical works you’d want people to see/read/listen to?
This could be a very long, very crowded section. I'm going to include the first quality picks in each category that come to mind.
Beksinski, Gregory Crewdson
Rubberbandance, Firebird by Stravinsky
Terry Gilliam (Brazil, Fisher King), Pom Poko
Watership Down, Kim (Kipling)
Decision Making and Rationality in the Modern World (Stanovich)
Genesis, Gentle Giant, La Dispute
Bob and Doug MacKenzie
Who are the people you admire most?
I always had this problem when I was young when they asked in school "who is your hero?" because I didn't have an answer. Usually I mentioned my grandfather because he was the kindest and most supportive person that I knew. Honestly, I don't pay much attention to other people.
Of the people who are not in my life, Borges (for thinkers who can make improbable connections), Keanu Reeves and Tony Levin (for people who are kind, who can share), and Galois (for being transcendent).
What are the most important concepts for people to know?
The peak-end rule of experience applies to happiness and pain. An over focus on the average experience will not capture human experience.
Culture is not just food or a preference for certain colors in clothing and does not exist purely along racial/national lines. It would be too easy to break a town apart along fundamental values if the right questions were made a subject of public concern.
Addiction is about the need to escape. You don't break it by removing elements from life, you must supplant it with something worth living for.
How to use a turn signal?
What is your favourite characteristic in people?
Humility - direct honesty about the bounds of your knowledge.
Which artists do you listen to?
Various, I could dip into my records and put together a few primers. Genesis is my favorite group. I'm currently waiting on albums by Dessa, Protomen, and Circa Survive. When I find a song I like, I add it to my collection. When I find a band that performs well, I get their best album. My collection holds days worth of music.
Feel free to hit me up for targeted recommendations if you're bored.
Which non-fiction authors do you enjoy? Which fiction authors do you enjoy?
This is harder to answer than it should be as I've actually been remarkably bad about recording the books that I've read and its hard for me to recall them without some prompting information.
Nonfiction
Amartya Sen
Keith Stanovich
Jorge Luis Borges
Anne Carson
Fiction (not necessarily quality authors but I like them)
Glen Cook
David Gerrold
My favorite author that I haven't finished a work by
Leo Tolstoy
Waiting on their latest work
Patrick Rothfuss
Would you change anything in life if you could redo it?
I would never have chosen to live in the Bay Area for as long as I did.
If I could send one message to my younger self, I'd ask them not to neglect social knowledge. Its valuable when you need to get anything done (push model of action).
If I could send two messages, I'd ask them not to neglect their physical skills - they are not less valuable for not being "on the pathway to immortality".
What areas would you like to learn more about?
My reading list is too long. Here are some of the nonfiction materials on it.
early schools of atheism (The Epistle of Forgiveness by Al-Ma'arri)
history of class (The Making of the English Working Class by Thompson)
crime in London and the formation of the Thames River police (still looking...)
more riding techniques (Sport Riding Techniques by Ienatsch)
early religious evolution (The Formation of Hell by Bernstein)
distributed algorithm analysis (Distributed Computing by Herlihy)
social dynamics (Distinction by Bourdieu)
city dynamics (Out of the Mountains by Kilcullen)
home medicine (Where There is No Doctor by Werner, Green Pharmacy by Duke)
native american culture (Shooting Back from the Reservation by Hubbard)
chinese history (Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian)
What are your hopes for the future?
To reach a point where my ambitions and logistical skills are matched and I never take on more challenges than I can handle.
What would you like to change about yourself?
Less generalized anxiety would be nice.
To be a quicker writer, optionally a better, more coherent one too. It still takes me forever to put any kind of thought on page and that's a problem when you're an aspiring pseudo-intellectual like me.
What are your main interests?
Distributed coordination, theory and practice. Promoting good outcomes for people.
I wish I could be part of some mutual support organization but am honestly not that good with sustaining enduring relations with others.
What are some works which can take us into your mindset?
Rationality and the Modern World will always get my recommendation for thinking about humans thinking. War and Peace, I still have not finished this book but the deep empathy that Tolstoy displays in the early sections that I've read makes for a good reflection of my beliefs. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (both play and film) would also work.
I’d tag @drethelin, @morteledraco, @injygo, @house-carpenter, @bambamramfan. Feel free to play if you want to.
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Jealous Kitten
Yet another OneShot I posted on FF.net and Ao3, please check it out x)
He did it again.
He laughed with his lady again.
Adrien felt like pouncing at the redhead and do something really nasty to him. And shoving his pencils up his head was one of the nicer ways to make him stop laughing. The blonde growled and clenched his fists.
Nino placed a hand on his best friend’s shoulder and looked at their two laughing classmates worriedly.
“Dude, you look like you could kill someone.”, pretty accurate thought, Adrien praised the boy next to him in his thoughts.
“Really, Nino?”, he instead answered, his glare not leaving the young artist’s head.
“Yeah. Everything alright?”
“Of course. Everything’s just fine. Better than fine, actually. I’m feeling great. Of course, yeah… Kill me.”, he muttered the last thing under his breath and Nino tried to lean in to understand but then shrugged.
“It seemed to me that you were mad. Yeah, anyway, let’s catch a movie tonight, you’re up for it? I heard this new Marvel movie is-…”
Adrien growled again and now, his best friend picked it up.
“Woah, dude. Really, what’s up?”
“Nino, ‘m fine! Goddamnit!”
Alya nudged his side and grinned smugly.
“They’re pretty cute together, eh?”
That’s when the blonde exploded. He felt his face heating up and stormed away, leaving the school. Nino looked after him questioningly and then turned to Alya after shouting the young model’s name after him half-hearted.
“Uh, Alya, what’s happening?”
She giggled and shrugged, crossing her arms in front of her chest, her gaze still not leaving Nathaniel and Marinette talking.
“You just have to be oblivious most of the time, don’t you?”
When Nino attempted to ask her, what was going on, she just took his arms and laid them around her, making him hug her from behind.
“Anyway, let’s just say… Marinette’s available, and not just for one guy. Adrien has to learn that.”
“Wait, Adrien’s crushing on-…”
“You bet.”
He rested his head on his girlfriend’s head, closing his eyes.
“How do you know, though? Even I don’t.”
She laughed again and he felt her back bouncing against his belly.
“It’s so obvious. He looks at Marinette talking to Nathaniel, another boy, and is mad. Familiar much?”
“Familiar to what?”
“Yourself, just half a year ago. You threatened to kill Kim for helping me down the stairs when I had sprained my foot. And we hadn’t even been a thing back then.”
“Huh…”, Nino mumbled, recalling this not so bright moment in his life. He had been furious when even thinking about another boy touching his girl, “Yeah, I remember.”
He felt her smile and tightened his grip around her.
“So you think Adrien’s jealous?”
“Man, did you see his reaction? It’s almost worse than yours!”
He now laughed along with her when Marinette said goodbye to Nathaniel and joined the couple.
“Heh, you’re right.”
“As always.”, Alya replied, receiving a questioning look from her best friend.
“Right with what?”
“Meh, Nino is just being Nino, as always. I’m right and he’s wrong.”, Marinette and her laughed while the boy rolled his eyes and couldn’t hide the little smile he always wore when spending time with his girlfriend.
“Yeah, but opposites attract, so what’s the problem?”
Alya turned in his arms and pressed a kiss to his lips, smiling.
“There is no problem, dork.”
Marinette stuck out her tongue and rolled her eyes, turning away from them.
“Ugh, if you’re just gonna eat each other, I’m out. See you tomorrow!”
Alya parted from her boyfriend and hugged Marinette goodbye, not letting go of his hand.
“Yeah, see you tomorrow!”
When Adrien arrived in school again, he already saw the redhead standing a bit closer to Marinette than he liked it.
He already felt his blood boiling again and turned away, only to stumble into Kim.
“S-Sorry Kim.”, he mumbled.
“Everything alright, don’t worry.”, the taller boy grinned and turned to Max again.
Adrien bit on his lip and tried to look away from them. It was almost impossible. Especially because his best friend was busy nibbling on Alya’s ear while she tried to talk to him about something. So, he stood around, feeling a bit lost, trying to not look lost in staring at his phone.
He sighed, staring at a picture of Ladybug – the girl he was losing to this classmate right at this minute – that was his screensaver and did not look over to Marinette. But then, it was inevitable.
His gaze left his phone and was locked to the back of her head. Nathaniel laughed again. For how long had they been such good friends? For a month, already?
Yeah, it had begun with Nathaniel dropping his sketchbook in front of Marinette’s feet. She had picked it up for him and they had begun talking about his drawing skills. That’s when they had started talking. About an hour later, Adrien was jealous.
He knew his lady didn’t know his secret identity – he had discovered hers by accident when he had wanted to visit Marinette and had watched her detransform right in front of his eyes – and he knew she didn’t even like him and hadn’t ever been his lady actually but when Nathaniel’s blushing and smiling like that again I’m gonna rip-…
“Adrikins!”
He sighed and rolled his eyes. She was the last thing he needed right now.
“Hey Chloé. How’s it going?”
She wrinkled up her nose but tried to place a kiss on his lips regardless. He turned his head right the second her overly glossed lips made contact with his skin.
“You’re spending too much time with that Nino. He’s gonna ruin your beautiful manners.”
“If ya say so, Chloé.”, he tried his best to sound like Nino when replying to her but unfortunately, he couldn’t do much with this sentence.
“Anyway Adrikins, just yesterday I was-…”, and he didn’t listen to her anymore. The conversation between Marinette and Nathaniel seemed to become a bit more serious. He couldn’t see her face but the redhead looked like he would either burst out in tears or kiss her the next moment. Adrien couldn’t let this happen.
He briefly brushed Chloé’s hands off his chest and walked over to his classmates in question, wrapping an arm around Marinette’s shoulders.
“Hey guys! What’re you talking about?”, he grinned as Nathaniel looked away and Marinette blushed.
“W-We were talking about f-future plans! Nath w-wants to be a s-storyboard artist at Disney studios. Th-That’s so cool, right?”, she nervously replied, grinning widely. His stomach twisted at the nickname Marinette had given the redhead.
“Yeah, that’s actually really cool! Congrats Nathaniel, I’m wishing you the best. And you Mari? What do you wanna be?”, he smirked when she flinched at his nickname for her and then started laughing.
“I-I-… I thought a-about m-maybe starting an i-internship in y-your father’s firm.”, she stated and he looked down at her surprised.
“Really? I could help you. Maybe introduce you to my father and organize a conversation with a few leading heads in the firm. That’ll be no problem, they all know me since I’m, like, five years old!”
She turned beet red and couldn’t form a coherent sentence anymore.
Nathaniel looked at him with a smile but Adrien knew it meant war. And he sent back the exact same smile. Bring it on, man.
“Class is about to start, guys. Allow me?”, he pulled at the straps of Marinette’s bag and took it from her, carrying it into the classroom with placing his other hand on the small of her back. She was still muttering inaudible things, mostly trying to thank him, but his attention was fixed on the boy that followed them suit. He let his white model teeth blend up and turned to the front to escort Marinette to her seat. She nodded, finally shutting up because she was so embarrassed. But Adrien didn’t mind. He thought her stuttering was cute, even though he wondered why she was only behaving like this in front of him.
Nathaniel bumped his shoulder when he walked past while Adrien straightened up again after setting down her bag.
He had to grin. The redhead was easy to tease. If he was easy to get to fight, too?
The blonde walked down to his desk and sat down beside his best friend, ignoring his questioning looks. He could hear Alya trying to get something out of Marinette but the bluenette still wasn’t able to form a normal sentence. And when Mme. Bustier walked up front to start the lesson, she shut up completely.
Adrien couldn’t be more satisfied.
In lunchbreak, the model was faster than the artist again. He stood up, turned to face Marinette and watched as Nathaniel’s face was about to match his hair’s color.
“Hey, are you hungry? My treat!”
The girl turned red once more and he received a very confusing look by Alya but decided to go through with it.
“Y-Y-Yeah-… Th-Thanks, A-Adrien-…”, she muttered, smiling up to him. He beamed at her, gripping the straps of his bag tighter.
“Great! Together with Alya and Nino? I know an excellent café just down the road!”
He nudged his best friend who looked at Alya. They both nodded after a brief non-verbal discussion. Adrien almost jumped up into the air, squealing of joy. One lunchbreak less for Nathaniel to score.
Alya pulled at Adrien’s sleeve when they left the school, motioning him to walk slower when he turned around. With a questioning gaze, he did, bringing distance between them and their friends.
“Look, Adrien-… You may wanna slow your pace.”
“B-But I already did…”, he said, tilting his head.
“I didn’t mean your walking pace, Agreste. Let’s just say, Marinette is not used to so much attention from you and you may wanna think about how you’re acting in front of her.”
“Am I treating her badly?”, suddenly, he was worried. He didn’t know her that good, they were friends, sure, but before he started wanting to keep Nathaniel away from her, they hadn’t been able to actually get to know each other. I had been because she always stuttered and acted awkward around him so he didn’t exactly try to get to know her better. He always thought she didn’t like him.
“No, you’re not, just-… Be a bit more sensitive, okay?”
“Why is that?”
“Because if you hurt her, I will be after you like a wolf that hasn’t been fed in ages, understood?”
He drew back, looking at her deadly expression in surprise. He hadn’t expected that from her.
“Uh, sure.”
“Good.”, she smiled and entered the café along with him. For the rest of the lunchbreak, he could feel her eyes on him whenever he turned to Marinette.
“Hey Nath! You wanna sit with me since Alya’s sick?”
Adrien gritted his teeth. It had been two days since he had received the threat from Alya and – as she said – had been a bit more sensitive around her. He had given Nathaniel more room to make his moves and deeply regretted being scared by Alya. But today she was sick, so he had a chance again. Even though Marinette felt more comfortable around the young artist than him, he still felt the urgent need to grab the cute girl and run away with her, cradling her in his lap and stroking her hair, licking her forehead like she was some tiny kitten-…
He moaned and shot a glance down to his bag. Plagg snickered when he noticed the angry glare from his chosen and Adrien cursed the little Kwami. Ever since he’d become Chat Noir he could feel the instincts of a cat awakening in him. He wanted to chase after everything that moved and desperately craved scratches – his father already wondered why Adrien had made so much appointments with a masseur – and maybe that was just the reason why he was being to territorial over Marinette. Besides her being his lady, of course.
“Dude, you okay?”
“Yeah, sure, why shouldn’t I be?”
He heard Nathaniel getting up and lowered his head.
“Of course, Marinette.”, Nathaniel answered her question, sitting down next to her.
The blonde lowered his head even more, trying not to pounce on the redhead.
“Cool.”, she laughed, “Otherwise I would be so alone.”
“We don’t want that, do we?”, the artist answered, grinning. Adrien swallowed, trying to push back the bitter taste in his mouth.
“No, certainly not.”
They were flirting! They were flirting just behind his back! And her couldn’t do anything but listen because the lesson was about to start! He groaned.
Nathaniel was moving faster than Adrien thought. It was in the break when the redhead kidnapped his Marinette from him, in the middle of a conversation.
“Hey Marinette, I gotta show you something!”
Again, this irritating feeling of jealousy aroused in Adrien’s stomach, making his blood boil.
“Yeah sure-… Adrien, I’m sorry!”, she shouted over her shoulder when he dragged her away.
Nino was in a conversation with Kim, so he took his chance and followed them. Nathaniel just brought her into the locker room so Adrien ran in after them before the door shut close and hid behind a row of lockers, eavesdropping on them.
He heard pages being turned and then Marinette squeaking. Adrien did everything in his might to not stand up and interrupt them with whatever they were doing. Maybe Nathaniel was kissing her right now!
He couldn’t take it anymore and peeked around the edge to see them standing in front of each other, the redhead holding a sketchbook in his hands.
Marinette seemed to look at something inside, concentrating intensely.
“Nath-…”, she glanced up to him and he smiled, “That’s-… That’s really good! You’re so talented!”
He rubbed the back of his head while still holding the sketchbook with his other hands, laughing nervously.
“Really?”
“Yeah! It’s so cool!”
He wasted no time. The young artist leaned in and kissed her right on the lips. That’s when Adrien turned red, trying to suppress his scream. Marinette was just as surprised as him and a thousand thought’s seemed to rush through her head. For a little moment, it looked like she was tempted to kiss him back and Adrien had to hold back from running up to them and breaking every single bone in Nathaniel’s body, but then she squinted her eyes and gently pushed him away.
“I-… I’m sorry Nath… But I like someone else-…”
Adrien’s heart died along with Nathaniel’s.
Both their faces fell as Marinette turned away and Adrien quickly hid behind the lockers.
“I’m really sorry, Nath.”, she spoke with a trembling voice.
“I-… I understand. Who is he, though? O-Or her?”
The young model heard Marinette’s smile when she spoke again.
“It’s Adrien. Really, I’m sorry Nath, if it wasn’t for him I maybe would’ve liked you back, but-… I’m sorry is all I can say…”
Despite his shock, Adrien got up and quietly ran behind the next row of lockers before Marinette had the chance to see him. The redhead had kissed his lady and she had just confessed she had a crush on him! He didn’t know what to process first!
It ended up with him missing two entire lessons, just sitting in the locker room and trying to wrap his head around what had happened.
But when he finally stood up again, he knew exactly what to do.
#miraculous ladybug#adrienette#fanfic#adrien agreste#marinette dupain cheng#nathaniel kurtzberg#jealousy#scheming#one-sided reveal#freckles writes
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These 6 NBA teams will hit the under on their projected win total
Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images
Sorry, Lakers fans.
Everyone in the NBA is undefeated in the preseason, but that glorious early fall optimism has a way fading quickly. With only a few weeks until the games start to count for real, the SB Nation staff examined some over/under betting lines on win totals and picked the teams we think will disappoint.
The lines are from Draft Kings and all come with their own odds. These the teams we like to hit the under this season.
Los Angeles Lakers: 51.5
There are so many potential pitfalls for the Lakers. On the brink of season No. 17, LeBron James no longer seems indestructible after being limited to 55 games because of a groin injury last year. LeBron has famously coasted through the regular season (especially on the defensive end) for the last few years, but he doesn’t have that luxury this season even if he remains fully healthy. Who else is going to initiate this offense? Rajon Rondo? Quinn Cook? Alex Caruso? Would any of these guys even be in an NBA rotation if they weren’t with the Lakers?
Yes, Anthony Davis is great, but 65 percent of his field goals were assisted last year, a number that’s more than 10 percentage points higher than even Joel Embiid and Nikola Jokic. For all of Davis’ talent, it’s hard to imagine him carrying the offense by himself if and when LeBron isn’t on the court. The defense will likely be a real problem even if they’re at full strength. Then there’s the issue of lineup optimization: Davis doesn’t love playing center full-time despite that being his best use when the games really count. Davis is already talking about the Lakers using “super big” lineups with Dwight Howard and JaVale McGee on the court together. That’s a hard pass.
I’m buying the idea of the Lakers being able to beat anyone in the playoffs if they’re healthy. The LeBron-AD two-man game is that intriguing. I just don’t see them winning 52 games or more before they get there.
— Ricky O’Donnell
Milwaukee Bucks: 56.5
Giannis Antetokounmpo was everything last season, but as a one superstar team, the Bucks were still a team only as good as the sum of their parts. So what happens when one piece of the machine is stripped away?
Malcolm Brogdon’s signing with the Indiana Pacers was one of the most overlooked moves of the 2019 offseason. Brogdon’s a really good on-ball defender and an elite shooter. Both things are crucial to what makes Milwaukee’s system work. He connected on 51 percent of his shots from the field and 43 percent of his four three-point looks and 93 percent of his free throw attempts. Brogdon’s minutes are super productive, and they’re going to be replaced by less stable replacements. Will this be Wes Matthews’ bounce back season? Does Pat Connaughton take a leap? Donte DiVincenzo maybe?
There’s a missing piece in Milwaukee’s floor-spacing offense, and no obvious replacement.
— Matt Ellentuck
Indiana Pacers: 47.5
There are several reasons why 48 wins is a reach for the Indiana Pacers this season, but none touch the unknown surrounding Victor Oladipo. Here’s what Pacers head coach Nate McMillan said about his star guard last week: “I don’t anticipate Victor being available for a while, and I don’t know what a while is. There’s no timetable. “I haven’t had any information given to me that he will be practicing live anytime soon.”
Now, a Pacers optimist can counter by looking at Indiana’s “strong” finish after Oladipo’s injury. Yes, they avoided total collapse and made the playoffs. But after January 26th, they also had the league’s 24th offense and a defense that relied on an ability to force turnovers. Indiana also lost five of their top-seven scorers—including Bojan Bogdanovic, who averaged 20.7 points per game after Oladipo went down—and five of their six minutes leaders. Who is replacing Thad Young?
Malcolm Brogdon was really good in the role he had in Milwaukee, but asking him to generate shots on a team that doesn’t have Giannis Antetokounmpo or Khris Middleton eating all the defense’s attention will be quite an adjustment. T.J. Warren is a nice player, and we’ll see how he responds to competitive basketball for the first time in his NBA career. But the Pacers have too many questions and concerns to knock on the door of a 50-win season until they have at least one healthy All-Star making a nightly contribution. Onward to 2021.
—Michael Pina
Indiana Pacers: 47.5
This is your resident Indiana Pacers fan, doubling down on the Pacers hitting the under. There is no optimistic way to spin this but Pacers are going to spend a large chunk of their season without their star in Victor Oladipo. And that team without Oladipo, probably won’t be in the hunt to win 50 games. This feels like free money.
Oladipo ruptured the quad tendon in his knee and at one time had an expected return of January, but the Pacers continue to preach there is no timetable for his comeback. The Pacers also have no reason to rush their star back onto the court this season.
No matter how lovable Domantas Sabonis and Myles Turner and Malcolm Brogdon may be, they are sadly not a 48-win team. They will be fine and and sometimes fun. Just not ya know ... as good as they’d be with Oladipo on the floor.
— Whitney Medworth
Washington Wizards: 27.5
This summer featured Ted Leonsis reportedly calling every high-profile general manager candidate he could think of and begging them to take a job as the highest paid GM in the NBA, with none of them even accepting the interview. Tommy Sheppard seems like an extremely qualified and well-respected dude, but the Zards needing to resort to roughly their 5th choice tells you all you need to know about the state of their roster. Several smart people took one glance at the situation and quickly determined it was a loser for them.
Thankfully for fans, the Zards do have their own pick, so SuperTanking could prove extremely fruitful. So could trading Bradley Beal, who rules, but is almost certainly worth less to the Wizards than the assets he could fetch from a contender.
A healthy John Wall, a handful of new young players and a couple of lottery picks could make the Wizards extremely entertaining in 2020-21. I’m looking forward to the Anthony Edwards era in Chinatown. But betting on 27 wins or fewer this season feels like free money.
— Kim McCauley
New York Knicks: 27.5
Much has been made of the Knicks’ disastrous summer from a macro perspective. They embarrassingly struck out on the superstars they promised to bring in, watched their crosstown rivals swoop in to snag them, and released what amounted to a public apology less than 24 hours into free agency. All this after trading their best young player at the deadline on the theory that having additional cap space to build a superteam was preferable.
In response, the Knicks proudly refused to hand out long-term maximum deals to second-tier stars, which is understandable. The problem is they didn’t build a coherent basketball team in doing so.
The Knicks have more useful NBA players, but none of them fit together. It’s hard to see how Julius Randle helps elevate Mitchell Robinson, or how a bunch of 4.5s up front combined with non-shooting point guards helps space the floor for R.J. Barrett’s inevitable growing pains with the ball in his hands. Does Marcus Morris really help Kevin Knox, or will he simply block his playing time? Where is the infrastructure that’d allow Dennis Smith Jr. to play with the ball in his hands consistently? Is it even possible for David Fizdale to build a functioning five-man unit that has everything he needs without pissing off someone who believes they should be playing?
NBA teams need a pecking order and a coherent style of play to win games in the regular season. The Knicks’ full roster may be better than last year’s 17-win unit, but there’s no way all the parts can add up to a sum of 11 wins more than last season.
— Mike Prada
New Orleans Pelicans: 38.5
They traded for a new core that even Anthony Davis couldn’t drag to competency last year — and all due respect to Zion, but at age 19, AD he is not.
Additions like Derrick Favors, J.J. Redick, and Jaxson Hayes are nice, but not enough to move the needle in the savage West such that they’ll flirt with .500; David Griffin may have them well-positioned for a future when Zion develops, he potentially trades his point guard who can’t hit a J, and all those picks from the Lakers start to become real, tangible, actual hoopsters. But 2019-20 will feature a fair amount more losing than winning.
— Alex Rubenstein
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Tears to Tiara: A Return to One’s Roots
It’s been a year since I finished Tears to Tiara: Kakan no Daichi and I feel that the game (and series) has influenced me quite a bit. In this post I will try to explain why and describe my thoughts on fiction in general.
Update (May 10, 2019): Added some things near the end because it was something I swear I was going to put in but I somehow forgot.
I will say this first: A large part of why I like Tears to Tiara so much is because the compatibility level between me and Marui Takeshi is very high. Only by realizing this after finishing TtT1 and rereading some of his work have I come to accept how much his writing has shaped my interests.
I feel that the Tears to Tiara series in which he is the planner and main writer of embodies many of the ideals written about in past works while opening it up to wider audiences (who will be the hero who reads Routes???).
No matter what anyone says, I believe that the most important theme present in this series is “kindness“.
This is what struck me the most after finishing TtT1. Tears to Tiara is a story built on the willingness to be open and kind towards yourself and others, to have the strength to take action and the responsibility to support the people you care about no matter the situation, to be human and humanistic.
While these may seem like empty words at first glance, I never felt that way about the scenario even once. A large part of that is due to the harmony between the voice acting and the text.
I feel that Marui’s text is very good at bringing out the emotions and inner workings of the characters, and sometimes I’ve felt like emotions were pouring out from the onscreen text itself (don’t ask me how this works I don’t really understand how I get this feeling either). While it does sometimes feel a bit long or indirect, it is not unnecessary text by any means and the specific wording used serves to envelop your mind into the workings of the characters and the world they live in. There is a certain steady, rhythmic pace to the dialogue that makes advancing the text feel very satisfying which kept me wanting to continue the game. The voice acting has just the tempo and amount of emotional weight to match, making it almost sound like a story is being read to you.
The wording of the dialogue combined with the voice acting makes lines that would not be considered quotable (aka 名言 level) in most cases still memorable and riveting nonetheless, which is a big part of why I am so fascinated with Marui as a writer.
Here is a scene from the beginning of the game to try to show what I mean:
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The story-like nature is heightened by the fact that the game has almost no narration (地の文), with what little there is usually being voiced (in fact, I don’t recall there being any unvoiced narration in TtT2). This leaves the weight of the narrative into the hands of the dialogue, and the performances of each voice actor must be dramatic enough to match. It feels quite dramatic in the theater sense, which is also helped by the fact that the protagonist’s sprite is shown nearly every time they speak. This heightens the sense of being a third person looking into a world as opposed to feeling like being in that world, although I was never really one to self-insert into the protagonist in the first place. Tears to Tiara is the first game I played where I can say that the “protagonist” is my favorite character without hesitation.
These emotions make it feel like the characters are speaking from the depths of their hearts, without any deception or obfuscation. It makes me believe that they will see everything through to the end, that none of it is for show. It is a bit hard to describe in words, but there is no mistaking the fact that I feel sincerity radiating from the characters. This sincerity is one of the main reasons why I like pretty much every character, which doesn’t happen to me that much (I also feel this way about Routes).
The text is also good at conveying just the right amount of information at the right time. There were some lines that I could tell were foreshadowing the first time around, but I was surprised to see just how many there were when looking at some scenes for a second (or third, or fourth...) time.
I feel that this 構成力 is best exhibited in Kusakabe Yuuki’s route in ToHeart2. It took me one and a half hour to clear from start to finish when I replayed it recently, but each event presents information about Yuuki, her relationship with Takaaki, and/or the plot of the route that reveals itself at the end. Discovering how much was shown right from the very first meeting with her was interesting, and going through each scene thinking “So this is what that was referring to...“ was very fun. I had a similar experience with Kajiwara Yuuna’s route in Routes (coincidentally or not, both of these characters are voiced by Satou Rina).
All of these factors also pair well with the other aural element, the music. As briefly touched upon in my previous post, the use of the soundtrack in TtT1 made me conscious of this aspect in other games, although I think the only other works that have approached this level from what I’ve played are the Dai Gyakuten Saiban series from Capcom. It has long been my conviction that Aquaplus’s strongest suit is music and sound (the music in Routes is what actually got me into Aquaplus as a whole) and there is little that would convince me that Tears to Tiara is not the pinnacle of those abilities. The interplay between the BGM, vocal songs, and the scenario is a sight (or sound) to behold, and this only improves in TtT2. My hours with the series have formed deep emotional attachments to the music within me and to this day can get me to cry the most consistently.
The amount of emotion found in the music is truly a strange thing, as I found out for myself a few months after finishing TtT1. It was when I decided to listen to the PC/Gaiden OP song Tears to Tiara. I felt a wave of nostalgia which I thought to be very strange. After all I had just completed the game and it was too early to become an old favorite or anything. Nonetheless, I felt like I had returned home and was filled with a sense of peace and comfort (or maybe this is my Nakayama Arisa bias from Routes). This made me listen to the soundtrack through the lens of “nostalgia” which ended up bringing out more emotion than I thought possible.
Revisiting scenes only serves to remind me how all of these elements work together to get the story’s messages and themes across as a coherent experience. I enjoyed myself immensely, with engaging and important scenes happening throughout the story from the very beginning to the end, although of course most of them are at the end. It blends both 燃え and 萌え (of the male characters for both properties tbh) making it easy for me to recommend to other people actually.
The amount of research done into the names and historical background of the setting is also something I really like, making it feel more inclined towards history than fantasy (historical fantasy?) at times. Marui is a self-proclaimed 設定オタク (seen in the 05.03.30 entry here) and it shows, mainly by my many trips to Wikipedia to see why something is a certain name and what historical events mirror those in the game. He’s even written about one of the trips he’s taken to Europe/Africa and how it influenced some of the locations in TtT2. This kind of attention to detail makes my own research all the more worthwhile (TtT made me realize that I did the same thing in Routes for the Heian/Kamakura periods in Japan...).
In the past year, I’ve been thinking about why and how this series means so much to me and I think I’ve finally found the words to explain these feelings.
To put it simply, I found what I have been looking for in fiction in Tears to Tiara. My foray into visual novels started with a friend recommending me Umineko, but the first one that I chose to start myself was White Album 2 (Skip the next paragraph if you don’t want my backstory).
Part of the reason why I chose this is tied to how I started learning Japanese. It was the summer between middle school and high school and I figured it might be useful in the future. I taught myself kana, read some of the Tae Kim grammar guide, and installed Rikaichan on the suggestion of a friend. Soon I was able to navigate webpages and search results with a bit of confidence. At that time I was beginning to run out of English fan art/fiction of a certain fictional couple that was not very popular. This led to me going through Japanese search results and finding fanfiction in a language that I was not quite used to reading yet, but was willing to try with Rikaichan. I rapidly consumed what I could find leading to my reading skills greatly improving, but that was not the only thing that increased. I had already sensed at the time that I was not interested much in real world romance and so looked to fictional romance instead. This led to me looking for fiction focused on the romantic (Romantic) and emotional elements. While White Album 2 satisfied this desire, I continued to search (and will continue) for something more.
To me, Tears to Tiara is a work of fiction I’ve always wanted; it is unapologetically emotional, unapologetically passionate, and above all, unapologetically positive. There were times where I could only sheepishly grin at a character’s idealistic goals, but I could rest assured that their companions would help them ensure a future where they could be realized. There were times where a character’s despair would wring out the pathos within me, but I could rest assured that someone would be there to hear and validate their worries, to support them when they get the courage to face their problems, and to share the happiness when things get resolved.
Negative feelings are treated as a natural part of being human, as something that must be given equal attention to as positive feelings. To be human is to both give and receive, and to possess the insight to discern how much energy one should spend in each category.
These might seem like obvious things, but Tears to Tiara made me seriously think about these concepts and how they could apply to my life. It is a game that gives importance to feelings that are easy to pass off as “weak” or “cliché” (this is also a reason why I like Kitto, Sumiwataru Asairo Yori mo, a lot).
This made me reevaluate what kind of 感動 I want to experience in fiction. It is not that I want to cry. In reality, I did not cry much while playing the games themselves. It was after I had enough time to think about the consequences of each event and how they connected to each other that I could not hold back the urge to shed tears. It feels much better to cry for the accumulation of a character’s growth and the happiness they acquire over an event that takes those things away. This is the secret behind how the soundtrack can get me to cry consistently: the happiness I feel brings me to an emotional high that has a high probability of being accompanied by tears. When I revisit a scene, the parts I feel emotionally overwhelmed by are usually “slice of life” ones. The nature of the text (described above) combined with the knowledge of future events make the characters all the more precious.
In the end, Tears to Tiara to me a work that is about nostalgia: for the past, present, and future. It is about the joy of being alive and living in a world that possesses beauty all around if you care to look. It is a series whose music and characters I can reliably gain motivation from, and I sincerely hope that more people get their own meanings from it.
それは決して 悲しい物じゃなく 強くて優しい
―― Until (Nakayama Arisa)
3はよ
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How to prepare for a natural disaster
My world is on fire.
As you may have heard, much of Oregon is burning right now. Thanks to a “once in a lifetime” combination of weather and climate variables — a long, dry summer leading to high temps and low humidity, then a freak windstorm from the east — much of the state turned to tinder earlier this week. And then the tinder ignited.
At this very moment, our neighborhood is cloaked in smoke.
I am sitting in my writing shed looking out at a beige veil clinging to the trees and nearby homes. The scent of the smoke is intense. My eyes are burning. After everything else that's happened this year, this feels like yet one more step toward apocalypse. So crazy!
Fortunately, Kim and I (and the pets) are relatively safe. We're worried, sure, but not too worried. Our lizard brains make us want to flee. (“Fight or flight” and all that.) But our rational brains know that unless a new fire starts somewhere nearby, we should be safe.
Here's a current map of the fire situation in our county. (Click the image to open a larger version in a new window.)
The areas in red are under mandatory evacuation orders. (And the red dots are areas that have burned, I think. They added the dots to the map this morning.) Residents of areas shaded in yellow need to be prepped to leave at a moment's notice. And the areas in green are simply on alert.
See that town called Molalla? That's where my mother and one of my brothers live. My mother's assisted-living facility was evacuated to a city twenty miles away. My brother and his family voluntarily moved from their home to our family's box factory. But even that doesn't feel 100% safe. (The box factory is located just to the left of that cluster of red dots at the top tip of the yellow area around Molalla.)
Kim and I live near the “e” in Wilsonville. We're more than twenty miles from the nearest active fire. We should be safe. But, as a I say, we're worried. So, I spent much of yesterday prepping for possible evacuation.
Update! Barely three hours later, things have changed. Now Molalla is under a mandatory evacuation order. My brother can't go back to get anything. He didn't film his house and belongings, so he simply has to hope for the best. Meanwhile, the level two alert has been shifted to cover more of the county, including the town where I grew up (Canby) and the surrounding areas. The caution zone ends at the Willamette River, which is maybe four miles from us. Kim and I are on edge. Here's the latest update to the evacuation map…
The scariest part of all this? The main fire that's threatening these communities is zero percent contained. Zero
Natural Disasters
We Oregonians don't have a protocol for emergency evacuations. It's not something that really crosses our minds.
While the Pacific Northwest does have volcanoes, eruptions are rare enough that we never think about them. And yes, earthquakes happen. Eventually we'll have “the Big One” that devastates the region, but again there's no way to predict that and it's not something we build our lives around. (Well, many people have been adding earthquake reinforcement to their homes, but that's about it.)
In the past fifty or sixty years, the Portland area has experienced four other natural disasters.
My father used to talk about the Columbus Day Storm of 1962, a cyclone that blew through area when he was in high school.
On 18 May 1980, Mount St. Helens blew its top. There was plenty of warning before the eruption, though, so most everyone had cleared away from the peak.
On the morning of 25 March 1993, we had the “Spring Break quake”, an earthquake of magnitude 5.6. (This was also my 24th birthday, so I personally call it my “birthquake”.)
The Willamette Valley flood of 1996 was pretty spectacular.
Now, in 2020, we're experiencing the worst wildfires the state has ever seen. That's roughly one disaster every ten or fifteen years, and it's the first one during my 51 years on Earth that's made me think about the need for evacuation preparedness.
Kim and I have been asking ourselves lots of questions.
If we were to evacuate, where would we go? What route would we take? What would we carry with us? How would we prep our home to increase the odds that it would survive potential fire?
Let me share what we've decided and what we've learned. (And please, share what you know about emergency preparedness, won't you?)
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Evacuation Preparedness
The first thing we did was brainstorm a list of things that were important to us. Without reference to experts, what is it that we would want to do and/or take with us, if we were to evacuate.
Our animals (and animal supplies).
Phones, computers, and charging cords.
Important documents from our fire safe.
A bag for each of us containing clothes and toiletries.
Sleeping bags and pillows.
Sentimental items. (We have no “valuable”.)
Create a video tour of the house for insurance purposes (be sure to highlight valuable items).
Move combustible items away from the house.
After creating our own list, we consulted the experts.
In this case, we looked at websites for communities in California. California copes with wildfires constantly. (And, in fact, Kim's brother and his family recently had to help evacuate their town due to wildfires!) For no particular reason, I chose to follow the guidelines put out by Marin County, California. I figured they know what they're talking about!
The FIRESafe MARIN website has a bunch of great resources dedicated to wildfire planning and preparedness. I particularly like their evacuation checklist. While this form is wildfire specific, it could be easily adapted for other uses, such as hurricane preparedness or earthquake preparedness.
The ready.gov website is an excellent resource for disaster preparedness. It contains lots of info about prepping for problems of all sorts. You should check it out.
Creating a Go Kit
FIRESafe MARIN and other groups recommend putting together an emergency supply kit well in advance of possible problems. Each person should have her own Go Kit, and each should be stored in a backpack. (In our case, I have several cheap backpacks that I've purchased while traveling abroad. These are perfect for Go Kits.)
What should you keep in a Go Kit? It depends where you live, of course, and what sorts of disasters your area is susceptible to. But generally speaking, you might want your kits to contain:
A bandana and/or an N95 mask or respirator.
A change of clothing.
A flashlight or headlamp with spare batteries.
Extra car keys and some cash.
A map marked with evacuation routes and a designated meeting point.
Prescription medications.
A basic first aid kit.
Photocopies of important documents.
Digital backup of important files.
Pet supplies.
Water bottle and snacks.
Spare chargers for your electronic equipment.
That seems like a lot of stuff, but it's not. These things should fit easily into a small pack. Each Go Kit should be stores somewhere easy to access. Kim and I don't have Go Kits yet, but we'll create them soon. We intend to store them in the front coat closet.
Writing this article reminds me of one of the first posts I shared after re-purchasing Get Rich Slowly. Almost three years ago, I wrote about how to get what you deserve when filing an insurance claim. This info from a former insurance employee is very helpful (and interesting).
Final Thoughts
I spent much of yesterday prepping for possible evacuation. This isn't so much out of panic as it is out of trying to take sensible precautions. I gathered things and put them in the living room so that we can be ready to leave, if needed. If authorities were to upgrade us from level one to level two status, I'd move this stuff to my car.
Also as a precaution, I moved stuff away from the house and thoroughly watered the entire yard. (Not sure that'd make much difference, but hey, it can't hurt.) I created a video tour of the house that highlights anything we have of value. And so on. This took most of the afternoon.
This morning, I can see that the neighbors are doing something similar. We're all trying to exercise caution, I think.
Kim and I will almost surely be fine. Although the smoke is thick here at the moment — it's like a brownish fog, and it's even clouding my view of the neighbor's house! — there aren't any fires super close to us. And barring mistakes or stupidity, there won't be any threat to our home.
Still, it's good for us to take precautionary measures, both now and for the future. And it's probably smart for you to take some small steps today in case disaster strikes tomorrow.
Updates!
The situation here in Oregon is evolving rapidly. I'm going to use the space at the end of this post to post updates. These will be fragmentary thoughts, for the most part — not coherent paragraphs.
Here is a terrific Reddit post about what one person wishes they'd known when evacuating for wildfire.
Last night, it became clear that the family box factory really could be in harm's way. We're worried. We're not freaking out yet — it's a good distance from the fires and it's located in a “prairie” — but the workers there are trying to formulate some sort of plan for if things do go bad.
There are crazy rumors floating around that the fires were started by far-left political operatives. This is blatant bullshit and it pisses me off that (a) anyone would believe this idiocy and (b) spread the (unsubstantiated) rumors. It's causing actual issues as armed vigilantes are threatening people now because they're worried they're liberal firestarters. Simply insane.
Kim and I intend to spend most of today (Friday, September 11th) prepping the house as if it were indeed going to get hit. We realize that it probably won't, but better safe than sorry.
That's it for now. More later.
from Finance https://www.getrichslowly.org/emergency-preparedness/
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The Case for Kanye
On Independence Day, Kanye West announced a last-minute bid for the Oval Office, setting up the rapper, sneaker mogul, and Kardashian-by-marriage to square off against Trump and Biden as an independent. While it may sound like a joke (or the kind of publicity stunt that West has been known to pull in the past) the announcement quickly drew support from a few significant public figures: his wife Kim, Elon Musk, and Mark Cuban.
These endorsements are noteworthy because they come from some of the few A-listers who have at one time supported Trump—though Cuban had already jumped off the Trump train by election day 2016. Across the aisle, Kanye’s announcement has sparked concerns that a young black rapper—one of the most popular artists of all time—might pull key demographics away from the doddering, septuagenarian nominee of the self-anointed party of the future. West’s transpartisan appeal and the exceptional confusion of the current moment make a Kanye presidency…well, maybe not likely, but surprisingly possible.
Unfortunately for West, he has already missed the deadline to file as an independent in multiple states, so the logistics of victory would be difficult, to say the least. More fundamentally: he’s Kanye West. He’s a pop-culture celebrity whose presidential aspirations—if they are even real—are obviously tied up in his ego and his flair for the dramatic. There’s no way he can win against serious politicians, and no reason he should. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
In fact, just about every conceivable argument that might be brought against Kanye’s candidacy from the right could have been leveled against Trump in 2016, and was. He has absolutely no relevant experience. His public statements have often bordered on the genuinely insane. His past actions might raise serious concerns about his character. He has displayed no broad or consistent fidelity to mainstream conservative principles. His chances at winning are minuscule. We have heard all these things before, and answered them at the ballot box.
But it became evident fairly early on that Trump would be, in the best case, our Julius Caesar: a catalyst for radical change who—despite seeming at first like a savior in himself—would merely prepare the way for a leader and an age to come. What was not evident—what seems, even now, fairly ridiculous—was that our Octavian might be a bombastic rapper from the South Side of Chicago. There had been, until the fourth of July, only two likely scenarios for the conservative succession to Trump.
The first was grim: Joe Biden wins in November. Quick on the heels of loss come the inevitable evaluations of where we went wrong, and the powers that were will insist that our fatal error was the abandonment of the old consensus. Trump’s defeat will reopen the Republican power vacuum, and the old guard will quietly slink back in. We will watch a few more decades of bargain-bin Reagan clones score a string of pyrrhic victories. The Trump moment will be dismissed as a minor aberration until a moment like it inevitably comes again. The day of reckoning will be all the more difficult for the time we held it off.
The second is, at this point, wishful thinking: after a 2020 victory and four more years of Trump leadership, the reins of the party are handed over seamlessly to someone who can put a more positive spin on the populism Trump has tapped into. Senators Hawley, Rubio, and Cotton are the obvious contenders. Under this new generation of leadership, a pro-family, pro-labor, pro-American party offers a serious, earthbound answer to the Left’s apocalyptic vision. We get the realignment we hoped for four years ago. What’s more, we manage to free it of any unpleasant Trumpian entanglements.
This was probably the best argument for reelecting Trump in 2020. He would serve as a placeholder for four years, and we might even get another justice on the Supreme Court in the meantime. But a seamless transition from Trump to a renewed GOP is no longer plausible. This is in part because Trump has not been the disruptor we expected. Despite some intense rhetoric and a few outlying policies, this has been a fairly standard Republican administration. We cannot reasonably expect any seismic shifts in the party platform, and we certainly can’t expect any mass migrations into its electoral base. While the administration bears some blame for this latter fact, there are also unavoidable complications of this particular moment at play: any hope of electoral windfall from the once-booming economy, for instance, has been buried by the COVID crisis. Even if he scrapes out a victory in November, the possibility that Trump might, like Nixon, usher in decades of Republican dominance has vanished into thin air. The party and the movement will merely find themselves limping along the scenic route to the same long-term result as scenario number one.
Kanye’s entry into the race presents us with a third way. The controversial rapper, who has drawn sharp criticism for his past support of Trump, has a few defining qualities that may make him the best available successor to the current commander-in-chief. He may be our only hope to actually force the realignment we expected from Trump, and avoid a backslide into the GOPs old losing strategy.
The first point in West’s favor is actually rather practical—and timely. It is clear now more than ever that any conservative coalition that hopes for lasting success in American politics must involve the millions of socially conservative black Americans who have been abandoned to the Democratic machine by an apathetic Republican establishment. Trump is obviously not the person to bridge that gap—to incite one of those electoral mass migrations that would be vital to sustained political success. Kanye may well be, and not just because of the color of his skin—though the electoral benefits of shared identity should not be underestimated. West is at his most coherent (and his most insightful) when he talks about the troubles plaguing black communities: violence, addiction, “welfare mentality”, single motherhood, birth control, abortion. West recognizes the roots of the problem—and the solutions in policy and practice that support family and enterprise—with a clarity and a conviction that neither the left nor the mainstream right approaches by a mile.
The benefit of West’s insight would not be limited to black America, either. The social and economic solutions to these problems are consistent over nearly all of our nation’s divisions: strong families plus a people-centered economy is a winning formula across the board, not to mention a morally sound one. West has even waded into policy domains that have been untouched by conservatives for decades, but deserve and desperately need our attention: land reform, contraception, school prayer, and more.
Trump, at his best, showed no resistance to these things: he was willing to ride populist and reactionary waves, but he was never particularly invested in the ideas that drove them. Meanwhile, for all the outrageousness of both Kanye himself and his equally famous relatives (his wife, Kim Kardashian; his father-in-law, Caitlyn Jenner), nobody who has been paying attention could honestly deny that West is passionately devoted to strong family—both on the personal and the societal level. Some may question the sanity of his somewhat heterodox Christianity, but nobody doubts its sincerity. We may likewise lament the lack of nuance and erudition in Kanye’s platform while appreciating the general direction of his vision, and the energy with which he pursues it.
That energy is another of West’s defining traits, and it actually parallels one of Trump’s. Both possess an undeniable explosive power. Trump’s is corporate: when supporters said in 2016 that they wanted Trump to run the government like a business, they meant specifically one of his businesses. Whether the moribund GOP went the way of Trump Steaks or the Grand Hyatt Hotel didn’t make much of a difference. They simply wanted the disruption that Trump had been peddling for decades in the public sphere.
But the New York businessman, expected by his supporters to be immune to the forces of the swamp, turned out to be overcome by them with remarkably little resistance. Not only are we not experiencing the positive realignment which Trump supporters hoped for, we aren’t even really seeing the intermediate disruptive stage—the swamp-draining, in Trump-speak—that should have been our consolation prize. If anyone can actually deliver the disruption—and thus force the renewal—that Trump had promised, it’s sure to be Kanye West. This is in part because West’s energy and genius, as an artist, is of an entirely different kind from Trump’s, and far less easily reined in.
More importantly, however, in the wake of his recent conversion to a zealous (if nebulous) Christianity, West’s energy is actually aimed in a clear and positive direction. Trump was always merely a disruptor, but West’s combination of chaotic potential and moral vision positions him perfectly as a transitional figure between the old age and the new. The Art of the Deal has done all it can to cure mainstream conservatism’s many ills. It’s time to take Jesus is King for a spin.
Declan Leary is TAC’s Collegiate Network Fellow and a graduate of John Carroll University.
The post The Case for Kanye appeared first on The American Conservative.
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