KIM MYUNGOK YOON BARAM

NAME: Kim Myungok "is what my birth certificate says, but my death certificate better say 'Yoon Baram' or else what's the ing point."

NICKNAME: Kim. Myung. Ok. Call her this.

AGE: 24
BIRTHPLACE: Eonyang-eup in Ulsan, South Korea
ETHNICITY: Korean
FACECLAIM: Lee Geumhee (Jeong Seoyeong).

Juuuust kidding those two are the same person. Actual backup is Crayon Pop's Soyul (Park Hyekyeong).

DETAILS MAKETH (WO)MAN

APPEARANCE & LOOKS: It's like looking at a bottle of pepper spray. There's substance in there, most of it harsh on the eyes, but what you see, hold, or otherwise deal with is all plastic packaging. Myungok is cosmetic surgery incarnate, plus circle lenses and lash extensions and an crust of face creams. She goes somewhat "natural" with her blush and lip gloss, but that's as natural as she gets.

Other than that, she follows the classic half-starved trend, bony wrists and thigh gap and all. She lathers on plenty of product to keep her skin nice and smooth, though there's a limit on smooth it can be when it's clinging to corners of bone. If Myungok were taller (a lot taller), her figure would fit right in with the extreme runway models. As it is, she is just tiny and bird-boned and a papery thing in the breeze.

FASHION: Before even knowing her name, most folks know her as "that human doll with technicolor hair" or ruder variations of such. Ever since her university days, she has upheld cuteness above all else. Ribbons, oversized tops, thigh-highs, tights, and the list only gets more impractical from there. She dresses up like a girl on her first date every day, give or take some formality when needed. Not one thing in her usual wardrobe is made to survive a week in the woods.

But her hair. That is the real party. Red hair, blue hair, long hair, short hair; all of the above, all at once. Why not? Let's go duotone today, latte-colored on one side and americano on the other. Tomorrow, let's go lavender cascades with soft peach highlights. And if she wants to chance her hair's style and color three times a day, she can. Just throw on a fresh wig. The wonders of being bald.

Yes, bald. Two years of chemotherapy did exactly as advertised to her scalp, though she doesn't miss her "own" hair any more than she missed her "own" face. Myungok's not going to suddenly become sentimental just to grieve for some hair. She changes wigs the way others change shoes and is always shopping for more. There's this adorable
neapolitan look that she hadn't worn out in a while, and she's already laid out an outfit to match. Get ready, manor, you're about to taste the bottoms of bedazzled combat boots ft. an all black, faux-street, faux-hipster ensemble.

Personality MAKETH MONEY

TRAITS: | + |  frank, open-minded, empathetic,

                       inconsiderate, limited bandwidth,  | – |
                       self-awareness often catches up
                       a few moments too late,

               | ? |  deliberately blasé & intimidating,
                       devilmaycare, 24/7/365.

PERSONALITY: "A colorful little rascal on her way to tea with the reaper" about sums it up. Take craziest half of Alice in Wonderland and the meanest parts of the Internet, smack them together, snowball it up Maslow's hierarchy of needs until we reach Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, then stir like a motherer.

Yeeeeeah... let's break that down.

❝ , we all mad here ❞  ← accurate sample of her grammar and cussing habits. One out of five words is likely to make a grandmother gasp. Meanwhile, innocent little sentence components are murdered off-screen; sacrifices to destroy the grammar-archy and erect fresh monuments of attitude. Myungok is very much a Mad Hatter Wigger who thrives on nonsense and theatrics. Her outfits may veer saccharine, but her insides aren't lined with sugar to coat her words. 

❝ hello darkness my old friend ❞  ← fancy dicking around with you again. Kim Myungok once fit right in with the vast legions of unabashedly opinionated netizens. "What's the harm in just saying what I believe? If you're free enough to police what a bunch of online randos say, you should work on living your life."

Keyword: once. She now mocks her former dismissiveness with a bitter bark of laughter, unladylike even with her pretty pink bows. Do not mistake her forwardness with a refusal to back down; if she done messed up, she done messed up. She's sorry, truly and sincerely, and she'll do something to rectify what she'd caused even if the other parties don't quite deserve it. So, for all her bluster, Myungok is quick to apologize, acknowledge her faults, and hear you out.

❝ you live, you learn, you cringe ❞  ← Under the aggressive irreverence is a fundamental respect for others' and a surprising amount of principle. Myungok's instincts are to snap and dismiss and walk off after confirming her superiority, but more and more she is realizing that sense of superiority is an illusion. She makes a point now to listen first, then try to understand, then confirm before patting herself on the back for a half-assed effort. As loud and opinionated as she is, Myungok is quiet when she listens and slow to judge.

It's inevitable, though, that old habits slip through. So even as she does her best to live up to her own principles, she may come across hypocritical as her behavior wavers between "jerk with a heart of gold" and "wannabe saint." Myungok truly is learning, but her self-awareness and everything-else-awareness can be natural inverses sometimes. Like, if she's trying to duck these swinging blades, maybe she gives less of about your stupid overabundance of feelings... oh, wait, sorry...

❝ no one can be right forever ❞  ← this she knows, all too well. Denying one's own flaws and mistakes is like powering a city with a hamster wheel. "Like, eventually the poor son-of-a-hamster goes kaput. Blegh~ and there in the vast darkness your myopia shines like a in' lighthouse, showing you exactly where you came from but not where the hell you goin'."

Or, in nicer terms: don't assume you're always right, and hindsight is 20/20. There's a lot she doesn't get about people, herself included, but some things are brutally clear. Myungok's life is honestly in a bad place right now, but at least she has clarity with herself on a level she's still getting used to. She knows her core hopes and dreams. To live. Then to design fashion stuff, support cancer care/research, and not treat other people like if she can help it. Everything else, all that stuff she wouldn've live for and definitely wouldn't die for, is just noise. (Social expectations in particular can go die in a ditch... she says, as she still grudgingly adheres to some general rules.)

And if she can offer a corner of that clarity to anyone else, she will. With flourish and F-bombs galore. She calls it sharing the wisdom. Others may call it "randomly getting attacked and forced to admit flaws in order to make her shut up."

❝ uh yeah, no one's reading all that ❞  ← Foul-mouthed and aggressive doesn't have to mean unreasonable and dismissive... or, at least, she's trying to make sure it doesn't. Myungok wants to be a good person, and she wants to help others be better too, but that may not be so easy with what she considers communication skills.

History MAKETH JACK

BACKGROUND: Just to say... not all cancer experiences are the same, and this is definitely a less conventional one. I apologize in advance for any inaccuracies (I'm sure my research must have missed a few things) and for anything sensitive content. The character herself is often insensitive about topics most would consider delicate. I saw your portrayal of some pretty intense and divisive themes in the teasers, so I'll take the risk and include my crazier ideas here—but! If you feel that anything is too much (or hurtful in any kind of way), I am truly sorry and will gladly fix things!!

Thank you!

Sometimes it's as if her life didn't even begin until she realized she was dying. 22 years flew by in a haze of I must study, I must make [authority figure] and [society as a whole even if they don't care that much] proud of me, keep it squeaky clean and don't even think in swears. She pulled the regular all-nighters that all her classmates at the Ulsan Science High School boasted. She didn't know how she got there, but this was her life now. That's what every signal seemed to say, and that was the lane she stayed in.  Life equaled destroying her body for the sake of her transcript, maintaining consciousness with coffee and compliments, and ignoring every warnings sign telling her  thiswasn't worth it.

She drowned her doubts in the blue of late-night forums where she commiserated about studying and unleashed rabid opinions without the energy to mind consequences. Whether those consequences were someone developing anxiety thanks to the bandwagon she hopped on or some anonymous blasting at her. Myungok didn't care. What discourse? What rhetoric? It's just the Internet, who cares that much? Which is funny, because that question is in itself rhetorical for her; she never cared if anyone cared. Not as a braindead high school student, anyways.

She got into Seoul University. The brilliant class president was now the woman in STEM, the pride and joy, the "meant for great things." Great things despite a frail body and busted wiring where her brain used to be. The coffee she poured into her stomach seemed to pour straight out without doing anything to keep her eyelids open. She was even getting this weird Kdrama ache in her chest, which made her laugh at times. She wondered absently if she'd start coughing up blood too and joked with her classmates that she'll be full-fledged drama character once she did. But as it turns out, she wasn't a drama character. Her fate greeted her in plain room with only the AC as soundtrack. No crimson splatters, just the black and white of a mammogram and the doctor's ashen face.

They said a bunch of words that the engineer in Myungok wanted to deconstruct. The mechanic in her wanted to reconfigure them to spell hope. The rabid netizen in her wanted to dismiss this as easily as she dismissed anything that was too bothersome to reply to. Then there was the Myungok that every Myungok had actively ignored until now: the one that knew she couldn't go on forever. The one that muttered bad words while she clenched her teeth and smiled. The one that tasted freedom when she opened her computer and took out its fury on fragile strangers.

"Well, ," she said, somehow calm. Saying it was easier than she expected, and that made this hell of a day oddly easier too. The doctor's eyes widened, but only in surprise. Not judgment. That went better expected too.

At 22, Kim Myungok lived for the first time. She saw herself in the mirror and realized she looked boring. Too boring. How did she spend hours perfecting the color scheme of a booklet only one professor will ever see but spend less than 10 minutes a day on this body that everyone will see (including herself—especially herself)? She looked at her life trajectory and realized with a jolt that she would never not be tired. She'd claw her way up the walls forever, but what did she want to see on the other side? Actually, what did she want, period. She never asked herself that, and now she had officially trade in her life... and for what?

" snapped," is how she put it on her new blog. Screw it. She wanted to die with glamour, with noise—something, anything more than a life so drab even she barely recalled any of it. Under the randomly chosen name of Yoon Boram, she published her diagnosis and announced her desire to blaze her remaining life expectancy.

Amidst a few netizens (not unlike who she used to be) calling it a scam, "Yoon Boram's March to He__" acquired an eclectic following. Other cancer patients found strange catharsis in her increasingly wild doses of carpe diem. As her fashion got crazier and she got all the plastic surgery she could ever want, she became an ulzzang with a particularly clickbaity backstory. Soon, she was a minor celebrity, enough so to walk out of university and straight into self-employment, with a clothing/wigs/accessories brand and online store of her own. She sent just enough money home to impress her parents (and the neighbors) then punted whatever she didn't spend off the cancer research and other charities. Existing cancer-related communities found her approach jarring, sure, but also fresh and effective. Not so boring anymore, huh?

The fog in her head cleared. She slept as she pleased and worked as she pleased. She live streamed thrill-seeking vacations and cracked a morbid joke every three seconds. Maybe she pushed the bounds of appropriateness—okay, she body-slammed it regularly—but she was dying, alright? Even more than online anonymity, that gave her a free pass to be... not the greatest person. She was as callous and insensitive as ever, just more vocal about it now and with a legion of fans to defend it for her. Sometimes she honestly just said stuff to see how much she could get away with it. Not the nicest thing to do, but again: she had a get-out-of-caring-free card.

The story could end there, but of course it doesn't. Myungok sees other things too. How behavior like her own as a netizen can sting. How she genuinely hurt people with things so minor she barely remembered doing them. It took her 22 years to start learning about real empathy, to start giving a about people other than what they did for her transcript. As Myungok became happier with her life, her field of vision expanded to include others' happiness too. And others' unhappiness, especially that which she caused.

Learning starts with acknowledging her own mistakes, and she does even that with great hullaballoo and audience participation. Her (unsolicited and sudden) public apology for her past viciousness online happened on a whim. She brought her own receipts, red-inked her own bad form, and asked people to tell her how she can be better. It was scary, but it was roller-coaster scary. She was secure in her path and didn't fear getting thrown off; she had control over parts of her life she didn't even know existed before; and above all, she knew it would all end soon enough, regardless of how it turned out. Some folks learn best at the beginning of their lives and others at the end. Myungok was seeking out her own lessons and learning at last.

Fast forward the two years she was expected to have. They kept up treatments on a slim hope, but Myungok wasn't too bothered. She twirled into the hospital, all bright colors and roguish energy, and nicknamed the machines. Rest of her time was spent between her fundraising fashion brand and a new cancer patient support forum she'd helped to establish. With newfound self-awareness, "Yoon Baram" was starting to become a force of... not "good" exactly but positivity. She visited child patients and entertained them by taking her wig on and off her head, and none-too-subtly proclaiming that real hair is overrated #BaldMasterRace. She sat down with more disenchanted patients and unleashed some profanity in a weird sort of mutual therapy. She wasn't everyone's cup of tea, of course, but she'd earned all the grudging respect she got. And above all, she was happy doing something that mattered to her.

Her fanbase grew with bursts of virality. Her fundraising fashion rallies made a visible and fun way to build cancer research funds; her will was eventually made public, including the names of those who'd take over her brand and programs. Some fans started a countdown, which she chuckled darkly at and linked to on her main site. Though "Yoon Baram" was by no means a household name, it functioned as the stagename for a minor celebrity, an online fashion icon and inspiration to others with terminal illness. Her foul mouth and irreverence made her hugely controversial, but for every person she offended, there were others who defended her right to go out with a bang 

Again, the story could end there, but it's stinking long and it doesn't. The time ticks down; she gets a few extra months, but the doctors don't risk too much optimism... until she just starts getting better. Maybe it was the fresh purpose in life, maybe it was the lifestyle improvements, or maybe just Science. Regardless, she was still at risk, but the warnings of relapse slowly phased out for promises of hope. Myungok slowly allowed herself to be excited as well, and she shared the successes with her followers.

Now that was where "Yoon Baram's March to He__" steered itself to hell. Despite her evolution as an individual, her fanbase definitely carried plenty of folks who were expecting to commiserate or at least relish in her dark humor and acknowledgement of mortality. Now that death no longer hung on the horizon, well... this wasn't what the clickbait titles promised, now was it? And she couldn't excuse any rude/inappropriate/extreme behavior with her impending death now. There rose a small but persistent minority that claimed betrayal. That she had a "promise" to keep and now that she made money, she was backing out of her prior commitment (to do what? Die?)

Honestly, those people were easy to ignore. Most would agree that her life wasn't some sort of duty-free (guilt-free) snuff film. The problem was those early attackers who said her claims of cancer were a fraud. That sentiment resurged and gathered support alarmingly quickly. Demand for proof of her condition picked up momentum and actually began affecting her brand and online communities, with angry netizens pouring into the forums she'd set up for cancer patient support. Myungok's angry button was very much pushed, and in a less-than-brilliant PR move, she started revealing her medical documents with the intent of ending things quickly.

But the story doesn't end. She walks out of the hospital cancer-free but gets her first headache since all this began. The documents got picked apart and deemed fake by anonymous "experts," while the name difference led to other archaeological expeditions that led public ire straight to her family, still in rural Ulsan. Myungok wanted to call them all ridiculous, but then... didn't she take some part in TaJinYo all those years ago? Did she not tell some celebrities to die when they rubbed her the wrong way, back before she started thinking about her actions? It was almost karmic, that she now faced the same "intellectual" attacks that she once participated in.

Just as Myungok was finally given a second chance at life, she started getting death threats suggesting alternative methods of fulfilling her "promise to die." Rumors of her taking money out of the funds raised through her online store to pay for plastic surgery instead of chemotherapy became public fact, much thanks to "evidence" detailing how much each of her face's procedures were supposed to cost. This time, she knew better to reveal every single plastic surgery receipt she'd kept, because she had no idea how to prove the absence of more receipts. All this without any PR team or big-scale legal support.

Half the time, she thought it was unrealistic that such a thing even became a scandal. Then, the other half, she knew with some shame that if she weren't herself, she'd have doubts too. It wasn't impossible for someone to fake a sob story to make others write sympathy checks. The world had been burned before, and it would fight fire with fire, whether there was a fire or not. As people found her true identity, she couldn't even leave the house, let alone help out at the program she'd started. Her defenders, including some people she'd helped directly, could only do so much against the surge of public scrutiny and the "vigilantism" spray-painting FAKE DEATH SCAM on her family home.

With everything at the precipice of falling apart, Myungok finds one envelope among the many red-dripping papers jammed under her door. Her first thought was that this wish stuff was totally a scam... but wait, was it (she)? Was it (she) a scam just because that was the reasonable thing to assume? So, she sneaks out carefully, in darker clothes than she'd usually put together—though she couldn't resist a pretty wig.

Summary: Once an ideal student/daughter/etc. who took out her stress as a toxic netizen, Myungok's cancer diagnosis prompted her to let go of her ideals and finally make her own path—to reinvent her image and live to the fullest. As she is finding her place in the world, her illness also fades away... but at the cost of her online reputation. Now under attack from the same toxic netizens she used to number among, the girl accused of being a scam finds a suspicious letter and, in a warped bit of empathy, gives this manor a chance to prove its wish-granting claims. 

The Details (AGAIN, WHEEEEE)

OCCUPATION: Blogger, forum owner; online store model+owner; career fundraiser for cancer research and patient support; volunteer with patient support program.

SKILLS: 
❝ okay, house. sure. whatever❞  ← is attitude a skill? because after so much time living on the brink of death, the manor's machinations don't really hurt her psychologically. she just takes it in stride and with a lot of sass (see character quote). besides, it's not all about the manor; she refuses to let this house dominate every minute of her life, especially when said life may end shortly. she won't let the fear and desperation to live (which she's definitely feeling too) take over and turn her any less civil than she already is. because again, this house.
❝ , your life is actually so worth living. why are you giving it to a ing building? ❞  ← she's not giving up living after she's finally come to terms with the fact that she wants to live—even with all the opposition to it. so her morale is a force of its own, and she's not about to let someone else give up (like she did) without realizing there is so much to live for.
❝ give the man a nobel prize for the lives he just saved, hot damn ❞  ← weirdly supportive pep talks that are maybe 50% swear words and 60% anti-establishment, with generous overlap. contrary to her image, she's actually a positive force with a lot of oddly encouraging things to say.
❝ shut up and let me stitch your face ❞  ← not a trained medical professional, but hanging out with doctors so much has given her some medical common sense. it's not great, but it'll do in a pinch.
❝ trust me, okay? i trust me ❞  ← her honesty is perhaps too much for the "real world," but in the manor, trustworthy people may be a rare commodity. if she gets put in a position to lie, she'll just explain her ed-up situation and hope for understanding instead of attempting to get away with bull. she's not fond of being called liar lately.

HABITS: 
✄ hyperspecific with colors, down to the exact (and probably pretentious) pantone name
✄ rolling her eyes; the rest of her face can't move all that much from so much surgery, but she manages an epic face regardless.
✄ thinking of a mean thing to say then biting back on it
✄ an anti-habit of sorts, but she has almost zero fear response to jump scares, drastic changes in situation, etc. even the most claustrophobia-inducing medical machinery barely phases her—hell, death itself was her companion in the travel vlogging days—so fatal traps are at most a "huh, okay, let's dissect this motherer."
✄ imagining alternative styling for other people; if they had a makeover to become fully happy with their style, what would they do? no change is too extreme by Myungok's standards, obviously; just look at her face. if you wanna rework your s, then you do you, buddy.
✄ tying complicated knots and then untying them. a hobby!

LIKES: 
✄ gallows humor. the worse, the better.
✄ amethyst purple. she used to work summerat eonyang's
amethyst cavern park, and even she gets sentimental about something.
✄ gemstones in general. she knows way too much trivia for her own good.
✄ FASHION FASHION FASHION!! ALL GENDERS! ALL STYLES! BUT ESPECIALLY PSYCHEDELIC!
✄ cranberries. this probably won't matter... or will it?!?!!1!

DISLIKES: 
✄ apathy, selective or otherwise. she has tasted enough of its poisons, both from others and from her own mouth.
✄ poor repressed souls and/or willful ignorance. not that she dislikes them, but she wants to share her freedom—granted, in a rather forthright and gaudily self-demonstrative way, but hey, if American can do it, she can do it (better)
✄ not having a mirror to check if she still looks fly
✄ her phone running out of battery (she brought two portable charge batteries at max, but still...)

important people, I GUESS

FAMILY/FRIENDS: Her family is a pretty classic combo. Loving but restrained mother, loving but awkward father, loving but competitive brother. She once fit right in as the loving but busy firstborn, but since the diagnosis and the metamorphosis of sorts, they have quietly become strangers to each other. Or rather, her parents thought she'd become a stranger to them, and Myungok hadn't been able to disagree. Minchul, her little brother, was pretty apathetic—as apathetic as she always was—but he and their parents were forced out of their uninvolvement as the scandal hit. Her parents tried to defend her but were far too clumsy in digital waters; cue backfire. Her brother didn't try to speak up, but that made the accusations look truer to the accusers and made him look like a traitor to the defenders; cue double backfire. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, damned if you live and breathe at all. Same went for all the school friends she'd kept since graduation and the hospital/patient friends she'd made. Her reputation was deadly contagious. RIP support system

LOVE: Whatever works for you!

The Wish

WISH: She didn't really know at the start, honestly. In general, she just wants things to be okay again, but she didn't really take this Manor stuff all that seriously until it got serious all by itself.

If she could articulate what she wants... it is to die without dying. Does that makes sense? She'd like to "properly die" of cancer as she was expected to and get those netizens off her family/friends' backs—but she'd still like to live and help people. She has seen the impact of her oomph and flair, and she has more to live for than just herself now.

Myungok has spent so long living with death looming over her that she kind of craves that burst of liberty again. What is it like to live not for the sake of living before you die but just for living? She wants to know. She wants to live, no matter what those [insert foul monikers] tell her. It's just that she may have to "die" first.

ending

SUGGESTION: Knowing me, I'll think of 81 things as soon as I turn this in. Good thing this is interactive... //sweats

COMMENTS: I somehow did the whole app in less than 24 hours??? I guess your idea was just that inspiring hehe

PASSWORD: A classic but a true love of mine. Surely the penultimate scene can double as a scene request, given this girl's... um, language rating preferences...