#robin x min june

[seducing-mr-perfect]

This is a set of very short transition scenes, sandwiched between two huge ones: the botched sogaetting with Jin Guk/bar meetup with Robin situation, and Yoon Mi's birthday party. The blind date situation is their first major misunderstanding, and it's aftermath is clearly shown in these scenes. Not a lot seems to be obvious in these sequences, but there is still much beneath the surface here.

Su-yeoung's persistence

While it was obvious to both Min-June and Su-yeoung that the date with Jin Guk failed, Su-yeoung is clearly invested in pushing this match forward: to the point where she insists Min-June is crazy for nipping this opportunity in the bud, and encourages Jin Guk himself to communicate with her through phone and in person.

Min-June finds herself having to handle two conversations on her way to work: a hugely exhausting one with Su-yeoung convincing her to agree to marry Jin-Guk, and an equally tiring one with an irate Robin who insists on reviewing the Maeda contract before time.

In the first one, her best friend's refusal to understand that she isn't interested in Jin Guk whatsoever frustrates her enough to cut their conversation short. In the second, she finds herself at the receiving end of Robin's frustration, unable to understand why he suddenly seems angry with her for no fault of hers (remember, at this point she doesn't even know he got the card).

Grandfather's Photograph

At this point professionally, Robin and his company are at their strongest. Mr Mistsiyoshi has caved in to their offer - faster than any of them expected - and Robin feels a sense of personal victory for getting the deal this far. How does he bask in his success? By remembering his grandfather, the man he's doing all of this for.

Remember how I mentioned Robin's obsession with his private space, and how much he dislikes any intrusions on it? This scene is a proof of that. Holding that photograph is Robin's private moment, and he reacts very strongly when Min-June encroaches on that space.

As soon as Robin notices Min-June, he instinctively jerks backwards, and turns his back to her so she won't notice his reaction. The audience gets to see what she doesn't - that he's almost gasping for breath and taking a moment to calm himself. Obviously, having his space invaded that way is a really, really big deal to him, and when it happens without enough time for him to prepare, he gets worked up and can't exactly communicate until he's properly composed himself.

We have plenty of evidence across the movie that establishes how guarded he is, besides this scene. His reaction to having his office cleaned, his anger at the fact that she threw his grandfather's uniform away, the way he grabs his grandfather's photograph from her hands in his hotel room. Taking that into account, it makes his trusting her in the end an even bigger deal.

What June Doesn't Know

Have you noticed that in the entire duration of the film, whatever interactions do take place within the office space tend to happen soon after there has been some misunderstanding of the sort? Let's take a look at the scenes shot in Robin's office:

1. In their first office scene, Min-June discovers Robin is her boss, and Robin subtly calls her out on lying to him and the company (about not knowing English, about her fake appendix operation).

2. Operation Angel, where she cleans his office and unknowingly throws away his grandfather's uniform.

3. This scene, where Robin is frustrated because he thinks she ditched him the previous day, and June has no clue he feels this way.

4. A few scenes later, where she calls her behaviour at Yoon Mi's party a mistake, and Robin misunderstands and thinks she is talking about their kiss.

5. Just before their big meeting with Mr Mitsiyoshi where both of them are aware of how they feel, but don't believe the other person cares for them that much. This is before Jennifer tells Min-June about Robin's past.

6. The final scene, where Robin apologizes to her.

Notice how the only times when misunderstandings are cleared are the first and the last scene in Robin's office? Every other scene that takes place there sees the two fumble around and struggle with their feelings towards each other, not knowing the turmoil the other person is going through.

Unlike the other outdoor locations where the two meet and talk, the office space is closed, formal. They speak freely about her love life at the hotel bar, are open emotionally to each other at the ferry and the bench outside his hotel. But most times, within the office space, any attempt at communication that doesn't involve work tends to leave more room for misunderstanding.

Min-June enters Robin's office believing he never got the note. Robin reacts to her believing she was asking for lessons she didn't seem to need. The tension between them from that botched meeting spills over to their interaction here. Here, Robin loses his temper at Min-June for not knowing about a piece of classified information on Maeda that could give them an edge in their dealings with the company (a company that, in fact, they're pretty close to acquiring, if we go by Robin's conversation with Steven but a few minutes back).

Robin's frustration isn't about her not knowing this piece of classified information. Not at all. She's botched things up before, and he's had no problem giving her opportunities to correct that. He also knows she does her work well, trusts her abilities, and when she doesn't know something he doesn't mind filling her in and keeping her in the loop. It's obvious, both by Min-June's reaction to his outburst, and the way he lowers his voice immediately after, that this is something he doesn't do, and this sort of reaction from him is unexpected.

As I have mentioned in the previous scene, Robin's irritation seems to lie more in his reaction towards her. He doesn't expect to feel the way he does, doesn't expect to be so affected by her actions...but the truth is that he is and there isn't much he can do about it.

It's possible that Robin started out believing that his attraction towards Min-June didn't run too deep, and that she could not affect him beyond that (as proved by the challenge to make him beg, and his reaction to her subsequent attempts to change his mind). I feel like this mindset has begun to change post Min-June's sogaetting.

By this point, he's beginning to feel he's more invested than he likes to admit, and this clearly frustrates him. It doesn't justify Robin's irrational actions towards her in this scene, but it helps us understand why.

"Hi, Jennifer!"

This sequence of scenes is perhaps the first time Jennifer's name is taken up in the movie, almost an hour after her appearance in the very first scene. Nonetheless, it's a tiny nod to what her eventual role in this film will be. The woman who seems to be a rival against Min-June for Robin's affections, but ultimately someone who values her friendship, and her friend's well-being over any feelings she may have.

"Hi, Jennifer" is something Robin says while Min-June is on her way out, humiliated and livid. Since his outburst was about her work, you'd expect her to probably imitate him on that, but no: it's the last thing he says - to another woman - that she focuses on instead.

Shortly after this, her younger colleague Yoon Mi (she calls Min-June by the honorific unnie*, which establishes her as the senior in their working relationship) comes out, dressed up to the nines for her birthday, obviously in a style Min-June hasn't seen her in before. When the latter comments that Yoon Mi's clothes might be too revealing for their fellow colleagues, the younger woman reveals to her that she's playing up to Robin's tastes ("sexy, big-breasted women") a statement that Min-June pays very close attention to.

The bathroom scene makes it clear - once again - how singular her focus towards Robin is. Since he's tossed that challenge her way, Min-June hasn't been able to think of anything else besides proving him wrong, and she invests real time, money and energy into making it happen. She's more invested in making this almost-stranger change his mind than she would like to admit. From this point on, she goes all-out: clothes she rarely wears and doesn't seem exactly comfortable in, mingling at the party and ensuring she continuously catches Robin's attention. Truth be told...she is as invested in what Robin thinks, as Robin is in her.

This set of sequences acts as a good bridge between two sequences, rich with tension and intent on showing us how little these two characters know about each other, and their own feelings.

--

* unnie: the honorific term used by younger women to address older ones. Younger men, on the other hand, use noona to address older women (something Min-June's boyfriend Ju-hyeoung should be calling her - being younger to her in age - but she allows him not to).

#seducing mr perfect #daniel henney #uhm jung hwa #robin heiden #robin x june #kim min june #robin x min june #robin x minjune #smp scene analyses #mr robin kkosigi #long post #then what were you doing all week?

[justkarliekloss]

Joshlie timeline

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 |

I’m using this article by Jewish website Hey Alma as the base, and I’ve added details they’ve missed or didn’t add.

2012

->  June 8. They met after Derek and/or Dasha set them up at a birthday dinner by having them sit together.

Karlie talks about that moment on this video with Ashley Graham, min 5. This is the first photo of them together, probably from that day. We know the date thanks to this post Karlie did back in 2016.

-> August 24. Kevin Systrom, creator of Instagram and Josh’s friend, posts this photo where he says “I think my friend likes her”. He didn’t tag anyone.

But in 2015 Karlie will repost it to celebrate Valentine’s Day, and we will know who it was (x).

-> First rumours about them dating after the VSFS.

US Weekly reported, “After walking the runway in several super-skimpy getups, the flawless American-born supermodel, 20, hit an afterparty with a very lucky guy on her arm: NYC-based investor Joshua Kushner… the 27-year-old Instagram investor ‘seemed nervous and shy around everyone but handled it well. Karlie is stunning and the sweetest girl ever. She stuck close to him.'”

-> November 19. They attend their first event together (x)

-> Karlie buys her West Village place.

The Daily Mail writes for the first time about them: “The move also means she will be closer to her rumoured boyfriend, 27-year-old, Joshua Kushner.”

-> December 5. We see them again at a Chanel dinner in Miami (x)

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

2013

-> March. On an interview with People, Karlie acknoledges Josh for the first time.

“Also making her feel all those things: love Josh Kushner, a.k.a. Ivanka Trump’s brother-in-law. And she appreciates that he’s ‘so not in fashion. It’s really refreshing to leave all the fashion shows and shoots and chaos totally behind.'”

-> April. They attend Coachella together.

Josh posts a photo of Karlie for the first time, and she will post it too. Also this month, Kevin Systrom posts a photo of Karlie and Josh together.

-> May

They attend the Robin Hood Foundation Gala together (x) and are seen at a basebell game where they are photographed with model Anne V (x)

-> June 2. Josh posts this photo and Karlie reposts.

-> June. Trip to Iceland.

Karlie posts a photo Josh on her instagram for the first time, and Josh reposts. Karlie also posts this photo from Iceland.

-> July. They both post photos from a visit to the MoMA.

They both posted photos at the rain room (x) (x) There also is this photo that Josh deleted/archived from the same day.

-> August

They pose together at Karlie’s 21st birthday party (x)

They are spotted out and about in NY twice. (x) (x)

-> December

They both post the same photo on instagram, and Karlie credits Josh as the photographer. (x) (x)

They travel to Bagan, Myanmar, and Burma to spend the New Year. Josh posts a photo of Karlie there.

* There also are these two photos that judging by Karlie’s hair are from these years, but I don’t know the exact date

#karlie kloss #joshua kushner #joshlie

[woollyslisterblog]

1834 May Friday 9th

6 20/60

12 40/60

fine, but dullish morn[in]g ready in an h[ou]r F51 1/2° at 8 1/2 from wh[i]ch h[ou]r b[u]t till 10 5/60 then br[eak]f[a]st in 20 min[ute]s -

then wr[ote] and s[e]nt off by Joseph at 10 3/4 no[te] to ‘Miss Walker, Cliff Hill’ and let[ter] that ca[me] for h[e]r last night, and The H[alifa]x and Huddersf[iel]d Express (vid[ere] p[age] 46, line 25) -

Lucky I was d[o]wnst[ai]rs this morn[in]g as the workmen ca[me] int[o] the courty[ar]d or so[me] of them w[oul]d n[o]t ha[ve] g[o]t on so well – Mallins[o]n and 4 men - 2 beg[a]n at the upp[e]r Kitch[e]n chim[ne]y - s[e]nt for the chim[ne]y sweep[e]r and h[a]d it swept bef[ore] 10 - 2 Masons in the n[or]th parl[ou]r help[in]g Ch[arle]s H[owarth] to relay joists and mak[in]g 3 floor vent holes to the outside , and oppos[i]te it und[e]r the draw[in]g r[oo]m floor – Ja[me]s H[owarth] prepar[in]g floorb[oar]ds -

2 one horse carts bring[in]g soil from the Greenw[oo]ds field and Pickels and 3 men – (one fill[in]g soil carts) 2 barrow[in]g it int[o] the gard[e]n and P[er]kins hims[elf] and John Booth dress[in]g up new terrace slope John plant[in]g it w[i]th strawberries - out ag[ai]n at 11 - till n[ea]r 1 -ten min[ute]s w[i]th my a[un]t then fr[om] 1 10/60 to 2 40/60 asleep in my study - out ag[ai]n till 6 40/60

din[ner] at 6 20/60 - coff[ee] - h[a]d Mar[ia]n w[i]th me till aft[e]r 8 - then Joseph ret[urne]d fr[om] Crownest (I h[a]d taken no[te] ‘to Mr Sam[ue]l Washingt[o]n Crownest,’ to desire h[i]m fr[om] Miss Walk[e]r to call up[on] Mr W[illia]m Rothwell for hers and Mrs Sutherl[an]d’s theatre divid[en]ds and to call here on his way to H[alifa]x in the morn[in]g) Joseph ret[urne]d fr[om] Crownest, and br[ou]ght good acc[ou]nts fr[om] Lidg[a]te of Sarah's d[au]ght[e]r – Mr Robins[o]n s[ai]d no dang[e]r - and Matt[hew] return[e]d fr[om] Mr Sund[erlan]d's say[in]g he might go to York tomor[row] –

wr[ot]e th[e]re for[e] an s[e]nt at 8 40/60 2 pages to ‘Miss W-[Walker] Hewarth Grange, York’ say[in]g I sh[oul]d s[e]nd h[i]m off by the Commerce, Highflier, or Mail, at 11, 12 , and 1 tomor[row] and hop[e]d he w[oul]d be w[i]th ab[ou]t 7 – ga[ve good acc[ou]nts of Sarah's d[au]ght[er] and ment[ione]d my no[te] to Mr Washingt[o]n - then till 11 3/4 p.m. exc[ept] 1/4 h[ou]r (ab[ou]t 10) w[i]th my a[un]t wr[ote] 4 pages and 1 p[age] and ends of envelope to Miss W-[Walker] to go by Matt[hew] tomor[row] - k[i]nd let[ter] propos[in]g her keep[in]g Sarah and the Lodg[in]g till Mon[day] 2nd June, or if she preferr[e]d it send[in]g Sarah ho[me] and giv[in]g up the Lodg[in]g on the 26th inst[ead] – on[l]y propos[e]d the form[e]r plan in conseq[uence] of Dr Belcombe’s ab[ou]t her (Miss W-[Walker]’s) leav[in]g him -

w[e]nt to my r[oo]m at 11 50/60 – ver[y] fine day - F59 1/2° in my study now at 11 50/60 p.m.

[t-baba]

Angular 10, data grids, randomness, and checking some boxes

#494 — June 26, 2020

Unsubscribe  |  Read on the Web

JavaScript Weekly

Lessons Learned Refactoring Optional Chaining Into a Large Codebase — Lea Verou, creator of Mavo, decided to refactor Mavo to use optional chaining (?.) and here’s some of what she discovered along the way. (As an aside, Lea was the subject of a neat 10 minute programming documentary recently – worth a watch!)

Lea Verou

A Little Bit of Plain JavaScript Can Do A Lot — For anyone more than happy to dive in and write JavaScript without dragging in an entire framework and tooling to manage it, there will be no surprises here, but this is a nice reminder otherwise. Do you always need a 'framework'? No.

Julia Evans

Creating a Voting App with Firestore and Wijmo — Learn how to build a realtime voting app quickly and easily with the Firestore database and Wijmo components. The app uses OAuth for authentication and allows users to submit and vote for ideas.

Wijmo by GrapeCity sponsor

Angular 10 Released — A major release for the popular Google-led framework, though smaller in scope than usual as Angular 9 only came out in February ;-) 10 gains a new date range picker, optional stricter settings, and an upgrade to TypeScript 3.9.

Stephen Fluin (Google)

What's Coming in TypeScript 4? — The first beta of TypeScript 4 is due any moment with a final release due in August. New bits and pieces include variadic tuple types, labelled tuples, short-cut assignment operators (e.g. ||=) and more.

Tim Perry

⚡️ Quick bytes:

Chrome 85's DevTools have gained better support for working with styles created by CSSOM APIs (such as by CSS-in-JS frameworks). There's also syntax autocompletion for optional chaining and highlighting for private fields.

There's nothing to see just yet, but NativeScript is coming to Ionic.

The creator of AlpineJS has written about how he's passed $100K/yr in income using GitHub Sponsors.

Did you know there's a Slack theme for VS Code? 😆

▶️ The JS Party podcast crew discusses how their use of JavaScript syntax evolves (or not) over time.

engineeringblogs.xyz is a new aggregator site (by us!) that brings together what 507 (so far) product and software engineering blogs are talking about. Worth a skim.

💻 Jobs

JavaScript Developer at X-Team (Remote) — Join X-Team and work on projects for companies like Riot Games, FOX, Coinbase, and more. Work from anywhere.

X-Team

Find a Job Through Vettery — Vettery specializes in tech roles and is completely free for job seekers. Create a profile to get started.

Vettery

📚 Tutorials, Opinions and Stories

ECMAScript Proposal: Private Static Methods and Accessors in Classes — Dr. Axel takes a look at another forthcoming language feature (in this case being at stage 3 and already supported by Babel and elsewhere).

Dr. Axel Rauschmayer

npm v7 Series: Why Keep package-lock.json? — If npm v7 is going to support yarn.lock files, then why keep package-lock.json around as well? Isaac goes into some depth as to how yarn.lock works and why it doesn’t quite suit every npm use case.

Isaac Z. Schlueter

How to Dynamically Get All CSS Custom Properties on a Page — Some fun DOM and stylesheet wrangling on display here.

Tyler Gaw

Stream Chat API & JavaScript SDK for Custom Chat Apps — Build real-time chat in less time. Rapidly ship in-app messaging with our highly reliable chat infrastructure.

Stream sponsor

Getting Started with Oak for Building HTTP Services in Deno — A comprehensive Oak with Deno tutorial for beginners (which, I guess, we all are when it comes to Deno). Oak is essentially the most popular option for building HTTP-based apps in Deno right now.

Robin Wieruch

Understanding Generators in JavaScript — Generator functions can be paused and resumed and yield multiple values over time and were introduced in ES6/ES2015.

Tania Rascia

Build a CRUD App with Vue.js, Spring Boot, and Kotlin — It’s a fact of life that not everyone is building apps with JavaScript at every level of the stack. Sometimes.. people use Java too 🤫

Andrew Hughes

▶  Creating a Basic Implemention of 'Subway Surfers' — No modules, webpack or such-like here.. just exploring the joy of throwing a game mechanic together quickly using rough and ready JavaScript. Love it.

Shawn Beaton

Rubber Duck Debugging for JavaScript Developers — When you’re stuck with something, why not talk to a rubber duck?

Valeri Karpov

🔧 Code & Tools

Tabulator 4.7: An Interactive Table and Data Grid Library — Supports all major browsers and can be used with Angular, Vue, and React if you wish. 4.7 is a substantial release. Among other things is a new layout mode that resizes the table container to fit the data (example).

Oli Folkerd

Tragopan: A Minimal Dependency-Free Pan/Zoom Library — Try it out here. Claims to work faster due to use of native browser scrolling for panning (left/right/up/down) and transform/scale for zooming.

team.video

Builds Run Faster on Buildkite 🏃‍♀️ — Build times <5 mins at any scale. Self-hosted agents work with all languages, source control tools & platforms.

Buildkite sponsor

React Query 2: Hooks for Fetching, Caching and Updating Async Data — React Query is well worth checking out and has extensive documentation and even its own devtools. Main repo.

Tanner Linsley

Rando.js: A Helper for Making Randomness Easier — The rando function lets you get random integers in a range, floats in a range, pick between multiple items, return a random element from an array, and more. There’s also randosequence for a more shuffle-like experience.

nastyox

jinabox.js: A Customizable Omnibox for AI Powered Searching — Designed to be used with a Jina back-end. It’s all open source, but will take some digging around to understand fully.

Jina AI

MongoDB Is Easy. Now Make It Powerful. Free Download for 30 Days.

Studio 3T sponsor

IntersectionObserver Visualizer — If you’re new to using the IntersectionObserver API, this useful interactive demo might help you comprehend it a little better.

michelle barker

Polly.js 5.0: Record, Replay, and Stub HTTP Interactions

Netflix

Vest: Effortless Validations Inspired by Testing Frameworks — If you’re used to unit testing, the syntax used here will be familiar.

Evyatar

👻 Scary Item of the Week

Checkboxland: Render 'Anything' as HTML Checkboxes — This frivolous experiment is equal parts terrifying and impressive. It’s a JS library that displays animations, text, and arbitrary data using nothing but HTML checkboxes and, to be fair, they’ve presented it really well!

Bryan Braun

by via JavaScript Weekly https://ift.tt/3g53MDU

#Javascript Branding #Javascript Weekly

[myeongchokrp]

↠ RESERVED UNTIL JUNE 29TH .

[ 000 ] LEE SEUNGHWAN ( SEO KANGJOON ), ACTOR

↠ RESERVED UNTIL JUNE 30TH .

[ 433 ] SEO, JOHN ( JOHNNY ), NCT

↠ RECEIVED APPLICATIONS .

[ 369 ] CHAE HYUNGWON, MONSTA X as AEON

[ ### ] KIM AHYOUNG ( YURA ), GIRL’S DAY as YURA * PLEASE OPEN YOUR IMS!

[ 000 ] KIM MYUNGSOO ( L ), INFINITE as PARK SUNGKI ( PRINCE )

[ 801 ] KIM YERIM ( YERI ), RED VELVET as MIN SOHEE ( ROBIN )

[ 738 ] LEE MINHYUK, MONSTA X as LUCK 

[ ### ] LEE MINHYUNG ( MARK ), NCT as FANG

[ 715 ] NA JAEMIN, NCT as STARLING * MESSAGED!

[ ### ] PARK JIMIN, BTS as KHANG MINJAE ( PAN )

[ ### ] SHIN RYUJIN, ITZY as SHIN YUJIN ( ROGUE )

#mi:reserved #kpop rp #krp #crime krp #gang krp

[thing-you-do-with-that-thing]

Kari’s Favorite Things Challenge

 So get this! Y’all cause I am a weirdo I have been thinking about doing this for months. I did a celebration thingy for 666 so off course I wanted one for 6666 aswell :D

This one is gonna be a challenge and since the number 6666 is wicked cool and sorta a fav thing of mine the prompts are gonna reflect that. There are gonna be 66 prompts (and 66 spots for people to sign up for). There are gonna be 6 different categories amongst those prompts and there will be 6 different characters you can chose from to write for.

Sign ups end when I run out of prompts. No more will be added. Only one person for each prompt but no limit on characters. 

The Rules - READ CAREFULLY:

1. You have to send me an ask telling me your pairing (and if the pairing is two of the characters on the list please let me know which one you wanna focus on). The ask also has to say which prompt you choose (state the NUMBER not just the prompt. Send a backup prompt in case the one you want is taken. IMs, reblogs and replies will be ignore

2. I am fine with most pairings but please no dealistar, wincest (of any kind) or samifer. I wanna read all these fics and I can’t stomach those pairings. No hate if you ship it I just don’t. No male readers or OMCs are allowed either. Again no offense I just don’t read them.

3. You can write fluff, angst smut -  if you write smut please no non-con, A/B/O or daddy/mommy kinks. Again no shaming. I just can’t bring myself to read those.

4. Word min: 500 and word max: 6000 words.

5. It can be the start of a series or a one shot. Please don’t make it the middle part of a series - I don’t have time to catch up on 66 series for this one.

6. The fic is due June 15th. If you have to drop out or need an extension that is cool - just let me know a week ahead of time. People signing up and not completing the challenge without getting back to me that they need to drop out will be banned from my future challenges.

7. All are allowed to sign up, the tags are only for signal boost, but one person can only sign up once.

8. Tag me @thing-you-do-with-that-thing in the A/N and use the # Kari’s favorite things challenge within the first five tags. 

9. Have FUN :D

Characters you can write for:

It is TFW and J2M - I know but they are the ones I read the most and this is my challenge.

You can however pair them with any other character you like (again not any form of wincest, samifer or dealistar), you can pair them with a female reader or a OFC (no male readers or OMCs please), or you can write a general fic. You just have to let me know which and which guy you will focus on.

NO WIFE BASHING/HATE IS ALLOWED IN THE RPFS!

1. Dean

2. Jensen

3. Sam

4. Jared

5. Cas

6. Misha

Examples of an Ask:

Hey I would like to join your challenge and write for Destiel (with focus on Cas). I would like prompt 66 with prompt 5 as back up

Or

Hey can I join your challenge and write for Jared x reader with prompt 10 and 9 as back up please?

Prompts are under the cut

Kari’s favorite Tv shows (you can do crossover, rewrite an ep, do a french mistake sorta thing, or have the characters watch it):

1. Supernatural @benjerry707 (???)

2. Game of Thrones @fragments-of-stardust Destiel (Dean)

3. Once Upon a Time @the-devils-prophet (Jensen x reader)

4. Big Bang Theory @winchesters-imagine (platonic Sam x Reader)

5. Battlestar Galactica @blacktithe7 Winchester!sister reader

6. X-files @webcricket Cas x Reader

7. Criminal Minds @warward-marvel-sommer1196 Dean x Reader

8. Friends @wayward-oneshots Jensen x Reader

9. Firefly @katymacsupernatural Jensen x Reader

10. True Detective (season 1!) @kayteonline Dean x Reader

11. Justified

Kari’s favorite Movies (you can do crossover, rewrite the movie, do a french mistake sorta thing, or have the characters watch it):

12. Indiana Jones (any or all of them) @deansdirtylittlesecretsblog Deonna

13. The Hurt Locker @rachelladytietjens Dean x OFC

14. Captain America - Civil War @blackgirloneshots Dean x Reader

15. A Walk in the Clouds

16. Robin Hood - Prince of Thieves

17. Hunger Games (any of them) @imaginesforthose-wholovefandoms Dean x Reader

18. Willow

19.  Silver Linings Playbook @aiaranradnay Dean x Reader

20. The Purge (any of them really - I just like the concept) @abbirae99 Sam x Reader

21. Inception @winchester-family-business  Dean x Reader

22. While You Were Sleeping @casownsmyass Destiel

Kari’s favorite activities (just be creative - use it how you want):

23. Writing @emilyevanston Stucky (made an exeption and let my fav marvel blog participate!)

24. Singing (badly - but you don’t have to use that lol) @chaos-and-the-calm67 Dean x Reader

25. Dog Walking (bonus points if it is a german shepherd) @lean-mean-sam-and-dean Dean x Reader)

26. Painting @td122609 Jared x Reader

27. Camping @sammy-moo Sam x Reader

28. Sailing @amanda-teaches Dean x Reader

29. Baking @atari-writes Dean x Reader

30. Talking on phone or skype (with friends) @karlee-fay-my-wayward-son Jensen x Reader

31. Taking long baths or showers @roxy-davenport Dean x Reader

32. Snuggle up on the couch watching tv @winchester-writes Jensen x Reader

33. Going to the movies @emilywritesaboutdean Dean x Reader

Kari’s favorite things/words (make them the center of the fic, theme or just fit them in somehow):

34. Strawberries @percywinchester27 Sam x Reader

35. Serendipity @winchesters-flannels Dean x Reader

36. My mobile (Samsung Galaxy A3 2016 - the one Dean breaks I am pretty sure, dumbass! ;)) @wonderange Dean x Reader

37. Spring 

38. Emerald @megansescape Dean x Reader

39. Leather Jacket @winchesterswoonathon Dean x Reader

40. Banana Milkshakes @captainemwinchester Dean x Reader

41. Christmas Lights @deanxfuckingadorablexwinchester Dean x Reader

42. Apple or strawberry Pie (it’s a tie) @xfanqirlinq Dean x Reader

43. Flannel (I am scandinavian not a Winchester I swear :P) @luci-in-trenchcoats Dean x Reader

44. My cucumber Rimmel Mascara (don’t judge me!)

Kari’s favorite Tropes/AUs (self explanatory really):

45. Coffee Shop AU @deanfuckingwinchesterrr Dean x Reader

46. Musician AU @ellen-reincarnated1967 (Jared x Reader)

47. Firefighter AU @jayankles Dean x Reader

48. Friends to Lovers @roxyspearing Dean x Reader

49. Hurt/Comfort @wideawakeandwriting Sam x Reader

50. Forbidden Love @waywardimpalawriter Sam x Reader

51. Neighbor AU @iwantthedean - Jensen x Reader

52. Social Worker AU 

53. Cop/FBI AU @flufy07 Dean x Reader

54. Fake Dating @docharleythegeekqueen Dean x Reader

55. Enemies to Lovers - @mysupernaturalfics Dean x Reader

Kari’s favorite Songs (let the song inspire you, let someone sing it, use the lyrics, above playing in the back preferably):

56. Bruce Springsteen - Dancing in The Dark @wayward-mirage Misha x Reader

57. Ed Sheeran - Thinking Out Loud @not-that-rude-but-very-ginger Jensen x Reader

58. Imagine Dragons - Demons @effie-w Dean x Reader

59. Billy Joel - Just the Way You Are @homeschooledonmyhands (Jared and reader no pairing)

60. INXS - Afterglow @pimentogirl Meg x Cas x Dean (focus Cas)

61. Lady Antebellum - Need You Now @dont-trust-humanity Jared x Reader

62. Passenger - Anywhere @adriellej Misha x Reader

63. Sara Bareilles - Breath Again @mrsbatesmotel53 Dean x Reader

64. Kansas - Dust in The Wind @abbessolute Sam x Reader

65. James Arthur - Say You Won’t Let Go @fangirlingfanatic2442 Dean x Reader

66. The Script - The Man Who Won’t Be Moved @bringmesomepie56 Dean x Reader

Tags for signal boost

@chaos-and-the-calm67 @bringmesomepie56 @blacktithe7 @percywinchester27 @mysupernaturalfics @angelkurenai @torn-and-frayed @nichelle-my-belle @blushingsamgirl @splendidcas @bkwrm523 @ellen-reincarnated1967 @deansdirtylittlesecretsblog @mamapeterson @winchester-writes @winchesterenthusiast @winchesterswoonathon @adriellej @d-s-winchester @iwantthedean @iwriteaboutdean @emilywritesaboutdean @kittenofdoomage @waywardlullabies @impala-dreamer @imagining-supernatural @dancingalone21 @imadeangirl-butimsamcurious @teamfreewill-imagine @latinenglishfandomblog @purgatoan @jalove-wecallhimdean @quiddy-writes 

#kari's favorite things challenge #spn challenge #spn writing challenge

[atttitudeofgratitude]

Thursday, June 15th, 2017

TODAY I CAN: - [x] Daily Word  I GIVE THANKS TO GOD AS MY SOURCE AND SUPPLY. - [x] LOVE ❤️ Note 😊❤️ - [x] Meditate 😌💨 - [x] Journal 📚📖🖊📝 - [x] COLORING!🖍 - [x] GLO 🔆 - [x] Happier 2017! Minion bandaids! - [x] MOVE 🏃🏼‍♀️ NOT raining, ALL I HAVE TO BE GRATEFUL FOR!🙏🏽🙌🏽✝️ - [x] HEALTH COACH CHAPTER 2! Kara Goucher!, Runner's World podcast ** ME 🤓 Blisters better! HEALING - [x] STRENGTH 💪🏽 A few injury prevention exercises - [x] GLUTES - [x] FOAM ROLLING - [x] STRETCHING - [x] YOGA! BREATHING 🤓😊💨 HEADSTAND! ** I HAVE STRONG ABS! ENJOYING 🎶🙏🏽🙌🏽✝️😊 “This made my day ❤️ thank you” — Marissa! ❤️ - [x] Dance!👯 🎶 'Ooh Child' 😊 "Hi Johanna, I just want to tell you that I love you, too. 💜❤️" — Robin 💚💙 LOVE 😍❤️ "Your legs are all muscles!" "I'm lucky to have you" — Marissa PEACE Walks GOD 🙏🏽🙌🏽✝️ PRAYERS 🙏🏽🙌🏽✝️ - [x] Tomorrow! - [x] BE GRATEFUL 🙏🏽🙌🏽✝️ - [x] LOVE MYSELF 😍❤ - [x] SLEEP 😴💤 Prosperity I GIVE THANKS TO GOD AS MY SOURCE AND SUPPLY. When I rely on the outer world as the basis of my abundance, I can lapse into fear and uncertainty. When I remember that God is my unfailing and limitless resource, I experience peace of mind. A consciousness of God is the one true source of my good. **My heart overflows with gratitude as I reflect on this reality. In Spirit, I have unlimited access to everything I need to live a fulfilling life. I cultivate an awareness of Infinite Spirit each day, continually enriching myself with divine ideas, unexpected gifts, and windfalls. I give thanks as my world expands exponentially in direct proportion to my ever-growing spiritual faith. The Lord will open for you his rich storehouse, the heavens, to give the rain of your land in its season and to bless all your undertakings. —Deuteronomy 28:12 the world is how we see the world. If you have the mindset that bad things always happen to you, you are literally telling the universe that you want that in your life. If you have the mindset of abundance, the universe will bring it to you. Everything starts in the mind. Today, let go of the negativity that is playing in your head and start looking at the world the way you WANT to see it. I do a lot of visualization exercises, like writing down exactly what I want and then spending 5-10 min visualizing how that looks in my actual life. Never underestimate the power that one good workout can have on your mind. Keeping the dream alive is half the battle. — Kara Goucher “See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand. ~ Deuteronomy 32:39 My story, and your story, is one of a spiritual arc, extending over time. These arcs stretch from wherever each life begins to wherever it will end. All along each arc, strength rises and falls with the challenges that lead us either closer to Christ or away from him. We can choose our reactions to daily challenges, but they will never stop coming. People ask me what my secret is. Anyone who tries to follow Jesus already knows that "the secret" isn't a piece of information. It's trust. It's trusting that God has control. It's growing in my faith even as I face obstacles. It's asking myself how Jesus would ask me to look at life. As for life's misfortunes, I don't look to my relationship with Christ to keep misfortune away or protect me from tragedy above anyone else. But I have already found, so many times, that this thing we Christians call salvation allows me peaceful confidence. We stand assured of love and existence beyond the physical limits of our lives. I don't hear an audible voice speaking to me in answer to my prayers, like you might in a Hollywood movie. Nevertheless, I feel a silent pull; strong, compelling as gravity itself. It keeps me focused when I would otherwise be lost. God doesn't solve problems for me like a magical servant. What he does is far greater. He puts strength back into my legs when they would otherwise fail me. He deflects despair. He protects me from the terrors of struggling alone. He shows me another path. — Adapted from Taking My Life Back: My Story of Faith, Determination, and Surviving the Boston Marathon Bombing by Rebekah Gregory ... fresh faith is apportioned each day (see Exodus 16:16, Ephesians 4:7). On the days of crisis, our faith allocation is significantly larger than on the days of comfort. It is apportioned to us according to our need. Like manna, we are to use it strongly and fully, and have none left over for the following day. He'll provide for tomorrow, just as he provided for today. Hallelujah. — Faith in the Word by Kandy Persall Who knows, perhaps have come to your royal position for such a time as this. — Esther 4:14 Loving Father, I confess my slowness in sensing Your direction. Thank You for patiently guiding my steps.

[seducing-mr-perfect]

So I passed the test, right? Let’s meet up at the hotel bar at 7 for the real lesson. Oh! Enjoy the lunch box - June.

The note. The thing that starts it all. The thing that starts out at as one of June’s heavy botched operations - only that it hasn’t failed the way she thinks it has. The thing that shows us for certain that, despite everything, Robin isn’t completely immune to June’s charms.

It is clear that while June may not particularly admit to liking Robin, things have changed between them after the Brighton deal. Which is why in the scene where she prepares the lunch box, in the dead of night, she seems to shake herself and say The operations must go on. No matter what. Almost as if her new dynamic with Robin is distracting her from her goal.

June seems to slightly miss the mark here too. As with Operation Angel, preparing a special lunchbox personally for him calls for a certain amount of intimacy that they haven’t reached yet. The movie has given us enough indications of how he feels about having his space invaded, for him to comfortably take what June is giving him. Preparing lunch for someone at work is a very intimate, taking-care-of-a-loved-one thing to do, and for a hoarder who doesn’t like to even have his office touched, partaking of that lunch (especially if he nursed secret feelings for the person who made it) would definitely feel like too much too soon. It’s no wonder then that he takes the note, and passes the box to Yoon Mi.

June sees this differently. She sees it as yet another rejection of her efforts, yet another reason to believe he wants to have nothing to do with her. She assumes that since he’s not even opened the box, he wouldn’t have noticed the note either.

Su-yeoung Tries To Help

We don't see Su-yeoung much in the film, even though she is June's best friend. A phone call in the beginning of the film, and two scenes where she is seen aggressively pushing to get June back into the dating scene.

What we do know is that Su-yeoung has had her fair share of disappointment in her own relationships. She has been married once and by the way she speaks of love in this scene, she seems to have changed to a more 'practical' mindset in contrast to June's, which is clearly more emotional and romantic.

However, having being brought up in a culture that does value both love and marriage as an eventual goal (for instance, one does not bring one's significant other to meet the parents unless they're certain of getting married soon), Su-yeoung controls the situation the way any Korean friend would - by arranging a sogeatting.

A sogaetting (소개팅) is a kind of introductory meeting that's often set up between strangers through a mutual friend. Approaching someone you do not know is not very common in South Korea, so it usually falls on a third person to introduce the couple and to stick around in case the meeting isn't going as well as planned. If the two hit it off, the mutual friend leaves them to decide how to take things forward.

Su-yeoung's motives are very straightforward: get June to move on from Ju-yeoung, with someone. Anyone.

Ju-hyeoung may have receeded far, far behind in June's mind, but there is a part of her that clearly isn't completely over him yet. June isn't the kind of let go of her relationships that easily - she tends to not give up on a person unless there is no way even she can ignore the red flags. That's just the way she is. So when her best friend insults Ju-hyeoung, she is immediately defensive.

This is an important distinction to make, because it gives us a better idea of why June would agree so easily to getting back with him later on, just as she has begun to realise her feelings for Robin.

The Note

The scene splits into two halves: one that shows us June's disastrous date with Jin-guk, and another that shows us Robin waiting for June for an entire hour. We don't get a lot of opportunities to see Robin's point of view on certain things, but the film teases us with enough to recognize that what he feels towards June and what he shows are two different things. It's in this scene that we learn that Robin didn't completely ignore the lunchbox, that he kept her note with him...and most importantly, that he's very, very happy to see her that evening.

We also don't get many scenes of Robin shedding his impenetrable sheild and being vulnerable. The times that we do are mostly associated with his past - his grandfather's belongings and occasionally his bullet wound. Robin is depicted as a hoarder; someone who holds on to his memories and keeps them to remind himself of how far he has come, and why his present is what it is.

This is the only time perhaps we see Robin actually show some attachment to something he has received in the present, that he keeps to himself, that he allows himself a private moment of joy (for instance, he tilts his head slightly while reading it, an action we see him do only with his grandfather's photograph). He first looks around to see if no one is looking, and only then gives himself the luxury of letting his guard down. And this is especially surprising given that he always chooses enclosed settings where he is completely alone - like his room or the office - to reflect on these things.

I think it's a mark of how deeply June has affected him that this intensely private man can't help but fondly re-read a casual, friendly note she has sent him, in a setting as public as a hotel bar.

Sogaetting

By sogaetting standards, the meeting between Jin-guk and Min-june is an unmitigated disaster. Su-yeoung only knows him as a friend of a friend, and June herself has her doubts even before the date has begun.

Marriage in Korea is usually a topic reserved either for when a couple have become really serious, or when it is a matsun (맞선) which involves matchmakers/relatives and where the entire aim of the meeting is marriage itself. While there are people who do date with marriage in mind, a sogaetting is hardly the appropriate place to jump into discussions about weddings, especially with almost no input from the potential "bride".

But Jin-guk? Goes straight for the jugular. Starts talking about wedding preparations: how their families will travel to the venue, the perfect place for venue and stay, consulting a family Taoist. He goes as far as to speak of the money the bride should be spending on their travel, reminding her of her potential place in his life and what he thinks her duties are. He presumes this is what she wants, presumes he is a good enough catch that it doesn't even occur to him that she may not want this, and in fact doesn't even care. June barely gets to even speak in this "conversation". She is so uncomfortable, in fact, that she has to hide in a restroom to escape him.

To make things worse, Su-yeoung enables his behaviour, fawning over him and agreeing to everything he says ("oh, a hotel? That's just fabulous!" "I love having my fortune told!"), eventually encouraging the match and calling June crazy when the latter states that she isn't interested. It's clear that by this point June has found herself in a tight spot.

Blind Date

There are two reasons the blind date/bar scene is so important:

1. It is the first of many misunderstandings in their romance. It works to keep the couple apart, keep them from even guessing that the other person might love them: so that when Robin tells June how he feels in the end, the revelation is that much more emotional.

2. More importantly, it highlights a pretty huge cultural gap between Robin and June.

For the most part Robin has fit in rather well to his new environment, despite his struggle with the language. He is respected by his peers and subordinates in the office, is able to navigate his work space without too many hiccups, seems at home with the way his juniors address him. He seems so at home, in fact, that it would easy to assume that he would know a great deal about Korean culture outside the office as well.

However, the film gives us enough hints of his struggle to understand certain aspects of Korean culture. One is the usage of certain slang words, such as piksari and tungchigi, which June has to explain to him. Another is his lack of knowledge about how marriage and meeting the girl's family works, leaving him to commit a huge faux pas in front of her father.

Robin has no idea what a sogaetting is. When June translates the same into a word that seems more accessible to him ("blind date"), she unknowingly leaves out the cultural context of how a sogaetting works and who facilitates it. "Blind date", for Robin and June, mean very different things. For June it is an arranged meeting that mostly just allows for further casual interactions to test the waters. To Robin, it could range from being merely introduced by a common friend (who won't be as involved as someone facilitating a sokaetting would, possibly?) to an actual date, which involves flirting and possibly sex if both parties are interested. This is possibly also why he assumes straightaway that she spent the night with her date as well.

This is where Robin gets not only angry, but also confused. This is someone who has gone to great lengths to get him to wait at that bar, including cooking for him and slipping in a note that specifically mentioned a time and a place. This is also someone who, he assumes, ditched her plans with him to date someone else, and didn't so much as give him a head's up about doing so (part of this is also his fault: he never lets June know that he received the note, even though he was aware that she found out Yoon Mi had the box). When the truth, really, is that she agonized over having her meticulously prepared lunch rejected, worried about losing the note, was tricked into spending an evening with an overenthusiastic friend and a man who bored her to tears, and spent the night wrestling with her brother over the takeout bill.

A lot of what Robin does here is pretty alien to the character we know thus far. He gets starry-eyed over a note, waits an entire hour for the woman who wrote it, calls her twice to find out why she didn't make it, and is tense and angry enough to warrant letting off some steam on the treadmill. None of this works, so he calls her again, unable to just let the matter go.

Let's remember that so far, Robin has been all about control. He exercises control over his relationships and over his feelings, because he knows the consequences of letting someone else have power over him. He views relationships as a game - which means he would prefer to detach himself emotionally from the other person involved, and not be affected by their actions. So when June "ditches" him, he's immediately riled up, instantly jealous, and just as instantly frustrated that he's giving her this much power over him. Part of his anger lies in the fact that she's affecting him in a way that's making him break half his rules.

He is also angry because, for the first time in possibly a long while, he was genuinely happy about something, genuinely looking forward to meeting up with someone, and her (supposed) lack of concern has ruined that moment for him. He is still thinking on the lines of what he thinks a date would look like, and assumes June's actions by those parameters. Owing to the issues he carries from his past relationship, Robin definitely seems like a man doesn't like feeling like he doesn't matter, and that's how he feels around June right now.

June never gets the opportunity (until just before their cruise trip) to clear this up with him, owing to multiple assumptions: that he never got the note, that he was calling her from some random place just to ask the time, that he thinks she is pathetic. First because she thinks the note has gotten lost somewhere, then because her cell battery died out on her. So she is left thinking he doesn't particularly care, and Robin is left thinking that he means nothing to her besides a man who can teach her the rules of the game. It's an impression of himself that makes him even more reluctant to admit how he feels about her - both to himself and to her. It's an impression of himself that he carries to the rest of the film.

--

*A lot of what I said about sogaetting I picked up from whatever I had read and watched. Korean readers, if I've gotten any of this wrong, I'm really sorry. Please do not hesitate to point it out so I can make corrections.

#seducing mr perfect #daniel henney #uhm jung hwa #robin heiden #kin min june #robin x min june #robin x minjune #robin x june #mr robin kkosigi #sogaetting #blind date #note #hotel bar #do i look like a man who has time to spare? #smp scene analyses

[seducing-mr-perfect]

June: *loosens two buttons from shirt* *cackle cackle* O he won't know what hit him.

Also June: *Robin opens door with no shirt on* ...what r werds 😵

BONUS:

Robin: ...good thing I'm already halfway seduced babe. You suck at this.

#seducing mr perfect #daniel henney #uhm jung hwa #robin heiden #kim min june #robin x min june #robin x june #shitpost #bad joke post

[seducing-mr-perfect]

Like A Bullet to the Heart (Robin x Min-June)

Pairing: Robin Heiden x Kim Min June

Movie: Seducing Mr Perfect/Mr Robin Kkosigi

Summary: Somehow, the words that hurt the most almost always make their way back to you. Set after the bar scene and June’s conversation with her father. Features June’s nightmare which involves her three ex-boyfriends.

Note: Since we’re never told what the other two men were called, I took the liberty of naming them myself, as well as Robin’s ex.

–

You bastard.

Surprising how easily the words come to her now, when he’s just a picture trapped in a frame - all smiling and bespectacled and sipping beer from behind her, his eyes only on her, even when they were just posing. It’s always been this way with Ju-hyeoung. She’d have the choicest words to fling his way in the privacy of her bedroom, but in front of the man she was a confused, stuttering mess.

Even today. She should’ve ended it in sass and style, strutting away from him like a queen. She should’ve been the one to end things. Should’ve given him a kick in the shins - or higher. definitely higher - while she was at it. What did she do instead? She begged.

Come home, Ju-yeoung. Please. You can’t leave me like this.

What hadn’t she done right? Hadn’t she said all the right words, done all the right things? Made herself different from every other girl he’d ever known (those greedy, gold-digging bitches, always looking out to suck a man’s paycheck dry, he’d complain), paying her own way, buying her own things? Dressed up the way he wanted her to, had sex the way he wanted her to, worried and loved and cared the way he wanted her to?

She almost wants to pick up that goddamn phone and force him to explain. To hell with “don’t contact me again”.

She’s almost about to do it, when a low, familiar chuckle stops her.

She turns around. Closes her eyes. Opens them, closes them again. Perhaps if she does this often enough the sight before her will seem less real?

Jae-won perched on her bed. Min-ho in his slate-grey suit, standing next to her bedside table (you’d better not topple over my favourite lamp, Min-ho, or I swear to God…). Ju-hyeoung lording it over her treasured armchair, as if he owned the damn thing. All of them staring back at her, amusement and judgement glimmering in equal parts from their eyes.

Jae-won still hasn’t stopped laughing. After all these years he’s still all bravado and bluster and bad-boy leather jackets bought with HER goddamn money. Why did I like you? Because you’re nice. Why did I stop liking you? Because you’re nice. You see, nice people get boring after a while.

Min-ho shuffles his feet uncomfortably from his place at the back of her room, his suit hanging over his frame like an overcoat on top of a mouse. He’d always insisted on wearing it, even if it was three sizes too big for him. When did I ask you for an allowance? (Three months before this conversation) Getting meals from you is embarrassing enough (but that never stopped you from asking, asshole!) Who do you think you are, my mother? (I was perfectly content being your girlfriend. Not my fault you turned into the worst kind of manbaby instead)

Ju-hyeoung’s eyes are black coal, cold and lifeless, but the words he says still sting. She isn’t sure if it’s because of the eerie calm with which he delivers them, or the fact that she’d heard them from him just a few hours ago. Give me some space. You’re the one who made me do this. (Stop asking for space while you’re sitting in my bedroom like you own it then!)

They’re almost three feet away from her but she can almost feel their breath on her neck. Her room is hot, too hot, with too little air and she’s suffocating. Can’t…breathe…need…to…leave…

Her feet are lead but she manages, inch by inch, to move towards the door. And stops.

It’s him.

Min-june prides herself on being slightly taller than the average woman in the office, and since Mr Heiden has arrived they’ve commented more than once how even without heels she reaches as high as his chin.

It makes no difference tonight. In this moment, blocking her way out the door and pushing her back to her room and bitter reality, he towers over her: tall and terrifying, a black hole threatening to suck out every tiny ounce of faith she has left in love.

You’ll always be treated like trash by men. Like a showgirl.

She wants to bar his entry, to push him out, get him as far away from her room as she can. But her feet act like they don’t even belong to her anymore. With every step forward he takes, they move back, granting him access.

And then you will grow old. All by yourself.

The other men stand up too, advancing towards her. Closing in on her, creating a fortress of misery and betrayal and bad intentions. Their whispers form invisible chains around her, so she has no space to move, no space to breathe. She looks to Mr. Heiden for help, but he has her trapped too.

All by yourself.

All by yourself.

All by yourself.

She wakes up in a cold sweat. Slowly, slowly, her eyes adjust to the darkness, noting with a heady relief that she is the only person in the room. No men. No horrible boyfriends. No Mr. Heiden. She is alone.

Only his words, ringing through the deafening silence in her house. Make me beg for you.

It’s been five hours. Five hours, and those words stick to like gum to a shoe - only letting go in bits and pieces. She’s as flushed with anger now as she was when she first heard them, so much so that she has to remind herself to breathe. In…out. In…out.

If there is a peculiar warmth settling in her belly when she hears those words in his voice, she won’t quite admit it. Not yet.

Her eyes glimmer brimstone and steel in the night. Manipulation and power-play and games…is that what he wants? Then she’ll make sure he will regret the day he asked.

“Just you wait, Robin Heiden,” she whispers, still catching her breath, “I’m going to make you beg to me. On your knees.”

Mr Heiden wants this to be a game? She will give him more than he bargained for.

She will give him war.

–

Late nights aren’t new to Robin Heiden. He’s been known to go for days on end with just three hours of sleep some months, surviving on nothing but adrenaline and coffee and sheer grit. It’s what’s gotten him this far.

He’s always been a man of extremes. Either he’ll spend the whole night buried in work - looking more rested than ever the next morning - or he’ll crash as soon as his head hits the bed. Disturbed sleep, random waking moments, scattered dreams that he can’t seem to remember the next day…none of this has happened for a while. Not for the last ten years.

In fact he isn’t quite sure when he last had dreams at all.

Not until tonight.

He’s twenty-one here, all long legs and messy hair and gangly frame. He’s lying on a picnic mat with a girl on his arm, counting stars. They locking gazes from time to time and share earphones, mouthing the lyrics of an old Queen song, and the space between them is so miniscule an ant could either give up walking through the gap, or die trying. His fingers gently tap the song’s rhythm on her hand as she sings.

Open up your mind and let me step inside

Rest your weary head and let your heart decide

It’s so easy

when you know the rules

It’s so easy,

All you have to do

is fall in love

Play the game, everybody play the game

of love

He imagines kneeling before her in this very lawn, his shins sinking into the mud and the grass as he holds out a ring. He imagines a single diamond, shimmering like teardrop in the moonlight. He imagines her in a pretty floral dress and tiny, perfect pearls - the kind she loves, the kind he hopes to gift her one day. He imagines she will hold out her hand. Her eyes glimmering as he says the words. Nadine Spencer, will you marry me?

He knows what everyone else will say. They’re too young. Too different. He’s too much of a dreamer, she’s too much of a realist.They’ve got futures, careers, whole lives ahead of them. Neither of them know what they want yet.

Still. He dares to hope.

He imagines she will say yes.

Click.

They’re twenty-two and joined at the hip, people say. Robin and Nadine, together everywhere, his friends at Harvard say. But only his. Hers’, he hasn’t even met in the three years they’ve been together, and he’s resigned himself to the possibility that he never will.

Still. He tells her he loves her every chance he gets. Tells her he worries about her, everyday. Cares for her when she’s sick. His friends have begun calling him mother hen.

He loves being with her, he tells her one day. He just doesn’t like being hidden away like her little secret. He wants desperately to meet everyone, to experience her family and upbringing and friends and life, to get know her better. He wants her to be proud of him, to puff up her chest when she introduces him to the people she loves, and yes, yes Nadine, of course he knows he’s not quite there yet. She’s told him so enough times, of course she would, isn’t it the truth? She’s told him to establish himself in the meantime, to wait for when things were just right.

He’s willing to wait forever if that’s what it takes.

Click

They’re twenty-three and in a club now, waving away the coloured smoke and squinting at the bright lights ahead. He wonders if it was a mistake, bringing her here. Nothing he does seems to make her happy anymore. The local bookstore doesn’t stock up on the things she likes, the gift shop is tacky, the park offers her nothing but ducks in a pond swimming all day and the nightclub has drinks that taste like floor cleaner. When he points out that she’s had three refills of the same drink so he’s sure it can't be all that bad, she dumps the rest of it on him. Great. It took me ages to pick out this suit and now it’s ruined. He feels terrible and awful and petty for thinking such superficial things after he’s practically ruined her night.

She sets the drink on the table, declaring she has had enough. Complaining that she’s tired of paying for everything, everywhere, Robin who else are you spending your money on if you have none left for me.

He’s taken out his credit card before she’s even begun speaking, and a whole pile of the entire week’s bills - all spent on things Nadine wanted - spills out.

She says nothing. Does nothing.

He picks the bills up and stuffs them back in his wallet as if nothing has happened.

Click.

They’re twenty-four and by now he’s learned to listen for sounds. For the click-clack of her heels on linoleum floor, marking her territory. For the slow dangerous rise of her tone, indicating he’s done something wrong. For the china that he’s now kept on the topmost shelf in case she’s in a bad mood. For the taste of fear, heavy and sour and acrid on his tongue. For the times he’s unable to tell anyone else how this feels because she doesn’t hit, she doesn’t attack, she doesn’t insult. She just slowly chips away at his self-confidence, one word as a time.

Yes, Nadine, I’m pathetic. Yes, Nadine, you lowered your standards to be with me. No, Nadine, I never did have a lot of self-respect to begin with. No, Nadine, you’ve never had to say these things to me. I understand anyway.

For the sweeter moments, when she almost lulls him into forgetting what life with her has become. And he almost believes things will get better.

He almost believes he will give her that ring one day.

Click.

He’s twenty five and he doesn’t know where he stands with her. Not after she’s thrown him out of their home and her life, not after he has seen her with another man. Not after she has gone away from him, and returned, and gone again, and returned, telling him she’s missed him each time. Not after she has told everyone she knows about the stalker ex-boyfriend who won’t take no for an answer. He says nothing because no one has ever really believed him before, so how would this be any different? The only person who seems to think any differently is his best friend Jennifer, and he’s already heard the rumours doing the rounds about the two of them. Great, Jen quips, so now they can’t decide if you’re a clingy bastard or a raging Lothario.

Still. There are days she comes back. Acts like she did in the old days. But he’s never sure when that will change and the prospect of seeing her go back to hating him again makes almost wish she would just hate him and leave it at that, instead of dangling him on a thread like this. It’s a dizzying rollercoaster ride of break-up-get-back-break-up-get-back, except this one never seems to stop, and now he feels sick in his stomach and wants to get off but doesn’t know how anymore.

He doesn’t know what a life without her looks like anymore.

Click.

He’s in the same grassy lawn again. They’d agreed to meet here. She said she had something to give him. He told her he has a gift to give her, and brings the promise ring he’d had made for her all those years ago. Keep it, it’s yours, I don’t want to have anything to do with this anymore.

But he doesn't have to. Because for the first time in this twisted relationship, Nadine decides to pass on her gift first.

He smells rather than feels the blood spilling from his chest, soaking his shirt. He registers faintly the sharp click of her heels on gravel as she leaves. So this is how it ends, huh? This is how I end. He half-expects Jennifer to arrive, screaming and crying and administering first aid with trembling hands. But she doesn’t. Not here. It’s someone else altogether.

The woman in front of him right now isn’t Jen. Or Nadine. It’s…

“BAM!” she yells, pointing two fingers to his bloodied chest and yanking them away, “like a bullet straight through the heart, sa jang-nim*. You know the feeling?”

…June.

“BAM,” she strikes again, grinning brightly, her eyes like great big black opals. Shining in the moonlight. Her teeth shine, pearl-like, as she grins. Or is she merely baring them? Is she another hungry lioness, pouncing on her prey instead? BAM. BAM. BAM.

It’s a miracle he doesn’t wake up screaming.

Robin jerks awake at 3 in the morning, his breathing heavy and laboured. It’s been so long since he’s had a nightmare at all that he’s almost afraid it’s real. He runs his hands over his neck, finds it slick with sweat. He looks around. No Nadine. No Jen. No June. No promise rings. No grassy lawn on a sunny day in July. No bloodsoaked mud.

He is in a hotel room in Korea, as far away from Nadine and her mind games as he can get.

Slowly, carefully - so carefully his footsteps can hardly be heard, he’s had enough practice - he makes his way to the bathroom. He doesn’t care how hard he splashes the water on his face, or how much, or how wet half his body has become. All he wants is to forget the last few hours ever happened.

He takes one last look in the mirror before he leaves, taking in the sight his assistant must have been confronted with tonight. A jawline that didn’t know what it meant to relax anymore. Cold eyes, dead eyes, eyes that told you nothing, gave away nothing. A mouth that didn’t know anymore whether to curve into a welcoming smile, or purse itself into thinner, crueller lines. A mouth that spat out uncomfortable truths today - about her, about himself. A voice that hurt her in the softest, calmest tones possible.

But the truth hurts, doesn’t it, he tells himself, if I didn’t hurt her by saying it, someone else would, by doing it.

Funny that on the day he wanted most to help someone, he wound up sounding exactly like Nadine.

Funny how the last words he hears before he returns to bed, don’t belong to Jen, or to Nadine. They belong to June.

What’s wrong with admitting that I love him, huh? What’s wrong with calling him or visiting him if I’m that worried about him? What’s wrong with wanting to give him all I have?

He swallows the sick, cloying, metallic taste in his mouth as he recalls those words. He closes his eyes, then opens them, then closes them again. He knows the answer to June’s question. It lies in an old bullet scar, constant and puckered on the left side of his chest.

Everything, Ms. June, he wishes he could say, Everything.

–

Sa jang-nim: Term of address, mostly used for your boss.

#seducing mr perfect #fanfic #daniel henney #uhm jung hwa #robin x june #robin x minjune #robin x min june #mr robin kkosigi

[seducing-mr-perfect]

Very often romcoms will have a lead couple, and a beta couple that will complement/offset them. The beta couple tends to comprise usually of people connected to one or both of the leads, and their story tends to move along with less conflict than them. The leads could look to the beta couple for inspiration on how to work on their relationship, or find themselves mirrored in them. Usually the beta couple tends to involve people who are friends/siblings/exes of one of the main characters.

In this movie however, none of Robin or June’s friends seem to fit the bill. Robin’s best friend Jennifer makes her entry in the last third of the movie, and June’s best friend Su-yeoung hardly features for more than two scenes, and while she seems to pay a lot of attention to Jin-guk (June’s blind date) there is never any indication given that Jin-guk and Su-yeoung are interested in each other.

There is one couple that features from time to time in the movie, and whose story holds some parallels to June’s romance with Robin - and that happens to be June’s parents. Not much is seen of Mr. and Mrs. Kim, but the little we do see of them tells us plenty.

Our first glimpse of Mr. Kim is at his bookstore, where a very subdued June seeks his advice and company immediately after her harrowing conversation with Robin. He strikes us at first sight as a jovial but uncannily perceptive man, noticing his daughter’s swollen eyes and correctly guessing that she’s drunk a little before making her way here. He does not offer any judgement on either of these things - just points them out and leaves the subject when June doesn’t give him a straight answer. June notes that she can talk to her father like he is a friend, unlike many of her peers, and Mr. Kim remarks that it could be because they could be “growing old together” - a comment that irritates June, given what Robin had just said about her growing old alone.

June’s mother, on the other hand, is portrayed as being reserved and not very keen on showing the people she loves how she feels, nor do her children/husband feel the need to openly shower her with affection. June clearly acts differently around her mother than she does around her father: she admits to her father that she drank a bottle of beer when he asks her, and plays innocent when her mother asks her the same question. And it’s for good reason: as soon as her suspicions are confirmed, Mrs. Kim punishes her the way one would punish an errant child. Mr. and Mrs. Kim couldn’t be any more different from each other.

It comes as a surprise to June, then, that the scrapbook Mr Kim is perusing so lovingly happens to be a 34-year-old gift from Mrs. Kim, and even he tells her I can’t quite believe it either. It’s interesting that the scrapbook shows up in this scene, following the scene where June has her first major disagreement with Robin. Mrs Kim’s act of preserving memories of her relationship with Mr Kim shocks both father and daughter because she hardly seems to show this level of romanticism in their regular lives, and in this I feel she resembles Robin. He doesn’t do grand romantic gestures or acts of giving very often, but he does show he cares in small - almost subtle enough to miss - ways (keeping her note, adjusting her head to his shoulder when she’s drunk and semi-unconscious, agreeing to help her with lessons even though it hurts him).

Mrs Kim also features in the scene where June is preparing the lunchbox for Robin, asking her why she’s preparing such an elaborate meal so late at night. In my mind, this creates another link between Mrs Kim and Robin’s characters - because this, among a few other scenes, leads us to show us - the audience - a tendency in Robin that mirrors Mrs. Kim: the need to hoard things from people who matter, while simultaneously keeping their distance. Mrs Kim shows no outward affection towards her husband, but hoards all their memories together into a beautiful, painstakingly-decorated scrapbook. Robin passes the lunchbox to Yoon Mi, reluctant to partake in something as intimate and homey as eating the food June has cooked for him, but keeps the note.

Mr. Kim plays a far bigger role in the last hour of the movie, when a drenched, confused June confides in him about Robin. She doesn’t take his name, but explains to her father how Robin blew up at her over almost getting run over by a car, and also that she senses his feelings for her in that outburst. Mr Kim correctly guesses that both are in love with each other, which June vehemently denies. She begins by stating that she “doesn’t even like him, much less love”, even though she has just poured her heart out to Robin in the previous scene in a way she has never done with any of her lovers. When it comes to Robin, however, she pauses and then dismisses the idea because he is “too cold” to her. It is here that Mr. Kim mouths one of the movie’s pearls of wisdom: Words do not always express one’s feelings. You have to read the eyes! People can lie with their words, but not with their eyes.

And who does Mr. Kim use as an example?

Mrs. Kim, of course!

June is a lot like her father, in that they’re both warm, affectionate, slightly chatty people who like talking their problems out and showing how they feel. Mr Kim has spent more than 30 years with a wife who loves him and their children, but who shows it more by her actions than her words. Up until this moment, all June’s assumptions that Robin doesn’t like her stem from what he says to her, rather than his actions. In his regular speech to her, he can be cold, distant, critical when the need arises, and crabby when he’s jealous. But his actions - waiting for her at the bar, the ferry ride, taking her home when she’s drunk, being available for her whenever she requires his assistance, going crazy with worry when she almost gets hit by a car - reveal exactly how deeply she affects him.

Ironically, June’s attempt to reach out to him backfires when she finds out that he’s leaving for the States, and overhears a conversation with Jennifer where Robin vehemently denies that June means anything to him beyond just being “a woman I work with”. She goes by his words that he doesn’t care, almost missing his look of devastation when she lies to him about getting married.

It is in the montage following this sequence that we finally get a good view of Mrs. Kim’s scrapbook, filled not only with pictures of June’s parents but sketches, dried leaves and flowers and writing. Mrs Kim is a woman of very few words, but one look at this scrapbook and it is clear that she has invested a lot of time, effort and love into creating it, into showing her husband that whatever they have had together matters to her.

Robin eventually reaches this stage, when he whispers mianhae (“I’m sorry”) to her at the end of the movie. It may not be as creative as putting a whole scrapbook together, but involves a great deal of emotional energy from Robin, and a great deal of self-reflection: something he wasn't as capable of doing in the beginning of the movie. It is June’s action of telling his story to Mitsoyishi that helps Robin realise she cares for him, and that encourages him to finally open his heart to her.

The above scene is seen as taking place after their confession in the final cut of the movie, but is really part of a set of deleted scenes that were set in the days between Robin’s going-away party and the Maeda takeover (I will explain this further in the scene analysis set aside for those scenes). Mrs Kim is shown as being happy about Robin’s possible relationship with June (we’re never told why: it could be because he’s a wealthy, established man who has taken an interest in her daughter), and Mr. Kim is shown as being doubtful and slightly skeptical of this new man in June’s life - eventually threatening to throw him out when he believes Robin won’t marry her at all (thanks to June’s brother completely messing up the translation).

Even though this scene was supposed to feature before their actual confession in the office, it is interesting that in the final cut, the movie closes with a meeting of these two couples, whose dynamic and conflicts so closely mirror each other.

#seducing mr perfect #uhm jung hwa #daniel henney #kim min june #robin heiden #june's parents #robin x june #robin x minjune #robin x min june #mr robin kkosigi #smp essays #father-daughter bonding scene #scrapbook scene #lunchbox prep scene #people lie with their words not with their eyes

[seducing-mr-perfect]

We last left off at the bar scene, where an angry Min-june left the hotel bar post an argument with Robin, and her subsequent conversation with her father. Shortly after, she has a nightmare involving all the men in her life – including the one she’d met just a few days ago. And somehow, it’s that very man that consumes her thoughts for the rest of the film.

The nightmare sequence is important for obvious reasons. We already know that Ju-hyeoung is a selfish lying coward who doesn’t care for Min-june at all, that he treats her with utter disrespect then blames her for his own choices. But what we don’t know, until this sequence, is that this has become a pattern with Min-june.

The first boyfriend mocks her for being ‘nice’. The second one takes issue with her need to look after and care for him. Ju-hyeoung blames her for his cheating tendencies. The men she dates don’t see a warm, loving, genuine woman with a maternal streak - they see a girlfriend they can use and discard as they see fit. And Min-june, in attempting to be the perfect girlfriend for them and ignoring her own needs, ends up digging her own grave.

Interestingly, in her dream, Min-june focuses on the last part of Robin’s rather extensive sentence. You will be treated like trash by men, and then you’ll grow old alone. Given that this part of his dialogue sticks out more strongly than the qualifiers he used just before (“if you continue on [acting the way you do in relationships]…”), it’s possible to assume that she feels this is his overall opinion of her, and that it will never change.

I feel this impression she has - of what Robin thinks - is what becomes a major block to her recognizing how real, or deep, his feelings for her run, later on. Because she doesn’t have a context for why he speaks to her this way at the bar, the only assumption she is able to make is that Robin thinks she is a pathetic, clingy person who deserves to be treated like trash in general.

But none of this is what this analysis is really about. This analysis is about Robin’s challenge to June, and how she tackles it.

Why does Min-June take this challenge so seriously in the first place? For this we need to look at one statement that June made, the one Robin so bluntly interrupted with his challenge:

I could have a line of guys begging for me. I could, but I don’t. You know why?

The real answer to 'why’, June addresses in her exchange with Robin much later in the film (at the bench scene, where she confides in him how uncomfortable she is with resorting to manipulation and power-play in her relationships). June doesn’t want men to beg for her, even though she knows she’s completely capable of having them do so. She just wants to be able to show how she feels without having it being constantly used against her.

She takes this challenge because it’s important for her to establish that she can. That she isn’t some naive ingénue who knows nothing about relationships or people or desirability. She isn’t trash. She isn’t someone who deserves to be alone for the rest of her life. And she needs to prove to herself, as much as to Robin, that she is more than capable of playing the man at his own game if she really sets her mind to it.

The only problem is that the man she's trying so hard to 'seduce', is just as determined not to fall for it. Or at least knows how to let it not show.

Operation Beautiful

The next time we see Min-june at her workplace, she’s in a flattering floral dress and pearls. A look - in contrast to her usual professional and office-wear (the pantsuits, the smart dresses, the shirt-skirt-quarter-pants combinations) - that is meant to emphasize her femininity and play it to her advantage. She speaks of using her beauty as a weapon “that will make the enemy’s heart pound”.

But here is also where she makes a massive miscalculation. Robin is too tough a customer to snatch that way. He already has several walls erected, walls that June can’t even see yet.

Did he anticipate that June would seriously take him up on his words at the bar? The movie doesn’t exactly tell us either way.

Does he, however, know what she’s trying to do? Highly likely, given his reactions both here and the scene in his hotel room.

Robin could have ignored June entirely, or not mentioned her dress at all. But he doesn’t. He chooses not only to comment on her attire in front of her colleagues, but also to cast it in an undesirable light. Almost as if he is accepting her challenge and then turning it on its head, sending a clear message that she’ll need to try harder, strategize better, if she is to actually stand a chance at besting him.

So it’s highly possible that this is his way of pulling the rug from under her feet, ensuring he still has the upper hand in this battle that’s erupted between them.

Operation Angel

Operation Beautiful works as a short - but slightly insignificant - comedy scene. This sequence works as that, as well as foreshadowing to a very important plot point (Robin’s grandfather’s connection to Maeda). Here she attempts to conform to another trope of traditional femininity: that of “looking after” him through cleaning his office space (she even buys fresh flowers to decorate his table). This includes rifling through these things and throwing away stuff that she thinks is useless and unnecessary. And this is where she makes her second major mistake.

In the film Robin is shown, time and again, as being very possessive of his personal space, and reluctant to share anything about his private life with anyone. Even around his closest friend, Jennifer, he sidesteps any personal questions, deflects and often changes the subject. Twice, he shuts down Min-June’s attempts to step into his personal space (both times involve her seeing his grandfather’s photo).

Here, Min-June not only intrudes on his space but also unwittingly throws out the most valuable item in that office: his grandfather’s Maeda uniform. Yet, this intrusive, impulsive act is what contributes to him ultimately trusting her with one of his biggest secrets towards the end, knowing she will understand how big a deal it is. It would be foolish to miss the importance of this scene, given that when he finally chooses to confide in someone about Maeda, that person happens to be Min-June herself.

Min-June doesn’t know it yet, but she has already wormed her way into the deepest parts of Robin's life and history, and knows him more intimately than most people would.

What’s interesting about these two sequences is also the background music that plays while these two operations are going on: a song by Sweet Sorrow called Tangdanghan Kunyoga Arumdada*, which is a modern Korean jazz-inspired number that describes a confident, beautiful woman that the man is slowly falling for. This seems slightly contradictory to the way Robin thinks of Min-June if you’re seeing the movie for the first time, but makes plenty of sense when you realise that he had actually had feelings for her all along.

A 386 Versus A Pentium

So far Min-June has made two rather unsuccessful attempts at besting Robin at his own game, and her techniques and moves are about to get more and more complicated. She refers to this particular attempt as “psychological warfare”, hoping to find some soft spot in him that she can touch and exploit (he has one already, for her, but she has no clue of it yet).

Interestingly, though her main focus is to get him to sympathise with her, she also doesn’t completely rule out using her physicality to further attract him, by unbuttoning the first two buttons of her blouse. Which makes for a slightly comedic (and also some HUGE FANSERVICE 😂😂😂 for Daniel Henney fans especially) turn which Robin briefly addles her brains by opening his door with no shirt on. But this scene goes beyond just giving us an excuse to see Daniel Henney shirtless. As with “Operation Angel”, it gives both Min-June, and us viewers, a glimpse into Robin’s past - this time through a gunshot wound from his first love.

What I find most fascinating about these two sequences is how both the uniform, the photograph and the gunshot wound are framed within these scenes. They are pictured as seemingly unimportant things that nonetheless are central to understanding where Robin comes from and what matters to him.

Min-June sees these items in passing and doesn’t dwell too much on them, but by the end they are central to her understanding of him. Her intrusive discovery of them is also why Robin trusts her with the most personal, emotional parts of his life, and why Jennifer correctly guesses the two were close enough for Min-June to have seen his scar.

Once Min-June has made herself comfortable in Robin’s hotel room (perhaps too comfortable: she is caught snooping on Robin’s photograph of his grandfather), she attempts to - in her own words - “request his counsel on difficult matters and bring out his soft side”. She begins by dramatically stating outside his door that she feels like dying, and then plays on his ego by deferring to him and claiming that she has realized how right he is, and then establishing some level of proximity by asking him to teach her his ways. This is a move that backfires on her. As with the “Operation Beautiful” exercise, Robin seems prepared and is ready to have the upper hand over this conversation.

He does so by insinuating that Min-June’s thought process is outdated and unable to deal with change - comparing her with a model such as the Intel 386 (Is he the Pentium, then? Is she meant to upgrade into…him?) and stating that making changes now could cause her brain to “stop functioning from a fatal error”.

What does Robin mean when he says this? After all, this is the same woman he singled out for a project he was personally invested in, and not just because he was physically attracted to her. This is the woman he labelled as having “a particular talent for deception”, who had singlehandedly made their first step towards sealing the Maeda deal possible through her attempts at duplicity.

Interestingly, again, Min-June feels Robin’s comment is aimed at her as a person, in totality, rather than an aspect of her life. And why wouldn’t she? Robin never really makes the distinctions clear enough.

Does he really mean this to refer to June as a person? Or is he just referring to the way she handles relationships?

Funnily enough, when Robin has to give Min-June an analogy to drive home his point about relationships, he speaks in purely business terms (when a piece of stock has no future, you have to know when to cut your losses and sell. Relationships are the same…) assuming she will understand perfectly. Yet, when Min-June sasses him out on the ridiculousness of his statement, she does it by indicating that this is what he must think of her at the workplace as well.

How does Robin respond to this? By offering her a chance to prove her mettle professionally. He pits her against her co-worker and friend, Brian, for a very important deal. If she succeeds in beating Brian and bagging that deal, he will give her lessons.

–

I’ve often wondered about the international title given to this movie**. Seducing Mr Perfect. Who is the Mr Perfect here? What seducing actually takes place?

But the more I think about it, the more I feel the title is really an ironic take on the story itself. Min-June tries - and fails - in her actual attempts at seduction, unaware that Robin has, in a way, already been 'seduced’ by her. And Robin appears sorted and 'perfect’, only to be revealed as immensely flawed, a mass of contradictions, an emotional mess of a man - someone so guarded, and with so many walls, that he almost loses out on what’s most important to him in the process of erecting them.

–

* At some point, I will be posting rough translations of lyrics of the 4 songs in this movie, followed by a write-up on the song, how it fits in with the movie and the characters, and the sequences they feature in. I do think any analysis of this movie would be incomplete without an exploration of its excellent jazz-based music.

** The films original title - Misuteo Robin Kkosigi - directly translates to “Flirting with Mr Robin”, which sounds great in Korean…not so much in English.

–

#seducing mr perfect #daniel henney #uhm jung hwa #robin heiden #kim min june #robin x min june #robin x june #mr robin kkosigi #operation beautiful #operation angel #operation psychological warfare #386 to pentium #when there is nothing left to salvage cut your losses and sell

[seducing-mr-perfect]

SMP Scene Analysis Masterlist

First Meeting/“I wanted to kiss you”

Maeda Party/“Figure it out!”

Car Ride/“What is true love?”

Bar/“Make me beg for you”

The Operations/“The soggy 386 is going to withdraw”

Brighton Deal/“Don’t assume anything until the contract is signed”

Sogaetting/"Do I look like a man who has time to spare?"

Robin's outburst/"Then what were you doing all week?"

#masterlist #seducing mr perfect #smp scene analyses #daniel henney #uhm jung hwa #robin heiden #kim min june #robin x min june #robin x june

[seducing-mr-perfect]

A lot happens in the car scene. And I mean A LOT. Till now Robin and June have been squabbling strangers in their first scene, boss-and-assistant in their second and co-conspirators at the Maeda party. But this scene not only sets up things to get a little more personal between them, but also brings up little things that will later become important to the story. I will be dividing each of them into sections:

Language Barrier

The film tells us, straight off the bat, that the language barrier between Robin and June is almost non-existant. June has a pretty high level of proficieny with the English language, owing to her work environment, and is capable of using it fluently when the occasion demands it. Robin is said to have mastered five languages (and we see him speak at least three in the film: English, Korean and Japanese) and can understand just about everything said to him in Korean. They use their native tongues with each other because that’s what they are most comfortable with, and communication flows seamlessly between them.

However, it is only natural that Robin - who is familiar with only certain aspects of Korean culture - will struggle to understand some of the finer nuances. That includes slang and turns-of-phrases, as well as things that only someone who has lived in Seoul can understand. This doesn’t seem very obvious in the movie, but we do get hints.

When Robin compliments June on a job well done, June uses the word “piksari”, a colloquial word Robin isn’t familiar with, and means “mistake”. She does this so Robin doesn’t give her undue credit: she knows that her success could be attributed more to the executives’ stupidity than to her own skills.

The other colloquial word used here is tungchigi, which seems like a variation of “call it even”, when referring to the matter of paying the bill for his car. I helped you bag the company you wanted, so naturally I don’t need to pay.

None of this seems important to the viewers now, but it serves nonetheless as an indication that Robin might have a tough time understanding certain aspects of the culture. We see this in the way he misunderstands the concept of sogetting (basically a blind date where a mutual friend introduces two people, often with the aim of marriage) at the June/Jin-guk date. We see it in the way he interacts with June’s father at the end. To his credit, Robin may not seem like a fish-out-of-water, but there are certain things that - as an American - escape him. This has the potential to create misunderstandings between them.

He’s Hiding Something

June’s boyfriend hasn’t even shown up yet (except for a tiny shot of him being an ace photographer in the beginning) but we already know he’s going to be a collosal asshole. After all, he stood June up during their Hong Kong trip and is now giving her missed calls while cutting her calls off. It’s Robin - who’s tried the same tricks before - who points it out to her.

It’s not that June isn’t aware of how unsatisfying her relationship is. She spells it out for us in the very beginning: is it possible to find a love that won’t make me lonely? But she’s also the type that doesn’t want to give up on a relationship until she’s absolutely certain there is nothing left to save. In her heart she knows that Robin is right. But she will still make excuses for Ju-hyeoung because if she didn’t she’d have to admit he’s someone who doesn’t deserve her. And she isn’t quite ready to do that yet.

Bullet

This scene is pretty interesting, given that it’s so loaded with irony. June uses the analogy of a bullet to illustrate to Robin what true love feels like, and Robin quips that he has had personal experience with being shot.

It seems all light and casual, until you go back to this sequence for a rewatch and realise the bullet wound was given to him by a woman he loved. He not only has personal experience being shot: he has personal experience with loving someone who didn’t care about him, at a time when he was very much like June herself. In his mind, no one knows the consequences of believing in “true love” better than he does.

An Unhappy Person

How does June explain true love to Robin?

To share your heart, to not be lonely, to be warm…happy…that sort of thing.

Funny, because she says just the opposite when she’s stood up in Hong Kong:

June is right about what love should feel like. But where does she get it all wrong? She gets it wrong in that love also involves keeping yourself first. She admits to caring immensely for people she loves at the cost of her own well-being. But love is a two-way street. It involves being one with another person while still maintaining your own individuality. June doesn’t know where her lover ends and where she begins. She respects the boundaries of the other person, but allows her boundaries to be trampled on time and again. Basically, she expects so little from her lovers that they find it easy to use her, throw her away and then blame her for the fallout.

Robin understands this. He’s been there. Which is why he takes the other extreme: take care only of yourself. Look out only for yourself.

He may be wrong about a lot of things, but when he points out that June doesn’t seem very happy, his observation is completely on the money. And mind you, this is someone he has just met.

The sequence that follows this scene - the birthday montage where June prepares Ju-hyeoung's own flat for his birthday (even more of an indicator how messed up this relationship is) and Robin settles in, in his hotel room - shows both of them going about their lives alone, solitary, in spacious rooms that seem to scream for another person to keep them company.

The only thing Robin seems to forget…is that he is as lonely and unhappy as she is, for very different reasons.

#seducing mr perfect #daniel henney #uhm jung hwa #robin heiden #kim min june #robin x minjune #robin x june #car scene #smp scene analyses

[seducing-mr-perfect]

June: Since when did you start liking me?

Robin: From the first day I met you. I saw that lipstick mark, and I wanted to kiss you.

–

(PS: The other thing I love about this scene? Robin tells us later that he thought June had a “special talent for deception”, and he entrusts her with a pretty risky mission on their first day working together. He figured out she knew English as soon as he saw her card and found out she was essentially an analyst in his company. Looking back at this sequence, it’s obvious he felt this woman would have an uncanny ability to smoothly make her way out of any situation he threw at her.)

#seducing mr perfect #daniel henney #uhm jung hwa #robin heiden #kim min-june #robin x min-june #robin x june #volvo scene #smp scene analyses

[seducing-mr-perfect]

The bar scene counts as one of my favourite scenes in Seducing Mr Perfect. Sometimes, on first watch, it feels very much like the jaded asshole boss insulting his angelic assistant for not being jaded enough (the more angelic person will eventually be proven right in the end. And yes, June is proven right - but not without learning some very important life lessons of her own). But there is so much more going on this scene that you tend to take away something new every time you watch it.

To truly understand what’s going on in this scene, we need to rewind a bit and look at some of the scenes linking the car ride scene and this one.

As mentioned in my last post, the car ride sequence ends with a montage of Robin settling into his new hotel room, and June waiting in vain for her boyfriend to celebrate his birthday with her. The scene following this reveals a tired, worn June, with bags under eyes and a face that clearly reveals that she hasn’t had much sleep.

Here, her colleague Brian teases her about her “wild night”, only to have her retort that Ju-hyeoung never came to her flat at all. Robin, who is close enough to them to overhear the conversation, smugly replies that his assessment that Ju-hyeoung is hiding something from her is right.

Shortly after (possibly that night, or a few nights afterwards), Robin asks June to come to a rather fancy Italian restaurant, presumably for work, and June catches her boyfriend there with another girl. While she vows to confront him in a manner different from her other breakups, she quickly loses her composure and publically berates him for cheating on her.

June’s fight with Ju-hyeoung here reveals to us two things about their relationship:

1. Ju-hyeoung accuses June of not giving him enough “space”, and blames her for his decision to cheat. The irony of it all is that when she goes out with him again, he claims to miss the old her, the ‘pleasure bunny’. We don’t seem to have seen much of their relationship, but the little that we do see shows us that Ju-hyeoung only ever saw June as someone worth anything when she was sleeping with him, and when she blindly trusted him enough for him to abuse her trust whenever he wanted to.

2. It takes a lot for June to end a relationship. Even when she has caught Ju-hyeoung cheating on her red-handed, she begs him to come home with her so they can talk this out instead. It’s a reasonable solution to her immediate problem, but it also shows us that June is still trying as hard as she can to ignore some very obvious red flags, even when they’re right in front of her. Even though they have broken up, June still insists that her best friend talk of him with respect, and it doesn’t take very long for Ju-hyeoung himself to convince her to get back with him. Fortunately, by the time he does, she recognizes that she needs to take charge of her role in the relationship this time around, thanks - in part - to Robin.

Robin appears in front of her only after Ju-hyeoung has left, but it is entirely possible that he’s witnessed at least part of the fight. If he has, there are chances that he has at least seen June try to convince her boyfriend to come home with her, and remembered being in a similar situation (Jennifer does tell June later that Robin couldn’t let go of his ex for over a year before she shot him). This sets the tone for their conversation at the bar in the hotel where Robin stays.

Starcraft

I don’t know a lot about this game, but the little I do know says plenty about Robin’s own thoughts on relationships. Starcraft is a sci-fi themed Real-Time Strategy Game, where players harvest resources and spend them on constructing units and buildings and on research. Strategy is very important in this game, as the main aim is to make sure your units overpower those of your opponents. One loses the game when one’s buildings have been destroyed.

What does it mean that Robin views love as a play of strategy and June doesn’t? It means that both have vastly different approaches to how they view partners. June sees a partner, Robin sees an opponent. June believes in wearing her heart on her sleeve, Robin believes in holding all his cards close to his chest. June wants to be open and free with her lovers, lavishing them with concern and affection. Robin wants to maintain power in his relationships, so displays of affection, if any, will be hidden behind layers and layers of attitude. We see this kind of approach, too, in the lessons he gives June: one of which involves “training your opponent on how to treat you like a queen”. Relationships aren’t just a game to Robin. They’re a battlefield, and he’s not about to lose his life in one again.

Memories

Compare Robin’s facial expressions in this dialogue, to other conversations he has had, or will have later, with June (the “he’s hiding something” dialogues, his lessons, the Pentium comment), and you will notice a marked difference. When he correctly guesses June’s way of doing relationships, his body language seems more relaxed, his expression less stiff and guarded, and there is a hint of laughter in his voice. If you observe his facial expressions and eyes in this scene, you might also find a certain wistfulness in the way he describes these actions. Almost as if he’s run the same gauntlet himself.

The movie doesn’t expand much on Robin’s relationship with his ex (one of my main problems with what is an otherwise amazing movie). All we know is that he loved her more than she did him, she left him for another man, he couldn’t let go, she shot him. The possibilities for how this relationship could have been are endless, and could range from Robin being a creepy stalker to his ex being manipulative. But there are tiny hints, and you could find most of them in this scene.

Robin isn’t only correctly deducing June’s way of handling relationships. He’s also giving us a glimpse of what he used to be like.

I think this scene shows us that Robin, at one time, used to be exactly like June. Notice how he pauses at the “and” before he talks about anniversaries and the way his tone softens. Notice how playful he looks when June confirms what he has said, and asks him how he knows. And it’s worth it to also notice how guarded he becomes again, with his response:

Robin sidesteps June’s actual question here, which is if he’s had personal experience. You will notice throughout the film that he finds it extremely hard to share things that are personal to him. Even when he’s trying to make sense of how he feels about June later on in the story, he is reluctant to openly show any affection or talk about how he feels. This is something he struggles with even towards the end - it is Jennifer who has to give June background on his past relationship, and Robin only reveals his grandfather’s connection to Maeda when June aggressively questions him on why they need to change the name.

But the way he frames this answer leads me to believe that he has done many of the same things, and had been as involved in his past relationship as June is now. I believe this scene also exists so that we see Robin as someone who used to be like June, and his character arc involves learning to be a wiser version of that person rather than this detached, jaded man.

This is why he goes extra hard with his criticism of her way of doing relationships. He’s seen what happens when you give that much of yourself to a person, and cannot understand why June would still want it live that way.

Treated Like Trash

This is where Robin unknowingly really crosses the line. This is a rather blunt man. As long as it doesn't require much emotional input from him, he will be honest. Most times, he simply calls it as he sees it. And in this case he believes that in doing so he's giving June valuable advice. But his words are extremely harsh and his opinion of her - to June herself - seems considerably low.

So take my advice, and this is sincere, so listen to me. If you continue on acting like this, being so…pathetic, you will always be treated like trash by men. And you’ll grow old, all by yourself.

As I have said in the previous section, Robin has been through the agony of loving someone more than they loved him. He’s also possibly been through the emotional stress of being always available for someone who probably wouldn’t make time for him or give him importance. It’s entirely possible for him to relate to June to the extent that he would want to give her the kind of advice that he feels he should have gotten from someone.

He has most likely seen her beg a man who betrayed her to return to him, an action that rankles because he’s done it a million times over in his first relationship. And then to learn that she’s faced this over three relationships? It’s beyond Robin’s own comprehension. A younger, more naive Robin would have understood this better, but he has moved too far away from that person to even believe he exists anymore. Plus, it is a fact that he is depicted constantly in the film as being truly lonely, with very few friends or people he actually trusts. Growing old, all by himself, isn’t a very impossible future in Robin’s case. So I believe that when he is calling her pathetic, it’s not just an opinion on her, but on his past self as well.

But June sees this very differently, and for good reason. From her point of view, it sounds like Robin is doing the same thing her boyfriends have done - blaming her for the way she’s been treated. She hears “you will be treated like trash" as something Robin feels she deserves, and “you’ll grow old, all by yourself” as a comment on her own worth. These statements stand out to her, considering she repeats them in her tirade against him here, and she hears him say them in her nightmare as well. As far as she is concerned, this stranger saunters in, calls her pathetic, blames her for being who she is in her relationships and tells her it’s her own fault that men are being assholes to her. Especially during a time when she’s vulnerable and hurting and her wounds are still very raw, Robin's remarks are the equivalent of rubbing salt over them.

Apologize!

This scene is the game-changer in the movie. The pivot on which the main plot rests, the moment that changes their equation for the rest of the film, the mirror scene to the eventual climax. In romantic comedies like this one, it is always possible to find a scene where an arrogant lead character may find themselves throwing a challenge at their love interest, only to gladly lose to them in the end. This trope is very cliche, granted, but it is also used pretty effectively here.

It matters to June that Robin apologizes for what he has said. She wanted something specific out of her exchange with him: comfort, kindness, empathy - and was left with very painful judgements on her opinions and behaviour instead. These are judgements that continue to haunt her beyond this scene, and later when she speaks of missing her old self, she berates herself on similar lines by calling herself “hopeless”.

It is also a testament to how much Robin is growing to matter to her, that this one throwaway comment on her affects her much more deeply than even Ju-hyeoung’s break up with her did. From this point onwards, her focus is entirely on proving Robin wrong and beating him at his own game. Her physical and emotional energies in the movie are spent so extensively on winning him over that she almost forgets about Ju-hyeoung until he finally returns.

The interesting thing about this scene is viewing it with the knowledge that Robin has already begun to have feelings for her here. He tells her, at the very end of the movie, that he wanted to kiss her from the moment he saw the smeared lipstick mark across her face. Even though he seems extremely cold towards her, the film hints at him unknowingly showing he cares about her in different ways. The least obvious, but very implicit, one is this: June and Robin were supposed to be meeting up for work. June even refers to him as a slave-driver for making her do it over dinner. But the moment he sees her alone, heartbroken and vulnerable, he pushes the work aside immediately, takes her to the bar at the hotel he stays in, lets her have a beer and listens quietly as she pours out details about her love life and failures to him. He follows this up with advice that he sincerely believes will help June, only for it to backfire when June points out how cruel his words were.

What does it mean when he throws this challenge at her, fully aware that he is starting to like her? I think it shows how high his level of confidence is that he won’t be swayed by anyone. No matter how she makes him feel, he’s certain that he will be able to hide it and gain control over it, and that June will never be able to get under his skin. And that’s where he gets it all wrong.

Why is it so important for the story to make Robin apologize? He spells it out to you here itself. He never apologizes for anything. He seems to believe that he is right in what he says and does, and that he doesn’t need to change that line of thinking for anyone. By having him spell it out here - and by many of his actions in the movie - we are led to believe that Robin needs to undergo a very gradual, very deep transformation for him to even admit how wrong he is. It makes his apology towards the end that much more poignant, because one can really feel the change in him and how his experiences with June have transformed him for the better.

I think he poses the challenge mostly because he feels certain she won’t take him up on it. I’m not sure he is entirely serious when he tells her this - not because she can’t, but because he’s sure she won’t. Here, too, he’s pretty wrong. If Kim Min-June is given a challenge, you can bet your last bottle of soju that she will tackle it. Or at least try.

Departure

June leaves the bar angry, frustrated and slightly drunk, with Robin looking on. She tells us that she was hoping for a confidante, someone who offered comfort rather than judgement - it’s not your fault, they just weren’t the right men for you - and Robin is at a point where he is incapable of providing that.

But he will echo this very sentiment sometime in the future, at a time when he’s beginning to rethink his own principles.

#seducing mr perfect #daniel henney #uhm jung hwa #robin heiden #kim min june #robin x min-june #robin x june #smp scene analyses #bar scene #make me beg for you