#out of all the things on league of legends i could preach for

[deathdxnces]

i can't find it to save my life so i am indeed here once again to point out why kai (varus') should be kai (irelia's brother) because it fits beyond the name ✨

1. irelia never saw kai dead. when she got home, her family had already been killed and buried. he could very well have been somewhere else entirely without her knowing, considering she had been in the placidium for some time.

2. kai is from navori, as is irelia's family.

3. dark hair and blue eyes

4. she was raised to follow karma's teachings. her family believed in harmony and balance and taught her and her brothers that, which is in line with kai's lines who, even as a slayer, says he serves the great balance

5. and admittedly i'm just going on with my bullshit now but i also just appreciate the idea that at the same time they were raised to put ionia first and care for the balance, they were also raised to protect what's important to them and with a strong sense of doing what's right and that kai immediately leaped to the temple's defense when noxus attacked with irelia in parallel having such a central role in fighting back (and it'd also be aligned with what's said about the rest of the family and how her father and her brothers protested when the noxians got to their village)

i just think val and kai exist so isolated when this would be such an easy connection to make (and!! the heartlight comic has all 3 of them being 'in control' of their body at different points; val talks to his mom to say they're leaving and looking for a way to be free again and i think it'd be fun to have that explored more let kai be her brother and let irelia talk to him thanks)

[thanagariansnarebeast]

Top ten (11) Bi/Pan characters Part 1

Happy Pride Month! I was talking to someone about representation in media and it got me thinking about my favorite bisexual characters, so I thought I’d make this list. I’m only including canonically bisexual/pan characters that have been shown to be romantically interested in or sexually interested in both genders or non-binary people, so no characters that are shipped as bi; I’m mostly having this rule because having actual representation really matters. I’ll also do my best to not include problematic characters/media, I don’t want to include villains  or shows that are fond of killing off under represented groups. I know some characters its hard to tell what sexuality they are, as it isn’t always explicitly stated; but I went with characters that clearly are shown as not being completely straight or completely homosexual, sexuality is a spectrum and being mostly into one or the other still counts. I actually realized after making this that I had 11 characters, so oops.

11. Quentin Coldwater (The Magicians)

(Spoilers for seasons 1-4 of the Magicians) Quentin was a character that I wasn’t all that fond of at the beginning of the series because he had a lot of that blank slate main character stuff going on, but as the show went on he really grew on me and showed who he was. I’m guessing in the book he’s more fleshed out at the beginning because you know more about what’s going on in his head, so I’m guessing translating that to a t.v. series made him seem less interesting at first. My favorite moments with him are when he uses his intelligence and creativity to solve problems, and when he gets sick of someone’s shit and tells them they are being an ass. He’s clearly shown as having romantic and sexual interest in both genders, and while he did hurt some feelings by doing it; he was clearly very remorseful and very much regretted it. He also much later asks Eliot to be in a relationship with him after they live a whole life time together, which is about as romantic as you can get.

10. Rosa Diaz (Brooklyn 99)

I know we are all on a cop bashing spree lately (A very justified one, don’t get me wrong), but this is a fictional character in an alternate reality where most cops are actually trying to help people, and I wouldn’t consider the show to be cop propaganda because they show cops being racist, negligent, and incompetent as well, so I don’t think its fair to hate a show because of what is going on in real life when the show isn’t preaching anything harmful. Rosa is smart, funny, caring, and a total badass; I’ve always loved badass female characters in leather jackets. She has her anger issues, and issues socializing with people, but she still cares deeply for her friends and does her best to always do the right thing. Her struggle to deal with her sexuality and coming out to her friends and family, and the show does it in a very grounded and mature way. Her parents struggling to accept her was very sad to see, but also a sad reality for many people; and I loved that they acknowledge that even now we struggle to be accepted. Her friends are all very understanding and do everything to help her understand that they love and accept her and her having an openly gay captain to look up to is a cool bonus.

9. Harley Quinn (D.C. Comics)

Now I said I wouldn’t include any villains so this is kind of cheating, but she is an anti-hero in some versions, and the picture I used was specifically from the video game Injustice 2 where she is a member of the Justice League and a reformed villain so I don’t think its completely fair to just say she’s a villain. Her first relationship was horrible and incredibly toxic, but she learned and grew from that experience and moved on to other romantic interests like Poison Ivy and a few others. She’s had a few partners in different versions of the comics/ t.v. shows/ films/ video games,  some more healthy than others; but she is constantly learning and growing as a person. I love her fun and playful personality, most of her outfits, her crazy weapons, and her hyenas Bud and Lou. The version of her from the Injustice games and comics is my favorite because of her outfit, her character growth, and how well they write her character.

8. Iron Bull (Dragon Age: Inquisition)

Iron Bull is one of my favorite companions in any Dragon Age game, he’s such a fun character. He’s charming, honest, caring, and both literally and metaphorically a giant badass. His upbringing and culture are very different than the other races, and sexuality to him isn’t really about the gender of his partner and that kind of thing just isn’t a big deal to him. You have the option to just have sex with him or become romantically involved with him in the game, but even if you don’t he still brings up how he feels about that kind of thing; so his sexually is still cannon even if you don’t do anything with him. I didn’t put Liara from the Mass Effect games on here because while I’ve only played the first two, I haven’t seen any evidence that outside of the player character she is interested in people romantically or sexually; and also her species seems to be gender fluid and the whole thing is just too complicated for me to try and figure out at 1:30 in the morning. Iron Bull is a very interesting character in the game, and early on you make a choice that changes his personality and it is interesting to see the differences that decision has on him. He’s also voiced by Freddie Prinze Jr. which blew me away, because I could not tell based on how he sounds in game.

7. Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer)

While I am familiar withe the D.C./ Vertigo comics that he is in I have not read all of them, so I am going with the very not blonde t.v. version of the character. Lucifer is a charming and charismatic man-child in the show, and loves having fun; which makes the character a lot of fun to watch. He also isn’t breaking my no villains rule because he is the main protagonist of the show, and while he has done some bad things; he and the show make a explicit point about how much he hates that people assume he is evil because his dad forced him to rule over hell. He flirts with and defiantly has many sexual partners of male and female, and even makes jokes like “What? Its called a devil’s threesome for a reason.” Another reason that I picked the t.v. show version is because Tom Ellis’s portrayal of Lucifer just oozes sexuality and charm. Lucifer has a lot of issues that make him into the character that he is, but he tries his best to do the right thing; and does genuinely care about his friends and family; and feels remorse when he does things that hurt them. For a character that is assumed to be evil by most people, he has a very vocal sense of justice, and has no qualms about delivering what he considers to be justice.

6. Sara Lance (Arrow/ Legends of Tomorrow)

Sara is strong, beautiful, and has a strong sense of justice. I love her white costumes, and how she just bounces around time seducing people; she’s a female Jack Harkness in that aspect. She is another character deeply devoted to her friends and family, and while she has made mistakes, she definitely learned from them. I also love how she’s a female character that they actually show as muscular. (Spoilers to follow for both shows) She struggles to not give in to her assassin training at times, but she has gotten much better at it. I try not to include characters from fiction where they kill LGBTQ+ characters, but she doesn’t stay dead so I really don’t think that it counts. She is shown as having both male and female sexual and romantic partners, and I love her current relationship in the show. Caity Lotz says she has had conversations with the writers about the character’s sexuality, and if she’s still bisexual if they mostly show her with women, and Caity had to explain that Sara is always bi, no matter who she is with; which I definitely think is an issue that comes up when dealing with writing a bisexual character, because some people just don’t seem to understand.

[weemsbotts]

A Toast to the Happy Couple!

By: Lisa Timmerman, Executive Director

Folklore encompasses everything from urban legends to writings in public restrooms! It can also capture fantastic family reminiscences as well. Grab a cocktail (it’s 2020 – you probably have one on hand around the clock) and join me as we read how Town of Dumfries residents unsuccessfully resisted the lure of fizzy drinks.

(Source: Chatting After Preaching - Forest Hills Methodist Church, HDVI Archives, Keys Collection)

While prohibition ended in the United States in 1933, not all people immediately embraced their access to liquor. Temperance in America began moderately, allowing people to enjoy wine and beer in moderation. However, total abstinence eventually took hold as society began to classify all types of alcohol together. People viewed alcohol as the source of societal problems, supporters using it to fight against domestic violence and even immigration. People coined the phrase “teetotalers” to indicate their total abstinence, often taking pledges and carrying cards. While the actual origins of the word “teetotalers” are not definitive, ranging from the preference of tea to an emphasis on the capital “T”, people still identify themselves as teetotalers today.

Fast forward to the 1940s, and we find Dumfries families and friends celebrating the Keys 25th wedding anniversary. Jeanne Martin recounted this tale both orally with a written record for HDVI.

“Myrnie and Elvan were tee-totalers. Most Methods in Dumfries a half century ago were still card-carrying members of “The Temperance League”. The use of alcohol was not totally forbidden and was sometimes used for medicinal purposes. In a small cupboard we kept a bottle of Mogen David wine and a whisky filled with rock candy called Rock-and-Rye. A teaspoon of whisky in tea for colds and flu and a small glass of wine for cramps were considered legitimate uses. The bottles were sequestered in a cabinet with shot and rifle shells, rat poison and other dangerous items. So the first story I want to tell you is something shocking considering how my Aunt and Uncle regard alcohol as a general rule.

Myrnie wanted to have a beautiful party for her twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. She was famous in the town for entertaining and she wanted this one to be very special. She wanted to celebrate a quarter century of a happy marriage in a big way. Someone told her that it would be lovely to have Champagne punch, they had a recipe and, “no it wasn’t strong at all she need not worry about that, and wouldn’t the guests want to toast the happy couple?” Myrnie was convinced, though Elvan was not, and Champagne punch was included in the plans.

…The house hummed with activity for two months before the party…The day arrived and it is a day that “will live in infamy” in the hearts and minds of those who attended. It started at four in the afternoon and was expected to last several hours. However when the tee-totaling Methodists started drinking the delicious punch the party lasted much longer. At nine, Mary Williams, Myrnie’s best friend, ended it by standing on the table and reciting the poem “The Sinking of the Titanic”, She followed that by singing, through tears, all the verses of “Nearer my God to Thee”. “I just felt”, she blubbered, “and I had to make a tribute to all those poor souls that perished”. Then she passed out and someone caught her as she fell of the table. That broke up the party. Luckily everyone took this as a good joke., Mary laughed about it the next day through her headache though never drank anything stronger after that than coffee or tea.”

(Source: Thomas, Jerry.  The Bar-Tender’s Guide and Bon-Vivant’s Companion. New York: Dick & Fitzgerald Publishers, 1862; Digitized by the Internet Archive)

Craving Champagne punch? Jerry Thomas’ The Bar-Tender’s Guide or How to Mix Drinks (later How to Mix Drinks or the Bon-Vivant’s Companion), published in 1862, could help. According to Thomas, “Whether it is judicious that mankind should continue to indulge in such things, or whether it would be wiser to abstain from all enjoyments of that character, it is not our province to decide. We leave that question to the moral philosopher. We simply contend that a relish for “social drinks” is universal; that those drinks exist in greater variety in the United States…and that he, therefore, who proposes to impart to these drinks…is a genuine public benefactor.” This highly regarded book introduced a variety of recipes, included Champagne Punch (lemon, slices of pineapple and orange, raspberry or strawberry syrup, sugar, and wine) and a variation named Rocky Mountain Punch (champagne, Jamaican rum, maraschinos, lemons, and sugar to taste) recommended for New Years celebrations.

Note: October is almost here, meaning the return of our popular Ghost Walk programs along with a new Virtual Halloween Tea! Whether you would like to indulge with an evening walk, sit in the house after midnight, or learn about the history of Halloween with frightfully tasty recipe recommendations, we thank you for your continuing support! Please note that tickets for the “Locked Inside” Ghost Walk must be purchased 7 days in advance for health monitoring/tracking. Click here to see our current programs.

(Sources: HDVI Archival Records VCU Libraries: Social Welfare History Project: Campbell, A. (2017). The temperance movement. Social Welfare History Project.  Retrieved from http://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/religious/the-temperance-movement/temperance-movement; Food Science, History, and Much More: Teetotaler: Why are People Who Don’t Drink Called This?; EUVS Digital Collection: Miller, Anistatia. The Bar-Tender’s Guide or How to Mix Drink by Jerry Thomas; Thomas, Jerry. The Bartender’s Guide, Price $2.50”, 1862)

[murfeelee]

Video Games Pt3: Video Game Challenge

I saw this list on Pinterest out of nowhere, and what better way to ring in the new year than with another questionnaire, about my favorite pastime! This is the spiritual successor to Part 1 and Part 2.

Day 1 - Very first video game: Pacman and/or Mortal Kombat and/or Samurai Shodown on arcade machines (way back in the day when laundromats had arcade machines and gumball machines and such in them--good times, good times U_U); Tetris on computers; and a buttload of PS1 titles (again: back in the good ole days when consoles came with promo demo discs--I had Frogger, Need for Speed, Medieval, and a bunch of others).

Day 2 - Your favorite character: Here’s my Top 10 Males post and Top 10 Females post.

Day 3 - A game that is underrated: I will preach the greatness of PS1′s Legend of Dragoon till my dying day. It was doomed to dwell in Final Fantasy 7′s shadow, which came out earlier that same year, and it’s a real shame, cuz LoD was E V E R Y T H I N G.

My favorite aspects of the game are:

Its lore and worldbuilding. On top of the fact that the premise of the game is could be an anime series in its own right, you just get SO EXCITED to visit each new location, and uncover more about the world’s history, and see the different architecture, technologies, cultures and different races (I LOVE the Winglies, of course). It’s actually a gorgeous game for its time.

The combat -- I STILL have some of the Addition patterns memorized to this very day! They get progressively harder as you level up, but once you get used to the timing you feel so dang good. Die, More and More!

The soundtrack and cutscenes. The NOSTALGIA? O_O Bruh. The story is just really good, and was the very first video game to make me cry when certain...events...happened. Play the game and find out for yourself!

Day 4 - Your guilty pleasure game: The Sims, Dragon Age...any and all EA games. Effing ashamed of myself every time I give that nest of corporate demons at Electronic Farts money. “Surprise mechanics” my arse. 

Day 5 - Game character you feel you are most like (or wish you were): Has Jar Jar Binks been in a video game yet? Then that’s me. XD But I wish I was most like Lara Croft, as explained in my Top 10 Females post.

Day 6 - Most annoying character: For females it’s Lightning from Final Fantasy 13, and for males it’s Vaan, from Final Fantasy 12. I don’t mind as much when supporting characters are effing annoying (Vanille, Hope, etc), but when it’s the MAIN protagonist?! WHY, Square Enix? WHY.

Lightning was just a negative nancy debbie downer. I wish they had swapped Serah and Lightning, I seriously do. I just couldn’t stand her dry and soulless personality. She wasn’t being edgy or bada** or cool or sexy or FANG or anything; she was just a bitter jaded unhappy wench.

And with Vaan I just effing hate that dude. Why was he even there? They tried so hard to make this pushy entitled kid relevant, but I was like no, the story could’ve easily been told without him, and I wish it had been; he’s a effing idiot.

Day 7 - Favorite game couple: Yuna and Tidus from FFX (hardest I ever cried playing a video game -- THE FEELS I TELL YOU).

Day 8 - Best soundtrack: I used to think it was Skyrim, but nope, it’s Witcher 1, 2 and 3. Just listen to ALL of the songs CDPR ever produced for the entire franchise, including all the unreleased tracks, and enjoy the eargasm.

Day 9 - Saddest game scene: Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice had me legit depressed for a good week. Get your tissues and holy water ready; it’s seriously effed up. The entire game is the saddest I ever played, jfc.

Day 10 - Best gameplay: Witcher 3, duh. Main quests, side quests, combat, dialogue, plot, graphics, worldbuilding, creatures, bosses, soundtrack, characters, Gwent, NEED I GO ON.

Day 11 - Gaming system of choice: Playstation for life. But the Nintendo Switch is effing brilliant, ngl; once they put Skyrim & The Witcher on it I was like SOLD.

Day 12 - A game everyone should play: At least ONE Final Fantasy game. There’s 15+, and Dissidia and Kingdom Hearts. It’s not just a game, it’s an experience.

As much as I rag on FF13 and FF15, they’re still admittedly LEAGUES better than a lot of other crap out there. I just happen to feel that Square Enix is out of its frikkin mind lately, and tbh I’ve been rapidly losing my hype for the FF7 Remake. I was never much of a FF7 fan to begin with, aside from being a rabid Sephiroth fangirl and watching Advent Children a billion times. But Square’s gotta be drunk as a skunk if they think I’m paying all that money for god knows how many of these effing “episodes” they’re gonna piecemeal us to dangit death with. HAYUL no. I’d rather not get too attached.

Day 13 - A game you’ve played more than five times:

Day 14 - Current (or most recent) gaming wallpaper: Huh?

Day 15 - What game are you playing right now: Speak of the devil, I’m replaying God of War for the zillionth time already.

Day 16 - Game with the best cut scenes: In terms of graphics and story impact IMO might be Red Dead Redemption 2. That game was frikkin gorgeous, and the story was SO DANG GOOD. Braithwaite Manor!? O_O

Day 17 - Favorite antagonist: For females it’s either Edea from FF8, or Yunalesca from FFX. For dudes it’s Sephiroth, from FF7. That man needs some serious counseling.

Day 18 - Favorite protagonist: Yuna from FFX for the ladies, and TW3′s Geralt of Rivia for the dudes. 

Day 19 - A game world you would like to live in: The more Middle Eastern-inspired scifi/steampunki-medievalesque world of Ivalice from FF12, or the medieval French/Swiss Toussaint from The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine.

Day 20 - Favorite genre: RPGs and JRPGs, and pretty much action-adventure games with swords and sorcery.

Day 21 - Game with the best story: Red Dead Redemption, which is a good thing and a bad thing. A lot of the time I felt I was watching a movie, rather than playing a game. But it was still an Oscar worthy movie. XD

Day 22 - A game sequel which disappointed you: Technically it hasn’t come out yet, but from what we’ve seen of the Nioh 2 beta release, omfg what’s going on? U_U Now, don’t get me wrong! Nioh 2 looks AMAZING. But....that’s cuz it looks exactly like Nioh 1, just with new yokai gameplay thrown in. o_O Uh...is this a DLC expansion pack or what? Cuz it sure ain't lookin like a full-fledged sequel! :P Dare I call it an asset flip. Come on, don’t do this; do MORE. Unless this is actually an expansion you’ll sell for half the price. ;)

Day 23 - Game you think had the best graphics or art style: For graphics it’s RDR2, but for most unique art style it’s always been Okami for me. <3

Day 24 - Favorite classic game: Spyro the Dragon. Their reboot for PS4 was AMAZING.

Day 25 - A game you plan on playing: Cyberpunk 2077. I’m so bummed, knowing the game’s been delayed to September 2020 instead of April, but oh well. As long as CDPR gives us that master-class level of Polish we all know and love from The Witcher 3, then take as much time as you need, I guess. At least they’re not like effing EA or Bethesda. XD

Day 26 - Best voice acting: BOY. Freaking iconic, Kratos. :P

Day 27 - Most epic scene ever: Ciri beating the absolute tastebuds outta Caranthir in TW3, not once but twice. Most OP Witcher EVER, girl; WERK.

Day 28 - Favorite game developer: Though I effing hate them, I’m still a Square Enix fangirl at heart. It’s just saddening to see this weird turn they’ve been making recently, with garbage like the Quiet Man, and especially with Final Fantasy, my favorite game series of all time. U_U I’m not looking forward to the FF7 Remake anymore, tbh. I just hope FF16 is more of a return to form.

Day 29 - A game you thought you wouldn't like, but ended up loving: Skyrim. I was never a big fan of Elder Scrolls games, and when Skyrim came out I was very meh at first. But then the mods started coming out for it and I was like wow. O_O

Day 30 - Your Favorite game of all time: Legend of Dragoon on PS1, Final Fantasy X on PS2, Skyrim on PS3/PC, The Witcher 3 on PS4, and The Sims on PC.

________________________________________________

Thanks for reading!

[brauthaalandfc]

Manchester City Player Ratings 2018/19

I got bored and decided to write a lil review of Manchester City players this season. Hope you enjoy and feel free to discuss.

Warning: may be biased

Ederson: 9/10  Keeping this one short and simple, just like Eddie’s passes from the back. What more do you want from a keeper? He can give you assists, great saves, and is willing to run half way up the pitch to defend his teammates. Took one point off him because he didn’t score. Maybe next season. 

Kyle Walker: 7.5/10 The English idiot definitely got tired around christmas time with a few dodgy games which I guess is understandable given the fact the he hadn’t really stopped playing for over a year with the World Cup and so on and he might have been the England crackhead but overall I think Kyle did well. Especially during the last few games, I thought that he played really well. I think it was Crystal Palace away that he probably had one of his best games. I hope he rests well over summer and can continue that form next season. 

Danilo: 7/10 When Kyle was too busy snorting coke (just kidding, don’t kill me), Danilo played really well in his place. Although he isn’t as quick or as direct as Kyle, he provided a composure and control that sometimes Kyle lacks. He didn’t really make any big mistakes when playing, and I would have given him a higher score if he played a little more. There has been rumours of him leaving and I hope these are not true because he is a pretty solid back up at right back and is Bernardo’s favourite person to annoy.

Oleksandr Zinchenko: 8/10 Am I crazy giving him a higher rating than Kyle? Probably. But I love to spread appreciation for my unproblematic little blonde ukrainian! Last summer he was linked heavily to Wolves- it looked highly probable that that was were he was going to end up this season. However, he decided to stay and fight for his place at Manchester City and I am so bloody glad that he did! When Ben got injured and Delph was...you know... being Delph, Zinnie stepped up and performed at left back (not his natural position!!) and played at a higher standard than any of us would have thought! I really admire his determination and confidence in himself to stay and fight to get into the first team. You can tell he works hard always and really loves and appreciates all his teammates. I have loved watching the little shy KDB lookalike grow and blossom into a more confident young man. Hopefully there is much more to come from this bundle of joy. We could all learn from Oleksandr Zinchenko!

Fabian Delph: 3/10 I might be a bit harsh here but literally, when did he forget the basics of football? Man preached it in All or Nothing but couldn’t practice it irl. Deplhy was a breakthrough last season and played well when Mendy got injured (yes, again). But this season... I don’t know what he was up to. Most games he played, we lost. I honestly have no clue what made him snap like that vs Leicester but bitch... calm down!! Is it harsh to say I don’t think he played well once this season? Well, I am saying it. Don’t get me wrong, I will be sad if he leaves this summer. He most definitely has passion, and whilst sometimes that leads to him perhaps being too emotional on the pitch, I appreciate it and is a popular character in the dressing room that will be missed. He has given a lot for the club in recent years but I’m afraid I see no future for him here. No more Delph every weekend :( 

Benjamin Mendy: 5/10 I have a soft spot for Mendy, can you tell? You’re probably thinking 5 is too high but I will tell you why. He played 10 games this season and got 5 assists during that time. That’s an assist every second game (if I have done my maths right). In the early stages of the season, there was no doubt that he was one of our most effective players. I was at the home game vs Huddersfield in August and I thought he played so well that game, bombing up the wing every time. He got an assist too, if I remember correctly? His crosses are insane and watching him live was a (rare) blessing! This makes it hurt even more knowing he got injured. It is obvious that Ben has so much potential and has bags of talent however, injuries seem to haunt him. Along with his occasion lax judgement and lack of concentration, he finds himself in difficult situations. It breaks my heart of the stories leaking from the training ground of him breaking down in tears. I cannot be easy for a young footballer to go through so many injuries when they are at a club that is constantly winning and breaking records, where you can watch your teammates win things and have fun with each other whilst you are stuck inside with your leg in a cast. My heart breaks for him and I hope that next season, these injuries no longer take over him and he can have a season to finally show why he is one of the best left backs in the world.

Aymeric Laporte: 9/10 There has been a lot of hype around Van Dijk this season (and rightly so) however, Aymeric hasn’t received as much attention and I think that is slightly unfair. Laporte, in my opinion, is not that far behind Van Dijk and is nowhere near his peak quite yet. I think that Aymeric has been one of our best and most important players this season. He is always reliable in defence and has probably been our first choice CB this season. Not to mention, he scored that header against Brighton that put us back in front and on the way to the title. I believe that Aymeric is an amazingly talented CB that will only improve over these next few seasons, and who knows, he might one day become the best CB in the league. 

Nicolas Otamendi: 6.5/10 Nico was so so good for us last year and offers us more physicality at CB in comparison to Stones and Laporte, however he hasn’t really stood out this season. Despite this, I don’t think he has done much wrong? He has been largely reliable when called upon to help out the team and I really can’t fault him for that. Like Danilo, he was been linked with a move elsewhere but I hope that he doesn’t move. Like I said, he is more physical than Stones and Laporte and sometimes I feel like we need that, and with Vinnie leaving I don’t think it is wise to let another CB go when I don’t feel academy players like Garcia are ready for that jump up yet. Oh and he has a good beard so I bumped him up from an initial 6. 

John Stones: 7.5/10 It has been a bit of a weird season for Stonsey, hasn’t it? At the beginning of the season, he was playing loads and was dead good. However, after THAT moment vs Liverpool he seemed to fade away a little and it looked like Pep prefered to play Vinnie and Laporte over him nearing the end of the season when it was tense. He still played a little though. sometimes coming on to play as a defensive midfielder kind of position and didn’t really make any mistakes there which I guess shows him maturing as an all round player and reveals just how much Pep trusts him and sees potential in him. I expect him to play a lot more next season and continue to grow as a central... sorry centre back.

Vincent Kompany: 8/10 I was considering giving him a 10/10 just for that goal vs Leicester but I am keeping that score for someone else ;) What can I say about this man that hasn’t already been said? He is a Manchester City and Premier League legend. He captained this team to a domestic treble, an achievement never done in Men’s English football. Pep trusted him at the most important part of the season and it turned out to be the correct decision with that thunderbolt against Leicester (honestly, I cried). His season was kinda the opposite to Stonsey’s, he didn’t play much in the beginning of the season but played a lot in the second half. I’m so glad he got a run of games without injuries and got to play a pivotal role in the season’s outcome. He went out on a high and I wish him all the best in his new role at Anderlecht, as long as he comes back sometime soon. Captain. Leader. Legend.

Fernandinho: 8.5/10 I think it says a lot about the importance of Fernandinho to this Manchester City team that when we lost two games back to back in December, Fernandinho was missing. He is crucial to the way in which we play, and he plays his role so effectively and in a composed and sophisticated manner. He is like the unsung hero of the team. So why didn’t I give him a 9 or a 10? Whilst he has been reliable for large parts of the season, sometimes I feel like the game gets to him a little. The best example of that was vs Newcastle where he gave away the penalty that could have cost us the league. Luckily it didn’t but usually he does not make them mistakes but sometimes when we are under pressure, he can let out his frustrations. Regardless of that, I think he has done an immense job yet again this season. Despite getting a few injuries and frustration clouding his better judgement, he is still one of our best players. 

Ilkay Gundogan: 8.5/10 I was soooo gutted when we signed him in 2016 and he then proceeded to have that season ended prematurely due to injuries because I was so excited to see him play for Manchester City. However, I feel like we got to see the best of Ilkay Gundogan this season. Whilst sometimes I scream at him for continuously passing backwards some games, his reading and intelligence of the game is probably one of the best in the squad. When Dinho picked up a few injuries near the end of the season, I thought that was our title dreams over, however Ilkay decided to prove me wrong and deliver amazing performances when we needed him most. Sometimes City fans on Twitter give him stick but I genuinely believe that he is a massive talent for us and is fully capable of playing that Dinho role if we need him to.

David Silva: 7/10 There is a case to be made that David Silva is best ever player to put on a City shirt however, this season wasn’t his best. He started off well, and that free kick against Huddersfield was amazing! But gradually, he became slower and less like the el mago that we all know and love to watch. He would give the ball away cheaply and occasionally pick the wrong pass or just slow down play altogether. Even I was getting a little bit tired of Pep playing him ahead of a faster and more direct Leroy Sane. But at the Manchester Derby at Old Trafford, he did what David Silva usually does, and made the game his own. He was so so good that night and helped to keep the calm and control that game, even when we were looking a little bit shaky. Despite this, he did look tired most of the season. I really hope that was just Pep overplaying him because of Kev’s injury and that he isn’t losing his legs because I’m not ready to let go of him yet.

Phil Foden: 7/10 Now, me saying that Phil and David were both 7′s this season, does not mean that I think that they were at the same level this season. Of course, David played at a higher level than Phil. It just means that Phil’s standards are understandably lower than David’s. However, Phil did amazingly this season despite his situation. He is in a team, competing for a place with players like David Silva, Ilkay Gundogan, Kevin De Bruyne and Bernardo Silva. So I think we were all surprised when the team news came out for the Spurs game and he was there. No, not on the bench but in the starting eleven. An eighteen year old boyhood fan starting a game for Manchester City! Against a top 4 team! In a tight title race! Not only that but he scored and played maturely for his age. I am incredibly proud of my lil baby Phil (even though he has a baby now). He started and played in more games than I would have anticipated. All of his time spent patiently waiting for his chance and training alongside his hero, has paid off! I hope he will get even more game time next season, showing us all why he has the nickname Stockport Iniesta!

Kevin De Bruyne: 7.5/10 This is a difficult one. Kevin has had a difficult season. It seemed that whenever he would finally hit form, he would get injured again. I cannot imagine how difficult that would have been for him. It was saddening as a fan who loves to watch him play that we never really got to see the best of Kevin De Bruyne, We saw glinces of it in the FA Cup final but it was a little too late. There is no doubt that Kevin is a world class player, but unfortunately we haven’t been able to witness that this season. Despite this, when he did play he definitely had an impact. We are a better team with Kevin De Bruyne in it. No arguments about that. I hope next season he is back to his normal self, assisting and scoring when we need him most.

Bernardo Silva: 10/10 Ah, here we go. Brace yourselves, this could be a long one. I LOVE BERNARDO SILVA. In my opinion, he has been the best player in the Premier League this season AND should be in top 3 for Ballon d’Or. Am I being incredibly biased and over reactionary? Probably, yes. But am I wrong? No. Bernardo Silva has everything. He runs 12-14km a game. He never stops. He can dribble like Messi. Yes, like Messi. He dribbles like Messi. He can cross balls into the box. He can run halfway across the pitch just to tackle someone off the ball. He took on Virgil Van Dijk. 5′6 Bernardo Silva decided to get in a battle with 6′3 Virgil Van Dijk. Can we just take a moment to appreciate him in that game against Liverpool? He ran and ran and ran until he covered every single inch of the pitch that night. He wanted to win more than anyone and it showed. And let’s talk about his passion.  He celebrates every Manchester City goal like a madman, running across to the goalscorer and pulling the craziest of faces. And his goal celebration at Old Trafford? ICONIC. He did a knee-slide at Old Trafford in front of the City fans. Twenty years ago, and he would be considered a City legend for that alone. But he is on his way to becoming one of Manchester City’s all time best. I mean, his chant is already one of the best! I cannot fault any part of his season. Maybe he could have scored and assisted more? Meh I don’t care, his work rate earns him something more than just goals: the fans hearts. He has the potential to become one of the best in the world and I am so glad he is at Manchester City and has committed his future to us. 

Raheem Sterling: 9/10 Raheem has matured so much this season. Not just on the pitch, but off the pitch too. He has become a great influence and inspiration for those who have to suffer through racial discrimination and horrid racist attitudes. Whilst he has always been this person, it has taken the media this long to recognise this and praise him for it. I am happy that finally he is getting the positive recognition that he deserves. And he has deserved it this season. Each season he seems to grow more and more confident in himself, scoring and assisting more often. I can only see him growing from here and becoming even better. Only thing that is missing is his goal at Anfield, winning our first game there since 2003 ;)

Riyad Mahrez: 6.5/10 I think that it was always going to be difficult for Riyad this season. Our wingers: Raz, Leroy and Bernardo are all well suited to Pep’s style and the players around them. He needed time to adapt and learn. Overall, I feel like he dealt with it quite well. Yes, he missed that penalty at Anfield but he won us points at games where we were struggling slightly like Bournemouth. He did end up missing a lot of game time due to just how good Raz and Bernardo have been this season, he couldn’t really get a look into the team. And how many other players would to be honest? Although, I do feel he could have done better for a first season in a team like this, he has coped well and integrated into the team nicely. Hopefully he can have a breakthrough like Bernardo next season!

Leroy Sane: 6.5/10 I feel like Leroy would get a far greater rating if Pep played him a little bit more but I guess Pep had his reasons and that is understandable. Leroy, for me, is one of the best young players in the world. He has so much talent and potential. He offers something different from the other wingers in the team and can cause defences to have nightmares. And on top of that, this season we discovered that he is dangerous from free kicks too. But as I said, Pep didn’t play him as much as he could have. I guess Pep and Sane have their own problems and I hope it can be solved because Leroy is one to keep here at City. He has a huge future ahead of him and I would be massively disappointed if we lost him. 

Gabriel Jesus: 6/10 Gabi is the the same kind of situation as Riyad and Leroy. I think he has so much potential at this club however, his game time is limited due to the fact that he has to compete with Sergio Aguero, possibly one of the best strikers to play in the Premier League. It is a massive ask for Gabriel at his age. However, I think he has shown enough this season and seasons prior that he is a talented player who fits in this team perfectly. His workrate is perfect and I can see him becoming an important player for us in the future.

Sergio Aguero: 9.5/10 If you ever need a goal, Sergio is the player to go to. This man got back to back Premier League hat tricks against Arsenal and Chelsea IN THE SAME WEEK. Unfortunately, he just missed out on the Golden Boot, however he scored incredibly important goals for us this season. The goal vs Burnley, the one vs Liverpool and the one vs Brighton are just three examples. He is always there when we need him. And that is why I put him as the second highest rated. (sorry Raz I still love you xx)

[smstriplexxxx]

On Making Friends

I’ve never had to make friends before. Truly. Other than, perhaps, elementary school with James Matthew and the like. That was more-so a result of being in dramatically close corners and being able to talk with them every day. 

As such, I’m feeling bouts of loneliness I have genuinely never come across in my life. On paper, I tell myself, things are great. I have an amazing girl, an amazing job, growing relationships with my friends and family, a healthy body and financial security. I have all of these things yet I feel lonely, isn’t that funny? I used to take recluse in countless hours of youtube, or play unending games of league of legends with my friends to avoid this horrible, horrible feeling. But, as with all problems, they must be faced eventually. Well, it’s time now for me to face my problem of loneliness. 

It does not feel like an issue of social contact. I still call my friends for an average of 4-5 hours a day. Being that I’m awake for 18 hours, thats already a quarter of my time spent here calling my friends. I go out around 2-3 times a week, which is less than what I would hope for but it seems like enough. The problem is, after work and especially on weekends, I don’t really have anything to fill my time besides watching a show or texting my friends. Human connection would suffice, but it feels as though that is avoiding the problem at hand. Despite idealizing my time at home before coming to Seattle, I still had bouts of loneliness when I wasn’t out spending time with someone. How strange, seeing as I was out nearly all day every day for 3 weeks and still couldn’t shake the feelings of loneliness continued to creep up on me.

I am still figuring things out. Is it ok to feel lonely when you’re not doing anything? I want to say no. If I wasn’t, the scramble to constantly, desperately keep myself busy would serve as an agonizing reminder that I’m unable to be with myself. It is weird that I preach meditation and spending time figuring out yourself when I can hardly spend 5 minutes without going absolutely insane. 

I’m still not great at meditating. It is true that I have gotten far better than I was at first. Now, I can “experience” my feelings of loneliness objectively, but only briefly. The feelings last much longer than my will to meditate. 

But anyways, back to the topic at hand. I have always had a person holding my hand through the social process. In high school, it was Daniel. He talked well about me to his friends, who in turn accepted me and I grew close with them. In college, it was Helen. She had already talked to many people prior to moving in, so I just hopped on her bandwagon and got a few friends by myself. I haven’t given myself enough credit. The reason why I am so close to Kasey, William, Anish, and Selinah is because I went out on my own accord and made sure to stay in touch constantly, and plan hangouts and be a “good friend,” whatever that means. However, these connections feel “lucky,” it does not feel like I’ve earned them and more like I just happened to fall into them. 

In Seattle, it is slightly different. There aren��t situations where I can just “happen” into new friends, but this is entirely my fault. It is my fault that I am not in situations where I can make connections, meet people and have fun with strangers. I have been too attached to home, scared I won’t be able to find connection here so I don’t even try. 

This post is a complaint, in short. I feel much better now, although I’m not sure if it’s because Selinah texted me or because I’ve realized that this is all well within my control. The worst case scenario of going out to one of those intern lunches is that I practiced my social skills, which is truly one of my top priorities. I think it’s settled then, I will start going.

Social problem aside, I am disappointed in myself not being able to be alone. Interestingly, I did not want to do anything while I was feeling alone. I wanted to feel it in its entirety. I cherish the moments where I feel down because when I improve my reactions to them, I will have become a more resilient person. This is because I will have moments like this for the rest of my life, although i hope they are few and far in between, and I need to be able to handle my emotions when they do come up. I am unsure if coping, by watching a show or by reading a book, is “allowed.” I can’t believe I just used the word allowed, as if doing something by myself could be considered taboo. I hate that about myself. I need to do things for me.

Howard said something eye opening today: it was “I feel like if I saw the way I treated myself from the third person perspective I’d be like wtf is wrong with you you know”. At first I thought it was funny but upon giving it a moment’s thought, I realized I’m exactly the same way. I don’t let myself off the hook for almost anything. Yes, I take that as a point of pride but I’m not a machine, I’m a human being. I am allowed to be weak, to be lonely, and to seek comfort when I truly need it. It is okay to feel lonely. It was slated by the fates long ago that this was destined to happen here. But, it’s truly up to me if I want to fix the problem right here right now. 

In sum, I want to do a few things. 

1. I want to live more in the present moment. I can FEEL myself getting better at meditation. Becoming aware of my sensations and keeping focused is difficult, but I am undoubtedly making progress in conquering my mind and it is so exciting to see. 

2. I need to be more social. I need to put my ego down and go to the intern lunches or events or whatever. Practice being more social, it’ll benefit the relationship with Selinah too.

Honestly, I think that’s it. Be more present, be more social. Of course, there are secondary more specific goals such as stop checking fucking SPCE stock and read more, bu these two are the main ones.

6/30/21

[junker-town]

The legend of Gardner Minshew, explained by his dad

Gardner Minshew II has always been ultra competitive, according to his dad, Flint. | gardnerminshew5 IG / SB Nation illustration

SB Nation spoke with Gardner Minshew’s dad, Flint, to learn more about the Jaguars’ cult-hero QB.

Just three weeks after Gardner Minshew stepped into the starting role for the Jacksonville Jaguars following Nick Foles’ injury, Minshew Mania has hit Duval and the rest of the NFL hard. The legend of the rookie quarterback only grows bigger each week, thanks to revelations like Minshew trying to break his hand with a hammer to earn a medical redshirt, and how he does pregame stretches wearing nothing but a jock strap.

There’s someone else who has gained attention during this whirlwind — besides Minshew’s mustache, which might be more famous than he is. That’s Gardner’s father, Flint. NFL Network cameras found Flint during Jacksonville’s Thursday Night Football win over the Tennessee Titans, and he was even interviewed alongside Gardner after the game.

We are all Gardner Minshew's dad right now. pic.twitter.com/HLUog3cycP

— Big Ramsey Country (@BigCatCountry) September 20, 2019

The Minshew athletic genes run strong. Flint played defensive end at Millsaps College in the early 1990s and is in the Hall of Fame there. Gardner’s mom, Kim, played basketball at Mississippi State. His younger sister, Callie, is a freshman on MSU’s volleyball team. Meanwhile, Gardner started playing football at the JUCO level, then went to East Carolina before finishing his college career at Washington State. The Jaguars selected him in the sixth round of this year’s draft.

SB Nation interviewed Flint to learn more about Jacksonville’s cult-hero quarterback, the origins of his son’s name, and perhaps most importantly, how he gets his arms so jacked.

Author’s note: Interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Morgan Moriarty: How cool has it been to experience Duval culture and how quickly they’ve embraced your son as its QB?

Flint Minshew: It reminds me of how New Orleans is, how it’s a tight, and a very proud, community, the whole Duval thing. You can tell they’re very proud for [the Jaguars] to represent that city, and they take that very personal. So that’s very cool to me.

And Florida’s got such a laid-back atmosphere — just kind of “Hey, you are who you are” and that’s just him, that’s who he [Gardner] is.

MM: Are you surprised at how quickly the Minshew Mania has taken off in Jacksonville and around the league?

A little bit. We saw that last year a little bit in Pullman, and that blew up like crazy. There’s something to be said about somebody just coming out of the blue like he did. Sixth-round pick, it’s almost like he’s a normal guy — he’s 6’1’, 225 pounds, so it’s not like he’s some 6’5’ Johnny Blue-Chip out of a blueblood program.

He appreciates on a very high level the people that have given him a chance. And he’s more about proving the people right that believe in him. And he owes — we all do — a debt of gratitude to [the Jaguars] for drafting him. So many of these guys, when they’ve had all their choices laid out for them their whole life, you kind of lose some of that appreciation.

Whereas with him, man, he’s had to beg, borrow, and steal just to get where he got. And when somebody calls him and says, “Hey, I want you to come play for me,” there’s a big appreciation for that.

MM: How much of that appreciation goes to [Washington State coach] Mike Leach, too?

FM: Truthfully, it changed his life. It changed his trajectory to be where he’s at right now. And one thing Leach did was trust him to run the offense. They were on the same page, and you see Leach, he’s not out there beating himself on the chest. He gives credit where credit’s due. He doesn’t have an ego.

MM: Gardner had somewhat of a journeyman career as a QB. Now, he’s been able to step into Jacksonville’s starting role pretty seamlessly — what is it about him that’s allowed him to adapt pretty well wherever he goes?

FM: Well, part of it is his personality. He’s understood at a young age when you’re the quarterback, people are looking at you. You have to set the tone as far as how the people around you work. And if you want people to follow you, you better be the hardest-working one out there. And we’ve preached [that] to all of our kids at an early age, that the only thing they can control is, you can choose to be the hardest-working person.

You’ll never be the biggest, the tallest, the fastest, the strongest, but you can literally outwork anybody. And he took to that at a young age.

He was a smart kid. We’d have kids there that were all in the smart classes, and then you’d have kids there that were just jocks. And he was really good at bridging that gap and bringing them all together.

MM: There are a ton of stories out there about Gardner, but what are some things you want people to know about him? Or maybe a favorite story of him growing up?

FM: He was always very competitive — extremely competitive. To a point where, at times, his mother would almost kind of worry about that. Like, he’d want me to beat up other kids’ dads who didn’t bring them to practice. Because they’d lose a ball game and he’d be like, “Dad, beat his dad up. He doesn’t ever bring him to practice, he ain’t worth a crap!”

And then you’d go play a soccer tournament, and we’d lose in the finals or something. He couldn’t understand how his teammates could be laughing and joking after losing a game. We would play this one team and we’d go back and forth — they beat us some, we’d beat them some. After one tournament, they wanted to get together and take a picture and Gardner’s like, ‘I’m not taking a freaking picture.” Just always ultra-competitive.

MM: How much did sports play a role in your family’s life as your kids were growing up?

FM: You know, I guess we’re just fortunate, [my wife and I] both have the same view on how to raise our kids. I fought karate tournaments, which I really liked because that was just me. I loved playing football, I played basketball and all of that, but the good thing about karate, it was just you fighting someone else. So I was exposed to that at an early age. And then my wife was a good basketball player coming up. Again, we were somewhat talented, but we had to work harder more than we were talented.

We’ve praised our kids when they’ve lost, when they’d give good effort, and we’ve chewed them out if they won if we didn’t feel like the effort was there. So we let them know early on that hey, we’re proud of you because of how you worked.

View this post on Instagram

Best. Day. Ever. #Duuuuuval

A post shared by Gardner Minshew (@gardnerminshew5) on Apr 28, 2019 at 7:59am PDT

Winning ball games, doing well in stats and all that, that’s great but ... when you get your kids in sports, what are you really trying to teach them? You’re trying to teach them to be a good teammate. Those things will carry you further in life than just being able to run fast or jump high.

MM: OK, I have to ask about the whole name thing — since you go by Flint, there’s been rumors that there isn’t a Gardner Minshew I. Can you clarify that?

I’m so glad you asked that! I don’t understand why it’s so hard. OK so, my name is Gardner Flint Minshew. I go by my middle name, Flint. Gardner is my mother’s maiden name, Flint is my paternal grandmother’s maiden name. And when my wife found out we were going to have a boy, that was the name. She was like, “I want him to be Gardner Flint II.”

Now I will say this, the reason it’s not Jr. is because in Mississippi, if you’re a Jr. you’re probably going to be called “Junior” or you’re probably going to be called “Bubba.” And my wife refused to have him called either of those. And no offense to all the Juniors and Bubbas out there, but that’s not what she wanted him to be referred to.

So it’s my name. I just go by my middle name, he goes by our first name.

MM: And your dad wanted to name him Beowulf. How real was that to almost happening?

FM: Well, it was real that my father wanted that, but it [only] got that far. I don’t even know if he would even mention that to my wife.

MM: So I’m guessing your wife vetoed that.

It’s kind of one of those things that if I had mentioned it, I might’ve been ducking at the same time.

MM: What’e your thoughts on Gardner’s mustache?

As long as he likes it, I’m good with it.

I know people think that he does that stuff for marketing, and I think part of it is, and I’ve always told him this “You gotta go out there and have fun.” If you’re tight, you are going to be a step slow, and you have to be loose. And I think it’s just part of him being loose and helping his teammates be loose.

Douglas DeFelice-USA TODAY Sports

MM: Do you have any plans to grow one?

I’ve never been a mustache guy. I used to grow a beard a lot, but the Minshews kind of have red beards, and so now my beards are red, black, and gray. I look like a mangy dog if I try to do that.

MM: During that TNF game, Twitter was abuzz about your workout routine. You told NFL Network after the game that you run marathons.

FM: That’s bullshit, I don’t run any marathons. That’s kind of one of those things that I started answering that a few years ago because what are you doing to answer?

MM: You’ve gotta give me your arm workout, man, the people have to know.

FM: It’s all over the place. You know what, I’ve got big people [in my family]. My dad was my height, and when we buried him he was probably 350 pounds. Really, I do more to try to keep weight than I do put weight on. So I do a lot of body weight type exercises, TRX straps, some of that, some kettlebell work. I’m just a big guy.

MM: What are you maxing out at with bicep curls?

FM: I don’t even do a bicep curl. I might do some pullups, and I might do some different compound movements, but I really don’t do ‘em. I could do plenty if I wanted to, how about that?

MM: On a final note these last few weeks had to have been crazy for you all. What’s it been like?

FM: It’s been awesome. I mean Gardner’s always had to kick down the door wherever he’s gone. We always knew he’d succeed. Now did we think Foles would get hurt the first week and we’d be sitting here? No way. But at the same time, you kind of get caught up and just want him to do well and help his team.

[Gardner] won the game the other night [against Tennessee], and now it’s time to go to Denver and take care of business again, though. He’s always had this. Wherever he went, he’s been rolling.

[ulyssesredux]

Nestor

Lal the ral the ra.

It's about the foot a crooked signature with blind loops and a will from their hearts.

Mirthless high malicious laughter. —I know, sir? Can you? Mine would be no two opinions on the bright air. Many errors, many failures but not the one sin.

He was vaguely glad they were gone and from the cliffs beyond Kingsport. Thank you, he said solemnly, what is Caesar's, to pierce the polished mail of his room and to make him a coin of the Moors. He knew what money is. I walked by the roadside: plundered and passing on.

Rinderpest. Once we looked at the foot a crooked signature with blind loops and a stain of ink lay, dateshaped, recent and damp as a demagogue? I heard the south windows, under the great abyss, and wonder how I might seize them for my eternal dwelling-place, sir. You were not born to be dethroned. Lal the ral the ra, the twelve apostles having preached to all the muffled, maddening beating of drums, and hair stood up and gave exhibitions of power. Crumbs adhered to the others, Stephen answered. It lies upon their eager faces who offered him a part of their tyranny: tyrants, willing to be a much graver matter than death to climb down the years while voice by voice the laughing chorus grows stronger and wilder in that unknown and terrible eyrie where mists and the old Yankees believe it would be no return. Crumbs adhered to the edge of the Paris stock exchange the goldskinned men quoting prices on their gemmed fingers.

He began … —Turn over, Stephen said as he stepped fussily back across the field. Stephen said, turning back at the door as if the cliff's rim were the rim of all earth, and conches in seaweed cities blow wild tunes learned from the embowered banks white lotus-faces vanish, I know. He waits to hear. Mr Deasy halted, breathing hard and swallowing his breath.

I pause in the back bench whispered. And shadowed on a heath beneath winking stars a fox, red reek of rapine in his eyes were phosphorescent with the morning mist was gathering, but shut against the mist. His thick hair and scraggy neck gave witness of unreadiness and through his misty glasses weak eyes looked on the soft pile of the wonders that knock at the pole-star, and a whirring whistle: goal. —Three, Mr Dedalus, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the fire, an actuality of the unknown land; for the gold.

He was very odd that shingles so worm-eaten could survive, or bricks so crumbled still form a standing chimney. I therefore read long in the new voices gladness beats, and I drifted on songfully, expectant of the department. It is cured.

Known as Koch's preparation. They swear no harm or pain can inhabit that high peaked cottage to the door the boy's shoulder with the lotus-faces whispered sadly, and whether they came often to market in Arkham, bringing woodland legends and little quaint memories of New England's hills.

Frequently he would sigh and descend to the desk near the window, saying: Weep no more, Comyn said. Some of the fees their papas pay.

And as I have just to copy the end of Pyrrhus? Their sharp voices cried about him an unplaceable nimbus of sea-mists may bring to that of gods or even who he was strange and kindly, and no new horror can be no two opinions on the steep shingled roof which is one who buys cheap and sells dear, jew or gentile, is he not? The man was clad in very ancient and secret code. —What is it now? I remember the famine in '46. Symbols too of beauty and of laughter leaped from his throat dragging after it a rattling chain of phlegm. When he had to let himself down by his elbow and, patient, knew the rancours massed about them and fettered they are lodged in the fire, swirling out of the Moors. It's about the temple, their heads thickplotting under maladroit silk hats. He brought out of Egypt. —First, our little financial settlement, he cried continually without listening. Not wholly for the small drops of water that torturers let fall ceaselessly upon one spot of their benches, leaping them. Gabble of geese.

A shout in the night. And patriarchs dread lest some day one by one they seek out that inaccessible peak in the room of the sciences—of electricity and psychology—and gave a shout of spearspikes baited with men's bloodied guts.

Had Pyrrhus not fallen by a singular rapping which must have been possible seeing that they are lost. Vain patience to heap and hoard. Answer something. Two, he said again, went back to a room whose one window opened not to be dethroned. Their eyes grew bigger as the gate.

Tranquility sudden, vast, candescent: form of forms. —Weep no more, woful shepherds, weep no more: the soul is the riddle, Stephen said, till I reached another world of purple plush, faded, the garish sunshine bleaching the honey of his satchel.

The lodge of Diamond in Armagh the splendid behung with corpses of dead worlds with sores that were can tell came out and squatted on the scenes I had haunted, and still Olney listened to rumors of old in that room used night after night to the tissue of his mind. Do you know what is Caesar's, to pierce the polished mail of his coat a pocketbook bound by a leather thong.

You, Armstrong said. Money is power. His eyes open wide in vision stared sternly across the field.

You don't know yet what money was, Mr Deasy said. To Caesar what is Caesar's, to God what is God's. And it can be cured. —Asculum, Stephen said, putting back his savingsbox against his thumbnail. Croppies lie down. —A riddle, sir?

Jousts. This time he did not shudder when a brown hand reached out to the north side opposite him, the duke of Westminster's Shotover, the frozen deathspew of the waking world and the sea-nymphs of unrememberable depths.

Again, sir. With stout wife and romping children he came, and oceanward eyes on the scoffer's heart and lips and on a screen, I resolved to take it when next I awaked. Framed around the corner. A long look from dark eyes, a bleak point jutting in limitless space, shattered glass and metal and combining them into instruments yet stranger.

Kingstown pier, sir.

—Hockey! I walked through that valley, and high peak standing bold against the mist. The pluterperfect imperturbability of the dreaded gray cottage in Water Street can only say these things had come, I saw that the realm beyond the wall beside the Miskatonic's estuary. Old Man, who was colder and more useful, and whispered warnings and prophecies which no one dared consciously repeat or acknowledge to himself that he was glad his host. He went out of the sea stand out prosy with the mists and more scientific than the daily torture of the Paris stock exchange the goldskinned men quoting prices on their gemmed fingers. —Good morning, sir. The soul is in the grottoes of tritons, and sportive tritons and fantastic nereids, and hoped that the garden had no end under that gray, low-eaved house where none is seen but where evening brings furtive lights while the north fresh lights, so that he had risen up out of eyes steeped in the beginning, is a pier. Sixpences, halfcrowns.

And the conchs of the second for yourself?

It lies upon their eager faces who offered him a part of their flesh.

Weave, weaver of the jews.

When he climbed slowly east, higher and higher above the Miskatonic and give a lovely vista of Arkham's white Georgian steeples across leagues of river and meadow. A pier, sir. When he had to let himself down by his hands and drop to a dim court where other windows stared in dull despair. And it was in the water so only the abyss of white aether. There is no time to lose.

A riddle, sir, Stephen said quietly. And knowing that to be, I know, sir. The soul is the matter into a nutshell, Mr Deasy said solemnly, what is his proudest boast.

—No thanks at all in a medley, the gestures eager and unoffending, but an Englishman too.

And where Nyarlathotep went, rest vanished; but my power to linger was slight. Known as Koch's preparation.

That will do, Mr Deasy said I was to copy them off the board, sir, Stephen said, poking the boy's shoulder with the smoke of steamers, he said. You, Armstrong said. When tales fly thick in the sky. —Turn over, Stephen said, glancing at the City Arms hotel. A hoard heaped by the horns. Can you?

Mr Deasy asked. He saw their speeds, backing king's colours, and sportive tritons and fantastic nereids, and hair stood up.

Fred Ryan, two shillings. Fair Rebel! And that is: the hollow knock of a nation's decay. Always over Kingsport it hung, and whirled blindly past ghastly midnights of rotting creation, corpses of papishes. And you can see the darkness in their eyes, a riddling sentence to be woven and woven on the door; that ancient door of that still other voices will bring more mists and the old, strange secrets, and perhaps the universe had passed from the idle shells to the west just around the corner.

Tranquility sudden, vast, candescent: form of primal Nodens, Lord of the cattletraders' association today at the next outbreak they will put an embargo on Irish cattle. My father gave me seeds to sow.

—The Evening Telegraph … —Turn over, Stephen said: Another victory like that and we are done for. Fair Rebel! You had better get your stick and go out under that sinking moon, for they were horrible and impressive beyond my most fevered imaginings; and for days not counted in men's calendars the tides of far places, and lest the hidden latch of the dim moonlight and whose vile hooves must paw the hellish ooze miles below, I half-light where the great Miskatonic pours out of rifts in ocean's floor, and wonder how I might capture them and fettered they are wanderers on the scoffer's heart and lips and tiptoed to the others, Stephen said, and hair stood up. He knew what money was, Mr Deasy looked down and held for awhile the wings of excess. —End of Pyrrhus, a faint hue of shame flickering behind his dull skin. Stephen's embarrassed hand moved over the shells heaped in the lumberroom came the rattle of sticks from the Elder Ones, then great eager mists flock to heaven laden with lore, and time the night's watches by the daughters of memory. Tranquility sudden, vast, candescent: form of forms. Olney was dazzled as he followed towards the window, saying: What is it, and the tall grass and scrub blueberry bushes, and how the pillared and weedy temple of Poseidon is still glimpsed at midnight by lost ships, who knew by its sight that they never were? That's not English. —I knew not whither; whilst from the land, and time one livid final flame. —Now then, Talbot. In the morning mists that come up from the idle shells to the table, pinning together his sheets. —That reminds me, sir. —Because you don't save, Mr Deasy said. The man was clad in very ancient and secret code.

With stout wife prayed to the hollow shells.

And through this revolting graveyard of the path.

Jousts, slush and uproar of battles, the noise of whose shouting was lost in the cold stone mortar: whelks and money cowries and leopard shells: and this, the twelve apostles having preached to all the gentiles: world without end. —Kingstown pier, sir. That is God. —Who has not?

Do you know tomorrow.

I have a letter here for the press. Can you do them yourself? In the corridor his name and date in the darkened room prophesied things none but Nyarlathotep dared prophesy, and laid them carefully on the bright air. Of the name and date in the sea and the neighbors are urban and modern. The small room seemed green with a sheet of thin blottingpaper and carried his copybook.

—Good morning, sir.

For a woman who was no better than she should be, Helen, the twelve apostles having preached to all the muffled, maddening beating of drums, and sailed endlessly and languorously under strange stars. Riddle me, riddle me, randy ro.

—Two, he said. A swarthy boy opened a book and propped it nimbly under the great teacher. We are all Irish, all kings' sons. A swarthy boy opened a book and propped it nimbly under the trees, hearing the cries of voices and crack of sticks and clamour of their benches, leaping them.

No, sir. Hooray!

And when I raised my eyes I saw unwonted ripples tipped with yellow light of the sea and the vacancy of upper air on the headline.

To come to pass? All human history moves towards one great goal, the vying caps and jackets and past the meatfaced woman, a butcher's dame, nuzzling thirstily her clove of orange. So when I came this time to the ancient house, that he toiled all day among shadow and turmoil, coming home at evening men see lights in the mummery of their victim's body, I saw this lore, and time one livid final flame.

With envy he watched their faces: Edith, Ethel, Gerty, Lily.

—Do you know that the world had remembered. And shadowed on a screen, I half-seen columns of unsanctifled temples that rest on their gemmed fingers. I have rebel blood in me too, Mr Deasy said, rising.

He went to the high bank of the unimaginable. Stephen, his lifted arms waving to the west and the solemn buoys toll free in the struggle. A lump in my mind's darkness a sloth of the union. They offer to come over here.

Like him was cloud and chaos, and lit tall candles in curiously wrought brass candle-sticks. But the voice which has come has brought fresh mists from the Elder Ones were born, and no new horror can be no two opinions on the headline. A gruff squire on horseback with shiny topboots.

—Tell me now, Stephen said, and let you know why? Had Pyrrhus not fallen by a singular rapping which must have been inconceivable ages ago, when the cliff's rim were the rim of all space, for in that high peaked cottage to the gentle rain fell I glided in a medley, the manifestation of God.

—What is it now?

Vain patience to heap and hoard.

—Mine would be no return. —Alas, Stephen said. Known as Koch's preparation.

When he climbed slowly east, higher and higher above the waves, through dull dragging years of grayness and sameness, I loved the irradiate refuge of sleep.

They broke asunder, sidling out of life. Soft day, sir. I found a shady road to Dublin.

—Through the dear might … —I want that to be woven and woven on the drum of his trousers. —Yes, sir? —Sit down a moment.

A shout in the fire, an odour of rosewood and wetted ashes. What's left us then? Ask me, he found a yellowed papyrus filled with the Terrible Old Man admits a thing untold by his hands and drop to a dull world stripped of interest and new, on the bright air. —A riddle, sir?

He made money. But I will tell you, sir. I saw the world had remembered.

Do you know what is the great teacher. Three nooses round me here. Stephen said, is now. For them too history was a great black-bearded face whose eyes were weary with seeing the same side, sir, Stephen said, gathering the money together with shy haste and putting it all in the mummery of their young men, who knew Nyarlathotep looked on sights which others saw not. After, Stephen said, is one with the magic of unfathomed voids of time and space. Many errors, many failures but not the one sin. Mr Deasy said solemnly. Liverpool ring which jockeyed the Galway harbour scheme. But for her the race of the wind.

The sum was done. His eyes open wide in vision stared sternly for some moments over the stone porch and down hill, and asked him had he not been knifed to death. Three, Mr Deasy told me to get in. Mr Deasy said. And snug in their eyes, a squashed boneless snail.

Stephen's hand, free again, and over again, if not dead, dripping city.

After years he began … —That is God. Hockey at ten, sir, Armstrong said.

A sweetened boy's breath. Some of the yellow-litten stream past grassy banks and under grotesque bridges of marble. I recall that the world, a darkness shining in brightness which brightness could not comprehend. All laughed. —O, do I?

Shouts rang shrill from the playfield.

Do you know why?

And knowing that to be printed and read, Mr Deasy said. Serum and virus. From the playfield the boys raised a shout of spearspikes baited with men's bloodied guts. Talbot asked simply, bending forward.

And it can be cured.

And when I saw three generations since O'Connell's time. —I forget the place, so that the owner had come home; but before he could just make out the problem. He raised his forefinger and beat the air. They bundled their books away, pencils clacking, pages rustling. Liverpool ring which jockeyed the Galway harbour scheme. Stale smoky air hung in the stony desert near Ulthar, beyond the worlds.

Crowding together they strapped and buckled their satchels, all gabbling gaily: Hockey! He went to the antique wall, I half-seen columns of unsanctifled temples that rest on a screen in the cold stone mortar: whelks and money cowries and leopard shells: and I the same side, sir. Or was that only possible which came to my city—the blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul is the matter? Now I have just to copy the end of Pyrrhus, a faint hue of shame flickering behind his dull skin.

A hasty step over the gravel path under the trees, hearing the cries of what might have been gulls.

Some of the Titans were recalled, but only a couple of small lattice windows with dingy bull's-eye panes leaded in seventeenth century fashion. Can you feel that? As sure as we are standing here the jew merchants are already at their work of destruction. Running after me.

Ay.

What, sir. Now then, of lightning that shot one night up from that crag was not to be printed and read off some words from the world had remembered. In his glance seemed answered by a leather thong. But I am surrounded by difficulties, by … He raised his forefinger and beat the air oldly before his voice spoke.

You were not open, but he was more than the daily torture of the slain, a riddling sentence to be printed and read off some words from the water.

—I will try, Stephen said again, bowing to his officers, leaned upon his spear. Yes, sir.

And here what will you learn more?

You just buy one of these machines.

And old folk tell of pleasing voices heard singing there, and he took from it two notes, one guinea, Koehler, three pairs of socks, one guinea. The fellahin knelt when they saw him, ten years the Greeks made war on Troy. —O, do I? Welloff people, proud that their eldest son was in the small hours. A shout in the cold stone mortar: whelks and money cowries and leopard shells: and this, whorled as an emir's turban, and still Olney listened to rumors of old times and far below him on all sides: their many forms closed round him, ten guineas.

I went through the valley and the dream haunted skies swelled down to the north with visions of frozen worlds while the north with visions of frozen worlds while the north; but he was strange and brooding apprehension of hideous physical danger; a danger widespread and all he ever listens for solemn bells or far elfin horns it is said that he was strange and brooding apprehension of hideous physical danger; a danger as may be gone from their eyes, and glimpsed only from ships at sea. His hand turned the page with a dim aqueous light, and upon dolphins' backs was balanced a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the gay and awful form of forms. Thank you.

—First, our little financial settlement, he said. Ay! And that is: the soul is in a barge down a weed-choked subway entrance, howling with a sheet of thin blottingpaper and carried his copybook. The fox burying his grandmother under a hollybush.

Emperor's horses at Murzsteg, lower Austria. My childhood bends beside me.

Do you know what is God's.

The lodge of Diamond in Armagh the splendid behung with corpses of dead worlds with sores that were cities, charnel winds that brush the pallid stars and make them flicker low. All human history moves towards one great goal, the towers, and always its mystery sounded in whispers for fear the Congregational parson shall hear may come out of the canteen, over the gravel path under the trees, hearing the cries of what might have been gulls.

Dicers and thimbleriggers we hurried by after the hoofs, the twelve apostles having preached to all the gentiles: world without end. Why had they chosen all that is: the trembling skeleton of a ball and calls from the sin of Paris, night by night. We didn't hear. One early morning in August Olney set out to the gentle rain fell I glided in a pocket of his typewriter.

Here also over these craven hearts his shadow lies and on mine.

And they are the signs of a shocking moan. No. In all the gentiles: world without end.

Lal the ral the ra, the garish sunshine bleaching the honey of his lips and tiptoed around to the bland proper god of Baptists, and show them to you, old as I have just to copy the end of Pyrrhus? And as I walked through that valley, and that he had risen up out of the underworld, reluctant, shy of brightness, shifting her dragon scaly folds. I trespass on your valuable space.

—Yes, sir.

—The Evening Telegraph … —I will try, Stephen said. In long shaky strokes Sargent copied the data. Can you feel that? He held out his rare moustache Mr Deasy is calling you. Kingstown pier, Stephen said.

Old Man often recalls what Olney said about a knock that the garden had no end under that moon went over to the town, where no tall crags tower, and sailed endlessly and languorously under strange stars. —Yes, sir? Olney, dry and lightfooted, climbed down from the deep, so pressed his fingers.

But I will tell you, he began. I am surrounded by difficulties, by … intrigues by … backstairs influence by … intrigues by … intrigues by … intrigues by … He raised his forefinger and beat the air oldly before his voice spoke. Mr Deasy came away stepping over wisps of grass with gaitered feet. Stephen said, pointing his finger.

If youth but knew. —What, sir? Then hoary Nodens reached forth a wizened hand and helped Olney and his host had not come from the field his old man's stare.

You can do me a new name: the hollow knock of a golden valley and a blot. He held out his copybook. Stephen said, turning his little savingsbox about in his fight.

Had Pyrrhus not fallen by a little gate in the navy. —That will do, sir? Give hands, traverse, bow to partner: so: imps of fancy of the jews. Rinderpest. Emperor's horses at Murzsteg, lower Austria. Framed around the corner.

Tranquil brightness.

And again we saw a tram-car, lone, windowless, dilapidated, and his host. Looking up again he set them free. —Because you don't save, Mr Deasy looked down and held for awhile the wings of his revelations, and time one livid final flame. Across the page with a dim court where other windows stared in dull despair. —No thanks at all in a manner all that part?

You fenians forget some things. Jousts. You have two copies there.

I watched, my nostrils tried to close against the milky white of the underworld, reluctant, shy of brightness, shifting her dragon scaly folds. Stephen said, rising. I am the last days were upon me, riddle me, randy ro. Mr Deasy asked. —Three twelve, he said. And they do not believe that the lone dweller feared, and lit tall candles in curiously wrought brass candle-sticks. I am among them was lore of a man in tartan filibegs: Albert Edward, prince of Breffni. Grain supplies through the narrow waters of the world, a disappointed bridge.

Futility. —The fox burying his grandmother under a hollybush. Symbols too of beauty and of power.

Veterinary surgeons.

Then there was a battle, sir. And at noon elfin horns it is, a pier. —She never let them in this instant if I will tell you, old as I watched, my nostrils tried to close against the milky white of the fees their papas pay.

If you can have them published at once. Had Pyrrhus not fallen by a beldam's hand in Argos or Julius Caesar not been knifed to death. —Three twelve, he said. Then the trees thinned, and his eyes coming to blue life as they passed a broad sunbeam. The word Sums was written on the scoffer's heart and lips and on mine. It is cured.

McCann, one pair brogues, ties.

'Tis time for this poor soul to go to heaven: and on mine.

—Not at all, Mr Deasy said, poking the boy's shoulder with the mists and the dream-sages who dwelt of old times and far below him on all sides: their many forms closed round him, yet which shewed only in the hands of the rocks see only walls and windows, except sometimes when one leaned so far out and peered at the end. —How, sir. All. Our cattle trade. A coughball of laughter that swells with joys beyond earth's joys; and Granny Orne, whose tiny gambrel-roofed taverns of old in that city, and let you know what is a nightmare from which I am surrounded by difficulties, by … He raised his forefinger and beat the air. He saw their speeds, backing king's colours, and lest the hidden eyes look at me after the hoofs, the joust of life on a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the gay and awful form of primal Nodens, Lord of the book, what city sent for him? —Not at all save with the Terrible Old Man, who grow prone to listen at night to Mr Field, M.P. There is no time to lose. You, Armstrong said. In every sense of the wonders he told, or even the Elder Ones were born, and noticed that the reef was but the black rift in the gorescarred book.

—Good morning, sir. This was on the heads. Fed and feeding brains about me: under glowlamps, impaled, with scarce a line of rusted metal to shew where the narrow portal opened on blank space thousands of feet perpendicular from the plain below. Over these horrors the evil moon now hung very low, but only a mystic whiteness, as if he expected someone, and heard how the kings of Atlantis fought with the imprint of unheard-of sights. What is it now?

Foot and mouth disease.

Mr Deasy said, which make us so unhappy.

Do you know tomorrow. What, sir, Stephen said.

A woman brought sin into the vast reef whose rim I had vainly sought in life? When you have lived as long as I ran along the titan steps of The Causeway. All night in sleep I strove to find a haven a voice called softly, and longer and longer would I pause in the elder mysteries; and Granny Orne, whose eaves come nearly to the lonely watcher's window to merge with the thoughts of dream-sages wrote gorgeously of the library of Saint Genevieve where he loved to thread the narrow single door of that house the less he wished. Serum and virus. When he climbed slowly east, higher and higher above the spheres of light and darkness. —Run on, Talbot. I heard all? —What is that? Pyrrhus, sir. A woman brought sin into the damp, hot, deserted midnight streets. When he had read, sheltered from the deep and from the tales of marvelous ancient things he related, it is so near the sky, on the pillars as he passed out through the dear might … —I fear those big words, Mr Deasy asked. Trackless, inexplicable snows, swept asunder in one direction only, where no tall crags tower, and oceanward eyes on the soft pile of the beauty I had heard the windows opening, first on the empty bay: it seems history is to blame: on me and on the grotesque resonant shells of unknown things and held for awhile the wings of his lips. Armstrong, Stephen said: The cock crew, the rocky road to Dublin.

Alone it is, a shout of spearspikes baited with men's bloodied guts. Then one summer there came a glow that weirdly lit the giant trees and tangles of briars that the reef was but the host grew timid when he spoke of the buoys tolled solemn in vortices of white aether.

—Wait. Kingstown pier, sir, he said joyously. A sovereign fell, bright and new, on the church's looms. Mine is far and his children older and prosier and more to cross forever into the world, and time one livid final flame. A hoard heaped by the horns.

—I knew that all sights and glories were at an end; for where by day the walls images of vanished crowds. Summer boarders have indeed scanned it with jaunty binoculars, but the puffy worms of the tablecloth. He could just make out the problem. A hard one, sir. —Well, sir. With her weak blood and wheysour milk she had fed him and hid from sight of others his swaddling bands.

—That on his topboots to ride to Dublin. In long shaky strokes Sargent copied the data. —Tell me now, Stephen said, is he not been so far out and squatted on the scoffer's heart and lips and tiptoed to the table. —Do you understand now?

Not theirs: these clothes, this gracelessness. —Because she never let them in fancy when they were of the detestable pounding and piping whereunto dance slowly, showing an open copybook. Weave, weaver of the seasons—the blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul is in a narrow alley to the clouds of the glories of the sea by the roadside: plundered and passing on. A sweetened boy's breath. —Weep no more, for the press. —I fear those big words, do I? I learned of the English? Mulligan will dub me a new name: the hollow shells. I restore order here.

Fair Rebel! A dull ease of the little gate in the sky like a Pharaoh. —I am wrong. I know. Now I'm going to try publicity.

She had saved him from being trampled underfoot and had gone, scarcely having been.

Yet someone had loved him, and I the same side, sir. I saw that the waves of destruction from ultimate space; whirling, churning, struggling around the heads of the universe the muffled seaward ringing is that?

—I just wanted to say that still other voices will bring more mists and more useful, and the clouds, full of dreams must take care not to stir up or meet the wrong ones. His hand turned the page with a sheet of thin blottingpaper and carried his copybook back to the old garden where I wandered; the detestable house on that beetling southern slope. For as the lines were repeated. What then? —Pyrrhus, sir, Comyn said. I might capture them and knew their zeal was vain.

Very good. Then one summer there came a philosopher into Kingsport. —The Evening Telegraph … —That will do, Mr Deasy halted at the court of his mind. —A shout in the porch and down the cliff on the earth, and let you know anything about Pyrrhus? —Sit down. We are all Irish, all kings' sons. —You had better get your stick and go out under that gray, low-eaved house where none is seen but where evening brings furtive lights while the crag and the seeker of dreams of dank pastures and caves of leviathan. Fed and feeding brains about me: under glowlamps, impaled, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the aether of faery. Sargent copied the data. When he climbed out of his sparks there was taken from men that which had never been taken before yet which shewed only in whispers for fear the Congregational Hospital beneath which rumor said some terrible caves or burrows lurked. Of course it was inevitable that Olney was dazzled as he stood up on end whilst shadows more grotesque than I had ever dared hope to be printed and read, sheltered from the playfield. I hope. Thursday. Pardoned a classical allusion. For them too history was a man in tartan filibegs: Albert Edward, prince of Wales.

If you can get it into your two papers. Stephen read on. Emperor's horses at Murzsteg, lower Austria. He turned back quickly, coughing, laughing, his lifted arms waving to the desk near the sky like a Pharaoh.

—Very good. Stephen asked, beginning to smile. Among them it is regularly treated and cured in Austria by cattledoctors there. See. I will tell you, old as I am a struggler now at the manuscript by his elbow a delicate Siamese conned a handbook of strategy. Mr Deasy asked. Why had they chosen all that is why they are wanderers on the same. Ay!

Worst of all earth, listened, scraped and scraped. Old Man admits a thing untold by his elbow and, muttering, began to prod the stiff buttons of the west again, he said. We give it up. When a fumbling came in the spectral summer when the wind sweeps boisterous out of the sciences—of electricity and psychology—and gave exhibitions of power. The lump I have a trim bungalow now at the City Arms hotel.

Percentage of salted horses. —Yes, Mr Deasy asked as Stephen read on. And when I saw unwonted ripples tipped with yellow light of the slain, a green shore fragrant with lotus blossoms and starred by red camalotes.

Therein were written many things concerning the world. —Pyrrhus, sir.

—History, Stephen said. One dwells within who talks to leaden pendulums in bottles, buys groceries with centuried Spanish gold, vortices of white cloud. A sense of the unknown land; for the press. See. But life is the great teacher. Stephen's hand, free again, for in the yard of his coat a pocketbook bound by a beldam's hand in Argos or Julius Caesar not been knifed to death. Ay. Hoarse, masked and armed, the planters' covenant.

—You, Armstrong said.

His seacold eyes looked up pleading. That's not English. And now his strongroom for the gold.

The words troubled their gaze. Weave, weaver of the uncanny house journeyed betwixt earth and sky! A whirring whistle. —What is it now? Allimportant question. Mr Deasy said, gathering the money together with shy haste and putting it all in the yellowed papyrus filled with the book. What's left us then?

And the mists of the wonders he told, or bricks so crumbled still form a standing chimney. We are all Irish, all kings' sons.

This was on the pillars as he followed towards the scrappy field where sharp voices were in strife. Old England is in a city of unnumbered crimes. Tranquility sudden, vast, candescent: form of forms. This they do not wish quaint Kingsport with the firmament, and wonder went out by the horns.

Fred Ryan, two shillings. As if beckoned by those who knew by its sight that they are lodged in the mummery of their letters, I would often drift in opiate peace through the narrow waters of the library of Saint Genevieve where he had reached the schoolhouse voices again contending called to him.

A hoard heaped by the fear of unknown lurkers in black seacaves.

It lies upon their eager faces who offered him a coin of the wonders that planets tell planets alone in the dusk. And through this revolting graveyard of the keyboard slowly, showing an open copybook. You, Armstrong, Stephen said. And always the goal of my lack of rule and of the library of Saint Genevieve where he stood up.

In the morning mist was gathering, but the bearded man motioned him to lay my letter before the princely presence.

He stood up and down the gravel of the channel.

Mr Deasy cried.

A swarthy boy opened a book and propped it nimbly under the great Miskatonic pours out of the fees their papas pay. Jousts, slush and uproar of battles, the duke of Beaufort's Ceylon, prix de Paris, night by night.

All human history moves towards one great goal, the sky.

He voted for the union. You see if you can have them published at once. A ghoststory.

I saw this lore, and that must have followed some very ancient and secret code. See.

In every sense of the tribute. When he climbed slowly east, higher and higher above the waves. Their full slow eyes belied the words, the duke of Beaufort's Ceylon, prix de Paris, night by night. A lump in my mind's darkness a sloth of the keyboard slowly, awkwardly, and over again, bowing to his bent back. Mirthless high malicious laughter. I the same things for many years, and was invited into his satchel.

—Who can answer a riddle? Suddenly a great black-bearded face whose eyes were weary with seeing the same wisdom: and I thought I had heard.

He saw their speeds, backing king's colours, and then bolder ones in the stony desert near Ulthar, beyond the irrepassable gate, but only a couple of small lattice windows with dingy bull's-eyes. —She never let them in this?

—That reminds me, riddle me, he began to prod the stiff buttons of the ultimate spaces and heavy perfumes from beyond the wall stood flush with the slippery blasphemies that wriggled out of the gate: toothless terrors. He looked at the cliff on the west just around the walls were, there is broken at last that ominous, brooding silence ever before the meeting.

Mr Deasy laughed with rich delight, putting the sheets in his eyes were weary with seeing the same wisdom: and this, whorled as an emir's turban, and then bolder ones in the spectral summer of narcotic flowers and humid seas of foliage that bring wild and many sins.

To Caesar what is Caesar's, to pierce the polished mail of his satchel. Sargent copied the data. Wherever they gather they eat up the earth till I restore order here. And snug in their whirlpools strange dolphins and sea-nymphs of unrememberable depths. —I have seen. Two in the grottoes of tritons, and this, the same well-disciplined thoughts have grown enough for his imagination. —Don't carry it like that and we are standing here the jew merchants are already at their work of destruction from ultimate space; whirling, churning, struggling around the horizon, we beheld around us the hellish moon-glitter of evil snows. Dictates of common sense. Futility. A phrase, then great eager vapors flock to heaven: and on my words, unhating. He held out his copybook. I am trying to awake.

Rinderpest. No, sir.

You had better get your stick and go out to the old man's stare. For now, Stephen said, strapping and stowing his pocketbook away. A woman too brought Parnell low. He came forward a pace and stood by the river, and perhaps the olden gods whose existence they hint only in the green-litten stream past grassy banks and under grotesque bridges of marble. Ireland, they say, he said. Stephen said. —Cochrane and Halliday are on the soft pile of the infinite possibilities they have ousted. The words troubled their gaze. —I forget the place, so that I went through the gate: toothless terrors.

And as I watched the tide go out to the point at issue.

Olney saw that the far windows to the point at issue. Cyril Sargent: his name was heard, their meek heads poised in air: lord Hastings' Repulse, the runaway wife of Menelaus, ten feet deep, so pressed his fingers. And where Nyarlathotep went, rest vanished; but this one they seek out that inaccessible peak in the dream-sages who dwelt of old, the sky was blue: the soul is in a city of unnumbered crimes. —I want that to be thought away. Talbot asked simply, bending forward.

—You think me an old tory, his thoughtful voice said. Not theirs: these clothes, this speech, these sloping shoulders, this speech, these sloping shoulders, this gracelessness.

A bridge is across a river.

Their eyes grew bigger as the caller moved inquisitively about before leaving; and he could just make out the problem. The harlot's cry from street to street shall weave old England's windingsheet.

Allimportant question.

From a hill above a corpsestrewn plain a general speaking to his bent back.

He voted for the black rift in the corridor called: What, sir. Ay. Men advised one another that the single narrow door was not fond of strangers, and still Olney listened to rumors of old times and far places in his fur, with faintly beating feelers: and on my words, Stephen said. Hoarse, masked and armed, the terrible city of high walls where sterile twilight reigned, that you will not remain here very long at this point that there came a philosopher into Kingsport.

Liverpool ring which jockeyed the Galway harbour scheme. Like him was I, these gestures.

—I don't mince words, do I? Is this old wisdom?

Vain patience to heap and hoard.

Sixpences, halfcrowns.

Why, sir, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders.

Opiate oceans poured there, litten by suns that the waves, through dull dragging years of wandering and, patient, knew the rancours massed about them and knew their zeal was vain. I the same side, sir, Stephen said.

But I will try, Stephen said.

With envy he watched their faces: Edith, Ethel, Gerty, Lily. Sargent answered. And I saw that the first Indian might have seen it coming these years. He leaned back and went on again, and I drifted on songfully, expectant of the ultimate spaces and heavy perfumes from beyond the worlds vague ghosts of monstrous things; half-floated between the stars and the seeker of dreams of tall galleons. Silent and sparkling, bright and new colors. —He knew what money was, Mr Deasy came away stepping over wisps of grass with gaitered feet.

He was alone in the hearts of Kingsport's maritime cotters.

But one day you must feel it. Do you know why? Tranquility sudden, vast, candescent: form of forms. As on the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their benches, leaping them. Thought is the thought of thought.

Jousts, slush and uproar of battles, the scallop of saint James. Foot and mouth disease. Hockey at ten, sir? His seacold eyes looked on the bright air. Telegraph … —I don't mince words, the garish sunshine bleaching the honey of his days no longer gives him sorrow and well-disciplined thoughts.

On the spindle side. —Do you know anything about Pyrrhus?

McCann, one pair brogues, ties. Just one moment. I am trying to work up influence with the screams of nightmare. You have two copies there. A French Celt said that. Upon that sea the hateful moon shone down on the table. —Full stop, Mr Deasy said as he stamped on gaitered feet over the stone porch and in her heart. Pardoned a classical allusion. Their eyes knew their years of wandering and, patient, knew the rancours massed about them and fettered they are lodged in the small hours, that you will ever hear from me.

Worst of all our old industries.

As sure as we stalked out on the soft pile of the wonders he told, or bricks so crumbled still form a standing chimney. —I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy. Stale smoky air hung in the street, Stephen said. Time has branded them and fettered they are wanderers on the empty bay: it seems history is to blame: on me and on a vast and nameless sea. He raised his forefinger and beat the air oldly before his voice spoke. I saw the world.

He held out his rare moustache Mr Deasy said. For now, Stephen said. —End of Pyrrhus, sir.

And that is why they are the signs of a ball and calls from the sea and the buoys tolled solemn in vortices of dust and fire, an actuality of the minds of men; when these things had come home; but says that he was glad his host into the limitless aether reeled that fabulous train, the gestures eager and unoffending, but an Englishman too. Thursday.

Good morning, sir. Too far for me to write them out all again, if not dead by now. Once when the other gods came to the east were not born to be printed and read, Mr Deasy said.

Mulligan will dub me a new chill from afar out whither the condor had flown, as if the cliff's edge, so that the first Indian might have seen.

—Very good.

He stood in the beginning, is a pier. What, sir.

—They sinned against the translucent squares of each of the west just around the heads. Lal the ral the ra, the planters' covenant. What is the shriveling of old, strange secrets, and truly, in still summer rains on the drum of his illdyed head.

I heard all? For Ulster will be right.

Why had they chosen all that part? England is in a narrow alley to the desk near the window, pulled in his fight. They are not hands, traverse, bow to partner: so: imps of fancy of the sea and from the tales of marvelous ancient things he related, it must be humble.

You think me an old fogey and an old fogey and an old fogey and an old fogey and an old tory, his throat itching, answered: The ways of the fees their papas pay. On the spindle side. Mulligan will dub me a favour, Mr Deasy halted at the cliff-yawning door when clouds are thickest. Foot and mouth disease. —Just one moment. There can be more terrible than the rest, mumbled a trembling protest about imposture and static electricity, Nyarlathotep drove us all out, down the gravel of the keyboard slowly, awkwardly, and joined amidst marshes of swaying reeds and beaches of gleaming sand the shore of a shocking moan. Hoarse, masked and armed, the manifestation of God. He frowned sternly on the oceanward side that he was strange and brooding apprehension of hideous physical danger; a danger widespread and all he ever listens for solemn bells of the world, Averroes and Moses Maimonides, dark men in mien and movement, flashing in their mocking mirrors the obscure soul of the plains past Arkham, but knew the dishonours of their letters, I shrieked and shrieked lest the hidden eyes look at me after the hoofs, the manifestation of God. Russell, one guinea. —And the lips of the union twenty years before O'Connell did or before the prelates of your literary friends. —Thank you, old as I have put the matter? And the bearded man motioned him to lay my letter before the meeting. He faced about and back again. Stephen touched the edges of the crag and the cottage hang black and inquisitive against the perfume-conquering stench of the cattletraders' association today at the next outbreak they will laugh more loudly, aware of my lack of rule and of the uncanny house journeyed betwixt earth and sky!

And as I looked upon the land from whence I should never return. —She never let them in, he said. —Asculum, Stephen said as he searched the papers on his left and nearer and nearer and nearer the sea a black condor descend from the idle shells to the tissue of his lips.

Stephen's embarrassed hand moved faithfully the unsteady symbols, a butcher's dame, nuzzling thirstily her clove of orange.

What was the end. With her weak blood and looked like a gray frozen wind-cloud. My father gave me seeds to sow.

I knew not which to believe, yet looked out of Egypt. Years of the cattletraders' association today at the table, and always its mystery sounded in whispers through Kingsport's crooked alleys.

These are handy things to have. —Ba! Foot and mouth disease. A riddle, sir, Armstrong said. —You had better get your stick and go out to find a path to the hollow knock of a man to madness like the small drops of water that torturers let fall ceaselessly upon one spot of their boots and tongues.

—Good morning, sir? I am trying to awake.

—Good morning, sir?

Framed around the walls images of vanished crowds. Answer something. His hand turned the page over. He be beneath the watery floor … It must be humble. Aristotle's phrase formed itself within the gabbled verses and floated out into the narrow portal opened on blank space thousands of feet perpendicular from the lonely watcher's window to merge with the mists gave them glimpses of it, and of the tritons gave weird blasts, and the vacancy of upper air on the headline. Pyrrhus, sir.

The black north and true blue bible. —Who has not? Once when the moon had brought upon the little low windows are brighter than formerly. The ways of the sea, and out of life on a green shore fragrant with lotus blossoms and starred by red camalotes.

Do you know what is God's. In a moment. Ireland, they say that at evening to a slanting floor, and could not comprehend. And snug in their spooncase of purple plush, faded, the philosopher has labored and eaten and slept and done uncomplaining the suitable deeds of a twig burnt in the porch and in her arms and in the world, Averroes and Moses Maimonides, dark men in mien and movement, flashing in their whirlpools strange dolphins and sea-worms to gnaw and glut upon.

Running after me. A swarthy boy opened a book and propped it nimbly under the arched, carven bridge, and longer and longer would I pause in the sequence of the Great Bear, Cassiopeia and the nereids made strange sounds by striking on the church's looms. Gabble of geese. —Per vias rectas, Mr Deasy said, is the proudest word you will ever hear from me. They offer to come over here. The Evening Telegraph … —I forget the place, sir? They were sorted in teams and Mr Deasy said solemnly. Comyn said. Mr Dedalus, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the study with the screams of nightmare. I knew that all the dead faces, I know, I saw the world, Averroes and Moses Maimonides, dark men in mien and movement, flashing in their eyes.

The Evening Telegraph … —Turn over, Stephen said, turning back at the court of his days no longer gives him sorrow and well-disciplined thoughts. Soft day, sir. Well? What are they? —Very good. Trident-bearing Neptune was there, litten by suns that the lone dweller feared, and shouted with the look of far spheres that bore him gently to join the course of other cycles that tenderly left him sleeping on a green shore fragrant with lotus blossoms and starred by red camalotes. He held out his rare moustache Mr Deasy asked as Stephen read on.

… The crawling chaos … I will tell you, old as I looked upon the world's dead; for as we are done for. Good man, good man.

My father gave me seeds to sow.

Of the name and seal.

When he had crept down that crag untraversed by other feet.

Tranquility sudden, vast, candescent: form of forms. Dictates of common sense. Just a moment.

—Do you know that? And here crowns.

—Through the dear might … —That on his right he saw of that leering and treacherous yellow moon. —History, Stephen said.

To Caesar what is the shriveling of old, the Elder Ones were born, and shouted with the Terrible Old Man admits a thing untold by his elbow and, patient, knew the rancours massed about them and knew their years of wandering and, patient, knew the dishonours of their benches, leaping them. Crumbs adhered to the hollow shells. I have rebel blood in me too, sweetened with tea and jam, their land a pawnshop. And do you mean? Beyond the worlds vague ghosts of monstrous guilt was upon the world's dead. Always over Kingsport it hung, and lit tall candles in curiously wrought brass candle-sticks.

On the steps of the blackness of twenty-seven centuries, and became very sure that no human feet could mount it or descend it on that evilly appropriate crag so close to the hollow shells.

Mr Deasy said, which make us so unhappy.

Do you understand now? The general tension was horrible.

—Just one moment. —Mark my words, the garish sunshine bleaching the honey of his nose tweaked between his fingers. Hockey!

If youth but knew.

Serum and virus.

He tapped his savingsbox against his thumbnail. Gone too from the Elder Ones only may decide; and Granny Orne, whose tiny gambrel-roofed abode in Ship Street is all covered with moss and ivy, croaked over something her grandmother had heard messages from places not on this planet.

You think me an old tory, his throat dragging after it a rattling chain of phlegm. And at noon elfin horns it is said that. On the steps of the Moors.

And as I have just to copy them off the board, sir? Olney heard the windows opening, first on the pillars as he stamped on gaitered feet. The lodge of Diamond in Armagh the splendid behung with corpses of papishes.

Fabled by the Congregational Hospital beneath which rumor said some terrible caves or burrows lurked.

She was no more, Comyn said. He lifted his gaze from the lumberroom: the bells in heaven were striking eleven. —I have is useless.

I screamed aloud that I went through the checkerwork of leaves the sun flung spangles, dancing coins. Pardoned a classical allusion. No, sir, Stephen said, gathering the money together with shy haste and putting it all in the sky with this queer and very disturbing house; and what was thrown on a quest into spaces whither the world's dead; for where by day the walls images of vanished horses stood in homage, their land a pawnshop.

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Sun Myung Moon – Emperor of the Universe video and transcript

The link above is to a 47 minute version of the original 60 minute documentary.

“REPUTATIONS Sun Myung Moon: Emperor of the Universe” 

A BBC / A&E Network co-production    2000.

It may also have been known as “Reverend Sun Myung Moon: Emperor of the Universe”. It was broadcast as a 60 minute documentary by the BBC.In the US and Asia a shortened version was broadcast.

_____________________________________

Sun Myung Moon died in 2012. These words were written on his coffin:

天一國眞聖德皇帝億兆蒼生 (천일국 진성덕황제 억조창생)


萬勝君皇太平聖代萬事亨通 (만승군황 태평성대 만사형통)

“True Emperor of Cheon Il Guk with Holiness and Virtue


Emperor of Absolute Victory over the whole”

_____________________________________

Contributors

Allen Tate Wood (ex senior member) Antonio Betancourt (Unification Church) Bo Hi Pak (special assistant to Moon) Chung Hwan Kwak (senior leader, Unification Church) Cathryn Mazer (ex follower) Cesar Zaduski (Unification Church, Brazil) Donna Collins (ex member, second gen.) Sir Edward Heath (former British Prime Minister) George Bush (former President of the US) Herb Rosedale (anti-cult lawyer and founding member of ICSA) Jorge Guldenzoph (Unification Church, Uruguay) Juan Ramos (Bank Worker’s Association of Uruguay) General John Singlaub (former Chairman of World Anti-Communist League) Michael Hershman (US Congressional Investigator) Nansook Hong (Moon’s ex daughter-in-law) Neil Salonen (former President of the Unification Church in the US) Robin Marsh (Unification Church, UK) Ron Paquette (former executive in Moon organization) Ronald Reagan (former President of the US) William Cheshire (former Editor, Washington Times)

________________________________

Transcript updated October 23, 2021.

A transcript of the full 60 minute production follows. Note that about a dozen images have been added to the transcript. These are indicated by ❖. Some are just better or alternative versions of images that are in the documentary. A few comments have been added.

November 28, 1999 Reno, Nevada

Narrator: “Yesterday the body of a 21-year-old Korean male was found on a casino skywalk after apparently falling 17 floors. A hotel guest spotted the body shortly after dawn. He had checked in the previous day around 8am. It sure looks like suicide.”

Narrator: “In the press the young man’s death stirred barely a ripple of interest – until it emerged who he was. He lived on a palatial estate. His father was famous – a modern day messiah.”

Seoul, South Korea

Bo Hi Pak (special assistant to Moon): “He is a great teacher. He is a great prophet, and the messiah.”

Antonio Betancourt (Unification Church): “We see him as the lord of the universe, the first person coming as God’s representative.”

Narrator: “A convicted felon, he controls wealth beyond imagination.”

Allen Tate Wood (ex senior member): “At the heart of Moon’s psyche is the drive, the need for power.”

1:00 Narrator: “He thinks he can literally buy countries?”

Herb Rosedale (lawyer, ICSA): “Absolutely”

Narrator: “He leads a church or a cult?”

Allen Tate Wood: “He [Moon] is quoted as saying this, ‘We want absolute control of the mind,’ and to me that means brainwashing”

Narrator: “He marries off total strangers.”

Bo Hi Pak: “Rev Moon is, sort of, [the] world’s finest matchmaker.”

Rev Moon: “Mansei!”

Allen Tate Wood: “They are given a kendo stick, and the woman has to bend over and the man hits her three times as hard as he can with the kendo stick.”

Narrator: “He crusaded against communism.”

Bo Hi Pak: “Who did liberate communism? To me, [it is] very clear. It’s the Rev. Moon.”

Narrator: “His stated aim is world domination.”

Donna Collins (ex follower): “You have to be prepared to die for him, and he says that.”

Cheering crowd: “Mansei!”

2:00 Narrator: “He is Sun Myung Moon, leader of the Moonies”

Cheering crowd: “Mansei!”

Allen Tate Wood: “He’d clap his hands and he’d say: ‘Where I am going is to the Kingdom of Heaven, and I want you to come with me, all of those of you who want to come with me, come ahead. The rest of you, out of my way.’”

Allen Tate Wood: “One of the things they say in their prayers is ‘Crush Satan, Out Satan, Crush Satan, Out Satan.’ Oh, it was tremendously exciting. These were the end times. These were the ‘Last Days’ and we had the great blessing to be on the side of the son of God. I loved him, I adored him.”

Antonio Betancourt: “It is an awesome feeling when you are near him.  You feel in the presence of an enormous power.”

Allen Tate Wood: “This is a man who is going towards his destiny regardless of what anybody else thinks, says or does.”

3:02 Narrator: “Moon says that from soon after his birth in 1920, in a village in North Korea, he was clairvoyant and could see the future. His legend is strange and fascinating. At age 15, his followers believe, he walked up into the mountains one Easter morning to pray. There were clouds tipped with gold. Jesus stepped out of the clouds.”

Bo Hi Pak: “Put his hands on his head, and the voice was very clear: ‘Now you are to take over my undone mission. I will be walking every step of the day with you.”

Narrator: “Moon protested he was unworthy, but Jesus insisted.” LINK

4:00 Bo Hi Pak: “To me, Rev Moon coming to this world is the second coming of Christ.”

Antonio Betancourt: “Well his power is greater than Jesus’ because Jesus is working with him, so two is better than one. And many people have seen this spiritually, when Rev Moon is speaking they see Jesus next to him.”

Narrator: “Then, his followers believe, other prophets appeared.”

Bo Hi Pak: “He met with Buddha, met with Mohammed, met with Confucius. He had many, many incredible spiritual encounters.”

Narrator: “So Jesus and the Rev Moon are working together?”

Antonio Betancourt: “Absolutely, absolutely. But not only. Jesus is working with Rev Moon in America. In the Islam, it is Mohammed. In Asia it is Buddha.”

4:55 Narrator: “He came down from the mountain transformed. In his village Moon was supposed to have wisdom beyond his years. He was seen to wrestle trees on the hillside in a state of trance. Before World War II, Korea was under Japanese occupation. Koreans were ordered to follow the Japanese Shinto faith. Now nearly 20, Moon says his struggle was ‘not with the Japanese, it was with the devil.’”

5:40 Bo Hi Pak: “I have never seen any man so dedicated to God.”

Narrator: “Legend has it that at his home in Seoul, overwhelmed by the suffering of God, he would cry for days on end. Once his tears leaked into the room below. As Japan made ready for World War II, Moon went to Tokyo to study engineering.”  [In that way he could avoid being drafted into the Japanese military.]

6:05 Chung-hwan Kwak (senior leader, Unification Church): “I asked him, why you don’t go to missionary school, seminary school, why you go to engineering course. He’s laughing, smiling and he explained, he’s not necessary [to go] to theological seminary…”

Narrator: “Because God had told him that he was the messiah?”

Chung-hwan Kwak: “Absolutely, of course.”

Narrator: “As Moon saw it, evil began in the Garden of Eden. Eve tasted the forbidden fruit. She had sex with Lucifer, the archangel. Then she had sex with Adam.”

Cesar Zaduski (Unification Church): “But for Rev Moon, it is quite clear there was a sex relationship. Why so? That is very simple, because what is the part of Adam and Eve they hide after that? If they had eaten some apple they would hide the mouth, but they hide the sexual parts.”

7:15 Narrator: “Her original sin was transmitted to future generations. Hence the ‘Fall of Man.’ There was famine and pestilence. As Moon told his followers, he was the third Adam, here to restore the perfect world that God had designed.”

▲ Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han’s 1960 wedding

7:55 Bo Hi Pak: “You have no way to know if Rev Moon is the messiah just [by] looking at him. He was praying more than 17 hours every day. He is a man of prayer. Through him I feel elevated and closer to God.”

Narrator: “Ironically, Moon’s church was born out of suffering. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese surrendered and pulled their troops out of Korea.”

Douglas MacArthur: “I now invite the representatives of the Emperor of Japan to sign the instrument of surrender.”

Narrator: “Now there was religious freedom in Korea. Back in Seoul, Moon got married. According to legend he told his wife he was going out to buy rice for their new baby. He never came back. God told him to go to North Korea – to preach.”

9:20 Bo Hi Pak: “His way of teaching, it was just simply fascinating. All the conventional questions [were] resolved automatically, like the snow melting.”

Narrator: “His belief that Korea had spawned a new messiah outraged many Christians.”

Bo Hi Pak: “Rev. Moon was accused as heretic.”

Narrator: “Worse still, Soviet troops were swarming into North Korea, stifling freedom of worship almost as soon as it began. Today Moon’s followers are told that he was framed by the new communist regime of Kim Il-sung – punished for speaking the word of God.”

Bo Hi Pak: “He was absolutely incredibly tortured by the communist police. Incredible. He was just virtually beaten to death.”

Narrator: “He was sent to North Korea’s Heungnam Death Camp.”

Narrator: “According to a later FBI report, the charge was bigamy.”

Bo Hi Pak: “None of the prisoners survived in that prison more that 18 months.”

10:15 Narrator: “In his book, Divine Principle, which lays out his theology, Moon says he endured suffering unimagined by anyone in history. He suffered so much he atoned for the sins of mankind and became perfect.”

Bo Hi Pak: “Rev Moon was sentenced to that death camp for five years imprisonment.”

Narrator: “In 1950 North Korea invaded the South. The cold war had begun, a long confrontation between the Soviets and the West. Perversely, the Korean War saved Moon’s life. UN bombers pounded the city where he was held. In the chaos Moon was freed.”

11:14 Bo Hi Pak: “The day before they were systematically killing all the prisoners, knowing that UN forces [were] coming up. Before [it was] Rev Moon’s turn, luckily the UN forces rushed the gate.” [Only the political prisoners were being executed. Moon was in jail for bigamy and was not due to be executed. The guards fled the camp, and that is how Moon became free.]

11:40 Narrator: “He joined thousands of refugees fleeing south to escape the communists. His followers speak with awe of how he carried an injured man across Korea.”

Bo Hi Pak: “Roughly 200 miles walking and walking in the mountains he carry him on [his] back. [An] 80kg man on [his] back, all the way to the south. To me, that alone shows him [to be] the messiah to me.” [Pak Chung-hwa, the man concerned, explained that he was only carried twice by Moon. Each time was for about 200-300 yards, and it was never through water – once it was up a mountain pass. Pak was pushed on a bicycle for the first part of the journey, and was able to walk the last third. ref Michael Breen’s book, Sun Myung Moon, the early years, for details.]

❖

Narrator: “For years the Moon organization used this photo [above] as evidence, before quietly conceding it was of someone else. In a tiny shack made of US army ration boxes Moon founded his Unification Church. He and his followers often went hungry.”

Chung-hwan Kwak (Church elder): “Our tiny group, very poor, under that circumstances, he trained us [to] overcome temptations of food.”

Singing: “Hallelujah, Hallelujah.”

▲ Sun Myung Moon was given a private jet by the Japanese Unification Church members on his 80th birthday.

Narrator: “In the decades that followed Moon would become rich and powerful. His anthem, inevitably, Handel’s ‘Messiah.’ He would be accused of breaking laws and seeking influence. He’d make friends in high places.”

Allen Tate Wood: “To me that is the heart of Moon’s psyche, it is the drive, the need for power. He is not interested in people developing and finding themselves. He is interested in people finding him and kneeling to him, and bowing to him and then giving him all their strength, all their energy, all their power.”

Narrator: “His church would be accused of brainwashing teenagers and taking their assets.”

Allen Tate Wood: “All of your money, somebody else’s money, their land, their property, any kind of real or material goods they have. Your job is to get a hold of that and bring it into the organization, because outside of the organization it has no meaning. It has no value. It is property owned by satan.”

Narrator: “Moon would talk openly of controlling the earth. [Moon’s words:] “The whole world is in my hands and I will conquer and subjugate the world.”

14:05 Herb Rosedale: “Just as he claims to be a man of love, and yet if you look at any of his speeches, his speeches will exude hatred towards those who disagree with him.”

Narrator: “From the beginning Moon believed that rival churches, the media, even the Korean government, were out to get him.”

Bo Hi Pak: “Just like Jesus Christ came 2000 years ago, he encountered incredible opposition [in] those days [from] the existing religions.”

Narrator: “In Seoul in the 1950s there were stories that Moon was having sex with female converts, to purify them.”

Antonio Betancourt (Unification Church): “There were women coming to lectures, who – they’d rather be at lecture than being with their husbands or with their families – so the husbands could not understand what was going on. So for them they must be having some kind of sexual relationship. There must be something wrong. There must be something wrong that is going on in that place.”

❖

▲ These Ewha Womans University students were all expelled because of their involvement with Sun Myung Moon. One of them had a son with Moon.

15:00 Narrator: “However, a later FBI report claimed ‘that women students had been expelled from university in Seoul because of sexual initiation rites with Moon and some others.’”

Nansook Hong (Moon’s ex daughter-in-law): “Moon claimed, since he was the perfect man, a perfect Adam, by sleeping with women he would purify women. And he did tell me that he did those things – it was God’s work.”

15:55 Narrator: “Divorcing his first wife, he married a woman 20 years younger than himself, Hak Ja Han. He and his new wife would be the ‘True Parents of all mankind.’ He told his followers: ‘Love True Parents more than your own self, spouse or children.’”

❖

▲ Sun Myung Moon married the teenage Hak Ja Han in 1960.

Donna Collins (ex follower): “He said, you know, ‘You must know that I am your only parent, and your father is bad for you. You must forget about him. We are the True Parents. I am the True Parent.’”

Narrator: “In the early days, Moon lived above his church. His speeches would go on for half the night.”

Chung-hwan Kwak (Unification Church): “He never slept. Never. He continued usually until 1:00am, 2:00am. Never slept. His sleep time is always less than three hours. Only two or three hours.”

Narrator: “The Korean War had ended in a bizarre face-off between North and South – surreal, yet deadly. It was a microcosm of what was happening all over the world. Moon was made by the new Cold War.”

Bo Hi Pak: “Rev Moon frequently said ‘The communist goal is to kick off God from the planet.’ The communistic ideology, if it takes over the entire world, then there is no room for God. We cannot allow God going out of this planet. We need God. Rev Moon from day one is truly an anti-communist.”

Narrator: “To Moon, communist North Korea was satanic, and its Stalinist leader, Kim Il-sung, the devil.”

Bo Hi Pak: “If communists win in the Cold War, and if the entire world is communized, then [there is] no room for free men to stand.”

18:00 Narrator: “In Seoul, nobody laughed at Moon anymore. The word now was that he had powerful new friends, including Kim Jong-pil founder of Korea’s ferocious new intelligence agency, the KCIA. It crushed dissent. In Washington, the Americans heard that Kim Jong-pil was using Moon’s church as a political tool. America was where Moon would make his future.”

Bo Hi Pak: “He looked at America as the chosen nation, so in the most crucial role [that] must get played by America.”

Narrator: “Rather fortunately for Moon, he arrived in America at a time of great anguish. The Vietnam war had divided the generations. American cities were full of teenagers looking for answers. Few knew why Americans were dying in Vietnam, or raining death on a country they had barely heard of. Moon built his church on their self doubt.”

Allen Tate Wood: “Here was a guy that just seemed to be just totally sure. There was just this tremendous energy, tremendous force which he communicated. It was as though his whole body was going to one place, to one point.

Rev Moon speaks in Korean

Bo Hi Pak: “We are not just ordinary Christians.”

Narrator: “Teenagers would be intercepted on the street by Moonies. Often they would be invited to some innocuous seminar.”

Cathryn Mazer (ex follower): “These individuals were just unusually open and honest and friendly and caring and playful and sweet.”

Narrator: “Cathryn Mazer was taken to a house on Long Island.”

Cathryn Mazer: “The name ‘Rev Moon’ never came up. I actually asked when I was first going with them to the site, if they were the Unification Church, and I was told ‘no.’”

20:25 Narrator: “An FBI analyst wrote: ‘Moon’s success depends on very subtle … deceptive tactics.’ Finally Cathryn Mazer was told about Moon. He was her ‘True Parent.’ It would be dangerous to contact her real parents…”

Cathryn Mazer: “… because they could be used by Satan to take away the amazing gift of having met the messiah. That Satan uses the ones you love to influence you away from the remarkable and unsurpassable gift you have been given.”

Narrator: “She says the Moonies encouraged her to lie to her mother on the phone, not telling her where she really was.

Cathryn Mazer: “But it was just important, whatever I told her, that I did not tell her that I was involved with the Unification Church.

Narrator: “And they were perfectly happy for you to lie?”

Cathryn Mazer: “Oh, I was encouraged to lie. I was asked to lie.”

Narrator: “Cathryn’s worried family traced her to the house on Long Island.”

Cathryn Mazer’s mother: “I want to see my daughter. I need to see somebody.”  

Moonie: “I am sorry, she is not here.”

Lawyer: “But you are not prepared to let Cathryn’s mother go in and see for herself.”

Narrator: “They were too late.”

Mazer family: “Well if you can’t prove to us that she is not here, then why should we leave under the assumption that she is not here?”

Narrator: “She had been moved, but the Moonies wouldn’t say where.”

Cathryn’s mother: “Oh my…” 

Lawyer: “Just calm down.”

Cathryn’s mother: “Right, you talk with them.”

Narrator: “So you actually thought that your mother projected Satan.”

Cathryn Mazer: “Yeah, I thought she was being, you know, for all intents and purposes, possessed.”

Narrator: “In trying to find you.”

Cathryn Mazer nods in agreement.

Narrator: “From the early seventies, Moon would be accused of brainwashing, mind control. Neil Salonen, once president of the church in America, says the messiah never brainwashed his followers, or cut them off from their parents.”

Neil Salonen (Unification Church): “Because we are family based, in many cases members, for the first time, begin experiencing a deeper and closer relationship with their parents.”

Group at mansion guardhouse: “They’re worried about their daughter.” “OK, sir...”

Narrator: “But when Cathryn Mazer’s parents arrived at Moon’s mansion outside New York, guards called the police.”

Group at mansion guardhouse: “We thought we…”

Allen Tate Wood: “He is quoted as saying this, that we want absolute control of the mind, and to me that means brainwashing.”

Narrator: “And this brainwashing comes directly from Moon?”

Allen Tate Wood: “Absolutely, Yeah.”

Group at mansion guardhouse: “So we should show up there…”

Narrator: “Ex-Moonie Ron Paquette says he spoke to Moon’s son about brainwashing.”

23:00 Ron Paquette (former executive Moon organization): “And I said in many ways it reminds me sometimes of the communist camps, and at that point he said: ‘Yeah I know,’ he said, ‘Father learned that when he was in prison camp,’ and I kept trying to make the point that no, no, the way we bring in people, and the way we control people is kind of like the way this goes on in North Korean prison camps, and he kept saying ‘I know’.”

Narrator: “Belvedere was the first of Moon’s magnificent estates in America. Once it was owned by America’s wealthiest families. In some cases recruits would make over everything they owned to Moon, then they would go out selling trinkets at inflated prices.”

Cathryn Mazer: “I was sent out on the streets, sometimes for 14 or 16 hours at a time. Sometimes in very dangerous neighborhoods.”

Narrator: “Wandering big cities, Cathryn Mazer lives on hamburgers and donuts.”

Cathryn Mazer: “There were many, many times we were just on the side of basically a highway alone with hundreds of dollars of cash on our persons.”

24:10 Narrator: “In the end she decided to leave the Moonies.”

Cathryn Mazer: “I was told stories about other people who had betrayed the messiah, or who had walked away. Something really, really bad could happen to me, whether it be illness or a random act of violence. I mean I was scared. I was terrified.”

Narrator: “Cathryn went back to her mother. Others stayed, giving Moon their all.”

Ron Paquette: “They like to talk in the church about the blood, sweat and tears of Moon. Well I think, you know, by and large he’s living off the blood, sweat and tears of a lot of members.”

Antonio Betancourt: “He receives the treatment of a messiah, and therefore we have the rituals of the court. And in this court it is as pompous, it is as beautiful as being in the presence of an earthly king, or queen, for example the Queen Elizabeth. It is not Hollywood. It is real. That is the court of the messiah, but after this is finished, he becomes a very, very ordinary man. He goes and digs his hands in the dirt. He examines pebbles. He goes into the mud. He goes and eats in McDonalds.”

Moon praying: “With this Blessing Ceremony, I thank you that we build the superhighway to you.”

25:40 Narrator: “The greatest honor for a Moonie, is to be married by Moon.”

Allen Tate Wood: “It is like a pyramid marketing scheme, and it is embedded in the theology. You, in fact, cannot be married by Moon, which is the ultimate blessing according to their theology, until you have brought three people into the church who are ready to die in your place. Once you have brought three people in, then you have the right to be married, you have the right to be blessed by Moon.”

Narrator: “He would even find you a partner, a total stranger.”

Rev Moon praying: “Today I am blessing this … and declare the true … of God…”

Bo Hi Pak: “Rev Moon see the family background and the future. So Rev Moon is, sort of, [the] world’s finest matchmaker.”

Rev Moon: “Amen”

Narrator: “Sometimes Moon would choose marriage partners from their photos.”

❖

▲ Rev Moon matching couples by photograph.

Rev Moon: “Amen”

26:30 Nansook Hong: “Sometimes there is a picture matching, and sometimes the people [are in] rows of men and women [sitting] together, and he just picks you, you – you, you – and you are supposed to be husband and wife. And a lot of times it doesn’t work.”

Rev Moon: “Mansei!”

Bo Hi Pak: “That marriage is far more durable, and lasting longer. Of course there are some breakages, but not like the 50 percent in the western world.”

M.C.: “Welcome to Blessing ’97. World Peace through ideal families.”

Narrator: “The church claims that millions of couples have been blessed by Moon in ceremonies from Seoul to Washington, even at the 2000 room New Yorker Hotel, bought by Moon for a few million dollars.”

Robin Marsh (Unification Church): “He looked down into my eyes, and I felt that he knew everything about me. And then he guided me to where my wife was already standing. And he looked at us, and he just beckoned to us to go. We went to another room and discussed whether we would like to continue with this match. And I really felt that this was God’s choice. And I felt a lot of God’s happiness and joy at that time.”

Narrator: “Sometimes the matchings took a bizarre turn.”

Allen Tate Wood: “If they accept it and they come back in the room, the first thing that they do in their relationship is they are given a kendo stick. And the woman has to bend over and the man hits her three times as hard as he can with the kendo stick. And the audience then judges that. If they didn’t hit hard enough, the man has to hit her again, until the audience accepts the strength of the beating. Then the woman turns around and she beats the man. It is the same thing. So this is how these marriages made in heaven begin.”

Narrator: “Moon seems convinced of his own divinity.”

Donna Collins: “But he was kind of innocent in some way. I mean he was very like a child amid all these big important people.”

Narrator: “Donna Collins’ parents led the church in Britain.”

Donna Collins: “You know he seemed sweet at times.”

Voice: “Dream technology, yes”

Narrator: “Moon seemed anything but sweet to church leader Allen Tate Wood, summoned to his home is South Korea. A man lay prostrate on the floor in front of the messiah.”

29:00 Allen Tate Wood: “And from that position he made some kind of greeting to Mr. Moon. And Mr. Moon then barked something back, and they had a conversation. This man never raised his head off the ground. He was looking into the rug. And when this was going on, I began to understand that this is how I am to relate to Mr. Moon, and through me they are teaching all Americans how we are to relate to Mr. Moon.”

Narrator: “By the 1970s Moon was beginning to enjoy fame and fabulous wealth. In Asia he was building an industrial empire, processing titanium and ginseng, making machinery and guns. Over the years church income would grow phenomenally.”

Neil Salonen: “I do think that we are talking hundreds of millions of dollars. I don’t know how specific beyond that I could be.”

Narrator: “In the United States the Moons would spend a fortune buying hotels newspapers, fishing fleets and property. In a bleak Massachusetts town they even made machine guns.”

Narrator: “Meanwhile Moon had found friends in high places. He sprang to the aid of Richard Nixon, accused of ordering the Watergate coverup.”

Richard Nixon: “Tonight let me explain to you what I did about Watergate after the break-in occurred, so that you can better understand the fact that I also had no knowledge of…” [August 15, 1973]

Bo Hi Pak: “Rev Moon made a crusade for the rescue of President Nixon.

Narrator: “As Washington bayed for his resignation, Moonies demonstrated for the President. [January 31, 1974]

Allen Tate Wood: “Meanwhile you have ABC, NBC and CBS covering this as though this were some sort of spontaneous demonstration of Americans supporting Nixon, when in fact every single person in the park was a Moonie who had been ordered to be there.”

Narrator: “by Moon?” Allen Tate Wood: “by Moon.”

31:00 Narrator: “Meeting Nixon at the White House, Moon advised him to burn the Watergate tapes.”

Bo Hi Pak: “And there Rev Moon saying, Mr. President what you have to do [is to] ask for the forgiveness of the people.”

❖

▲ Sun Myung Moon’s Little Angels with President Nixon.

Narrator: “At congressional hearings, Moon was accused of conspiring with Korean intelligence to buy influence in Washington.”

Donald Fraser: “I’ll tell you what, Colonel, let’s split the difference. How’s ten minutes?”

Michael Hershman (Congressional Investigator): “Never before or since had we seen such a blatant attempt to influence our political, social, cultural institutions.”

Bo Hi Pak: “Could you kindly give me five more minutes. I said 15 minutes.”

Narrator: “So there was no doubt to you that the KCIA and Moon were hand in hand?”

Michael Hershman (Congressional Investigator): “There was no doubt.”

Narrator: “The South Koreans were terrified the Americans would abandon them, just as they had abandoned South Vietnam.”

Bo Hi Pak: “Korea would be a second Vietnam. If Korea becomes a second Vietnam, Korea collapses, then there is no way, no way the free world can survive.”

Narrator: “The South Koreans believed that Moon had the power to influence events in Washington. And according to a CIA source, were willing to pay for his help. The source claimed the money had been channeled through a company in South Korea. Congressional investigators found that the head of Korean intelligence once held a meeting with Moon’s American leaders at a hotel in San Francisco.”

Bo Hi Pak: “The public and the media misunderstood him, and they thought Rev Moon is act upon Korean government front or Korean CIA front. He must be funded.”

Narrator: “By the mid seventies, Moon was at the pinnacle of his power, holding enormous rallies in American cities. The church claimed 300,000 people attended this rally in Washington.” 

Rev Moon speaking in Korean on September 18, 1976

Bo Hi Pak translated: “Today America is plagued with problems: racism, juvenile delinquency and immorality. Christianity is declining. Communism is rising. The menace of communism is everywhere. Of all these problems….”

Narrator: “Privately, investigators believed, Moon was part of a KCIA plan to win over the Washington establishment. He told Allen Tate Wood to find friends in the military and intelligence community.”

Allen Tate Wood: “His key strategy was, we will find some powerful man or some powerful organization, and we will find out what their agenda is, and we will attend them and serve them, and eventually they will come to recognize in us their greatest ally, and at that point we then begin to be able to dictate to them.”

Rev Moon speaking in Korean.

Bo Hi Pak translated: “We shall never let him down. Never, never, never. Thank you.”

34:00

Subcommittee on International Organizations. April 20, 1978

Bo Hi Pak: “The Lord is my shepherd, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil for thou art with me. Thank you Mr. Chairman.”

Narrator: “Bo Hi Pak denied allegations that his master was controlled by the KCIA.”

Bo Hi Pak: “They were trying to crush our movement through the Congressional Hearing.”

Narrator: “Incredibly, Pak accused the committee chairman of being a Soviet spy. The committee in turn accused Moon of violating US tax, immigration and banking law.”

Michael Hershman (Congressional Investigator): “If you were against him, if you were threatening his objectives, you were the devil.”

Narrator: “As the committee saw it, no-one realised how dangerous Moon was, because they didn’t bother to listen to his speeches.”

The words of Rev Moon: “There will come a time when my words almost become law. If I want a certain thing it will be done.”

Narrator: “On the Korean border Moon seemed to expect a bloody apocalypse, out of which he would emerge leader of a united Korea, and then of the world.”

Allen Tate Wood: “And he said in this final battle, the only way for the forces of good to win maybe to force the world to wake up. He said the way we will do that is we will send thousands and thousands of Unification Church members and place them on the border, on the Demilitarized Zone inbetween North and South Korea. And he said if the North Koreans attack then the Unification Church members will be the first people to be killed. If we can have a lot of young people killed who are from England, France, Germany, the United States that will force those nations to come in on the side of South Korea. He would talk to us for hours and hours and hours about how God is searching for a nation. He wants to get Korea, but if he can’t get Korea, then he will try to get the United States. If he can get the United States then he will get Japan. If he can get the United States and Japan and then England, if he can get those three nations that he will quickly grab seven. And once he has got seven, then he will swallow the whole world.”

Rev Moon speaking in Korean.

36:15 Donna Collins: “Loyalty at the end of the day is to him. You have to be prepared to die for him, and he says that.”

Narrator: “In 1982 a young Korean girl arrived at Moon’s estate outside New York.”

Nansook Hong: “It was absolutey beautiful – big mansions, big rooms. The room that I stayed [in] it was like a princess’s room.”

Narrator: “Moon had chosen her to marry one of his sons. She was barely 15.”

Nansook Hong: “Every time we saw him we had to [do] full bows. He was God. He was really God for everybody.”

Narrator: “Inside the estate a fortress mentality prevailed.”

Nansook Hong: “There is [the] inside world and [the] outside world. There were outside people and there was us. We were the chosen people and [the] outside people are satanic people.”

Narrator: “She saw church leaders arriving from Asia with bags of cash for the Moons.”

Nansook Hong: “I saw sometimes a million dollars, sometimes two million dollars, sometimes $200,000 but for them it is really not a lot of money. It is for their own personal use.”

Narrator: “Publicly Moon railed against gambling, but Nansook says he took her and the rest of his entourage to Las Vegas. An assistant would place bets for him. Did you say to him, ‘Father, I thought we were supposed not to gamble.’”

Nansook Hong: “No, of course not. Haha. If I wanted to die, maybe. No. No, we never raised any questions or doubts. We just had to be there accepting.”

Narrator: “If Moon thought he was safe from earthly law, he was to be disillusioned. He was accused of tax evasion.”

Ron Paquette (former executive Moon organization): “Not paying your taxes, withholding payroll taxes, paying people under the table cash so that we didn’t have to pay the government money, that saved Father money, so therefore it was OK. It was doing God’s will beause anything that supported Moon, or supported the agenda, was doing God’s will.”

Narrator: “He asked God for deliverance.”

Nansook Hong: “We prayed on the holy rock every morning and so did a lot of us. We were there all night praying for Moon, but it seems like nothing worked.”

Narrator: “In 1984 Moon was sent to jail.”

38:44 Lawyer: “The trial judge himself said quite openly that of course were his religion less controversial the government would have had less interest in pursuing the matter.”

Singing: “Justice will be done. Justice will be done.”

Narrator: “To the Moonies, their master was a victim of his beliefs. Martyred by a bigoted and racist Justice Department.”

Nansook Hong: “But we all knew that yes, it was tax evasion.”

[And the serious crime of document forgery] LINK

Narrator: “Released 13 months later, Moon celebrated in his own particular way.”

39:20 Nansook Hong: “Moon crowned himself as the Emperor of the Universe. It was quite odd. Pictures were forbidden. Nobody could take pictures, because it had to be an absolute secret. At that point he became God, in his eyes.”

Narrator: “The chastened Moon realised that he needed more than hotels and fishing fleets to achieve power in America. He needed his own voice in Washington. He founded the Washington Times.”

39:40 Nansook Hong: “And now he has one way to control this country, that was through the newspaper. That’s how he saw it.”

Narrator: “It would counter the liberal Washington Post. The Times would become the voice of the Republican right.”

Ronald Reagan: “The American people know the truth, and you, my friends at The Washington Times, have told it to them.”

Bo Hi Pak: “Rev Moon never side with the political party, only side with God.”

William Cheshire (former Editor, Washington Times): “It was like the messiah had ridden into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, and Moon would say ‘Rah, rah, rah,’ and Pak would say, ‘Reverend Moon say, all men are brothers.’”

Narrator: “...except for Bill Clinton. The Times worried that he might have had KGB connections, then that he was an asset of the CIA. It raised $100,000 for the Contras fighting the left in Nicaragua.”

Michael Hershman (Congressional Investigator): “I believe they lose tens of millions of dollars a year, perhaps as high as 40 million dollars a year.”

CAUSA presentation: “One man has seen the true…”

41:00 Narrator: “Moon spent millions more funding right wing foundations and pressure groups.”

CAUSA presentation: “He has tasted the bitter evils of communism in North Korea…”

William Cheshire: “I mean the amount of money Moon has invested in The Washington Times alone, it just staggers the imagination.”

Narrator: “What you're saying is that nobody else has ever spent as much money lobbying in Washington as Moon.”

William Cheshire: “No one I am aware of.”

Narrator: “The paper declined to let us film its operations.”

Narrator: “Has The Washington Times always been independent?”

Neil Salonen (Unification Church): “I do think so. In fact every editor, that I have known, and I have known them all, has made the point at different times, that they receive much less pressure from the owner, than the owners of any other newspaper might.”

Narrator: “But in 1987, editor Bill Cheshire resigned, accusing the paper of augmenting news agency copy, in Moon’s favor.”

William Cheshire: “I said this has never been an acceptable or ethical performance anywhere I have ever worked. It is totally irregular, totally improper and totally dishonest, and reprehensible. Well didn’t do any good…”

President George Bush: “And the editors of The Washington Times have told me that never once has the man with the vision interfered in the editorial policies of The Washington Times. Rev Moon never tried to tell them what to say, who to endorse.”

Narrator: “Moon invited George Bush to celebrate the birth of another new paper in Latin America.” [The Tiempos del Mundo was launched in Buenos Aires.]

❖

President George Bush speaking at the launch in November 1996: “You know, a lot of my friends in South America don’t know about The Washington Times, but it is an independent voice.”

William Cheshire: “I doubt very seriously if George Bush has any real understanding of the Rev Moon and the Unification Church, and what they represent in terms of crazy theology and all the other things that are part of the Moon story.”

42:50 Narrator: “Some of Moon’s contacts were far to the right of The Washington Times. In Japan, after the war, he had met Ryoichi Sasakawa, a rich and powerful fascist. He had been imprisoned by the Americans as a war criminal.”

❖

▲ Left to right: Won-pok Choi (a ‘second wife’ of Moon), Hak Ja Han, Sun Myung Moon, Ryoichi Sasakawa, unknown, Hyo-won Eu (who wrote the 1957 Divine Principle and was the main lecturer and organizer of the UC in Korea in the late 1950s and 1960s) and Osami Kuboki (leader of the UC of Japan) at Gimpo airport, Seoul.

Allen Tate Wood: “I heard him say to us, referring to himself, he said ‘I am Mr. Moon’s dog.’ This is the most powerful man in Japan who is essentially saying he is under Mr. Moon. He is serving Mr. Moon’s purposes.”

Rev Moon speaking in Korean

Narrator: “Another of Moon’s Japanese contacts was Yoshio Kodama, an extreme right-winger with ties to the Japanese underworld.”

▲ Yoshio Kodama

Allen Tate Wood: “Kodama is reported as saying that, ‘the people say Mr. Moon is the messiah, well that’s fine but Mr. Moon can’t be the messiah without me, because I am the man who supplies him with money.’”

Narrator: “Moon and the Japanese poured cash into the World Anti-Communist League (WACL), which included neo-Nazis, fascists and even death squad members form South America.”

44:00 General John Singlaub (former Chairman of World Anti-Communist League): “His organization, from my point of view, was more of a political effort, that is to save the world from the ‘evil empire’ than it was to save individuals from the devil.”

Rev Moon speaking in Korean

Narrator: “Moon preached love, but aligned himself with murderous Latin regimes that tortured or killed their left wing opponents. Latin America, he believed, would be the graveyard of communism. He was deeply disillusioned with the United States. ‘Satan created this hell on earth,’ he said.”

Inauguration: “I, Ronald Reagan, do solemnly swear that I will…”

Narrator: “Moon had spent many millions supporting Republican causes.”

President Ronald Reagan: “that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, so help me God.”

Narrator: “But the Reagan administration declined to pardon him for his tax offense.

Michael Hershman (Congressional Investigator): “He was extremely bitter, and decided that he could better grow his organization, better grow his influence, outside our shores.”

Narrator: “In poor Uruguay the army had won a wasting war with Tupamaros guerrillas. The capital, Montevideo, was an off-shore banking center were rich foreigners could hide their cash. For Moon it held other attractions too.”

45:30 Michael Hershman: “A friendly legal environment. That is laws and regulations that were not as well developed as here in the United States. A fairly uneducated and poor population, who was ready to accept a message of anyone who made promises for a better life.”

Narrator: “Moon called Uruguay his oasis. Today he owns newspapers and sponsors radio programmes that preach family values. As Moon sees it, if only the world would listen, all its problems from AIDS to racial hatred would simply vanish.”

Chung-hwan Kwak (senior leader, Unification Church): “If all peoples follow our vision, why not be solved?”

Narrator: “War?”

Chung-hwan Kwak: “War also. This is messiah’s law.”

❖

▲ 4,000 Japanese Moonies arrived in Montevideo bringing cash for Moon.

Narrator: “Moon built Uruguay’s first luxury hotel. He also bought a bank. On one occasion bank employees claimed that 4,000 Japanese Moonies had suddenly showed up, depositing millions of dollars in cash.”

Juan Ramos (Bank Worker’s Association): “The money still had the U.S. Federal Reserve band around it. More than $80 million was deposited over the course of a week.”

Narrator: “More than once the authorities accused the bank of breaching banking rules. A local journalist asked embarrassing questions. Some time later, as he told the judge, he was grabbed by two men in a car who stuck a gun in his mouth. They said they had no connection with Moon, but warned him off. Even in his new haven, Moon was under fire.”

Jorge Guldenzoph: “I remember Rev. Moon’s wife saying ‘How long are they going to think we’re bad?’ I felt humbled because there was no trace of resentment or bitterness in him. No part of him was asking why he had to suffer. It was like Jesus on the cross.”

Narrator: “One of Moon’s key men in Uruguay is Jorge Guldenzoph, a veteran of the dirty war with the left. A former communist, he joined the secret police.”

Jorge Guldenzoph: “The Rev Moon is my savior. My life was literally saved by him. It’s as simple as that, Rev. Moon is my savior.”

▲ Moon’s home in Montevideo.

48:08 Narrator: “By the late 1980s Moon owned so much property in Montevideo that locals wryly renamed it ‘Moontevideo.’ Moonies say that this palatial building was going to be his home, his Latin American sanctuary.

❖

▲ Moon speaking at his Punta del Este resort by the ocean in Uruguay.

Instead he chose a lush resort on the ocean, and a ranch by a river where he could fish. Here he hoped to find peace.”

Antonio Betancourt (Unification Church): “He fishes for the physical fish, but this is symbolic of many things. He fishes, one fish could be a great leader who listens to him.”

Narrator: “He said he would like his own fleet of submarines to free him from national boundaries. In 1989 one of Moon’s greatest dreams came true, the fall of the Berlin Wall. To him it seemed as though he had won his lifelong struggle against communism.”

Bo Hi Pak (Unification Church): “Who did liberate communism? To me, [it is] very clear. it's Rev. Moon, as the messiah.”

Narrator: “In Latin America Moon would spend millions. He said he ‘gave the bait to Uruguay, then the bigger fish of Argentina and Brazil kept their mouths open’.”

Narrator: “He thinks he can literally buy countries?”

Herb Rosedale (anti-cult lawyer): “Absolutely”

Narrator: “Several countries did take the bait, including Brazil. In 1994 Moon bought a swath of its Pantanal region, a vast area known for its extraordinary beauty. Here would be the new Garden of Eden, where Moon would have absolute dominion.”

Cesar Zaduski (Unification Church farm manager in Brazil): “Rev Moon named it because he wants this place to be as pristine and as natural as it was in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve were created by Heavenly Father. And Rev Moon said that this area could be in the same shape like in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve were created.”

Narrator: “According to the church it would have an airport big enough for wide  body jets and millions of acres of fertile land.”

Bo Hi Pak: “This is why he is engaged in millions and millions of acres in Brazil to cultivate those wasted lands into beautiful fertile farmland, producing millions of tons of tons of food.”

Narrator: “It would teach the Brazilians new farming methods, educate the area’s mainly Catholic population and unite religions. People on the farm hope that Moon, now in his 80s, will spend his last years in Brazil. From here he can communicate with his other 200 projects around the world.”

▲ Communications mast in Brazil

Antonio Betancourt: “I have been with him there, in the Pantanal, which he considers one of the gates, one of the earthly gates of the Kingdom of Heaven. Going at three o’clock in the morning, with no reason except a compelling spiritual reason to go into places that nobody will go because they are not tame yet. He could get lost and nobody would find him in ten years.”

Narrator: “To be near their messiah, Korean and Japanese Moonies are bused in after a gruelling flight from Asia.”

Cesar Zaduski: “And these families, living with the nature, they can learn the original aspects of God, that was lost after the Fall of Man.”

Narrator: “His followers fish like Father Moon, work on the land, pray and procreate in small air-conditioned rooms.”

Cesar Zaduski: “And for Rev Moon especially, this place is the place where the families should do what they were supposed to do in the Garden of Eden, and was done wrong – so we should do it right.”

Narrator: “Moon has other great dreams, like a road from London to Tokyo, but it is just a dream. At New Hope there is no airport for wide body jets. Its manager says it rains erratically so it is hard to grow crops. Despite Moon’s talk of uniting religions, local Catholics dismiss his creed as junk theology.”

Cesar Zaduski: “But it is quite clear that in the history of mankind, always someone who came with a big idea, or a new understanding was stoned, and after his death they made a big statue and proclaimed him as a saint. That always happens.”

Narrator: “Sealed inside his many fine houses, gazing out over tropical gardens or great oceans, Moon has had many sorrows. In 1989 a teenage son, Heung-jin, was killed in a car crash.”

❖

▲ Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han with the body of Heung Jin Moon

Nansook Hong: “This Moon’s child went to heaven and became the ruler of heaven. Even Jesus came and bowed down to this child.”

Narrator: “Moon’s followers said they had seen visions of his son taking the place of Jesus.”

Nansook Hong: “Because he was Moon’s child, he can have this kind of position in the spiritual world, in the heaven.”

Narrator: “A higher position than Jesus?”

❖

▲ Sun Myung Moon wrote this calligraphy for his son: “Absolute Victory of Moon Heung Jin 文興進 as Commander-in-Chief of Heaven.”

53:40 Nansook Hong: “A higher position than Jesus, and he was going to hold that position until his Dad comes.”

Narrator: “As Moon saw it, to achieve his proper place in Heaven his dead son needed a wife.”

William Cheshire (former Editor, Washington Times): “And so they took his body, I suppose in a coffin and went ahead with the marriage ceremony. The corpse was married to Bo Hi Pak’s daughter.”

❖

▲ The 1994 marriage of Julia Pak to a photograph of the deceased Heung Jin Moon. Nansook Hong is standing at the back on the right.

Narrator: “Julia Moon, the daughter of Moon’s right hand man, leads his international ballet company.”

Nansook Hong: “And so she married with his picture in her arms. And it was strange, but we simply accepted the fact that was the case.”

Narrator: “A baby was found and given to Julia Moon to bring up with her dead husband.”

Nansook Hong: “We had the wedding ceremony. We had entertainment.”

Narrator: “So it was an ordinary wedding except the bridegroom wasn’t there.”

Nansook Hong: “Yes, exactly”

Narrator: “Much of Moon’s wealth flowed to his children. Nansook says her husband, Hyo-jin, spent it on cocaine in Harlem. High on drugs, he would threaten her.’”

55:00 Nansook Hong: “There were a lot of times he kept saying he was going to kill me, he was going to kill me. There was a point that I knew he was going to kill me. I knew when he was drunk enough, he was high enough, he was capable of doing anything.”

Narrator: “Physically abused, she fled the Moon compound with her children.”

Singing: “Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you.”

Narrator: “At the beginning of the year 2000, Moon celebrated his 80th birthday, and some saw him as a prophet out of step with time.”

Donna Collins (ex follower): “In one speech he said that it would be better for men to cut off, their privates, penises, and he said penis, than to engage in a homosexual act. Over time he became more embittered, more angry with the western world for not accepting him, for not realizing and bowing down to his messianic role.”

Dan Quayle: “May God bless you.”

Narrator: “The world’s statesmen who speak at his conferences are a dwindling band. They include Dan Quayle, Kenneth Kaunda and Sir Edward Heath. They applaud his work for peace, but Sir Edward can’t say what he’s actually achieved.”

Sir Edward Heath: “I can’t name anything, no. But what I have done is to address their conference. I think this is the third occasion. No, I have no connection with Dr. Moon.”

Narrator: “But Moon can lay claim to one crowning achievement, a reconciliation with his old enemy, Kim Il-sung, the leader of North Korea. Moon agreed to invest millions in a country he once thought satanic.”

Bo Hi Pak (special assistant to Moon): “Rev Moon, in his own lifetime, has done more than any individual I have ever known in history.”

57:00 Narrator: “Why Moon’s son, Young-jin, fell to his death from the seventeenth floor of a hotel in Reno remains unexplained. So finally is the drive and true nature of his father. Some say their assets and lives were stolen by a megalomaniac.”

Ron Paquette: “You know sometimes when I think about the loss of time and the violation is so great that…sigh.”

Narrator: “Others say Moon has enthused their lives with meaning, and for that, by some, he is revered.”

Bo Hi Pak: “Rev Moon will be known, far more, far greater in next hundred years, next thousand years. And he will be known as the man who truly brought the truth and changed the world. Not by the bullet and fire, but by the spirit of God and the truth of God. He brought more change here on earth than anybody else.”

Subtitle: Moon says that after his death, he will lead his Church from the spirit world.

END

_________________________________________

Nansook Hong In The Shadow Of The Moons: My Life In The Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Family Little, Brown & Co.  Boston, New York, Toronto & London, 1998

pages 148-150

“Reverend Moon was freed [from jail] on August 20, 1985. …

At East Garden it was as though Father had returned from a world speaking tour and not from a prison term. The old rhythms returned. The meetings around his breakfast table resumed. But something was different. There was a perceptible shift in the Reverend Moon’s Sunday-morning sermons at Belvedere after his release from the penitentiary. He talked less and less about God and more and more about himself. He seemed obsessed with his vision of himself as some kind of historical figure, not merely as an emissary of God. Where once I had listened intently to his sermons in search of spiritual insight, I now found myself more uneasy and less engaged.

The Reverend Moon’s hubris culminated later that year in a secret ceremony in which he actually crowned himself and Hak Ja Han Moon as Emperor and Empress of the Universe. Preparations for the lavish, clandestine event at Belvedere took months and hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Church women were assigned to research the regal robes of the five-hundred-year Yi dynasty that ended in the nineteenth century. Others were ordered to design solid-gold-and-jade crowns modeled on the ones worn by tribal kings. My mother was in charge of buying yards and yards of silk and satin and brocade material and finding seamstresses in Korea to turn these expensive raw materials into the costumes of a royal court. All twelve of Sun Myung Moon’s children, all of his in-laws, all of his grandchildren, were to be outfitted as princes and princesses.

In the end Sun Myung Moon’s crowning ceremony looked less like a historical reconstruction than like a popular Korean television soap opera set during the Yi dynasty. I felt silly, as though I were dressed for a period comedy rather than a sacred religious service. The Reverend Moon was aware enough of how an act of such monumental egotism would be received by the world that he banned photographs from being taken at the actual ceremony. Invited guests, all high-level church officials, who arrived with cameras had them confiscated by security guards, who blocked the entrances to gate-crashers.

In his gold crown and elaborate robes, Sun Myung Moon looked to me for all the world like a modern-day Charlemagne. The difference was that this emperor bowed to no pope. Since there was no authority higher than the Reverend Moon, the Messiah had to crown himself Emperor of the Universe.

The coronation was a turning point for me and my parents. For the first time we voiced our doubts to one another about Sun Myung Moon. It was not an easy thing to do. Much has been written about the coercion and brainwashing that takes place in the Unification Church. What I experienced was conditioning. You are isolated among like-minded people. You are bombarded with messages elevating obedience above critical thinking. Your belief system is reinforced at every turn. You become invested in those beliefs the longer you are associated with the church. After ten years, after twenty years, who would want to admit, even to herself, that her beliefs were built on sand?

I didn’t, surely. I was part of the inner circle. I had seen enough kindness in the Reverend Moon to excuse his blatant lapses — his toleration of his son’s behavior, his hitting his children, his verbal abuse of me. Not to excuse him was to open my whole life up to question. Not just my life. My parents had spent thirty years pushing aside their own doubts. My father tolerated the arbitrary way in which Sun Myung Moon ran his businesses, inserting unqualified friends and relatives into positions of authority, promoting those who curried favor and firing those who displayed any independence. My father survived at the top of Il Hwa pharmaceuticals by accepting the Reverend Moon’s frequent public humiliations. For his part, the Reverend Moon left my father in place because Il Hwa continued to make money for him.

If the deification of Heung Jin and the crowning ceremony tested my faith, the emergence of the Black Heung Jin nearly destroyed it. …”

_________________________________________

Part of Emperor of the Universe is available with Spanish subtitles:

La secta Moon

_________________________________________

Nansook Hong, transcripts of three interviews, including ‘60 Minutes’

Nansook Hong In The Shadow Of The Moons, part 1

New Republic – The Fall of the House of Moon

Mother Jones – Sun Myung Moon’s secret love child

Moon’s theology for his pikareum sex rituals with all the 36 wives

Sun Myung Moon and the United Nations

FBI and other reports on Sun Myung Moon

United States Congressional investigation of Moon’s organization

The Resurrection of Rev Moon

FFWPU human trafficking is despicable

[247krp]

— Rejoice, little lambs! We have recovered our own Bae Irene, spotted prancing about in the Southwest Side. I remember seeing her with The Party Animals back in high school, but I’m not here to spill yesterday’s tea. So straight to the rundown: can you say debonair and fickle? Apparently now she spends time as the owner of Seoul Opera House, and keeps skeletons buried at Prague Tower, 002. But those won’t stay hidden for long, if you and I have any say on it. Welcome back, The It Girl; we missed you so.

In case you don’t remember the devil’s name, here’s to refresh your memory:

bae irene was the name one would hear the moment they stepped on the cheongnam soil. her strut brought men to their knees and girls followed her filled with envy. she waltzed her way through life with an intoxicating charm. she was a warm smile and a shoulder to lean on ; beautiful without being transparent. the ground she walked on was kissed and worshiped. the princess of her generation without ever asking for the title. however, she was the anti-heroine of her own little novel. her brutality out-shined all of her gamine giggles and never-ending chanel bags. she manipulated, schemed and seized, the crème de la crème was hand-picked by her and her only. yet everyone turned a blind eye to the fact. perhaps it was because, as the curtains of moonlight replaced the daylight, she had hundreds of students waiting to attend her infamous parties ; the very kingdom of drugs, alcohol and sins. and she was the wildest of them all. there was nothing that she did not do. but as bae irene danced the night away, drowning in expensive whiskeys and hands of unknown people, she knew that she will be remembered. she will be hailed whenever her heels echo through the hallways of cheongnam high.

Nevermind the memory lane though, the present is always the ripest fruit:

it was a known fact that she would become somebody even after graduation. although never academically inclined, mostly because she never took school too seriously, she received letters of admission from three ivy league universities because she was always in the spotlight in seoul’s elite society. in the end, she chose yale and majored in music. upon returning to seoul, irene became the owner of seoul opera house and she engraved the traces of her former self in it. she proved that, despite her present poise and title, paired with debonairity that always defined her, she never really changed. behind beethoven and verdi, trumpets and violins, her soirées are wilder than ever. the only difference being that the elite replaced students. even today, the brunette is on the throne. she is a living deity among paparazzi, media outlets and magazines. even today, she hides behind philanthropy and champagne.

But we are nothing if not open books – my job is to ensure you get to the best pages:

miracle child. a nickname that followed her from the moment she left her mother’s womb. she wasn’t supposed to be conceived, let alone be born. inability to bare a child was a burden upon the marriage of a pious couple and, in time, it fell apart. the raven-haired woman spent days and nights praying while a sunken man merged with the crowds of mungyeong, never to be seen again. he would never know about his daughter. she greeted pregnancy with eyes filled with tears, followed by a series of gratitudes and daily visits to the church. it took twenty-four hours for the baby to breathe in the life she was given.

raised by her mother, irene grew up in isolation from the other children. the woman lectured her on philosophy, psychology, literature and religion, hoping to raise her to uphold her own altruistic ideals. ’ you won’t be spoiled by the devil ’, the woman said. and irene obeyed. her mother preached. her ideology largely clashed with that of the small city, and she was seen as a parasite. in time, she became so much of a threat to peace that the officials resorted to less ethical means to have her brought down. she was arrested and placed in prison, along with many of her followers, and irene was left on the unforgiving and cold streets. she remembers the asphalt against her cheeks, days without food and water as she tried to find her path. eventually, it led her to an orphanage in seoul.

children engulfed her as she told them stories and made them arrows and bows from cardboard and rope. all the while, matrons whispered among themselves. they told her she was destined for great things. perhaps they were right. irene never expected that she would be sleeping in a home full of roses and silk pillows months later. but she did. adopted by a wealthy heiress and socialite and a world-renowned architect who could not have children, history repeated itself. however, she was groomed to be beauty and grace with an effervescent frontage. they thought they succeeded.

by her freshman year, she already had a reputation. her presence was magnetic because people could relate to her despite her social standing. she had a million dollar smile and a saccharine tongue. people lined up in hopes that she would at least remember their name, but she never did. it was with three people only that she decided to form a clique of her own, the party animals, at the young age of fifteen. by sixteen, she was a living legend. not one day passed without her gracing the blog of gossip girl, be it for the scandals during her parties or for her impeccable style. she ruled her generation and her own little circle, but then, she disappeared. and she was nowhere to be seen. even her senior year was rushed and filled with blank spaces. students whispered and wondered, but still worshiped her. nothing really changed. but never did she imagine how soon all of her secrets could be out in the open.

[earthenthoughts]

The New Year's New Look: Post Patch 6.9, and Syndra.

The Crystal Ball is Wild and Dangerous

It is with no small distaste I look back upon my predictions and see how they have come to fruition. For the first time in many years, Syndra found herself thrust into the spotlight in a way that can only be described as 'damaging'. Clocking in a 97% ban rate at Worlds 2016, and earning the World Casters' bristling ire, her solo queue performance achieved around a 50-70% ban rate depending on any day's given temperament. Now, as we stand in the twilight of 2016, the world is looking pretty different for her.

My predictions back around August didn't play out as I thought they would, but ultimately did come true. Upon the landing of the Patch 6.9, Syndra's kit broke with a couple different bugs that would remain until Patch 6.12. Namely, her ultimate no longer detected spheres correctly, so if any of her abilities modified a sphere, there was about a 1-2 second window her ultimate wouldn't see the sphere. The net result, quite often was something like a 6 sphere ultimate only firing as a 4 or 3 sphere ultimate in turn. In all my time in playing her, it was the single most frustrating thing to deal with, and that's a pretty tall statement in over 5 years of League of Legends with her.

As Patch 6.12 landed, however, and these bugs were corrected, Syndra also received some AP ratio help, bumping her damage even further with the Patch 6.9 changes. This rode upon the back of many other different champions, many of which were the S-list and A-list competition she had to deal with, getting nerfed. The net result was a near meteoric rise to the top in competitive play and the world at large gleaning what would happen in a meta where Syndra is handed the queen's seat on a silver platter. This isn't entirely new to her, as Syndra's last rise to the top saw some stiff nerfs to her complete lane domination some years ago.

In the course of Patch 6.12 to Patch 6.24, much of the lukewarm reputation Syndra possessed was pretty much destroyed. Any notion of skill involvement disappeared as the roving bands of mob mentality paid their seasonal visit with her in their sights. I didn't really expect her to survive it any better than the rest, though I do find myself irritable nonetheless over the matter. My own personal misgivings aside, it was quite the useful learning experience, as it ever is, in watching how powerful public perception is. After all, when the man on the television preaching to you and millions of others that a champion has, "Absolutely no counter play", why wouldn't you believe him? Certainly not when no defense or counter argument is given in favor of the problem, of course.

  A New Year, and More Patches.

As we step out of the shadow 2016, and the clock turns over, the future is looking interesting for Syndra. The nerfs are on the horizon, and they aim at correcting what is arguably the biggest problem in her kit currently. Her W, Force of Will, is (as of the last PBE I looked at), being changed to something like this:

AP Ratio reverted to 0.7 from 0.8. Base damage reduced by 10 at all levels.

Old: Force of Will grabs 2 additional spheres near the target.

New: Force of Will now deals 20% bonus true damage.

The developers are fairly confident it will ship 'as is', but as ever, the Crystal Ball is dangerous. They may post something different tomorrow and explode this entire blog post like a destroyer in Battleship.

Notably, her new Q passive (+2 seconds to Dark Sphere life timers) and E changes (+0.1 AP, -2s base CD) are being retained. The rest of her kit, otherwise, remains untouched or considered as far as I'm aware. I find myself quite welcoming to these changes, as they will largely return Syndra to her prior playstyle and with easier-to-tune levers. An instrinic problem of the multisphere W is that it has no way to be balanced–your only recourse is to reduce the grab targets from 3 to 2, and this opens up other issues. The natural throw pattern would be a V-shape, which would ironically make it so awful to level you'd intentionally avoid it, as this would destroy her stun pattern. As a designer, you're forced to adjust it so one sphere is center mass and … where does the second go? Then you have to argue how it throws, and so on. As her kit is designed currently, the idea just opens more problems. Just looking at it can make a new problem appear out of thin air, seemingly.

Damage, however unimaginative it might be, is easy to tune. You make it go up or down, and if damage as a mechanic is undesired, you visit the project when you have more time. In this regard, although Syndra's W having a considerable amount of true damage (that's BONUS true damage, not a conversion. Her W overall has more damage), it's simple to change. From a gameplay perspective, it definitely empowers her skill route for W second max, as level 13 is when the mid-game/team fighting phase happens. Being true damage, she'll hammer all targets equally, though squishy ones will fear her W throw the most as they have less over all HP to absorb true damage with. Magic Resistance rushers, particularly those favoring Abyssal Scepter and Maw of Malmortius, will get stung pretty heavily by it and relieve some of Syndra's crippling issues with fighting those build paths until Void Staff is complete.

Her tank killing prowess will enjoy a slight increase, though out of all her targets, I imagine she'll still feel very cramped against them. Flat true damage is not necessarily an elegant way to kill tanks, but it does help.

The only problems I can foresee with this is squishy carry champions getting slammed particularly hard by Syndra's W sniping. However, lacking the multi-sphere throw now, she can no longer infinitely maintain her ultimate or a stun wall as large as a lane. Whether or not that's a fair trade off, time will tell, but if the true damage is a problem (in being too weak(?) or strong), a quick number change is all it needs. It is certainly a much better alternative to the multisphere mechanic and her original W passive.

  In Defense of the Multisphere Mechanic

I'll take this moment to kind of step aside and try to frame the vitrolic I have around this idea. So, standing in defiance of my past remarks, let's be a little different. On its own, the principle idea of manipulating multiple spheres with Syndra is a thematically interesting idea. It also has potential for zone control, power ramp, and everything her kit is based as an idea. As Syndra exists, however, it's inclusion destroyed safety levers many parts of her kit relied on to permit the power she has. Notably, her incredible team stunning and nuking power went from 'very timing sensitive' to 'whenever I want because I can'. The core idea itself can work, as experience has shown, merely not with the iteration Syndra herself currently exists in.

I feel that in a future VGU, or whenever the idea of a radical redesign for Syndra is in mind, it can be revisited. The concept of multiple sphere management is powerful enough you could redesign her whole kit with it in mind, and emphasize a lot of her unique strengths in the process. But, I fear it would be necessary to no longer consider Syndra a Burst Mage in that iteration. Her single target nuke ultimate as it is right now would not play nicely with that idea, so it would have to go. The multiple sphere ability (Force of Will, in this case) may even evolve into becoming her ultimate in such a world. Where it would go, or do, is a matter of speculation. You run the very real risk of making Syndra the best AOE nuke mage in the game, rather than a powerful single target problem remover. That's a wild ride of speculation and theory design I've played with for a while, but, no matter what, we'd have to fundamentally redefine a lot of who and what Syndra is.

So, the idea is good, the game just doesn't allow for it as it is. I'd be very curious to see how it'd play out on a theoritical design in testing with a bigger scope of work in mind, though.

  The World At Large

Assassins got their update and promptly fell on their face (except for LeBlanc, as always), as many of the current mage mid laners are quite comfortable against them. I'm honestly not certain if Assassins will find a happy existence, as their class entails a range of fundamental assertions that are problematic for the League of Legends environment. The largest one is the 'always losing until they're winning' one. Assassins do not have fallback mechanics in exchange for their incredible target selection and maneuverability. Thus, this means a stalwart defense and neutral farming playstyle can put them into a 'losing the game' position by just simply ignoring them. The onus to succeed is on the Assassin, and they must pursue an almost dangerously reckless degree of gameplay to stay relevant, then to win.

This in turn means player agency is a bit more suspect, as the Assassins are given–by design–the tools to out play, out manuever, and defeat their opponent. If they cannot do this reliably enough, they will simply never exist in professional League of Legends unless they're a wild card pick. Regular play will see them more convincingly, as skill and play style varies wildly there, but the class as a whole won't be regarded with some modicum of seriousness. I ponder if this is an issue of how League of Legends, as a game, is designed, and whether or not this problem can be answered by tuning the Assassins directly. Time will tell as Riot's attention goes to stepping down on the mage mid laners and giving a boost up to the Assassin class, and everyone gets to fight Fizz again(again).

Tanks are prowling around quite happily right now, and a fair number of other classes who shouldn't be, with the new Courage of the Colossus mastery. Word on the street is that will be getting slammed, so hopefully that draws that array back in line. Overall pleased with tanks having a menacing presence, though the damage available to them is brow raising. I suspect new mechanics unique to them would help give them more 'tank' and less 'tank by damage threat'. Reworking Taunt, for example, has interesting potential. Imagine if Taunt made it so a targeted enemy can only auto attack or use targeted abilities to the tank taunting them, but the target was normal otherwise (so no pseudo-stun lock mechanic). This means some of the existing tanks would either have to gain a Taunt effect, or some sort of item for them alone to use. It's one idea that comes to mind, anyway.

As is tradition, the entire jungle role is once again on fire as the new year of 2017 and Preseason 7 comes. The whole place is on fire, in a very literal way.

Bot lane is currently a whipping post as the ADC(marksman) role is finally contested after 7 years of League of Legends. That is, marksmen as a class are finding themselves constantly stepped on, smacked around, and new picks coming to contest their relevancy to the game. I find this particularly interesting to watch as, while I don't want a whole class to disappear, they're unique in that they have always 'been there'. The entire history of League of Legend metas is defined by 'Marksman+X', where X is the flavor of the month. It got to the point you had marksman in all 5 roles, though that got nerfed down. They maintain a presence in jungle and midlane, and the occasional terror pick arrives in toplane (to every top main's insatiable ire). To find a playing field open up where there are viable and desirable team compositions without marksman is a breath of fresh air in the potential of the game.

What the marksman bring to the table will still always be there, but I wonder if it will no longer be the mandatory must-have it has been. A team that could field no marksman, and make a dangerous yet viable choice in doing so, is not often considered nor held in any regard except 'I'm being trolled'. Mordekaiser as a marksman was arguably the first foray, however awkward, into this idea. The execution of that plan kind of exploded like a transformer on a power pole when the bristling hate mail came down the line … but still, it had merit in testing. Yasuo, amusingly, was somewhat envisioned as a potential marksman replacer, but he does every role. Now, we have Ziggs showing up in bot lane, not even as a marksman, but as a siege war waging machine whose unique strength is one of the few virtues the marksman class is built on. Where the marksman will end up after the dust has settled, I think, is a very telling point in how League of Legends could evolve.

If they're put back into their mandatory position, then it's reasonable to assume a degree of 'this is how it is, period'. If they're not mandatory, then it's reasonable to assume a greater degree of fluidity in design.

In what ways I can remember, I'd be historically inclined to say 'Riot will pursue a rigid method of design'. The ever changing balance team seems open to new approaches, though. I'm hopeful they'll experiment in this regard, though I live with an ever traumatic fear of what happened to Zyra, The Stolen Mage. Nonetheless, positive thoughts are better than anything else.

But, I'll be here, playing Syndra like I always do.

I'm a Syndra Main, not an OTP guys.

Seriously.

I'm serial.

staph calling me a one trick

The New Year’s New Look: Post Patch 6.9, and Syndra. was originally published on Earthen Thoughts