#like it's not more terrifying for her to be an honest-to-god good person pre-infection

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Why I Am Not A Unificationist

I’ve been a Unificationist since childhood. From then, until I was around 19, I had to eat all of the sadomasochism fed by Rev. Moon. My new Father. My new Messiah. I’ll take some time to go through them, but please be patient. I had been told that God was some sort of compulsive crybaby whose universe was forever torn asunder because two naked teenagers had pre-maritial sex in a garden. A step up from the apple and snake, I admit, but the Garden of Eden is still a myth no matter how you spin it.

Anyways, I was also told that human history was a convenient series of failures on behalf of the human race to understand the infinite sorrows of God. The Church painted said God, interestingly enough, as quite impotent. He was a servant to some pseudo-scientific law, called the Divine Principle: a lugubrious, confusing, absurd, and comical attempt to plaster Moon’s idiotic theology onto human history. Neon Genesis Evangelion’s myths made more sense.

I’m not quite sure if the Divine Principle was supposed to be a moral law or not, but I certainly was given that impression. I would be horrified and disgusted if the Principle was by any stretch of the imagination considered moral. This so-called morality dictated that again, because two naked teenagers had pre-marital sex in a garden, the Biblical wars against various tribes, the Crucifixion of Jesus, the Fall of Rome, both World Wars, the Holocaust, the Korean War, and numerous other tragedies, in the Bible and in history, were ordained by the Divine Principle to occur as payment for indemnity, or global karma. The Principle has weird ideas on proportionality. I don’t think that even Zeus, at the height of his maliciousness, would have approved of such a doctrine, so it would be doubly discouraging if a loving and compassionate God did. 

Why then does Moon praise the Principle with such fervor? Even it was true, it should have been condemned and resisted, even if the effort was futile. Of course, there’s always the idea that the Principle is brutally objective, but then, I don’t recall Newton’s Three Laws of Motion or the Pythagorean Theorem bluntly putting persons into sides of God or Satan.

Again, I swallowed this nonsense in my elementary years – I didn’t know any better. I think that I was still watching Power Rangers. So all of this made me very terrified of sex. Moon had a cute obsession with sex. If you don’t believe me, just look up the instructions for the 3-day ceremony. It’s quite revealing. He also said that if a pretty woman attempts to touch your penis, you should kick her 1,000 miles and God will praise you for it, but I’ll touch on his sexism later.

He just could not stop going on about the sexual organs and how they were at the center of the universe, or something like that. Easy enough to pledge abstinence when you’re young, but after puberty, I felt like I was walking in a nightmare. No sex until after I married, and Lord knew when that was going to happen. No choking the chicken, either, but when I did get the occasional slip of the wrist, so-to-speak, my whole being filled with guilt, as if I had committed a crime against God and joined the ranks of Satan.

I realize that abstinence is quite common among many Christians and even Muslims in this country, but at least they are allowed to date! Yes, because God certainly doesn’t want His Children engaging in the evil of DATING. Okay, so women were off limits until I married. At least I got to choose my wife. Oh, what’s that? My wife could be chosen for me? We might barely know each other before getting married? She might not even speak English? There could be a waiting period before having SEX? You know, there’s a word for people who have a peculiar interest in other people’s sex lives, they’re called perverts, and Rev Moon was certainly among them. Lord knows the countless unintentional pregnancies, STI infections, and abortions his teachings may have prevented had he taught instead about the options of masturbation and birth control.

Speaking of sexuality, Rev Moon was diseased with homophobia. I am sorry to say that I caught this disease as well. Moon referred to homosexuals once as dung-eating dogs and homosexuality as an activity that attracts Satan. He also said that those who love dung eating dogs, ergo people who support gay rights, will produce that quality of life. I’ve heard some homophobic statements from Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, but Moon’s hate speech sounds like something you’d hear from Neo-Nazis. Yeah, I went there, but Moon’s words were straight up dehumanizing and condemnable. NO group of people deserve to be described in that fashion. Also, Moon himself said that Hitler and Stalin were reborn as new beings, and they declared him the messiah. So he seems to think quite a bit of their opinions.

In any case, many religions still have trouble with treating homosexuals as equals, and that’s a shame. I repeat, a shame. Moon could have learned a thing from Desmond Tutu. Even the 14th Dalai Lama supports gay marriage and Pope Francis, who does not like homosexuality, says that the Church has no right to interfere with the spiritual lives of gays and that he has no authority to judge gay Catholics. I grew out of homophobia after I grew out of Moon.

Then there’s this whole damned idea of Rev Moon being the Messiah. Hell, anyone can claim that. Just ask Father Divine, Marshall Applewhite, Elijah Muhammad, Jim Jones, or L. Ron Hubbard. We all know the story. Jesus asked Moon to take up the cross and suffer for humanity as the first True Parent. The whole idea being that Jesus was supposed to get married as opposed to being crucified. Now I wouldn’t force crucifixion on my worst enemy, but marriage on the other hand, should be a choice, not a requirement for joining heaven, as Moon teaches. I think that most people are comfortable with the parents that they already have, and don’t need fanatical ones from Korea.

What makes Moon so special that he should be the Messiah, anyways? It’s his word against mine. Surely, Jesus didn’t expect Moon to convince people on word alone. Except that he apparently did. To be honest, I believed that Moon was the Messiah out of pity. He does deserve some. His home country was torn apart before his eyes, and he had to suffer atrocious accommodations in a North Korean prison camp. No one should have to go through that. The pressure was all around me to convert. Certainly I wouldn’t turn against a man who suffered so much. Before I knew it, I was bowing before photographs and reading books I could hardly understand at six in the morning. For those who want a better idea of what I am talking about, check out the film, “Ticket To Heaven.” Moon, however, had a habit of romanticizing Korea as the center of the world. I don’t hate Korea. It’s a fine nation, but not a holy one. Since Moon cast North Korea as Satan and South Korea as God, he probably forgot to mention that “God’s” nation had brutal dictators like Park Chung-hee.

I could also go on about how, in face of separation of church and state, Moon crowned himself like a king in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, how he implored Americans to forgive Nixon who sabotaged the Vietnam Peace Talks in 1968, how he founded the Washington Times which spews climate change denial, and how he had at least one affair while dictating other people’s sex lives, but I think I’ve made my point. Moon is no more of a messiah than my dead goldfish. If you still want a Korean to admire, try Kim Dae-Jung.

In closing, you may wonder what exactly liberated me from my slave-masters? It was a woman named Nansook Hong, whose book I would implore all of you to read. She married Moon’s first son, Hyo Jin, and suffered unspeakable abuse, both mental and physical. When Moon was told of these things, he blamed her for not being a good wife. This is the sexism I was referring to earlier. Moon was more concerned about his magnanimous legacy than about the domestic abuse of his daughter-in-law. As I read her testimony and followed her journey, I found myself going through a similar one. By the last page, I left the church and freed myself from the depressing theology of Rev Moon. I live a happy life now. I’m not very religious, but I don’t hate religion. 

Moon didn’t learn a lot from religion. Many Jewish scholars see the Old Testament stories as metaphors to learn from, not literal historical events representing the Cain and Abel dichotomy. If Moon really understood Jesus, he would have lived more like Gandhi, Tolstoy, or even Shaliene Woodley, as opposed to Donald Trump or John D. Rockefeller. The Qur’an opposes collective punishment for crimes done by others and would be disgusted with ideas like indemnity. While both Buddhism and Hinduism see atheism or agnosticism as acceptable spiritual paths, Buddhism more so. Moon denounced godlessness as Satanic.

I would like to thank HWDYKYM for giving me a healthy space to express these thoughts. As you can see by the length of this, they’ve been bubbling beneath the surface for some time now. I know that I may not have not have gotten everything right as far as Moon’s doctrine is concerned. I simply speak from my own experience – what I was taught, what I had believed. I hold no ill will towards current members, by the way. Many of them are still beloved members of my friends and family, just don’t expect me to go to workshops.

Sun Myung Moon’s theology used to control members

Divine Principle – Parallels of History

Sun Myung Moon  – Restoration through Incest

Moon’s Theology of the Fall, Tamar, Jesus and Mary

Nansook Hong, transcripts of three interviews

Nansook Hong In The Shadow Of The Moons, part 1

#Nansook Hong #Divine Principle #Sun Myung Moon

[traitorwhoyoulove]

The Thing About Pre Med

I finished this startlingly fast. I wasn’t planning on posting this until tomorrow afternoon, but why not? Happy Bellarke Day!

The thing about being pre-med is that people think you know stuff. They think they can come up to you and tell you about the cough they’ve had that just won’t go away, or ask about the weird tingling sensation they get on the back of their knee and just expect you to be able to tell them exactly what’s wrong with them. And sure, you can probably tell them that the trapezius muscle is innervated by the spinal accessory nerve or that hemoglobin has a quaternary structure made up of four polypeptides that each interact with an iron atom that gives it the ability to carry oxygen through the bloodstream. But at the end of the day, you don’t know shit about medicine.

Which is why Clarke feels more than a little bit panicked when her friends start treating her like their personal doctor.

It doesn’t start out as a big thing: Monty picked up a cold after their friends had spent a late night out in the cold drinking cheap liquor in a field off campus. He had come to her a couple of days later asking about the best cold meds to buy from the CVS down the street, and Clarke had advised him to pick up the generic brand after extensive assurance that yes, they really were the same thing and to buy some kind of sports drink to replenish his electrolyte levels.

Somehow word had gotten around. Before she knew it, Raven was asking her how best to bandage the blisters on her hands from the wrenches she used for her part-time job as a mechanic, and Jasper was flashing his bare ass wanting to know what kind of rash he had and whether he needed to see a doctor (she didn’t even want to begin to relive that one).

“This is getting out of hand,” she huffs to Bellamy one after relaying the story of Harper’s weird mole-ish thing (she had no idea what it was, to be honest) she had shown to Clarke with a few days prior. She takes a long sip from the coffee she’d ordered when they arrived, watching the corners of his eyes crinkle with humor as he fiddles with the napkins on their table and struggles to subdue a grin.

“Not so easy being Dr. Clarke?”

“That’s the problem,” she groans, fingers tangling into the roots of her hair and letting out a frustrated sigh, “I’m not a doctor. I’m a sophomore. In undergrad. I know nothing.” She lets her head fall pathetically onto the table, shielding her face with her arms like a petulant child.

“Good thing you’re paying so much money for such a quality education,” he teases.

Her head snaps back up to meet his smirking gaze. “You do realize it takes eight fucking years to become a doctor, right? And even after that there’s still three to ten years of more training in residency. I’m, like, 15% of the way done. If that.”

He tears off the corner of the croissant that sits on the plate in front of her, ignoring her noises of protest, and deadpans, “You’re practically an ignoramus.”

“Exactly,” she says, ignoring his sarcastic tone. “If this were drivers’ ed and I was only 15% done, I’d still be reading the damn handbook. They wouldn’t even let me near a car. But suddenly it’s okay for me to be making life and death decisions about a person’s body?”

Bellamy scoffs. “Okay, Princess, I feel like that might be a bit melodramatic. It’s not like you know absolutely nothing. What about that time Miller told you about that earache he was having, and you told him it was an infection he should probably get checked out? You were right, and he ended up avoiding a trip to the emergency room because of it.”

“Lucky guess,” she shrugs, fingers drumming a light rhythm on the lid of her coffee cup.

“Or that time that kid had that seizure in the student union? You were the only one there who knew to turn him onto his side.”

She rolls her eyes. “Please. That’s basic stuff everyone learns when they’re kids. No different than ‘stop, drop, and roll.’”

“What the hell kind of elementary school did you go to?”

She stifles a snicker, ignoring the slight heat rising to her cheeks. It was nice to know that her best friend had faith in her, even if she didn’t. “When my mom worked all the time, the only way I could really spend time with her was to shadow her around the hospital,” she says with a shrug. “You pick up a few things. I spent my eighth birthday learning the proper technique for wrapping a sprained ankle.”

“See?” Bellamy quips, gesturing vaguely with his cup, “You already knew more than the average adult by the time you’d finished the second grade.”

She lets out a breathy laugh, one hand reaching up to tug absentmindedly at the ends of her blonde waves. “I don’t know. I just—I’m terrified of getting it wrong, you know?” She traces the letters of her name written on the coffee cup in front of her with a finger, focusing far more attentively than the task requires. “What if someone comes to me with something and I tell them that they’re fine, and it turns out to be something really bad? What if I miss it?”

“You won’t.”

She finally glances up at Bellamy. His eyes bore into hers with an intensity and confidence that makes the tension in her shoulders soften. “You don’t know that.”

“I do,” he says firmly, his hand reaching across the table to rest on the hand still mechanically tracing the black-inked ‘C’ on her cup. “You won’t miss it.”

A few weeks later, everyone piles around the tiny laptop screen in Raven’s tiny dorm room in a halfhearted attempt of a movie night.

“This,” Jasper whines, “was the worst idea ever. Raven, why didn’t you bring a TV to college like a normal person?”

“I think the better question is why did we choose to have a movie night in the one room that doesn’t have a TV?” Clarke grumbles from her spot on the floor between Harper and Bellamy, adjusting her shoulders in an attempt to find a more comfortable position against the wall behind her.

A chorus of dissent travels across the group as Monty urgently shushes them with an insistent, “Shut up, this is the best part!”

They continue like that for a while, making jokes about the ridiculous dialogue and terrible acting between someone’s complaints that they can’t see or hear the movie, all the while with Monty grumbling that they’re ‘ruining his favorite movie’ and that they ‘shouldn’t even have a movie night if no one’s going to watch.’

They’re a little over an hour in when Clarke realizes Bellamy has been notably quiet.

“Hey,” she whispers, playfully knocking her knee into his own, “you okay? You haven’t bitched about the historical inaccuracies once during this entire movie.”

“I’m fine.”

She bristles at his short tone, feeling him tense next to her as he leans his head back against the wall behind them. She waits for him to say more, but no response comes.

“You sure?”

His eyes close as she scrutinizes him. She watches his jaw tighten.

“Yeah,” he said through gritted teeth. “I’ve just had a headache all day. No big deal.”

She pats his knee apologetically and turns back to the movie. Her attention for the remainder of the night switches between the atrocity of a film on the tiny screen and making sure Bellamy is okay. He doesn’t say anything else, but she notices that his jaw is still ticking and his eyes are still closed when she checks on him.

When the movie finally ends, the group lets out a resounding sigh of relief as Raven cheers, “Thank God!” The next half hour is a blur of people gathering their respective pillows and blankets as they issue sleepy ‘goodnights’ and ‘drive safes.’ Clarke sees Bellamy say a quick goodbye to Raven and slip quietly out the door. She hurries behind him to catch up to his long strides.

“Bellamy,” she calls, speeding up her pace as he stops at the stairwell. “Are you driving home?”

He shakes his head. The previous summer, Bellamy had leased a 2-bedroom apartment just off campus to share with Octavia once she enrolled at Ark University.

“Octavia took my car to go visit Lincoln,” he tells her. “I’m just going to walk.”

She shakes her head, her stomach lilting at the idea of him walking home alone at night when he just seemed so…off.

“No, you’re not,” she insists. “My car’s right downstairs, let me drive you home.”

“I’ll be fine, Princess. It’s just a few blocks.” He turns toward the door to the stairwell, already reaching for the handle, but Clarke catches his shoulder.

“Come on. It’s really not any trouble,” she assures him. “Please?” She senses the hesitation in his stance. His already sluggish movements slow even further. She can feel him caving as she presses, “For my own peace of mind.”

He turns to her with a resigned grimace.

“Fine,” he says, rubbing his tired eyes, “but only because you said please.”

She gives him a small grin, her hand unthinkingly grazing his broad shoulders to guide him toward the door. She trails behind him down the stairs, watching him rub gingerly where his neck tapers down to his shoulders. He tilts his head slightly to the side, allowing her to see the wince that flits across his face.

“That hurt?”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says.

“That’s a yes.”

He lets out a tired chuckle. He holds the door for her as they exit the stairwell, and again as they reach the main entrance of Raven’s building. Clarke is silently thankful the parking lot outside of her own building a block away had been full when she had returned to campus earlier that day, forcing her to park just out front of the dorm she and Bellamy were leaving. Though she knows he’s doing his best to hide his discomfort, she can see the stiff way he carries himself, looking as though he’s trying to minimize as much movement as possible.

“Seriously, are you okay?” she asks when she sees his grimace as he ducks to slide into her passengers’ seat. She doesn’t miss the lilt of concern in her voice, and judging by way he turns to her with reassurance in his eyes, Bellamy doesn’t either.

“Clarke, really,” he says, “I’m fine. I think I just hurt my neck at the gym earlier today. No big deal.” The smile her gives her seems a little forced, but lets it slide, ignoring the vague anxiety at the back of her mind.

“You should ice that when you get home,” she advises. “Take some ibuprofen, too, it’ll help if there’s inflammation. And no gym tomorrow, okay?”

“Whatever you say, Dr. Clarke.”

She lets out an exasperated sigh as she pulls out of the parking lot, a smile creeping onto her face in spite of herself. She’s relieved he’s feeling well enough to tease her, even if he still doesn’t seem quite right.

“Looks like rain,” he notes, his drowsy eyes examining the sky. “Hope Octavia doesn’t stay out too late. She doesn’t need to be driving home in a storm.”

“She could always stay over at Lincoln’s.”

Clarke is fairly certain that Bellamy’s gaze would have snapped to hers had his neck not been causing him so much pain. Even still, she saw him side-eyeing her with more than a little distaste.

“That’s not funny.”

“Oh come on,” she says with a snort, “it’s a little funny.”

They fall into a companionable silence for the rest of the drive, Clarke keeping her eyes on the quickly darkening sky while Bellamy can’t seem to keep his eyes open. Though only a few minutes have passed by the time she pulls into the parking lot outside of his building, she has to call his name twice before he finally jolts awake.

“Sorry,” he says gruffly, already reaching for the seatbelt buckle. He stiffly exits the car, poking his head around the car door before shutting it. “Make sure you get back before the rain hits.”

“I will,” she assures him. “I’ll let you know I made it back okay.”

He nods, cringing at the jolt that comes along with it. He shuts the car door, turning to the staircase that leads to his floor.

Before his foot can reach the first step, Clarke rolls down her window and calls, “Hey. You’re sure you’re okay?”

He turns back to her with a weary smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

“I’m fine, Clarke. Scout’s honor.”

“You weren’t a Scout,” she points out, her voice dripping with sarcasm. She locks eyes with his, her tone becoming more serious. “Promise you’ll call if you need anything? Ice pack, a cheeseburger run, whatever.”

“I promise,” he says, his expression softening.

She gives a curt nod, offering a quick goodnight as she rolls up her window. As she pulls out of the parking lot, she does her best to silence the nagging voice in the back of her mind telling her that something isn’t right.

 Read the rest on AO3

#bellarke #bellamy x clarke #bellarke fanfiction #bellarke fanfics #the 100 #the 100 fanfiction #tess writes things #doctor!clarke #sick!bellamy #college AU #pre-med!clarke #med student!clarke