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revchainsaw · 4 years ago

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The Crow (1994)

Alright Cult of Cult. Do I really need to introduce this one? Let's get all 90s and gothy and maybe brace ourselves for a bit of cringe, but like in a fun way. It's the Holy Grail of Hot Topic, 1994's the Crow Starring Brandon Lee.

Sermon

Apparently before the auto industry totally crashed Detroit was already a total fucked to death pile of burning shit, or at least that's what the crow would have you believe. Sorry Bruce Campbell, and other people from Detroit, but mostly Bruce Campbell. According to the Crow the city of Detroit is the kind of place where gangs of warlock anarchist arsonists will bomb buildings, and murder and rape whoever they feel like and then walk around bragging about it the next day with absolutely zero consequences. Funny then that if Detroit was so bad they had to go to film this movie in Wilmington North Carolina which is definitely a fucked to death pile of burning shit. I can say that, I'm from there and I got the fuck out. My brother is going to kill me if he ever reads this. (It's okay, these are all jokes people). Did you know they also filmed the Super Mario Bros movie there ... also cuz they needed a really shitty looking distopia. Moving on ...

The ludicrous criminality of the Crow's Detroit is particularly on display on Halloween. In Detroit (apparently) Halloween is known as Devils Night and it's legitimately just a night of pure lawlessness and chaos and kids aren't even safe to get candy, except later when we do see trick or treaters. Eric Draven, hunky goth rocker who sort of looks like he could be Bruce Lee's Kid and his fiance are murdered by a gang of vicious criminals. One year hence, Eric is resurrected by a mystical crow (that is actually a Raven), to exact his revenge on the gang that murdered him.

He paints his face like sad Alice Cooper and refuses to listen to Joy Division, just covers. He murders Tin Tin (a knife guy) just for his long gothy duster, he murders Fun Boy and forcibly ejects heroine from her arms and tells her "Go be a good mom now" which actually works. (have I told you about our Lord and Savior Sting? He gave me the strength to get off drugs), he blows T Bird up dick first, and then comes for Skab? Scraap? Scooby? in a meeting of all of Detroits villains and just about kills them all.

He is supported by the most 90s little girl to have ever graced the screen, and I am here for it, and Officer Albrecht, who's played by Ernie Hudson but I like to call him Zeddemore: The Most Underrated Ghostbuster. The leader of the bad guys, who I cannot beleive wasn't played by Brad Dourif or Tom Waits, is pretty interested in the occult. He keeps his witchy girlfriend around and she makes him fun dishes like smoked eyeballs, and her main use is that she knows that the Crow is the Crows weakness. They set Tony Fucking Todd on the bird, and I guess you just have to hurt the bird and not kill it, and Eric loses his healing factor and other macabre undead powers.

The Crow, Jimmy the Raven, pecks out Dr. Girlfriends eyeballs, I honestly forget how Tony Todd gets offed, and Top Dollar gets Gargoyled (that is impaled on a gargoyle). Funnily enough that is more Gargoyle related impaling on screen then in the actual movie Gargoyle: Wings of Darkness where a Gargoyle is supposed to have impaled a guy.

The Benediction

Best Feature: Injustice League

In the Crow we have not only a set of super memorable villains but they are played by the bad guy all stars. John Polito as the most lowly of the bad guys as a kind of sleazy pawn shop owner who buys ill gotten gains. Tony Todd, who's size is really on display here, the freaking Candy Man is in this movie. T Bird is the head of Top Dollars goons and is played by David Patrick Kelly, you might know as the "Warriors Come Out and Play!!" bottle guy from the Warriors, or as Jimmy Horne from Twin Peaks, and of course Top Dollar himself is played by Michael Wincott. Wincott is not a particularly celebrated actor but has played villains effectively in Robin Hood, the Three Musketeers, and Dead Man.

Best Set Piece: Detroit Style Hot Dogs

The Set design of the Crow is perhaps one of it's most fantastic features. It's very moody and ethereal. It's just real enough to not take you out of the film, but fantastic enough to set mood and theme above realism. From Eric Draven's apartment, to the church where the final battle occurs they are all fantastic. I think that's why I really wanted to shine the spot light on a very minor set piece that would get nary a mention but just as effectively represents the qualities I was just talking about and that is the Maxi Doggs Hot Dog Stand, where a lot of the films exposition for audience surrogates takes place.

Worst Effect: Freeze Frame

At a few points in the movie the film makers made a strange decision to do these freeze frame transitions. I only noticed it twice in the movie where it was particularly stupid. I'm sure the film makers at the time thought it was a moody and atmospheric choice that highlighted the suffering that Eric Draven was going through, but it didn't age well. If you don't have the sensibilities of a goth girl from 1994 then it's very very hard not to laugh at just how self involved the movie is about it's super sadness.

Worst Feature: Tragic Accident

Solely based on the film itself, it is that very gothic and dated sensibility that hurts the Crow. The little sarcastic dance he does when he flees the police, quoting Edgar Allen Poe, and bowing to Albrecht. These affected behaviors that I'm sure seemed snarky and right on to the target audience only serve to make Eric Draven seem like an unbearable neck beard edgelord and not the troubled dark soul he's supposed to be. I'm sure at the time it seemed unique and gothy but that shit went out of style for good reason, people could see through it. It's a shame that the Crow himself was some of the cringiest parts of this movie now that I'm seeing it as an adult and not a 13 year old middle class boy with no real problems.

This however is not the low point of the movie. It's not news now and if you're reading some dudes review of The Crow on Tumblr then you probably already know the story. The worst thing about The Crow is that Brandon Lee was horrifically killed on set while filming this movie due to some negligible prop malfunctions. A series of unfortunate events that lead to the actor spending 6 hours in surgery fighting for his life before eventually passing. It was not a quick or painless death and it's really impossible to watch the movie without an appreciation for the fact that this kind of fun dark adventure was going to be a vehicle for Brandon Lee's career wound up taking his life. He was 28. I really wish I could have just bitched about the goofy goth stuff and moved on, but that's not the world we live in.

Best Effect: The Gargoyling

Maybe I should have called this best kill. But I'm not sure which it is. The slaying of Top Dollar at the Climax of the film was just super effective. The pointed wings impaling his chest and that horn coming out of his mouth, it was morbid and excellent and just fit the tone of the movie perfectly. I mean how many other movies can you say Cause of Death: Impaled on a Gargoyle.

Best Bird: The Raven

I tried very hard to look up the name of the bird that primarily performed in this movie and could not find anything. There was a Raven once upon a time called Jimmy the Raven, but that was in the 50s and I don't think birds live that long. There was a team of Ravens performing as the crow, they were chosen over crows for their larger size, and more imposing silhouettes. I just think it's so wonderful to see these often maligned birds get a chance to show off their talents. Corvids of all kinds are incredibly intelligent creatures. Im a sucker for animals, if you haven't already figured that out. I really liked seeing the ravens hit their marks, particularly the one whos job it was to drop the wedding ring into Sarah's hand at the end of the film. You can see that greedy little bastard do his trick and then look of camera at his trainer like "treat please!". It's very cute.

Best Actor: Top Dollar Performance

I'd love to take this opportunity to just put praise upon Brandon Lee, he truly gave everything for this role, but unfortunately with what was put to film we actually have very few character moments with Eric Draven. Stuff happens to him, and he does killings and fights. There's definitely some personality, but I felt like I walked away knowing almost nothing about who Eric Draven was. He was clearly a good dude but that and a few hobbies and a relationship and you don't really have a character yet. He's unfortunately not given a lot of acting to do, instead just relegated to stunts and action sequences. That were notably cool.

The bad guys in the Crow have a lot more character and among this who's who of character actors, Michael Wincott takes the cake. Hell he was standing next to Candyman himself, Tony Todd and still stealing the scenes.

Best Character: A Few Good Apples

Is the best character in The Crow really going to be the cop? The commissioner Gordon stand in? yeah, it is. Not to be political, but I don't like cops, but I guess in a world with magical birds and eyeball smoking I can suspend my disbelief and let Ernie Hudson be #1 cop dad. His character is really the heart of the film, since all Eric can do is brood and fight, we have to care about someone in this movie.

Best Sequence: Halloween Party

The best sequence of the movie is of course the scene where Eric Draven busts in on the Devil's Night party planning commission. I think Top Dollar brought Scrappy Doo there just so he could lure out the crow, knowing the baddest assholes in all of Detroit would be gathered it was likely that somebody was going to kill the beast, or if they couldn't at least Top Dollar could get a feel for his enemy. It's a bullet flying action sequence with a ton of weight. I can't put my finger on this all to common weightless third act problem that big budget super hero and action flicks have nowadays, but whatever that issue is, the Crow does not have that issue. From this point on the Climax feels earned and I am invested. For that reason, The Crow is honestly better in spite of its awkwardness, than many of the super hero movies out today.

Worst Sequence: My Guitar Gently Weeps

Speaking of brooding or fighting. The best sequence was fighting, the worst is brooding. I get that Eric was in a band or something, but didn't he have shit to do. It seemed like it was a cool idea for a shot, but for like a whole seen, watching somebody play an 80s guitar solo, that stood out so brazenly from the choices of music in the rest of the movie was extra corny. It felt like someone's( dad trying to relate to their kid. Oh you like Music. The Dresden Dolls eh? Oh man, then you're going to love Slash's Snake Pit!

Summary

The Crow is dated. It is iconic but I wonder how many of the people that hang that poster on the wall have watched that movie since they were kids. It's interesting how what i've liked and disliked about this film have changed so much sense I was a kid. It's a cheeseball fiesta. If you have matured at all beyond thinking that being sad is the same as being deep then you're going to like it a little less than you did when you were younger, but it is still solid. There's not much to hate on. I'd watch it over and over again. I was really afraid it would not hold up at all, but returning to The Crow was a completely positive experience.

Overall Grade: B

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esepoimipullula · 4 years ago

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BIG spoilers for Fantomius: L’inizio e la fine by Marco Gervasio

Can I just... rant a little bit about how freaking HAPPY the last two episodes of this series made me?! Oh, whatever, I’ll do it anyway. It might just be my love for unlikely protagonist/antagonist team-ups but I LOVED the temporary (or not-so-temporary) alliance we ended up with.

First of all, I really liked Pinko going from “bumbling minor adversary/enemy who’s comically uptight and a bit arrogant but a good person at heart” to “stone-cold badass” in like two lines. It actually fits very well, all things considered.

(”I could have left like Lord Quackett and his girlfriend did! But I’m not a coward, I don’t run away!”

“If injustice is law, it is our duty to oppose it!”)

On the other hand, I also liked him going back to planning to catch Fantomius and his team as soon as the Glomgold emergency was solved and the situation went back to normal. Pinko is not a cold man, but he puts his duty above all else. And his duty is not to any mayor or to any law, but to Duckburg and its citizens. He has to defend them from Wrong and make things Right for them. To him, stealing is Wrong, whether you’re stealing from the poor or from conceited or dishonest nobles. To make things Right, you have to catch the thieves. Likewise, exploiting those who are defenseless against you for your personal gain is Wrong, whether you’re a criminal or someone in a position of power. To make things Right, the one who’s doing the exploiting must be brought down and exposed, by any means necessary. These two thoughts can and do coexist, one doesn’t cancel the other out. Not even if the thief helps catch the shady powerful person in the act. I can appreciate a character with such strong convinctions and ideals.

Then... there’s Lady Senape. (A small side note: did any Fantomius stories with her ever get officialy translated? Because I’ve seen people on here refer to her with her original name and I can’t help but wonder... do you guys know it literally means Lady Mustard? Like, because she’s kind of a foil to Dolly Paprika? Paprika... Mustard...?)

Anyway, I really, really loved her in this one. Seeing her go from the usual petty but cunning and ruthless enemy to unlikely ally ro actual friend was extremely satisfying, even if most of her character development happened offscreen.

Now, this is probably an unpopular opinion, but... I’ve always liked her as a character. Because she’s a foil to Dolly but she’s not just some Clingy Jealous Ex or a shrew who can’t actually manage to do anything on her own, because she’s kind of a foil to John, too, because I have a fondness for friends/lovers to enemies situations, and because I was utterly charmed by her first appearance. The mystery, the tension, the whole Chinese theatre thing with the symbolic colours... it all made a big impression on me, y’know? So, that’s why I was pretty disappointed when it looked she was never going to get any real character development. In any direction, I mean. Had she turned out into something like a Big Bad to rival Glomgold, I would have been just happy that she got a little something more to do in the Fantomius stories.

And that was were I thought her character was headed to when I began reading L’inizio e la fine. I mean, she WAS getting the chance to seriously mess up everyone’s future, right? And well, she did, pretty much...

But the prologue of L’inizio e la fine came with a little article on Lady Senape herself. Probably just to recap her previous appearances for forgetful or occasional readers, sure. But between explaining why she wanted revenge on Fantomius after Fu Man Etchù, comparing and contrasting her to Dolly, and showing Gervasio’s studies on her character, the writer slipped in a bit of backstory that... I don’t really remember if it had ever come up before, honestly.

“Jen Yu comes from a family of Chinese farmers and she’s a descendant of Ching Shih, the nom de plume of the lady pirate who terrified the Chinese Seas at the beginning of the XIX century,” the article said. And being fascinated by lady pirates, Ching Shih herself, AND the idea of Jen Yu having a backstory offering all kinds of possibilities and parallels (did she go from downtrodden peasant to ruthless thief, unlike John who went from dissatisfied nobleman to gentleman thief? Did she discover her ancestry and immediately decide to emulate Ching Shih to take revenge on society for a difficult upbringing, kinda like early days Paperinik? Was a secret diary involved? Were her parents honest folks or was Ching Shih’s glory reduced into a family of petty thieves and crooks, and either way, did Jen Yu ever want to commit great and daring crimes to make her pirate ancestor proud? Did...) I couldn’t stop reading too deep into it. Though in the end, my main take from it was... “Wait, is she getting an actual backstory and an article all about her because she’s gonna be... important?? Sympathetic??? Someone the readers will be supposed to root for at some point????”

Nevertheless, I tried not to raise my own hopes too much. For all I objectively knew, Senape was just gonna be petty and vindictive and have her backstory never actually mentioned or referenced in-story and...

And then, Distopia and La fine e l’inizio happened. And the only thing that didn’t make me absolutely giddy about her was the lack of “Well, you know, one of my ancestors really was a pirate!” lines during the whole “boarding Glomgold’s ships” sequence.

Of course, I did spend the week between those two stories theorizing how Senape would turn out to be secretly working with Glomgold and spying on the group even as she pretended to have become their friend. Or betray everyone and ally herself with Glomgold as soon as things got too tough for her liking. Or help take down Glomgold but then immediately try to steal the golden mask again and turn back to the asshole I knew and loved (even as I longed to see something more done with her...). Needless to say, I didn’t (dare hope to) think the change would stick or even bring about any significant character development. And yet, what did I get?

Senape working together with Dolly and Copernico for a whole year without ever selling them out. The three of them being actually a good team. The three of them becoming actual friends. Senape and Dolly giving up on their “Lol your boyfriend used to be my lover don’t you feel sooo jealous when you think about it?” “Bitch you broke his heart and you’re an asshole and I want to punch you in the face” dynamic to... become an honest-to-goodness adorable duo? And Senape becoming a permanent (?) member of the team because Dolly asked her and Copernico vouched for her and she was all for it because she liked working with them?? Dolly defending Jen Yu from John’s objections and John giving in even if he rightfully doesn’t trust his ex completely???

*squees*

Btw, I’m also just so happy about Dolly having what seems to be shaping up as a regular female friend that is also involved in her criminal life. She deserves that. <3

If it doesn’t all go back to normal in the next Fantomius series with a sudden backstabbing, that is. I’ll be very sad for Dolly if that happens. Hope they just keep being besties.

#disney comics #duckverse #fantomius #i actually do ship dolly x senape a little #i mean just look at that last panel #'we have a lovely guestroom... ;)' 'are you asking me to stay? ;))'#honestly if i can lowkey ship dolly and john with copernico i can be open to other poly possibilities right?#maybe even an ot4...

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jupitermelichios · 4 years ago

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So we decided we wanted to watch a garbage-fire movie tonight, so we’re watching Divergent and just...

It’s impressive that even with the expectations I had, it somehow manages to be even more soulless than i was braced for. everything about it was so incredibly by-the-numbers it almost looped back around to being interesting, entirely by accident. the incredibly forgetable romance that i literally did forget was happening mulitple times (they have a single substantive conversation, then immediately have sex off screen, then the main character has a nightmare about the dude assaulting her, which is projected onto a tv screen for all her friends to watch, and then they’re just immediately so in love that she’d rather die than live without him. that sounds like an exageration but it’s not, she puts a gun to her own head and threatens to pull the trigger in order to get a +4 power of love charisma buff)

also you know how the hook is that people get assigned to gangs based on their personality type, but she’s special because she has more than one singular personality trait? the way that manifests is the ability to lucid dream. that’s it. that’s her special power. sometimes she also has a greater level of problem solving, but that’s entirely plot dependant, the only reliable power that divergents have is that they can all lucid dream. which is a pretty cool thing to be able to do, but it’s also just like a skill you can learn. apparently in the distopian future no one remembers that.

the thing the movie kept reminding me of was american evangelical prosperity gospel propaganda films, your ‘gods not dead’ and your ‘left behind’. those are generally bad in a very specific way, and they’re bad because the end goal of the film-makers is not to make a good movie, the fact that they’re making a movie at all is almost incidental to their goal. they’re making propaganda, and film just happens to be the medium which is delivering that propaganda. this had the same vibe, i’m assuming because the end-game here was money making and the fact that they were using a movie to do that was an entirely secondary consideration.

also i’m fascinated by the fact that it’s a ‘distopia’ purely in that it’s working with a muted colour palette with stark lighting, and then a handful of scenes are set in an Apple store (and the villain is a woman in a position of power who dresses like Conservative emma frost, because there’s always got to be one of those). there’s no actual distopia, they’ve just dressed the set to look like one. even the stupid faction system seems to be basically working and most people are fine with it.

It took me all of ten minutes of watching the movie to come up with a better premise as well. you keep the faction system, but then you have ‘divergents’ be a special elite class who run everything and then the big reveal is that actually everyone is divergent and no one fits into the boxes but the evil elites pretend they do becausre that makes it easier to enforce the class system. Like, that’s still soulless garbage with nothing of substance to say, but it’s at least thematically coherant garbage, and if anyone asks you can tell them it’s about the use of myers-briggs tests in job applications or the rise in beliefs in horoscopes, something like that. you could definitely fake-deep-ify that no problem. you don’t even really have to change the plot that much, 90% of it could stay the same, just with an actual coherant narrative.

that’s not entirely fair. with the exception of how the fuck abnegation relates to all of this, and how factionless people work (and why the hell the author chose ‘amnity’ for the farmers, instead of, say, diligence) the narrative is pretty coherant, it’s just garbage. soulless cash grabbing garbage.

i hated it intensly and i can’t wait to watch the other two tomorrow to find out how deep the stupid goes and whether they ever do anything meaningful with the lucid dream as a superpower concept.

#jupiter watches a thing #divergent bashing #i say bashing i consider this an entirely fair and accurate judgement #but i know the books at least do have fans #and i'm not here to yuck anyones yum

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laythornmuse · 6 years ago

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Distopia - One Quote, One Shot

Squeaking in 40 minutes before the end of my deadline, if you’re Pacific time ;) Thank you @notevenjokingfic and @balfeheughlywed My One Quote, One Shot!! Enjoy everyone!!!

Claire slapped the X-Ray onto the viewing screen, the snapping of film against glass sending a ripple of satisfaction through her. Her eyes studied the bilateral image of a skull, her husband’s skull, as her tablet loaded his last MRI report.

The acidic coffee in her mug swarmed her senses as her eyes searched, probed, for an answer. A tangible one. One besides prayer, patience and time. She’d had her fill with patience, and wanted to rage against the invisible bars of her well mannered, and understanding prison.

She’d lost her husband.

***

It had been a quiet Tuesday evening in her surgical suite. A dislocated shoulder and a minor hernia that had her and Joe playing “Rock, Paper, Scissors,” winner chooses last. It was during her surgery that Joe appeared with Dr. Weis, the hospital’s chief surgeon, to relieve her.

She knew to expect the worse and had often seen the worse scream through the trauma unit. But reading the accident report sheet—

- - -Vehicle roll over after head-on collision- - -Driver 1 DUA - - -Driver 2 non responsive- - - severe head trauma - - - 20 minute extradition from vehicle - - -

Claire read the words over and over, but her brain would not comprehend their meaning. She stood outside his trauma suite and saw the team prepping him for surgery, yet she could not reconcile the swollen, ravaged face as the one she’d kissed goodbye earlier that afternoon. He’d teased her when she made dinner reservations to celebrate their 4 month wedding anniversary.

“I dinna think four months is any more symbolic than 4 weeks,” Jamie quipped, “but I’ll eat cake with ye all the same.”

Four hours later, he entered surgery under the care of two men she respected and trusted—she could ask for no better—yet Claire felt desperate and agitated, her hope and faith a mere whisper in her mind.

24 hours after that, her world began to unwind.

***

It seemed he couldn’t avoid a complication. Infection, a punctured lung, burst spleen…

“It will all heal, Claire.”

Joe’s mantra played over and over in her mind. She prayed it, whispered it in the dark corners of the doctor’s lounge where she reviewed his labs and tests.

On paper, Jamie’s body was slowly mending, his vitals showing steady improvement, but Claire was restless as the days passed. And then, finally, his eye lids fluttered, and Claire felt a breath shudder against her ribs in relief. She smacked the call button to the nurses' station before her hands were on him, gently tracing the contours of his cheek.

“Jamie?” She sobbed. His face creased in the effort to flutter his lids again, his mouth pulling into a full Scottish grimace. “Aye,” he rasped. “God, I’m thirsty.”

Tears streamed down Claire’s face as she pushed his curls back from his brow. An impatient Scottish sound emitted from him, and she chuckled as she picked up her own cup of ice chips.

“Here then…small spoonfuls…” a smile broke across her face, as she saw his tongue move distastefully along his lip. With his lips less parched, he turned his eyes to her, his expression soft, confused, and wondrous.

“You were in a car accident, Jamie,” Claire explained. “You’ve been unconscious for three days.” The crease between his brows deepened as she spoke. When she swept her fingers along his jaw, he gasped and Claire jerked her hand away, startled. Claire watched as words crept to the edge of his lips, nearly spilling from his mouth before his teeth stopped them, a storm of emotions crossing his face in silence.

“Do you remember anything about the accident?”

“Just…light. And then pain.” He grimaced again before he pushed her spoon and ice chips away.

“And how’s your pain now?”

“I’ll bide. Can I see my sister and my Da? They must be driving ye—”

“What?” Claire whispered. She cursed her glass face as her lip trembled and Jamie’s expression turned from sleepy to alarmed. “Och, It’s no that I mind ye—”

“Did—” Claire felt her tongue was too large for her mouth as she stared back at him. “Did you just ask for your father, Jamie?”

“I did, and I’d appreciate ye not making me feel odd for it,” Jamie grumbled, his mood quickly becoming more agitated.

Claire’s face crumpled as she processed Jamie’s words, and then his painful cringe. “Ack, my head…”

“Mr. Fraser! I’m so glad to see you awake,” Joe greeted from the door, his face beaming. “It’s been hard to keep Claire away from you.”

A blush crept up Jamie’s cheeks that made Claire’s blood run cold.

“I can tell the lass has been attentive, but…”

“Lass?” Joe deadpanned, his eyes cutting to Claire as realization washed over her.

“Jamie,” Joe asked quietly, approaching the bed now and motioning for Claire to step back. The motion was unnecessary. Claire was already off the bed, holding her arms against her body. “You don’t recognize Claire?”

“Nay, but I fear I should,” Jamie croaked, his body trembling as his eyes locked on Claire. Joe nodded and reached into the hospital nightstand. He held in front of Jamie a simple platinum band and placed it into his good hand.

“Your left hand surprisingly was unharmed. We removed this from you to keep it safe.”

“It’s mine?” Jamie asked softly.

“Yes,” Joe answered. “It’s your wedding band. Claire’s your wife.”

***

Claire ‘s time as a doctor exposed her to many emotional outcries from patients, but she was not prepared for Jamie’s rejection. Upon hearing Joe’s words, Jamie’s eyes locked upon her and immediately began measuring. She felt naked before his gaze as his eyes scanned her from the tips of toes to the ends of her curls, and then…doubt. Doubt was all she could see beaming from his eyes and the weight of it crushed her.

Jamie’s doubt morphed into trembling sobs as Joe gently explained it was actually 2017, not 2015, but that this type of lapse was very common after head trauma. Claire also knew the reassuring language, but could not focus just then on reassurances. When her phone pinged, she stood up suddenly, drawing both men’s eyes to her.

“Jenny’s in the waiting room. I’ll bring her in.” Claire turned to leave, a murmured “Thank Christ” reaching her ears before she started toward her sister-in-law.

Jenny’s face paled when she saw Claire’s face.

“He’s all right,” Claire reassured, squeezing her hands.

“I’d never know that by the look of ye,” Jenny murmured. “How is he, really?”

“He has some….memory loss,” Claire muttered. “He doesn’t remember me, but…”

“He’s scrambled his heid that bad—”

“Jenny,” Claire whispered. “He’s asking about your father.”

Jenny placed a hand on Claire’s shoulder and grasped it tight, her other hand covering her mouth. “Oh, Claire. Oh, God.”

***

Claire sat on the tile outside her husband’s hospital room. He’d asked to speak with Jenny alone, so here she kept her vigil. She tucked her trembling knees to her forehead and leaned her aching chest against her thighs. It wasn’t fair, she thought. He shouldn’t have to live through this loss twice.

The first time, they lived through the loss of Brian Fraser together. This time, he would face it alone.

A shout shook her and made her teeth chatter. A keening sob sounded next, a rare sound she’d only heard once before, and Claire felt her insides liquify with the pain of it.

Murmurs echoed from the room behind her, Jenny’s soft voice crooning to him in Gaelic.

“I dinna want her!”

Claire froze. As suddenly as her tears had started earlier that afternoon, her eyes cleared as realization flooded her. He didn’t want her.

Claire sniffed and stretched her legs forwards, allowed herself to stretch over her knees. Gently, she gathered her feet beneath her and crossed the hall to the visitor’s bathroom. She splashed the tepid water across her cheeks and over her forehead before she physically shook herself before the bathroom mirror.

“Right,” Claire said to her reflection. “Food and Tea, Fraser. You have a long night ahead of you.”

He didn’t want her.

Claire scoffed to herself, righting her hair and patting her face dry. Of course, he didn’t want her.

He bloody needed her.

***

For two days, Jamie barely spoke to anyone, except the hospital staff and Jenny. Jenny’s visits involved more shouting than talking, so much so patients began closing their doors at 3PM in preparation for the incoming fight. It was impressive, even to Ian.

“This is more than his Da, Claire,” Ian spoke softly, watching Claire as she refilled his hospital water jug.

“I know it,” she replied. “He’s just…lost, I think. And frightened.”

“Jenny brought photos from your wedding today,” Ian said, and they both turned to watch the closed door of his hospital room as if it could explode at any moment.

“Well,” Claire muttered. “Silence is new, at least.”

Jamie had allowed her to be in his room during the day but stubbornly insisted each night he wanted to be alone. Claire, armed with a freshly packed weekend bag of clothes, stubbornly refused to leave the hospital and reminded him each night that she was sleeping across the hall if he changed his mind.

Tonight was no different.

“I dinna know ye, woman, and sitting there staring at me willna change it.”

Jenny had left an hour before, and Jamie had turned away from her when she reappeared in his room. Squaring up her shoulders, she eyed his back and the shivers she still saw under his hospital gown.

“I know that,” She said quietly. “But I won’t leave, Jamie. I—”

“Even if I told ye to leave me?” Jamie huffed. “Even if seeing your face just reminds me of how broken I am? That there is a life I had that’s now lost, along with—” His eyes closed as his body shook. “Did ye even know him?”

Claire watched as Jamie turned onto his back, not looking at her, but not blocking her out either.

“Yes.” Jamie didn’t respond but his head turned towards her, so she continued.

“We spent two weekends a month at Lallybroch. He transplanted a rose bush from your mother’s garden for us to take home.”

“We were living together?” Jamie asked, incredulously.

“If what Jenny said is true I only knew ye about six months…”

“Yes everyone said we rushing, but not Brian,” Claire chuckled. “Brian, however, saw our disastrous flower bed and berated you for not digging it up —”

“—Because we didn’t have a working front door—” Jamie froze and Claire’s face lit up into a knowing smile. “Christ,” Jamie whispered, as his eyes cut to hers. “How…how can I remember that but nothing else, but not…”

Claire let out a laugh, as she brushed a tear from her eye. “I’m a doctor and I can’t explain it.” She wiped at her cheek, but her smile warmed him, even from where he sat.

“Dinna cry,” Jamie murmured, not unkindly. “Christ, I remembered a door, of all things…”

“You remembered an argument,” Claire corrected. “And you’ll keep remembering. Just be patient with it.” Looking down at her hands, braced them together for courage. “Have I earned the right to stay, then?”

“I didna mean to be unkind, Claire,” Jamie muttered. “Aye. I’d like ye to stay.”

Jamie fell silent and turned on his side. Claire pulled a blanket around her shoulders as she sat back in the visitor’s chair.

“Did you like him?” He asked softly, as she dimmed the lights.

“Oh yes,” she answered. “I loved Brian very much.”

***

The next few days showed the typical signs of healing that Claire had learned to expect from her husband: stubborn and vile crankiness. If Claire joyous for her presence finally being accepted, Jamie was showing her the price she’d pay for it.

“Is there nothing in this hospital but weak broth and jello?” Jamie grumbled. “I canna even get full off this piss.”

“You can’t get full because you keep throwing up breakfast,” Claire muttered as her hands opened the seven cracker packets he insisted on for his weak broth.

“Ye try to keep down hospital eggs that are soppier than a bog.”

Claire rolled her eyes but pushed the bowl in front of him. His mood didn’t improve either as the day went on. His bones ached, his skin itched, and he just about bowled over a nurse who insisted he uses the walker to traverse from the bed to the bathroom.

When the sun settled, Claire thought his mood may have improved when he asked her to play cards. Until he asked to play Crazy Eights.

“No.” Claire deadpanned.

“What? Why?”

“Because every time we play Crazy Eights I’m double fisting 40 cards while you have 5,” Claire answered. “How about Rummy?”

“Bah, that’s a terrible—No!” Jamie sat up in bed, trying to make his body as menacing as he could to the nurse walking in with his dinner tray. Broth again, this time with apple sauce.

“Ye can take that brackish water right back to your prison kitchen and get me some proper bread and meat!”Jamie yelled. The nurse, a waif-like creature called Mary, startled at his tone, her jaw flapping as she looked between Jamie and Claire.

“You can leave it, Mary, thank you,” Claire responded.

“Ye will NOT leave it, and I’ll thank ye to no’ contradict me,” Jamie growled at Claire. Claire watched as Mary escaped, closing their hospital room door behind her. Claire grabbed the tray and began opening his crackers. “Jamie, I know it’s been a hard day but—”

As Claire moved the wheeling tray over his lap Jamie forcibly slapped it away, spilling the contents onto Claire and the floor.

“What the hell, Jamie!” Claire hissed, as she pulled hot steaming shirt away from her skin. “You could have burned me!”

“I’m tired of no one considering what I want, damn it! If I’m ever getting out of this hospital I need real food, not this processed bairn food fit for invalids!” Jamie shouted.

“All I’ve done is listen to you, damn it!” Claire yelled back. “Ever since you nearly killed yourself I’ve done nothing but try to keep you alive, despite you screaming at me!”

“I didna ask ye to, did I? I told ye to leave me, no? And I canna see why ye bothered to save my life if it’s only to starve me to death—unless ye enjoy watching it!”

This was altogether too much.

“Bloody ingrate!”

“Shrew!”

“You fucking bastard!!” Claire bellowed at him as she slammed his hospital door behind her.

Claire turned to see the hospital staff, and a stunned Ian and Jenny looking back at her.

“Feeling better, is he?” Jenny asked, a smirk lighting her face.

Claire took a breath. “Why, yes actually. He is.”

***

Later that evening, Claire awoke in the visitor chair when a soft hissing noise penetrated her sleep.

“Claire,” Jamie whispered again. “Are ye awake?”

“I am now…” Claire murmured, blinking several times into the darkness. “Are you all right? Are you in pain?”

“Nah. Will ye come here?”

Claire stood and wobbled toward his hospital bed, taking a seat on the edge of his mattress. When he moved over to make room for her, she lifted her legs onto the bed and turned on her side to look at him. “Whatisiit,” she murmured into his pillow.

“I dreamt of ye.”

“Oh. What of?”

“Well, to start…” Jamie muttered. “After Jenny and Ian left, I remembered…something. Another time ye called me a…erm, fucking bastard.”

If Claire was grateful for the darkness just then, but couldn’t help the chuckle that escaped her. “Oooh. Is that so?”

“Mmhmm. I believe…if I remember it right, I’d accused ye of flirting with some lad who got handsy with ye…”

“We were at a nightclub for Geillis’s birthday, against our will, mind you,” Claire murmured. “But you were pretty tipsy…”

“As were you, I think…”

“Uh-huh. But you got…angry.” Claire paused. “I think the term you said was ‘rut.’ If I planned to ‘rut’ with the lad, and if so you’d take yourself home.”

“Ah.” To his credit, he bowed his head, quite similarly to how he had two years ago. “So ye put me in my place, then.”

“Too right, I did.”

“But I went after ye?” Jamie whispered back, and Claire gasped as she felt his hand grip hers for the first time in a week.

“You did.”

He nodded, and brought her hand up to his lips, placing a soft kiss against her palm. “I think I dreamt what came next. My groveling…and my cherishing of ye. I feel like a right ass for making ye call me that again, but…”

“But what?” Claire slid closer so she could feel the heat coming from his chest.

“But, I’d like verra much to kiss you, if you’ll allow it.”

Claire grinned and felt her heart do a summersault.

“I’ll allow it,” she whispered and pressed her lips to his in the dark.

#one quote one shot #laythornmuse #outlander fanfiction #LTM Distopia

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rhymesswith · 5 years ago

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WEBCOMIC rec list

Anyway I’m trying to get back into webcomics because it’s basically the most amazing storytelling medium. So while I’m rereading my old favourites and hunting for new ones I thought I’d compile a list of my personal favourites old and new! I have a pretty formulaic taste I guess, give me a) a ragtag group of protags with differences to overcome, b) a rich and unusual setting with lots of world-building/lore c) some kind of magical system d) topped off with glorious art, and I am signed the heck up. So most of these fill those criteria, they’re all free online and many are available in print so enjoy!

1) Stand Still. Stay Silent. by @hummingfluff. Ongoing. Updates multiple pages a week. Post-apocalyptic/horror/fantasy.

My current obsession. Set in a post-civilization where most of humanity (and animals) have been wiped out by a super contagious virus which corrupts the body and soul, turning the victims into nightmarish bestial “trolls”. The story takes place in what’s left of the “known world” which is centred in Iceland. It’s heavily based on the lore of the region, so even though it’s set in the future, the story is woven beautifully with traditional motifs. I’m obsessed with the style and formatting, the chapters are interspaced with information pages for maximum world building. Also - the protagonists are from different nordic countries all speaking their own languages, so communication is a re-occurring point that the author uses in a way that I find so interesting.

2) The Archipelago by @thesilvertophat - complete. Gen Fantasy/save-the-world adventure epic.

My end-all-be-all first webcomic love. This comic is a delicious fantasy/sci-fi/distopia milkshake with a thick found-family ripple. Whats not to like; You have an enduring female lead with a high-stakes end-goal, a vibrant world with original lore, an array of complex villains with satisfying motives, an extensive supporting cast all of whom are interesting and fleshed out and bring their own thing to the table. You have multiple magic systems, demons, godlike myths come to life, humanoid races, dragons, pirates, prophecies, all in one place! I was lucky enough to read it as it updated and now it’s complete and very bingeable! There’s also at least one spin-off comic about a supporting character set in the same world. The art in this comic develops very drastically over the (many) chapters, which I think is super neat to be able to watch as the artist grew into their style!

Here are a non-spoilery sample to give you a taste of what the comic is like;

3) Ava’s Demon by @tinypaint. Ongoing, updates...semi-weekly...? I believe? Fantasy/Sci-fi/dystopia

You’ve probably already heard of this one. Guys the art is just...out of this world. Every single panel is just basically a masterpiece. A little more sci-fi leaning I think? But so different than anything I’ve seen before. Gods and monsters and dystopian governments ruling the galaxy. A bunch of misfits that want nothing to do with each other being forced to aid mysterious godlike warrior entities with questionable morals overthrow the tyrannical AI government. The formatting is SO neat with animations and music between regular comic pages, truly using the digital medium to it’s absolute fullest.

4) Lore Olympus - Ongoing, updates weekly. Fantasy/Mythological/Romance.

Another popular one - for good reason. An interpretation of the greek pantheon myths focusing on the blossoming romance between Hades and Persephone. The ART OF IT ALL. My god this is a beautiful comic. Olympus resembles modern times while the mortal realm is still classic greek which makes for such an interesting juxtaposition. In addition to top-notch art and unique style the characterizations are just so good, and the dynamics between them all them are so dang enjoyable to read.

I mean just

look

how pretty..........

5) The Glass Scientists by @arythusa - ongoing, updates weekly. Historical/magical realism/sci-fi

An interpretation of the Dr Jekyll and Mister Hyde story with all sorts of other things thrown together. Following Dr Henry Jekyll as he struggles to keep his mad scientist club afloat in an alternate 1800s London where mad science is shunned and monsters are commonplace but ostracized. Jekyll basically adopts blossoming young scientists like stray kittens and coaches them how to live in presentable society, all while struggling to keep a grip on his own unhinged demons. The ensemble cast has lots of female scientists, characters of colour, queer characters, high-strung victorian dandies, werewolves - everything you could ever want basically. It’s fun and light-hearted but with little moments of just cutting angst.

6) Never Satisfied by @ohcorny - Ongoing, updates a couple times a week. Gen Fantasy.

I thought this was just going to a fun, cute story about a group of magicians apprentices having adventures, and while it is indeed a fun, cute story about a group of magicians apprentices having adventures, it is also DEVASTATING.

(NB protagonist and cast full of LGBT+ characters and romances.)

7) Electric Bones by @hazeldrop - ongoing, updates irregularly but pretty frequently. sci-fi.

This one’s still pretty new but the author’s other comic was great (ARH doesn’t really fit in here genre-wise but also worth checking out!) so I trust this one will be too. So far it has fantastic space aesthetics and sci-fi vibes, a brooding protag in a turtleneck and snarky robots. The art is honestly such goals and I can’t wait to see where it’s going.

8) FantomeStein by @thedrawingduke - ongoing Historical sci-fi / horror

Phantom of the opera meets...Frankenstein?? something I never knew I needed in my life. The character design is everything and I too, am in love with Christine Daae. And Raoul. And Erik. Is it too much to ask they all live happy family together?

(some familiarity with both texts is helpful for maximum enjoyment)

9) The Meek @meekcomic - ongoing, updates erratically. Gen adventure/fantasy.

I was reading this way back and when it went on hiatus I assumed we’d never get to see more. But it’s back! It still appears to update in fits and bursts but the story is as good as I remember so I’m going to hang around. Following three separate protagonists all living at the border of two countries whose tentative peace has just failed, and they’re about to fall back into the bloody war that’s gripped them for generations.

10) Mare Internum by the same author (warning! for suicide on the first page and childhood sexual abuse later on) Complete. Sci-fi/ psychological/ horror.

Details an incident on the surface of Mars when a departing scientist and his replacement get caught in a rock-fall, trapping them deep under the planet’s surface.

11) Vainglorious by @kellysketches - ongoing, updates twice a week. Gen adventure/fantasy.

It’s a webcomic abut DRAGONS, need I say more? A young upstart dragon’s bid for the throne goes terribly wrong and he is cast out into a human body to live in human society until he can find a way to reverse the transformation. If he can avoid the dragon hunters for long enough to do so. Really cute characters and art 10/10 delightful.

12) Tiger, Tiger by @leppu - ongoing, updates a few times a week. Historical fantasy / adventure.

The aspiring daughter of a noble family runs off to pursue her marine biologist dreams. The plot is still building but we’ve got delightful swashbuckling vibes, an intriguing cult of the sea religion, sea monsters that are more than they seem, canon queer characters, and gorgeous art.

* * *

And lastly an honourable mention to La Macchina Bellica by @dechanique, which has been discontinued and taken off the web much to my eternal devastation. The author has hinted that they might one day revisit and revamp the story and because of that shred of hope I will hold out and keep looking out for it for the rest of my life. Because it was such a fun comic!! Steam-punky fantasy world with magic users and angsty war veterans and political intrigue. Great cast full of LGBT+ characters and characters struggling with mental illness, I honestly love the characters so much to this day and if it ever comes back I will be over the moon.

Anyway that’s it for now if you know of any webcomics similar to these that I should check out please let me know! Always hungry for more!

(All images belong to the respective artists and if you don’t want me using any of these images please let me know and I’ll take them down! I just hate that most rec lists don’t have pictures because the art is what it’s all about baby!)

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paintalyx · 6 years ago

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90 writing prompts by paintalyx

have some prompts i came up with in my spare time, feel free to use them if you want (props to those who catch all the song references here)

Just Breathe

Held Breaths

Torn Umbrella

He was the sun

Her ugly plushie

Black Matter

Grey Area

The Sun and Death

Why keep counting?

Mad Hatter

Cheshire Cat

Queen of Hearts

Ace of Spades

Hypocritical

Bittersweet

Muddy Thoughts

Crescendo into chaos

Morendo (italian for “dying”, also indicates a decrease in volume or tempo, but often affects both; to make the sound slowly die away)

The Wheel of Fortune (tarot)

Ashes of a phoenix

Choke yourself to sleep

And in the end, I’d do it all again

Old scars on the future hearts

But my heart really wants to cry

Sweater Weather

Hole in my soul

All of our flaws

Picture-perfect mutilation

Colourful mind

Stars that faded away

Just enough time

Glad you came

Where butterflies never die

Now the devil won’t leave me alone

Bright to black with no hesitation

Courtesy Call

Struck by you

Drugs and Candy

Hate your love, but love how you feel

Hope of Morning

Yesterday’s utopia is the distopia of today

The hummingbird on your shoulder (alt. The mockingbird on your shoulder)

Jester, not a fool

Cinderella’s cracked glass slipper

Bandaged Hands

No Handlebars

Beneath pale light of the moon

Stella, th morning star

Lemon and mint

Forget-me-nots

Camisado (a surprise attack occurring at night or at daybreak, when the enemy are supposed to be asleep)

Reconnaissance (military observation of a region to locate an enemy or ascertain strategic features)

Blitzkrieg

Crossfire

Biohazard

Ground Zero

Weightless

Say you’re sorry, still

Resonance

I’ve got a heart that gets on everybody’s nerves

Misery loves company

The last rose of summer

Waste of a lovely night

Blood in the water

A kiss with a fist is better than none

Like a lazy ocean hugs the shore

We don’t have to dance

Novocaine

When beginning met the end, they created infinity

Neon Bandainds

Blue Neck

Porcelain Face

Cardboard Mask

Rather be blind

Untravelled Road

Master of none

Worn edges of a canvas

Where sky kissed the sea

Discolouration

Day and Night (either literally or like the flower)

Sticky notes

Twenty words, or less

Snake around her neck

I didn’t laugh

Thistle and Weeds

Cut Strings

Hot Asphalt

Throw a brick

A little story in blue

B negative

#writeblr #writing prompts #writing #random notes #my stuff #credit not necessary #though it would be cool if you gave it

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bartonsedai · 6 years ago

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The Fantasy of Our Childhood

A discussion of how well the fantasy of our childhood has held up and how the new adaptations are treating them.

Panelists: Will Kenyon, John G. Hartness, Mark McCray, JD Jordan, David B. Coe

Rebooting of works How genres move, theory of trends emerging in cycles Fantasy with hard economic times, sci-fi end of hard economic times, as things get more hopeful the fiction gets more realistic. Utopia when times are bad....distopia when times good. Proof can be found for any theory. Not as accurate now due to slow rate of publishing More networks, larger variety, but using those trends leads to higher success Also increasing reboots because it's proven success Does licensing factor into reboots Fantastic 4 did this, putting out content before losing the rights to adapt it So was the Garfield Spiderman Specific, individual cases, not overall trends Pieces of fiction will pop up to fill voids. LotR -> HP -> GoT -> WoT Hard to speak to trends as these are very new examples. Also, trends tied to being something new, and to make money. Trends in books different from trends in TV. If one follows social status, and the other follows the first, then that second will be skewed off trend. The resurgence of media from our childhoods (gen X and millennial) has to do in part with us becoming adults and being given control and making decisions. Digression to how DVD box sets and dvr led to serialization of shows as opposed to monster of the week Now, with variety of networks, there is flexibility to reboot and make it edgier. Rebooting children's content for an adult audience? Role of technology in reboots? It's impossible to reboot anything without changing it. Besides just being boring, it's no longer relevant and very possibly is offensive. Nostalgia leading to content as not actually a reboot (Stranger Things) Role of nostalgia in the wot adaptation? Some level of it for earlier fans, but an adaptation does not feel the same as a reboot, so the feelings aren’t quite the same. Reboots fund new things. Whether for TV or books, rebooting something that as successful and you know will be successful brings in money that allows the network/publisher to take risky first-time content.

#JordanCon #JCon2019

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winebleeds-a · 7 years ago

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REALLY LONG CHARACTER SURVEY.

RULES. repost, don’t reblog, tag 10, good luck! TAGGED. nobody. stolen from @justpawns TAGGING. whoever.

BASICS.

FULL NAME : elizabeth marie spencer / elisheva bat martha NICKNAME : liz AGE : 25 BIRTHDAY : june 25th LANGUAGE / S : english, french, spanish, some german SEXUAL ORIENTATION : bisexual. ROMANTIC ORIENTATION : grey romantic RELATIONSHIP STATUS : single, though verse dependent CLASS : middle HOME TOWN / AREA : shenandoah in virginia CURRENT HOME : nyc (though this is verse dependent) PROFESSION : associate information systems officer for the statistic division of the united nations (it specialist for any company within verse dependent city)

PHYSICAL.

HAIR : near platinum blonde with golden highlights. normally, the length of her hair is just past her collarbone, she does wear hair extensions for fancier up-does or being able to flip her hair for high ponytails. she wears a lot of buns for work, then messier buns on lazy weekends. naturally, her hair is a lighter brown. EYES : light brown, sometimes appearing honeyed. FACE : tbh i am the worst at describing face shapes. but hers appears a little long (or ig oval?) with somewhat prominent cheekbones that are more noticeable with contour. LIPS : pink & thin. her bottom lip is much fuller than her top. sometimes, the edges of her top lip disappears at certain expression. she curls her lips into her mouth a lot, where you can’t see them. she applies lipstick (business, formal, seduction) & lipgloss (casaul lipcare). COMPLEXION : pale, but not overally pale (i sound like i’m writing my immortal here haha). is smooth but naturally dry. BLEMISHES : while h.alston does have a beauty mark on her cheek, liz would not have one. her nose is prone to blackheads when she skips facial care. she has a birthmark under her right shoulderblade that appears like a spotty star. SCARS : a medium scar at the left side of her head from the time TATTOOS : none, though can be different base on private verses HEIGHT : 5′2″. WEIGHT : 105 lbs, though she can fluctuate from 99 to 110. it very fickle base on her stress levels. BUILD : at average, she’s barely a healthy weight. the higher the stress the lower the weight. she’s very petite. FEATURES : she has a sharpness about her that she uses to cut at her advantage. ALLERGIES : n / a. USUAL HAIR STYLE : it’s a different style everyday. thought mentioned in the hair section, her usually style are buns, either more formal or messier with loose ends. USUAL EXPRESSION : deadpan. while she tries to make herself hard to read, there’s either constant irritation or a hint of mischief. USUAL CLOTHING : i’m linking her fashion board because it’s so vast & beyond my capabilities.

PSYCHOLOGY.

FEAR / S : closed spaces, lost of control ASPIRATION / S : success. power. if i have to sum them up. but also protect who she consider underdogs (re: her siblings). POSITIVE TRAITS : loyal, level-headed, cautious, trustworthy. NEGATIVE TRAITS : selfish MBTI : estj-a

Extraverted 60% 40% Introverted Intuitive 32% 68% Observant Thinking 72% 28% Feeling Judging 88% 12% Prospecting Assertive 58% 42% Turbulent

ZODIAC : cancer. TEMPEREMENT : melancholic. ANIMALS : she relates to horses, but she acts like a lizard cat. FAITH : athiest. GHOSTS ? : no. AFTERLIFE ? : no. REINCARNATION ? : she’s top tier what do you mean she doesn’t care ALIENS ? : no. she’ll pull out mathematical equations as to why, even if they exist, it’s impossible to know. :/ EDUCATION LEVEL : master. (for au’s with her father dead, she will get a phd to become a professor in his honor, since he always wanted her to be a teacher).

FAMILY.

FATHER : robert spencer : superintendent of rockingbridge county’s schools. liz’s role model, though he’s even able to hide just how cold he can be to people. liz is also clearly his favorite kid. while he appears to have a big heart (re : free ice cream to a grade when he visits the elementary schools when he was a principal), he’s pretty deadpan otherwise & does certain deeds for status. especially to his wife, who he hardly talks to. MOTHER : martha spencer : vice principal of middle school. fairly stern like, all the time, but does so in care. while her & liz have more in common personality wise, this often clashes & the two don’t get along well. robert’s favoritism doesn’t help either, though she was already having favoritism over raleigh. early on, she would lash out at liz if she was mad at robert (who was often ignoring her), but changed that as liz grew older. SIBLINGS : raleigh spencer (older brother) : he’s a doctor settled in nyc, living kinda close to liz. but they look & act complete opposite. he gets along with everyone, though he’s probably too trusting at times. does a lot of volunteer work, bikes, & goes to cons on his free time. hasn’t liz that (of course) he actually makes more money than liz, since they always had a mini rivalry (enforced by their parents). as said, they use to not get along, but now are pretty close. madeline ‘maddie’ spencer (younger sister) : currently a music major at jmu. she was forced to go to college by her parents (and liz, though she was more like ‘try it, & if it’s not for you then drop out’ sorta talk). while she likes college so far, she feels it’s because it’s a way to get away from her parents’ increase fights (and regrets leaving raphine, with the last spencer’s departure bring the fights to their apex) & her high school best friend is super supportive. while her goal is to be a rockstar, she’ll end up doubling major in music & education & become an elementary music teacher (and be the best at it). she also keeps telling liz she’s going to live with her at nyc because maddie looks up to liz. after all, with feeling like the outcast child for her parents, maddie jokes that liz raised her (to the point liz is ‘mom’ in maddie’s phone). EXTENDED FAMILY : more than my fingers & toes. like, on her dad’s side, robert had five siblings (four are still living), with one of them having seven kids; the other, including the deceased raleigh, has at least one child. heck, even liz’s ex married into the family. then, her mom’s side has a few relatives in nova (near dc) & boston. martha has three siblings: two in nova & one in boston with some cousins. like i said, it’s huge. NAME MEANING / S : ‘oath of god’ HISTORICAL CONNECTION ? : it’s her grandmother’s name, & her middle name is her grandmother’s middle name as well. in jewish tradition, its common to name offspring after dead relatives for their honor, & grandmother elizabeth died while martha was pregnant with liz, so the name felt befitting / that’s what robert wanted anyways. but elisheva is the historical name of aaron’s wife from the torah.

FAVOURITES.

HOLIDAY : she doesn’t have a favorite holiday, but her least favorite is christmas MONTH : june. SEASON : summer. PLACE : a horse trail, either in the mountains or on a beach WEATHER : a summer sunrise. SOUND : brewing coffee. SCENT / S : coffee. wine. clean linens. TASTE / S : coffee. wine. apples. chocolate. FEEL / S : silk. ANIMAL / S : horse NUMBER : 3 COLOUR : navy.

EXTRA.

TALENTS : math stuff. coding. BAD AT : art. literacy. TURN ONS : flustering partner. praising. glasses. TURN OFFS : domination over her. aggression. HOBBIES : equestrian. reading. cooking. overworking.

FC INFO.

MAIN FC / S : ha.lston sage ALT FC / S : none, but ca.rlson y.oung is her bodyclaim OLDER FC / S : na. YOUNGER FC / S : na. VOICE CLAIM / S : emma stone

MUN QUESTIONS. Q1 : if you could write your character your way in their own movie , what would it be called , what style would it be filmed in , and what would it be about ? A1 : well, ironically, the movie would not be about them. liz is a side character. like, her main thing is being the wife of the main character in a distopia thingy (remember destiny?). however, if being the main in a movie, it would either be a romcom or a teenage drama. maybe a star wars spin off if you count the verse with sophie & charlie (and, then, eliza is the main character duh).

Q2 : what would their soundtrack / score sound like ? A2 : pop folk music... does mumford & sons count?

Q3 : why did you start writing this character ? A3 : as a hetalia oc because i was having a bad time writing a canon character. and nobody was making a virginia & it’s my homestate so... yeah. it’s embarrassing.

Q4 : what first attracted you to this character ? A4: her crazy antic is fun to write. she’s so different from me that it helps getting into mindsets of characters i don’t relate to until i have something to relate to.

Q5 : describe the biggest thing you dislike about your muse. A5 : she’s so snobbish. like her interests (fashion) is beyond my expertise & it’s hard to add into writing when i can’t tell black & navy apart.

Q6 : what do you have in common with your muse ? A6 : the massive family dynamic & being an outlier of it. namely liz’s political opinion with her dad’s side of the family versus my opinions with my entire family. also, how we don’t really care about romance, though i’m a bit more open about it happen when it happens while she’s being against it.

Q7 : how does your muse feel about you ? A7 : she wouldn’t know i exist. and i would be scared of her

Q8 : what characters does your muse have interesting interactions with ? A8 : when she’s most uncomfortable, like around dogs & kids.

Q9 : what gives you inspiration to write your muse ? A9 : ta.ylor sw.ift songs. music, definitely. i have a playlist of songs to help.

Q10 : how long did this take you to complete ? Q10 : it over two days? because i get distracted & my migraine last night didn’t help. i work slow to begin with.

#this took forever #(headcanon) / ᵗʰᶦˢ ᶦˢ ʰᵒʷ ᵗᵒ ᵇᵉ ᵃ ʰᵉᵃʳᵗᵇʳᵉᵃᵏᵉʳ #but still useful

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isaacsapphire · 3 years ago

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I agree that some of the costs are costs of prohibition, and ending prohibition would possibly alleviate some costs. It would also result in endemic advertising and sales of addictive substances that are currently controlled substances. Oxy was very pure, and very available once, and it still destroyed lives even before the laws against it destroyed lives. The corporations already make every consumable and phone game as addictive as possible, don't deluded yourself into thinking they're not salivating at the prospect of selling the Good Stuff at every corner store.

People like to inject in nice places that make them feel good, like parks and playgrounds, and they drop the needle because of the hit. None of that changes with legalization. And a lot of addicts are broke and homeless because of addiction, so classy for profit injection sites (read: neo opium dens, just what your cyberpunk distopia was missing!) are going to be out of their price range once they're hooked.

I stand by my vote for marijuana legalization, but by now that's in large part because I've repeatedly seen it to be a far safer and less harmful alternative to alcohol, for both the user and everyone around them (only downsides for bystanders are secondhand smoke, the odor, and the fire danger inherent to any kind of smoking if it's smoked. Also annoying giggling).

But I'm tired of the sharps. I'm tired of "is that guy passed out or dead?" I'm tired of watching people kill themselves by inches and dancing on the knife's edge daily, or sweat and puke and shit and cry for days at best trying to kick the habit. I'm tired of knowing this is getting routine. I'm tired of watching people who won't pay the price of violence and sharps in their neighborhood and workplace and community snootely refute that awareness of the human cost is relevant to having an option @tanadrin . I'm tired of watching intelligent people think it can't happen to them @rationalists .

I'm tired of people in the class poised to profit pretend that this is a pure moral position. Be honest, say, "I want to burn people alive for profit" or "I'm so fucking stupid I'm shilling for people who want to burn me alive for profit."

Any of us can end of a gutter junkie, hoping someone would let us suck their cock for a hit. Any of us could watch our lives go up our noses, into a vein, or the lives of people we love. The line is so fucking thin, one personal tragedy poorly coped with, one car accident, a taste of the bullet with your name on it.

And the corporations are champing at the bit to light us all on fire to make a buck, they've done it again and again and again, with different substances, in different countries, and they do not care about you or anyone you love. The world runs on addiction and it has for a very long time. The US government flooded Black communities with crack. Entire nation states have destroyed each other with addictive substances before, that's how we got Hong Kong FFS. Don't shill for people who want to kill you.

I think there's like, a discussion to be had about addiction and medication and stuff but you can't kill yourself with SSRIs and they're like impossible to abuse so like. I should really just be able to buy them otc. Ditto with my trans meds

#the cyberpunk future we deserve #drugs by which i mean all drugs #sharps #class #biohazard #classism #class and addiction #addiction #addiction treatment #medical industrial complex #colonialism #gary webb #clearing the drafts

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peakwealth · 4 years ago

Text

The Year 2020

'Cos when the madman flips the switch The nuclear will go for me The lunatics have taken over the asylum

(Lyrics from The Fun Boy Three, British pop group, 1981)

* * *

The world has been in one crisis or another for so long now, it gets harder to remember when things still seemed to be in balance, or when they started to spin out of control. When did this slow agony start, the malaise that won't go away, the chaos and distopia year after year?

Or was it always like this?

I'm not thinking so much about the coronavirus epidemic, but about the other man-made disaster that kept us on edge throughout the year, the US elections.

Looking for answers, my first, intuitive stop remains the morning of September 11, 2001 when the world order was convulsed in that split second needed for an airliner to fly into the World Trade Center. It may be that our understanding of that day is still skewed by the deep symbolism of the visuals: the fire ball, the people jumping to their deaths, the towers collapsing on themselves, the mountain of smoking rubble. Images that came to define our age. But what seems certain is that the big wheel of history ground to a standstill on that day and when it started up again, it had gone into reverse. That regression has not stopped, indeed it is still gathering pace and is very much in evidence as 2020 comes to a chaotic end.

Of course, 9/11 was the outcome of forces set in motion much earlier including the Iranian revolution in 1979 when an unsmiling, bearded imam left Paris and arrived in Tehran. The world would never be the same, but we in the West did not realize it.

Donald Trump's seemingly farcical plea to Make America Great Again can be traced back to either of those events and to the American failure to make sense of them -- the end of the pax Americana, the myth of American exceptionalism, the twilight of the colonial world order that had been in the making for five hundred years. Americans closed ranks and reacted with defiant nationalism after 9 /11. Then they took their revenge to the world and declared War on Terror - just as the terrorists had intended.

Those events are still within living memory. Looking back further, historians like to point to the invention of moveable type which ushered in the information age and, with it, modernity. The first books 'rolling off' Johannes Gutenberg's press were bibles. But not for long. Since the printing press couldn't be controlled, books conveyed a profusion of radically new ideas. They brought democratization and they spread dissent. Think Martin Luther, or Copernicus, great disrupters of the sixteenth century.

But Donald Trump?

Was Trump the accidental result of reality TV, celebrity culture and internet-driven narcissism? Or did his flirtation with autocratic rule herald the necrosis of western democracies? Was Trump merely the symbol of America's irreconcilable differences, of the slow dissolution of white patriarchy or was he the inevitable outcome of late-stage capitalism, as some have suggested?

Where should we look? The Trump years have produced a cottage industry of scholarly attemtps to explain how something like this could happen, how the United States could start to degenerate like that. Where do we find the logic that would lead to this turning point in history?

Without pretending that I could add to this (lack of) understanding, I must admit that the question is compelling. It kept me busy all year, or at least until the American presidential election was finally over.

I have tried to approach the matter from a few angles.

* * *

The problem with books. (Bejar, Spain, November 2020)

* * *

Attempt A

Multiplication of the box

I remember the deep dark varnish of our first television set, an imposing piece of furniture sitting on rather slender round legs. The cardboard box it had arrived in was large enough to serve as my play house, with a door and windows, until it got rained on one day. The TV set itself started to hum when you turned it on and needed time to warm up before the picture appeared, monochrome of course. From the back you could see the glowing tubes inside and smell the dusty heat they emitted. When one of the tubes failed, the repairman had to come.

There was one channel, run by the Belgian state and broadcasting for a few hours in the evening. It seemed adequate at the time. More would have been too much. Programming was low-tech. The national weatherman stood in front of a flip chart and drew the weather map by hand: rainclouds here, sunshine there (though not so much) and low or high pressure fronts further afield, most likely over the Azores.

In fact there was another state channel but it was for the French speaking part of Belgium and thus foreign to us in Flanders. Furthermore there was a knob to switch the unit from standard definition (625 lines) to the broadcast standard in France which had 819 lines and allowed us, in theory, to capture programming from RTF, la Radio-télévision française across the border. Although we never did, I remember le général Charles de Gaulle addressing the French nation with a grandiloquent 'Françaises, Français!' followed by a theatrical pause. I used to imitate him as a child. 'Françaises, Français!'. I had never been to France.

This went on for some years until we upgraded to colour. The new set also allowed us to watch two channels from Holland. Although the programming rotated between party-political and religious organizations, everything that was Dutch looked more sophisticated. It probably was. Eventually cable TV came along and, like everyone else, we moved to twelve channels, then twenty-four, then hundreds after which the numbers became meaningless. Today the distinction between television and the internet has faded as billions of people have become broadcasters, sending and receiving videos on their phones every day.

In a matter of only two or three generations technology has increased our awareness and our exposure to reality from the very local to the infinitely global. From smudgy local newspapers to single-channel black-and-white TV to the torrent of youTube and Whatsapp. Each increment, each multiplication of channels and choices has fragmented our common understanding of what the world is like. This means not only that every problem in every corner of the world has become our problem, it also signals that reality itself has split into a billion pieces and has become complex, uncertain and unstable. We all live in our own bubble of perception, increasingly removed from the broader context that used to bring coherence to society. While some of us embrace the complexity of the 21st century, to others it translates as confusion and anxiety. It is a reality they have retreated from.

Personally, I put my last TV on the sidewalk fifteen years ago, the very set I had used to watch the unfolding history on the morning of 9/11. It was still working, someone picked it up.

* * *

Gone in 2020 but not forgotten.

* * *

Attempt B

Entertainment Forever

Long ago, when General Electric was one of America's preeminent industrial giants, it owned the Radio Corporation of America (known by the once ubiquitous acronym RCA) which in turn owned the National Broadcasting Company or NBC. America's first radio network was founded in New York City in 1926 "in the interest of the listening public" and in order to transmit, among other things, baseball scores. NBC television started in 1939 and (fuzzy) colour came in 1954. Announcing the birth of broadcast television in the USA, David Sarnoff, NBC's pioneering founder, described it as 'so important in its implications that it is bound to affect all society'.

Indeed it has.

Like Donald Trump, Roone Arledge (1931-2002) was born in Queens, New York. After a stint at NBC television he joined the rival ABC network as a sports producer in 1960. He soon started to rewrite the book on television production, putting his stamp on the world we live in. Starting at the Munich Olympic games in 1972, ABC ran a series of intimate portraits of Olympic athletes, called 'Up Close and Personal'. The words became shorthand for what sports would look like on American TV. The visual grammar shifted from being 'coverage' of events to a one-on-one experience with the viewer, a personal touch.

The formula jumped species in 1977 when Arledge became president of ABC News, one of the three commercial US networks with large news operations. The avuncular news readers of old (Walter Cronkite on CBS) gave way to a personality driven approach. Anyone remember Barbara Walters or Mike Wallace? As production values became a lot flashier, all of television became more like entertainment, including the news - just another 'show' looking for an audience and revenue.

The next milestone on the road to trash TV was 'Entertainment Tonight' (launched in 1981 and still going today, making it the longest running syndicated show on American cable TV). Shockingly and confusingly, it used a news format without being actual news. As the boundaries between news and entertainment started to blur, so did the distinction between gossip and verifiable fact. Credibility and substance faded from televison news, replaced by looks, celebrity, lifestyle, etc. Network comedy shows became major purveyors of political commentary. This cross-pollination of genres is still spreading today as journalists are being replaced by content originators, human today, most likely virtual tomorrow. In other words: commerce is still gaining ground while reality is losing traction.

When 'Big Brother' came along in 1997, so-called reality shows moved to the centre of the entertainment landscape. By that time the medium had evolved well beyond UC&P. Four-and-a-half years ago, I reflected on how reality TV had become "manipulative, sadistic and liberating - from caution, from human empathy and from rational thought. What wasn’t perhaps so crystal clear at the beginning was how trash TV would inflect politics, how it tapped into the disillusionment of a burgeoning global underclass. Barely perceptible then, the phenomenon eventually turned into rage against the political establishment and anything associated with it. The anger came from both sides of the political divide, from the rebelliousness of the Occupy movement on the left and from the fear-driven populism on the right."

Out of this fantasy world of uninhibited entertainment, celebrity and alienation stepped Donald Trump and declared he was running for the presidency of the United States. Four years of monosyllabic misrule later, he left America as damaged goods, a nation at war with itself.

Attempt C

Fact check till you drop

Watching the news on commercial TV at the local coffee shop few weeks ago, I was struck by the rough, frenzied pace of the editing. The stories were cut with an axe, as we used to say in the business. No shot lasted more than a second and the interview clips did not exceed three seconds. Far from being careful storytelling, it was pure media mash, exhausting to watch and obviously designed to keep the viewers hooked and the ratings up.

I wondered how anyone subjected to such visual bombardment could make sense of the news, complicated as it is, and not become neurotic or disoriented in one way or another? OK, I may be a little naive for it can be argued it's been like this since the invention of the cinema in 1895. Our brains have had more than a century to adapt to the stimulus of the ever moving, ever accelerating image. We've had manic TV commercials and split-second music videos for forty years, ever since MTV was launched in New York in 1981. People scroll trough their devices as fast as their thumbs will let them, consuming hundreds of images per minute.

But information programming should be different, or it used to be. News was supposed to be 'readable' as fact-based information viewers could easily de-code to figure out what was happening around them. Except that, for many, it isn't anymore.

Post-truthism didn't start with Donald Trump, but the perversion of reality took an ugly turn with him. The very words, 'truth', 'lies', have come to seem quaint, suspect, disfigured. In the early days of his presidency, armies of diligent fact checkers went to work to expose each and every presidential lie. They toiled in vain. Trump, the real estate salesman and former casino owner, lied without fear or favour, he had nothing but contempt for evidence-based reality and for those whose job it was to convey it. He scolded journalists, telling them they should be ashamed of themselves. His followers loved it. They were grateful for the steady stream of twisted thinking, incoherence and outright lies because they were in sync with their own prejudices - no, make that their own beliefs.

* * *

Disinformation and antisemitism. (Spanish pamphlet, claiming George Soros is the driving force behind Catalan separatism, displayed in the window of a local bookshop. Málaga, July 2020)

* * *

Attempt D

Put God back into the USA

"To a great many Americans, digital communication has already rendered empirical, observable reality beside the point."

Farhad Manjoo, writing in the New York Times, Oct 21, 2020.

Those Americans, it seems, believed that Donald Trump was divinely appointed to be president of the USA and to make America great again. God's will had been done and should not be thwarted by voters. Clearly, if they believed that, they believed anything. That the coronavirus was an evil plot or that COVID 19 could be stopped by injecting yourself with Lysol disinfectant or eating pods of laundry detergent. If Bill Gates was funding vaccines that would turn god-fearing dairy farmers into atheists, then George Soros was the mastermind behind it all. Or was it Warren Buffett? Communists were plotting a coup. Why not?

The mood got more unhinged and delusional as the year unfolded. Pro life, pro God, pro gun. Stop socialism. Put God back into the USA. When election day finally came, Democrats and Republicans rushed to the polls to save the country from the other side. Country hicks to one side, big-city satanists to the other. Although sanity eventually prevailed, it was touch and go. Far from repudiating Trump and holding him to account, more than seventy-four million Americans voted to let him stay in office.

In other words, although Trump and his royal court have been sidelined for now, the threat of an erratic America remains, driven by suspicion, ready to go off the rails again. The unbending fervour of fundamentalist Christians, focused on the abomination of abortion and the deviancy of LGBTQ+ rights has reached an intensity that is ever more reminiscent of Islamist extremism.

Mis and disinformation aren't new. Nor are they specific to any country. Most advertising qualifies as such. But the impaired thinking, the decline of reason and the contempt for manifest reality reached bizarre heights in 2020 and not only because Donald Trump used disinformation with such abandon. It looked more like a crisis of mental health propagated by social media. An American study found that young people were more likely to believe online conspiracy theories while only those over 65 had a secure grip on reality.

Social media drove the loss of empathy and civility, they normalized hate speech, they empowered virus deniers and antivaxxers. Finally they legitimized many Americans in their belief that the election had been ‘stolen’.

It was obvious, four years ago, that a Trump presidency would have incalculable consequences. But it was worse than almost anyone could have predicted. It wasn't about his vulgarity or his philistinism. The power vacuum created by having an idiot king in the White House made the world a more dangerous place where malevolent autocrats could do as they pleased because the West had lost whatever credibility and leverage it used to have.

The new era of impunity pushed hundreds of millions of citizens further into the arms of dictators and autocrats, plunderers and torturers around the world, from North Korea to Belarus, from Egypt to Myanmar because they knew they had a like-minded colleague in the White House. Political rivals could be poisoned and journalists jailed or disappared, it no longer mattered. Rather than restore America to greatness, Trump's monosyllabic rule brought decadence to the United States and ruin to global stability.

It still hasn't been widely grasped just how much power has shifted towards Russia and even more to China. The People's Republic is forging ahead in AI and machine learning, in aerospace, in digital currency, in quantum computing and in G6 data mobility. It is likely to give China an unassailable lead in technology and leave the West standing in the dust, complaining about totalitarianism.

The American election and the pandemic pushed almost everything else off the table in 2020, the explosion of Beirut's harbour, the Chinese clampdown in Hong Kong, quick-and-dirty wars in Ethiopia and Azerbaijan, global warming (open water near the north pole, smouldering Siberia, biblical wildfires in Australia), the popular uprisings in Minsk, Lagos, Kampala, Bangkok, etc.

Until the very end of this most difficult, gruesome year, the president of the Unted States did nothing but talk nonsense. He cared about nothing or anyone except himself.

As the cracks in American society widened and the disenchanted masses turned on each other, Donald Trump played golf and watched America burn. Already the race is on to stop him from being reelected four years from now.

* * *

Better luck next year.

#Attempt C

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megamangx · 5 years ago

Text

logans run 2 the fortnight wars

but tit had been year since logan run had stoped distopin and made world into freedom world and thing was back to normal again “this is good time for a peace” said logan run and he was with his wife

but then his friend fromt he first movie the old man was there “logan please helping me the young people are trying to kill us with the music and the dancing” the old

logan gotted his laser pistol and want to invetgate the scen

it was then he saw the young people doing fortnight dances witch gived the old people heart atacks becuse they did not understanding the young people cultures “die old people” said the zoomer and he zoomed real fast with his speed powe and dabbed on the dead old people “you died of old”

logan aimed his laser gun “its not good to kil people we should come togther and find a batter way of doing the task” said login but the zoomers just laughed and fortnight danced

“we are going to make the old distopia again becuse it was better and killed all the not young people witch is how things should be and we will be young people forever so we be ok” and they did the ok emoji

it was there then there leader had come and it WAS LOGAIN PUAL!! “i am now presidant of the world and will kill anybody over 23 because that is old people age now and will have flags with my sexy face on them” laughed logan paul.

Logan run shot at him “cant let you do that BROTHER!” said logan becuse logan paul was his younger brother

authors note-this is becuse they had different dads so that is why hes called logan paul and not logan run

“fool i will kill you foolish bro and then film self with your bode to send a meassage to the country to fear my power” said logan paul

but the ground cracked and the piller men song played IT WAS THE ALPHAS “time to die boomers” the alphas said and the zoomers cheered “yes the alphas will help us”

but the alphas stated to beat them up and kill them “oh no the young generation is trying to repace us” screamed logan paul

“you made this haplen becuse you did not wanting to come together to fix world problems but wanted dividing and now you have raep what you soe” said logan run “please save us” said logan paul

and logan run looked down and said “no” and walked away as the world burning.

the end

remember we not anyting BUT THE HUMAN RACE!

#logan paul #fanfiction #logans run #tiktok #vine #zoomers #boomers

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synchronoice · 5 years ago

Text

Melandaikan Kurva

"What if the cure for Corona Virus was trapped inside the mind of someone who can't afford an education?"

Disclaimer : Before you get butthurt, this whole story is fiction. So buckle your seatbelts, motherfucker! Because in the next paragraphs, i'm going to tell you something that i only learned a few days ago from the internet. So sit down, shut up and enjoy the experience of my 10 pm caffeine induced self hatred fueled writing extravaganza.

Gak ada satupun orang yang menduga bahwa dunia akan berubah jadi kaya gini. Dalam 3 bulan terakhir dunia perlahan berubah jadi distopia seperti dalam film-film blockbuster. Langit di penjuru dunia berubah semakin cerah seiring dengan berkurangnya polusi. Ikan-ikan mulai bermunculan semenjak kanal di Venice-Italia bersih dari pengunjung. Pegunungan Himalaya mulai bisa diliat jelas dari India untuk pertama kalinya. Disneyland perlahan kehilangan nuansa magisnya. Menara eiffel bukanlah tempat yang romantis lagi. Tembok China juga udah bukan dinding pertahanan yang aman. Ka'bah di kota suci Mekah pun kosong. Kalo kalian di Jakarta, kalian bisa liat dengan jelas gunung-gunung besar di selatan Ibu Kota. Virus corona emang ngebuat bumi jadi lebih cerah, tapi disaat yang sama merubah dunia jadi lebih gelap.

Mungkin bumi lagi nyembuhin dirinya, tapi di sisi lain, eksistensi umat manusia sedang terancam. Angka pengangguran diprediksi tertinggi semenjak The Great Depression, pertumbuhan ekonomi global menukik drastis dari tahun lalu, jalanan di kota-kota besar menjadi sepi seperti hatimu yang pernah menemaninya dikala rapuh dan dicampakkannya ketika sembuh. Resesi global, itulah yang diramalkan oleh kebanyakan Ekonom Dunia tentang apa yang akan terjadi di tahun 2020 ketika terjadi perang dagang antara US-China di tahun 2019 silam. Ramalan itu bener-bener kejadian, hanya saja penyebabnya bukanlah perang dagang maupun isu perang dunia ketiga setelah terbunuhnya petinggi militer Iran yang sempet hebot di awal tahun. Ironisnya, resesi global terjadi karena di China ada manusia sial entah gimana caranya dia bisa ketularan kelelawar atau trenggiling sakit yang terinfeksi Virus Corona dan menyebabkan pandemi global.

The beginning of 2020 has been a shitshow.

Kalo ditarik ke titik awal, semua kekacauan ini berawal dari tertangkapnya Sekretaris Jenderal De Hereen Seventeen Sunda Empire di awal taun 2020. Perlu kalian sadari, semenjak Rangga Sasana ditangkap, tatanan dunia jadi semakin chaos. Hampir semua negara di dunia sekarang terpapar virus mematikan, munculnya ancaman resesi global, terbakarnya jutaan hektar hutan Amazon, dan sederet efek domino dari pemanasan global. Mungkin ini terdengar konyol seperti pembodohan, tapi ini lebih masuk akal ketimbang menangkal corona dengan makan nasi kucing.

Oke kita balik lagi... Di Wuhan, China, sebuah pasar hewan liar ditutup karena diduga jadi sumber penyebaran wabah seiring munculnya kasus-kasus kematian akibat pneumonia yang berasal dari sana. Lalu ada seorang dokter whistleblower ngasih peringatan tentang kemungkinan adanya wabah dari virus baru ini. Bukannya didengerin, dokter ini malah ditangkep dan gak lama kemudian mati karena virus itu sendiri. Kota-kota besar di China kemudian dilockdown, tapi itu semua terlambat. Sebagian penduduk udah keburu jalan-jalan keliling dunia karena perayaan Tahun Baru China (Lunar New Year). Dan dari situlah malapetaka berskala global bermula.

Di awal pandemi, pemerintah-pemerintah dunia bertindak dengan cara berbeda, ada yang preventif dan cepet, seperti Korea Selatan, Taiwan, dan Jerman, tapi ada juga yang ndableg dan denial, seperti Amerika, Italia, dan Kekaisaran Oligarki Sunda Empire. Inggris sendiri sempet kepikiran buat nerapin Herd Immunity, tapi dibatalin gara-gara ngeliat proyeksi jumlah kematiannya sangat besar, malah sekarang PM Boris Johnson dibawa ke ICU gara-gara virus ini. Sedangkan Amerika, mirip-mirip dengan Negara +62 yang nganggep remeh virus ini, nyebarin disinformasi, bertindak rasis, dan menuduh WHO sebagai antek China. Akibatnya, orang-orang malah bingung dan jadi panik.

Di sebuah Negara Oligarki Sunda Empire, semenjak penetapan status pandemi oleh WHO, kita bisa liat banyak pernyataan dari para pejabat yang cocok banget buat dijadiin meme. Mulai dari pernyataan kalo masyarakat kita kebal corona karena sering minum susu kuda liar, sampe pernyataan yang menantang penelitian Hardvard tentang keberadaan corona di sini. Padahal, seharusnya di masa awal pandemi pihak Kekaisaran segera bikin tindakan preventif yang kongkrit untuk menangkal penyebaran virus corona. Sialnya, salah satu tindakan preventif yang dipilih adalah dengan ngebayar BuzzeRp buat menjustifikasi kebijakan absurd mereka. Seperti kebijakan nyiapin dana 72 miliar buat ngegandeng influencer untuk promosiin pariwisata di masa pandemi. Bahkan, di pulau bagian barat ada pejabat tinggi yang gegap gempita nyambut turis-turis China masuk ke daerahnya. Sialnya, paket kebijakan yang muncul malah lebih condong ke arah penyelamatan ekonomi, padahal yang sekarat manusianya. Mereka lupa bahwa untuk nyelametin ekonomi, yang seharusnya diselametin adalah orangnya dulu. Karena ekonomi masih bisa bangkit, tapi orang yang udah mati engga bisa hidup lagi. Kecuali negara ini dipimpin Tuan Orochimaru yang bisa Edo Tensei.

Alih-alih bikin langkah antisipasi kongkrit, seorang pejabat malah nyuruh kita berdoa untuk ngelawan virus corona ini. Aneh gak sih? Wabah yang seharusnya jadi urusan negara, malah minta rakyat mencegahnya dengan doa. Sementara jodoh yg seharusnya di tangan Tuhan, malah diurus negara. Seperti kebijakan absurd yang ngewajibin tes keperawanan dan kelas pranikah misalnya. Berdoa itu emang gak pernah salah, tapi kalo rakyat cuma disuruh doa dan mereka gak ngelakuin antisipasi nyata buat menahan pandemi ini, itu sama aja kaya peribahasa "Ringan sama dijinjing, berat sama dipikul. Ini pejabat kaya anying, mari kita pukul".

Saat ini kalian bisa bayangin gak perasaannya jadi Bu Sri Mulyono waktu rapat kabinet? Sebagai Bendahara Negara terbaique di dunia, dia harus merelakan duit 72 Miliar buat ngedatengin turis di tengah pandemi ketimbang ngasih dana itu buat memitigasi risiko, seperti pembelian APD atau pengadaan

Reagents PCR

buat tes masal.

Like, why am i still doing this job? How did i end up here? Why these people are so dumb?

Ketika pemerintah negara lain merilis warga negaranya yang positif corona setelah pulang dari +62, pejabat di sini malah belaga gila, dan banyak juga yang gak ada kontribusinya, persis kaya temen kerja kelompok yang gak mau bantu bikin paper dan tugasnya cuma jadi operator powerpoint. Gak jelas. Tiap diliput media, omongan mereka malah makin ngawur. Di titik ini, ucapan Sekretaris Jenderal De Hereen Seventeen, Rangga Sasono malah terdengar lebih masuk akal ketimbang mereka. Rakyat akhirnya bingung dan muncul distrust terhadap kredibilitas Kekaisaran saat ini. Di benak mereka, muncul keraguan-keraguan tentang wabah ini.

"Ini penyakitnya beneran gak sih? Masih boleh kerja gak nih? Naik Ojol masih bisa gak nih? Ah, anyink bodo amat gue berangkat dulu...".

Di saat krisis gini, kelakuan pejabat kita malah makin letoy kaya sendok plastik nasi padang, yang satu bilang A, satunya lagi ngebantah bilang B, terus dikoreksi sama Jubir C, kemudian dibantah lagi sama D. Dari semua ketidakpastian, kita tau sabda siapakah yang paling benar dan bersifat final. Dia adalah yang namanya selalu disebut di berbagai media, bergerak di belakang layar, seorang Menteri Koordinasi Segala Urusan (Menkosaurus), Yang Dipertuan Agung Lord Lutut Binsar Tailor,

First of his name, King of the Cabinet, Lord of the 34 Provinces, and Protector of the Nusanteros

. Dialah orang paling kuat di kabinet, karena dari namanya aja udah menggambarkan gabungan 2 lembaga adidaya, BIN dan SAR. Seperti BIN, kalian gak akan tau belio ada di mana. Juga seperti SAR, belio bisa tau persis kamu ada di mana.

Tidak adanya kasus positif di bulan Februari bukan berarti virus impor ini belum nyampe sini karena masih ketahan di Bea Cukai, terlebih karena kurangnya contact tracing dan akses swab test. Kamu pasti inget kalo kasus positif pertama yang tercatat adalah 2 orang di klub dansa yang melaporkan dirinya sendiri, bukan hasil dari contact tracing manapun. Setelah itu kasus-kasus baru bermunculan seperti jerawat.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Kita tau kalo jumlah kasus di +62 sebenernya jauh lebih banyak daripada yang dirilis secara resmi, termasuk misteri pasien-0 (pertama). Beberapa media meragukan keabsahan 2 orang yang ikut di klub dansa Kemank sebagai pasien pertama, karena negara lain (Singapura, Australia, Jepang) udah merilis data-data warga negaranya yang positif corona dan pernah ke +62.

Data kematian di Ibu Kota juga meningkat drastis sejak bulan Maret 2020, berapa dari mereka dikubur dengan protap corona. Banyak PDP dan ODP yang belum sempet dites, atau hasil tesnya belum keluar tapi orangnya keburu mati, sementara data resmi yang dirilis baru sedikit sekali karena keterbatasan kapasitas tes. Akhirnya, Sunda Empire masuk ke dalam top global negara dengan jumlaht tes terburuk.

Katanya data jumlah kasus emang sengaja dibikin terkesan disembunyiin, biar orang-orang gak panik. Padahal efek dari kesan nutup-nutupin jumlah kasus malah bikin sebagian warga jadi gak aware sama penyakit ini. Meski PSBB di beberapa daerah udah mulai, nyatanya masih banyak orang yang berkeliaran gak jelas, perkantoran masih buka, jalanan masih macet, bahkan tempat maksiat juga masih ada yang buka. Di titik ini, mau data ditutup-tutupi ataupun dibuka blak-blakan, orang-orang udah gak peduli, karena mereka udah males duluan. Kalo ditambah dengan sikap ngeyel masyarakat kita yang gak bakalan takut dengan penyakit kalo belum liat sendiri korbannya di lingkungan terdekat, pandemi ini hanya akan jadi bom waktu.

Sialnya, rangkaian kemahatololan ini membuat banyak tenaga medis jadi korban. Banyak dari mereka yang gugur karena kekurangan APD, dan yang lebih menjengkelkan adalah karena banyak pasien yang gak jujur sama riwayat gejalanya. Bilangnya gak kenapa-kenapa dan gak pernah kemana-mana, tapi pas diswab hasilnya positif. Kelakuannya persis kaya cowo yang bilang gak kenapa-kenapa dan diem-diem aja, tapi ninggalin kamu pas lagi sayang-sayangnya. Akhirnya sebagian Rumah Sakit di karantina karena ketularan. Beberapa keledai bebal malah sengaja berkeliaran meski udah tau dirinya positif corona dan berpotensi nularin penyakit ke khalayak umum.

Like, fuck this shit. I'll go outside and die if my time has come. But before that, i'll spread the virus all over the place.

Babak baru kemahatololan penanganan pandemi sedang dimulai, kali ini terjadi cekcok terkait wewenang antara pusat dan daerah. Beberapa warga mulai geram dengan keadaan saat itu dan gak mau ambil risiko dengan membuat

lockdown

tingkat RT/RW secara mandiri. Segala jalan ditutup, malah ada yang make pocong buat jaga portal.

Banyak pihak mulai dari SJW, dokter, sampe relawan memberanikan diri untuk bersuara supaya pemerintah ngebuka data pasien PDP dan ODP, memperbanyak test kit, melengkapi tenaga medis dengan APD, dan memperketat PSBB. Lambatnya proses pengujian karena harus lewat birokrasi berbelit dengan genome sequencing jadi faktor utama kenapa jumlah kasus masih sedikit, padahal dengan PCR test aja udah cukup. WHO sendiri udah nyuratin Kaisar Zukowi untuk naikin kapasitas tes dan netapin darurat nasional. Bahkan untuk nunjukkin seberapa seriusnya wabah ini, ada tim gabungan peneliti yang bikin 3 skenario prediksi angka kematian corona di +62. Tapi sayangnya, suara mereka terdisrupsi dengan suara BuzzeRp. Selain menghadapi kebodohan pejabat, kita juga masih harus beradu mulut dengan para BuzzeRp dan sejejeran hashtag give awaynya. BuzzeRp sial itu bakalan terus bikin propaganda ga jelas, sampe suatu saat mereka ngerasa sesek napas dan dilempar sana-sini dari RS rujukan karena penuh semua.

The saddest part? Some of the BuzzeRp are medics too.

Mereka mengglorifikasi dan meromantisasi kematian tenaga medis karena kekurangan APD. Ironis, padahal yang meninggal adalah teman sejawat seprofesinya, tapi mereka malah berusaha menutupi kegagalan Kekaisaran dalam melindungi warganya lewat narasi bahwa tenaga medis adalah pahlawan, dan mereka yang meninggal adalah bentuk pengabdian mereka sebagai garda terdepan melawan corona.

Bener banget, tenaga medis adalah pahlawan, tapi mereka bukan garda terdepan dalam penanganan wabah ini, melainkan yang terakhir. Karena kalo mereka udah gak ada, kita udah gak punya pertahanan lagi, semuanya bisa kena. Pertahanan terdepan dalam menangani pandemi adalah kebijakan pemerintah dan tindakan preventif secara kolektif yang bisa memutus mata rantai atau bahkan menghentikan penyebaran wabah. Salah satunya adalah dengan menutup pintu masuk dari warga negara asing yang terdampak langsung oleh wabah, pengecekan dan karantina di setiap pintu masuk bagi warga negara yang baru pulang dari luar negeri, serta edukasi dan penerapan PSBB yang bener. Kalo itu semua udah jalan, kita gak perlu lagi repot-repot bikin Rumah Sakit darurat dan memaksa tenaga medis buat kerja rodi.

Sesuai arahan Katak Pembina, kali ininarasi yang dibangun BuzzeRp berubah lagi. Mereka tiba-tiba jadi Mario Teguh yang menyuruh masyarakat saling bantu-membantu dan tidak menyalahkan Kekaisaran. Entah pura-pura bego apa gimana, tanpa disuruh juga orang-orang udah pada bikin donasi dimana-mana. Jumlah donasi di kisabita oncom aja udah nyampe 25 Miliar, belum termasuk influencer, artis, ataupun pengusaha kaya yang bingung ngabisin duitnya gimana. Pendaftaran relawan dimana-mana sampe penuh. Para penjait juga udah bergerak bikin #satujutamaskerchallenge dan APD buat disalurin ke RS Rujukan. Setiap lapisan masyarakat bergerak membantu sesamanya dengan cara masing-masing, kecuali politisi bejat yang memanfaatkan pandemi untuk keuntungannya sendiri. Kalo inget musim pemilu, setiap caleg dan partai sanggup bagi-bagi kaos meskipun rakyat gak ada yang minta, sekarang waktu pandemi, rakyat butuh masker aja ga ada yang mau ngasih. Kan ngentiaw namanya.

Di Jerman, seorang komedian bernama Henning Wehn pernah bilang kenapa di sana (Jerman) orang-orang gak bikin donasi. Karena menurutnya, mereka uda bayar pajak, dan donasi-donasi yang digalang oleh masyarakat adalah bukti kegagalan dari tanggung jawab pemerintah.

Ada benernya juga sih...

BuzzeRp bikin narasi supaya kita jangan mengutuk kegelapan dan jadi orang yang nyalain lilin. Entah mereka pikir kita ini babi ngepet atau gimana yang harus terus nyalain lilin. Seharusnya, sebelum kita disuruh nyalain lilin bareng-bareng, mereka harusnya mendorong pemerintah supaya bisa bikin genset supaya ruangan ini gak gelap terus, karena terangnya lilin juga ada batasnya.

Bukan cuma akhlaknya aja yang butek kaya plastik STNK, ternyata pikiran mereka juga sama. Di tengah pandemi gini, pejabat kita malah bikin rencana kebijakan tolol buat ngeremisi koruptor dan narapidana karena alasan corona. What the fuck? Padahal di Negara lain, para napi dipekerjakan buat bikin APD, sementara di sini malah dikasih kebebasan. Di awal April, sekitar 36 ribu napi udah dilepas ke alam bebas, dan gak perlu cenayang buat ngeramal apa yang bakal terjadi, sekarang bandit-bandit itu udah mulai beraksi lagi. Mungkin buat pemerintah kemunculan virus corona itu masih kurang greget. Ketika di dunia maya Netizen julid masih harus adu bacot dengan BuzzeRp, di dunia nyata masyarakat juga tetep dikasih kejutan yang gak kalah menantang, bertarung dengan bandit.

Kali ini Kekaisaran seharusnya sadar, mereka punya masalah yang ngga bisa diselesaikan pake lobi-lobi politik, gas air mata, ataupun BuzzeRp. Virus ini gak bisa ilang gitu aja setelah dikasih berjuta-juta hashtag. Menyelesaikan masalah segede ini gak bisa dengan cara kaya anak kecil yang nendangin es batu ke dalem kolong lemari es, dan berharap esnya mencair lalu menguap dengan sendirinya.

The problem won't dissapear. In this case, your people will.

Kalo dipikir-pikir, jadi Kaisar Zukowi di masa awal pandemi itu gak gampang. Belio gak punya latar belakang kedokteran, dan butuh pendapat dari orang yang dianggap tau tentang virus ini dari jajaran kabinetnya. Sialnya, orang itu ternyata hampir dipecat oleh Ikatan Dokter karena pelanggaran kode etik. Kalian tentu masih inget waktu press conference awal, Mr.

Cloudest

ini malah nyuruh warganya untuk "enjoy aja" ketimbang mengedukasi tentang bahaya dan pencegahannya. Hasilnya, gak nyampe 2 bulan, udah ada 10 ribu lebih kasus positif dan sekitar 800 orang meninggal akibat corona.

Kebijakan mulai berubah drastis sejak ada salah satu menteri yang-bilang-kalo-masyarakat-kita-kebal-corona-karena-doyan-makan-nasi-kucing dinyatakan positif Corona. Saat ini Kekaisaran Zukowi ngeluarin stimulus senilai 400 triliun buat penanganan wabah. Mulai dari sektor kesehatan, jaring pengamanan sosial, sampe perpajakan. Ini adalah salah satu berita bagus buat warga negara di tengah pandemi ini, meski sedikit tercoreng dengan ulah Stafsus Milenium yang nyuratin Kemendes

buat make jasa perusahaannya. Selain rawan konflik kepentingan karena make perusahaan milik Stafsus Milenium, potensi salah sasaran dari program Kartu Prakerja senilai 20 triliun j

uga ada. Sampe sekarang, gak ada kriteria yang jelas siapa-siapa aja yang bisa dapet kartu prakerja ini. Di fesbuk, ada seorang bocah yang pamer abis ternak akun kartu prakerja, sementara banyak orang yang kena imbas corona tapi ga bisa daftar. Malah seorang jurnalis senior ada yang nyoba nyelesein kursus online tanpa nonton videonya, cuma di

skip-skip

aja dan bisa dapet sertifikat. Seharusnya, kriteria utama untuk ngedapetin kartu prakerja adalah mereka-mereka yang internetan masih pake kartu Tri, Facebook lite, Youtube Go, dan Twitter Lite.

Di antara program itu, ada program Les

Online

senilai 1 juta yang dikerjain sama startup seperti

Ruangtunggu

, tokoijo, tutuplapak, dan lainnya. Kalo diliat-liat, konten-konten kaya gini sebenernya banyak di Youtube, dan itu gratis. Kalo salah satu imbas terbesar dari wabah ini adalah hilangnya pekerjaan, terus buat apa dikasih program prakerja dengan Les

Online

? Kerjaannya juga gak ada, mendingan duitnya langsung dikasihin ke orangnya aja.

Emang sih ada materi survival yang tersedia dari platform tersebut, seperti tutorial mancing dari pemateri milenial yang menghabiskan masa kerjanya di depan kubikel yang bisa kamu dapet senilai 800 ribuan di tokohijau. Padahal seinget gue, kalo mau mancing ya tinggal nyari cacing di kebon, cari potongan bambu, beli benang pancing dan kail, lalu lempar ke laut atau sungai. Insya Allah, selama yang dipancing bukanlah keributan, ikan yang kamu dapet udah bisa dibawa pulang untuk dimasak.

Ada juga tutorial kewirausahaan, seperti materi bikin kroket ayam senilai 400 ribu, yang kalo kroketnya udah jadi dan dijual kira-kira harganya 40 ribuan. Kalo kamu mantengin IGnya Ayu Tingting, kamu bisa dapetin ilmu yang serupa tanpa negara harus ngebayarin 400 ribu ke beberapa startup. Ketimbang duitnya lari ke pemilik bisnis unicorn, mending duitnya dipake buat pengadaan APD aja.

Bikin makaroni aja 300 ribu? Mereka gak tau apa kalo cookpad sekarang gratis?

Virus ini menunjukkan sisi tergelap dari umat manusia, keegoisan dan keserakahan. Orang-orang kaya mulai menimbun makanan, vitamin, hand satanizer, dan masker, seolah-olah bulan depan mau kiamat. Bahkan di negara adidaya macam Amerika pun orang-orang rebutan tisu toilet. Akhirnya stok di pasar perlahan menghilang, harga-harga jadi naik, dan orang lain yang terlambat beli jadi gak kebagian.

Mereka lupa, supaya gak terjadi penyebaran, orang lain juga harus sehat.

Pengusaha di sektor ini juga gak mau kalah jahat, mereka menjelma jadi firaun-firaun mini dengan menimbun hand satanizer, masker, dan APD (Alat Perlindungan Diri) lalu menjualnya dengan harga yang hampir menyundul langit. Harga masker medis yang biasanya 25 ribu se-boks (isi 50 pcs), sekarang bisa tembus 500 ribu di pasaran. Naik 20 kali lipatnya. Gue rasa orang Yahudi juga gak sejahat ini. Emang sih, manusia itu dibuat dari tanah, tapi orang-orang seperti mereka tanahnya kecampur sama tai kucing. Dan orang-orang kaya gini nantinya bisa dapet tiket masuk neraka lewat jalur undangan.

Padahal, kalo besok-besok beneran kiamat, emang duit segitu banyak buat apa?

Orang-orang yang gak mampu malah bertindak sebaliknya, mereka cenderung santuy. Kurang peduli dengan virus, hand sanitizer, masker atau apalah itu. Karena buat mereka, ada atau enggaknya virus corona, mereka tetep harus bergelut dengan kehidupan. Buat mereka, kehidupan dan kematian itu sangat tipis jaraknya.

Informasi tentang virus ini juga masih samar dan gelap kaya masa depan kamu. Kita cuma tau kalo virus ini seperti kegoblokan manusia, sangat mudah menular dan bisa menyebabkan kematian. Setiap hari, penelitian-penelitian baru bermunculan dan mengungkap tabir fakta setajam silet. Hewan seperti mantan kamu anjing, kucing, bahkan macan pun bisa kena corona. Munculnya kasus-kasus reinfeksi atau reaktivasi pasien yang udah sembuh juga bikin dunia medis bingung, sekaligus mempersempit jalan keluar paling pahit dari wabah ini melalui Herd Immunity. Karena syarat dari Herd Immunity adalah 70% populasi terinfeksi dan mereka yang sembuh bakalan kebal dengan virus ini.

Seperti Harun Masiku, Virus ini bergerak sangat cepat, yang tadinya zoonotic (menular dari hewan ke manusia), sekarang jadi human-to-human transmission (menulari dari manusia ke manusia). Tapi denger-denger ada juga yang brain-to-brain transmission, tapi yang menular bukan penyakitnya, melainkan ketololan umat yang menyebar secara terstruktur, sitematis, dan masif. Mulai dari hoax kalo virus ini bisa nyebar dari hape Xiomi, hoax kalung penangkal virus, sampe penolakan jenazah PDP/ODP dan pengusiran tenaga medis dari tempat tinggalnya.

"Emangnya antum kalo sakit yang mau rawat siapa kalo bukan mereka? Domba Hago? Kalo antum co.id siapa yg mau nguburin? Tukang kubur dari Ghana?"

*Now Playing Vicetone & Tony Igy - Astronomia*

Jalan keluar lain dari pandemi ini adalah dengan vaksin, tapi itu perlu 12-18 bulan. Apalagi dengan adanya kasus reinfeksi, ini bisa memperkecil kemungkinan salah satu cara pembuatan vaksin, yaitu dengan cara memasukkan versi virus yang udah dilemahin. Jadi bukan cuma KPK aja yang sengaja dilemahkan, virus juga ternyata dilemahkan supaya tubuh bisa membentuk antibodi. Seperti vaksin polio misalnya.

Seperti saldo rekening mahasiswa, mutasi yang sangat cepet emang sering terjadi pada makhluk yang memiliki umur pendek, sekarang aja udah ada 2 jenis strain corona virus. Hal ini jadi cukup tricky buat perusahan farmasi besar untuk bikin vaksin anti virusnya. Kalo ga salah denger, perusahan besar macam Kaspersky, Norton, dan perusahaan lokal Smadav aja gak bisa bikin antivirusnya.

Duh, tapi vaksin kan bisa bikin awtis...?

Buat kalian yang penganut sekte antivaksin, kalian sebaiknya berhenti dengan propaganda tolol kalian, dan berhenti nyebarin isu kalo vaksin bisa bikin autis berdasarkan jurnal yang belum dipeer-review. Kalo kalian masih punya utopia dunia tanpa vaksin, keadaan sekarang adalah kondisi nyata dunia cuma gara-gara gak ada satu vaksin.

It's a clusterfuck.

Penyebaran virus ini bersifat eksponensial. Tanpa adanya vaksin, penyebaran virus ini mampu berlipat ganda dalam waktu yang singkat, seperti kagebunshin no jutsu tapi versi jahat. Dalam grafik, penyebarannya membentuk kurva curam ke atas tanpa tau kapan akan menjadi landai. Seharusnya, cukup saldo ATM aja yang bentuknya kaya gini, bukan penyakit. Kalo kamu masih gak paham seberapa bahaya virus ini, coba liat grafik ini.

Kurva yang terus menjulang tingg, seperti tensi darahmu ketika tau UN dibatalin tapi udah bayar bimbel secara penuh.

Setelah dinyatakan sebagai pandemi oleh WHO, dalam sebulan virus ini mampu membunuh berkali-kali lipat. Peneliti-peneliti dunia udah banyak yang bikin model dengan berbagai skenario untuk memproyeksi berapa jumlah kasus dan kematian akibat virus ini. Hasilnya? Gak ada satupun yang membuat proyeksi dengan happy ending. Asumsi mereka akan ada 50% populasi yang terinfeksi, 20% kondisinya kritis, dan 1-3% bertemu malaikat Izrail.

Ta-tapi kan HIV dan TBC jauh lebih mematikan? Malah jumlah orang mati kelelep di aer aja jauh lebih banyak?

Betul, tingkat kematian dari HIV dan TBC lebih besar, tapi penularannya gak secepat corona dan cara-cara penanganannya udah ada. Kalo kamu pikir orang mati kelelep lebih banyak daripada orang mati gara-gara corona, coba pikir lagi, kalo mati kelelep itu kamu cuma bisa mati kalo lagi di AIR, kalo corona, kamu ga akan tau kalo kamu udah kena, bisa aja kamu lagi asik maen mobelejen di taman trus dibersinin orang lewat, dan dari situ, ada kemungkinan kamu demam dan besoknya dijemput Ghana Pallbearer.

Yaelah, ini kan cuma batuk pilek biasa. Abis kerokan juga ilang. Lagian kalo gue kena, nanti juga sembuh sendiri, gue kan masih muda. Kebanyakan yang mati kan yang udah tua dan penyakitan? Emang udah waktunya itu, yang patah tumbuh, yang hilang berganti!

Denger ya, nyet. YANG PATAH TUMBUH, YANG HILANG OTAK KAU!!! Makanya kalo punya tulang sumsum jangan diganti pipa Rucika, nanti gobloknya mengalir sampe jauh.

Pertama, anak muda juga bisa tertular dan mati. Per 14 April 2020, di Korea Selatan ada 27,32% kasus positif yang umurnya 20-29 tahun. Di Amerika, sekitar sepertiganya berumur 20-44 taun. Di Inggris, ABG umur 21 taun meninggal tanpa gejala. Kalo kamu pikir dengan kerokan penyakitnya bisa ilang, dan kamu ga bisa mati, terus ngotot berkeliaran kaya ayam kampung, mending kamu segera ke RS buat CT scan, siapa tau otakmu udah gak ada.

Kedua, meskipun kemungkinan besar kamu sembuh setelah terinfeksi, kamu masih bisa ngalamin kerusakan paru dan ginjal. Beberapa dari mereka yang sembuh malah menurun antibodinya atau bahkan gak terdeteksi.

Ketiga, kamu mungkin kebal kaya Balmond, tapi orang-orang di sekitar kamu bisa jadi selembek adonan Dalgona Coffee. Coba pikirin mereka, anak kecil di lingkungan keluargamu, temen deketmu, atau bahkan kucing kamu yang juga bisa ketularan. Kalo mereka ketularan dan kamu tau bahwa kamulah sumber penyebarannya. Rasa bersalah itu gak akan ilang sampe kamu mati.

Kalo cuma kamu doang yang kena, it's ok, tapi kalo orang tuamu yang kena, sebagai tulang punggung keluarga, mereka jadi ga bisa cari duit, dan ga ada duit itu bisa lebih bahaya daripada kena corona.

Jadi tolong... Kalo kamu bego, disimpen sendiri aja, jangan mentang-mentang kamu hidup di negara berkembang, begonya juga ikut berkembang menuju tak terbatas dan melampaui Sidratul Muntaha. Kasian orang orang lain yang terdampak dengan ketololanmu. Mungkin keberadaan orang-orang kaya gini yang jadi alesan iblis kenapa ga pernah mau sujud sama manusia.

Tau gak, berdasarkan studi, hampir 80% kasus gak punya gejala. Artinya, manusia bisa aja berkeliaran tanpa demam, batuk, atau sesek napas dan nularin penyakit mematikan ke orang lain sepanjang jalan. Kamu bisa aja keliatan sehat, tanpa tau sebenernya kamu adalah pembunuh masal.

You can now become a Hitler without his cliche moustache.

So, what now? What we have to do?

Well, i'm no epidemiologist. Tapi gue udah ngerangkum apa aja yang penting dan perlu dilakukan saat pandemi kaya gini, dan itu gue kerjain dalam semalem. Awokawkaowk... Kalo kalian bener-bener gabut selama WFH, silahkan baca petunjuk dari WHO disni.

1. Melandaikan kurva.

Jangan kamu pikir kamu bakal selamat dari virus ini karena tingkat kematiannya kurang dari 10%. Karena itu tolol, bahkan lebih tolol dari pejabat yang maksa mengesahkan RUU KUHP di tengah pandemi ini. Kalo kamu liat worldometer, setiap negara bentuk kurvanya hampir sama. Dari nol, mendatar, lalu tiba-tiba meroket setelah beberapa hari. Yang ngebedain adalah kapan kurva itu mulai mendatar lagi, bahkan menurun, karena setiap negara punya kapasitas kesehatan yang berbeda-beda. Bayangin kalo semua orang masuk rumah sakit bareng-bareng karena corona, Rumah Sakit jadi kelebihan beban, dan orang-orang ini bisa bikin jaringan Rumah Sakit ambruk. Orang-orang yang seharusnya dirawat karena penyakit lain jadi gak tertolong lagi, seperti pasien cuci darah, serangan jantung, atau stroke. Dan mereka bisa jadi collateral damage karena penuhnya kapasitas kesehatan kita. Disitulah tugas kita sebenernya, untuk melandaikan kurva.

2. Cuci tangan setiap abis megang apapun.

Hal paling penting untuk ngindarin penularan menurut WHO adalah dengan cuci tangan pake sabun dan air mengalir selama minimal 20 detik secara menyeluruh. Kalo kalian gak sempet cuci tangan, masih bisa pake hand sanitizer yang mengandung alkohol 70%. Inget ya alkohol 70%, jadi Intisari sama OT gak termasuk.

3. Jangan pegang muka, ngupil, ngucek-ngucek mata, apalagi jilat-jilat tangan.

Hal ini keliatan sepele, tapi ngejalaninnya bisa lebih susah daripada perjuangan menggagalkan RUU Omnibus Law. Mata, idung, dan mulut adalah pintu masuk utama virus, jadi stop pegang-pegang, apalagi kalo yang dipegang punya orang. Kalo megang aja gak boleh, apalagi peluk. Terutama kalo yang mau dipeluk udah punya orang lain. Cukup agama aja yang dipeluk, mantan dan pacar orang lain gak usah.

4. Pake masker kemanapun kamu pergi.

Karena banyak kasus asymptomatic yang gak kedeteksi, masker saat ini udah direkomendasiin sama WHO. Kalo gak punya masker medis, kalian bisa pake masker kain, jangan pake masker almond atau masker bengkoang, selain gak ngefek kamu juga keliatan tolol. Pake aja masker kain 2 lapis dengan bahan katun 100%, karena menurut penelitian bahan ini bisa nahan droplet sampe 70%.

5. Jangan pegang benda-benda di tempat umum.

Jangan suka iseng megang-megang barang di tempat umum yang sering disentuh orang. Kalo kamu lagi sial, bisa jadi barang itu abis dipegang orang yang positif corona. Kalo kamu kepaksa megang, pegang aja pake perantara lain, jangan make bagian telapak tangan. Seperti tombol lift, jangan dipencet pake telunjuk, pencet aja pake ujung mata kaki, atau pake kunci kamer kosan kalo kamu bawa.

6. Physical Distancing (Pembatasan Fisik).

Gue gak setuju dengan istilah Social Distancing (Pembatasan Sosial) karena kesannya interaksi sosial kita juga harus dibatasi, padahal yang perlu dibatasi cuma pertemuan fisik kita aja, itu pun hanya sejauh 1-2 meter. Lagipula di saat pandemi kaya gini, bukan cuma raga aja, jiwa-jiwa kita juga perlu makan. Dikasih makan ghibah misalnya, lewat media sosial.

Pembatasan fisik ini bener-bener wajib dilakuin dimanapun ketika kamu ke luar rumah dan ketemu siapapun orang yang bukan serumah dengan kamu. Jangan takut untuk dikira lebay dan parno, takutlah ketika kamu demam dan RS Rujukan udah ga bisa nampung lagi. Kalo kamu masih bingung, kamu bisa pake ini buat bantu jaga jarak.

7. #DiRumahAja

Kalo kamu termasuk kaum privilege yang bisa diem di rumah dengan kebutuhan utama masih terpenuhi, silahkan diem di rumah aja, gak usah sok-sokan jadi makhluk sosialis kalo kamu ke tempat umum cuma buat upload di Instastory. Jadilah orang-orang yang memutus rantai penyakit ini, sesuai kata Kaisar Zukowi. Silahkan nonton film atau serial seharian sampe kuota jebol dan perut makin buncit karena seharian gak ngapa-ngapain di kamer. Itu gak apa-apa, karena dengan gini, kamu udah ngebantu tenaga medis dengan ngurang jumlah pasien mereka di bangsal isolasi. Ini adalah saatnya kaum rebahan berjaya. Karena di saat pandemi kaya gini, diem di rumah aja udah bisa jadi pahlawan.

8. Keluar rumah hanya untuk hal-hal darurat aja.

Silahkan keluar rumah, tapi hanya untuk hal-hal penting aja, seperti ngambil duit, beli makan, atau ngambil duit di tempat makan. Pokoknya cuma untuk hal-hal yang bener-bener gak bisa ditinggalin, seperti dia yang selalu kamu jahatin meski udah ngasih segalanya buat kamu. Dan jangan lupa untuk selalu maskeran dan bawa hand sanitizer spray (cair) kemanapun. Hand sanitizer juga bisa dipake buat physical distancing.C aranya gimana? Kalo ada yang maksa deket-deket semprotin aja ke mukanya. Jangan lupa selalu mandi dan cuci baju sehabis keluar rumah, karena virus ini masih bisa bertahan di benda mati selama beberapa jam. Dan ingatlah, setiap kali kamu keluar rumah untuk hal-hal gak penting, mereka siap nungguin kamu depan rumah.

9. Kamu cuma bisa ngandalin diri kamu sendiri.

Wabah ini bukan kaya di film Contagion (2011), dimana orang-orang bisa berharap sama ilmuwan-ilmuwan ganteng dan cantik dari Amerika dan WHO buat merangin wabah dan secara ajaib bisa nemuin vaksin dalam seminggu. Ini semua tergantung sama kita, apakah kita bisa hidup bersih dan sehat, serta jaga jarak dengan orang lain sampe pandemi ini berakhir.

10. Berdoa.

Seriusan ini penting. Kalo kamu pikir doa itu ga penting karena selama ini kamu nyembah kaleng kerupuk dengan segala mahakaratnya, jarang beribadah, dan hidup kamu masih baik-baik aja, itu bukan karena kamu hebat. Melainkan kemungkinan besar karena ada orang-orang disekitar kamu yang ngedoain kamu setiap hari. Kalo kamu muslim, silahkan sholat 5 waktu dan berdoa. Kalo agama lain, silahkan menyeseuaikan dengan ajarannya masing-masing.

Bersikap paranoid dan skeptis di tengah pandemi itu jauh lebih bagus ketimbang disuguhi optimisme semu. Negara-negara yang dibilang "parno" sama BuzzeRp terbukti melandaikan kurvanya dengan lebih cepet. Taiwan, Hongkong, Korsel, Jerman, dan terutama Selandia baru adalah bukti bahwa parno itu lebih baik daripada nyuruh rakyatnya enjoy aja seolah-olah ini pilek biasa. Semakin cepet penanganannya, semakin cepet juga selesainya.

Udah banyak penelitian dan kritik baik dari dalem dan luar negeri tentang proyeksi kasus corona di Indonesia, dan hasilnya gak ada yang bagus. Kalo udah terpojok BuzzeRp bakal ngeluarin jurus andalannya untuk mempertahankan bahwa ekonomi itu lebih penting dengan nyuruh kita ngeliat kondisi Venezuela yang ekonominya terpuruk saat ini. Gak usah jauh-jauh ke Venezuela, liat aja Indonesia di taun 98, ada resesi, ekonomi ancur, GDP nyungseb, tapi di 2004 ekonomi udah bisa pulih lagi. Kenapa bisa? Karena orang-orangnya masih hidup.

Sampe saat ini, belum ada obat dan vaksin yang terbukti ampuh untuk menangani virus ini. Yang sembuh juga belum tentu kebal dan gak ada jaminan gak sakit lagi. Beberapa artikel malah nyebut virus ini bisa jadi penyakit musiman kaya flu. Kalo udah kaya gini, sampe 2021 pun belum tentu pandemi ini berakhir selama vaksinnya belum ada. Saat ini tempat ibadah sama tempat maksiat aja udah mulai tutup, kalo pintu surga dan pintu neraka aja udah sepakat tentang hal ini, berarti ini emang masalah serius. Bahkan organisasi dunia sekelas WHO aja cuma bisa nyaranin kamu untuk CUCI TANGAN dan DIEM DI RUMAH buat ngehindarin virus ini.

We're fucked.

So please, stay at home.

Tahan hasrat kamu buat keluyuran, traveling, atau sekedar nonton di bioskop. Plan kamu di 2020 silahkan direvisi secara berkala, jadi bukan skripsi aja yang kamu revisi. Kalo kamu mau keluar rumah tolong pikirin lagi, "perlu banget gak?". Kalo masih mau keluar? Inget mereka selalu ada di depan rumah kamu.

Gue akui harga yang dibayar dari Social Distancing itu cukup besar. Apalagi kalo kamu jomblo, perasaan hampa akibat Social Distancing selama berhari-hari bisa bikin pikiran jadi ngawur. Magabut secara terus-terusan juga berkontribusi menurunkan IQ sampe 30%. Kalo kaya gini terus, lama-lama IQ dengan ukuran sepatu bisa sama. Gak heran, kalo semakin magabut tingkah orang jadi semakin aneh. Pikiran jadi makin halu, berandai-andai dengan ratusan skenario tentang berbagai hal. Termasuk kalo seandainya gebetan yang kamu suka ternyata juga suka dengan kamu apa adanya, dan bisa menikah sampai tua. Atau berskenario kalo dulu lebih milih memperjuangkan dia karena menurutmu dialah sosok Siti Khadijah di Zaman Kardashian ini, dan mengingat-ngingat kembali masa kelam dimana setiap kali mau ketemuan pacarmu selalu minta dijemput di ujung gang kaya orang mau transaksi narkoba. Ada juga yang gak sengaja atau bahkan direncanakan ngescroll DM mantan atau gebetannya, dan dengan tololnya ngetik,

"Hai... Gimana sekarang? Masih suka main keong ga?" "Kok diem? Sengaja ya biar matengnya merata?" "Ada ranting, ada kayu. I'm nothing without you..." Setelah berjam-jam bolak-balik buka notif, ternyata masih 2 centang biru, chat kamu cuma dibaca doang, tapi gak dibales. Padahal di awal tadi kamu sempet ngira kalo sinyalnya lagi jelek, eh setelah dipikir-pikir ternyata kamunya yang jelek.

Lagian, gimana bisa perasaanmu masuk di hatinya, kalo mukamu aja gak masuk di akalnya?

Terus kamu mulai kepikiran, stres, dan mulai gak betah di kamar. Sesekali keluar rumah buat cari udara segar, eh gak taunya malah dibersinin orang lewat. Malemnya kamu demam, dan dibawa ke RS Rujukan buat di rontgen thoraxnya untuk screening corona. Pas hasilnya keluar ternyata bukan foto rontgen, tapi yang keluar malah foto tuker cincin dia yang kamu sayangi tapi gak bisa kamu miliki. Emang enak?

Lagian kamu juga salah, di masa Social Distancing kaya gini, cewe itu lebih suka dengan tindakan nyata. Karena kalo cuma sok-sokan perhatian, pasti di DM dia udah banyak yang kasih. Sekali-kali kasih dia kejutan. Makanya nanti kalo pandemi ini udah selesai, kamu ajak dia dinner di restoran, bawain dia sebouquet bunga, terus setrum dia pake raket nyamuk.

Social Distancing juga jangan disalahgunakan buat ghosting gebetan atau ninggalin dia pas lagi sayang-sayangnya. Make alesan klasik buat ngejauhin pacar karena mau fokus UN juga udah gak bisa, karena taun ini UN dibatalin.

Kalian jangan takut dibilang gak produktif, karena stafsus milenium juga sama. Kalo kamu merasa gak guna karena gak ngapa-ngapain seharian, coba bayangin perasaan orang tuamu? Bayangin gimana rasanya punya anak yang gak berguna.

Lagian, Ini kan pandemi, bukan ajang atau kontes produktivitas. Bisa jadi gak produktifnya kamu itu malah nyelametin ratusan nyawa lainnya. Lagipula, kalian itu disebut gak produktif karena mereka masih make standar dunia 3 bulan yang lalu, dan sekarang dunia itu udah gak ada.

Ini adalah keadaan normal yang baru, dan kamu harus mulai beradaptasi dari sekarang. Kamu masih bisa make waktu Work From Home (WFH) ini nyari ilmu-ilmu baru di medsos, karena kalo kamu nyari ilmu di lereng gunung, percuma aja, jin di sana juga lagi pada WFH. Ada banyak online course dan tutorial di Youtube, dari mulai cara masak air sampe cara jadi miliarder kaya di usia dini seperti Rafathar. Yaitu dengan memenangkan lotere kelahiran, tapi sayangnya, kamu ga bisa milih lahir dari rahim orang kaya.

Gak usah pesimis kalo tinggal di rumah aja bakal terasa berat. Kalo kamu pikir lebih dalam lagi, kehidupan selama self quarantine sebenernya mirip dengan kehidupan waktu jaman kuliah dulu. Seharian di kamer cuma browsing meme atau nonton film, sesekali keluar kamer cuma buat beli makan atau nyari cemilan. Kondisi keuangan juga sekarat kaya taun 98, bahkan kalo ke ATM, kita lebih takut keliatan saldonya dibandingnya kode PINnya.

"Terus kita kaya gini sampe kapan?"

Mungkin pertanyaan itu cuma bisa dijawab anak Indihome yang punya kemampuan buat liat masa depan. Kita, sebagai makhluk mortal pada umumnya gak ada yang tau kapan wabah ini berakhir, negara sebelah aja gak yakin kalo di akhir taun wabah ini bakalan selesai. Mereka udah bersiap dengan skenario-skenario terburuk dan perlahan merealisasikannya. Sekarang kita cuma bisa halu, seandainya pejabat-pejabat kita bergerak lebih cepet menangani wabah ini seperti mereka bikin RUU KUHP, KPK, dan Omnibus Law, mungkin keadaan sekarang gak akan kaya gini. Pejabat-pejabat kita cuma gercep kalo kondisi tersebut menyangkut kepentingan investor, terutama investor tambang dan sawit.

Kadang gue sendiri bingung, kalo dipikir-pikir kita ini udah hampir 2 bulan Work From Home. Instansi-instansi kekaisaran pada tutup, dan hampir semua PNZ kerja dari rumah. Kalopun ada yang buka, jumlah pelayanannya dibatasin dan cuma yang penting-penting aja. Dengan ditutupnya banyak instansi, dan sampe sekarang kita belum collapse, berarti ada 2 kemungkinan. Yang pertama, karena sistem pemerintahan kita saat ini udah bagus banget (semuanya serba digital, inovasi 4.0, *insert all geeky stuff*, dll), atau karena kebanyakan PNZ ga jelas dan instansi ga jelas, yang kerja atau gak kerja, juga gak ada pengaruhnya. Dan jawabannya pasti karena yang pertama dong, kan pejabat-pejabat boomer kita ngerti semua hal teknis pekerjaan dan gak gaptek. Masa iya gara-gara negara kebanyakan bayarin PNZ magabut? Gak mungkin dong, ya?

"Terus apa solusinya kalo gitu? Lu jangan cuma bisa ngoceh aja, PKI !1!1!1"

Kondisi sekarang ini ibarat mesen kentang Mcd buat take away, tapi pas nyampe rumah kita malah rebahan dulu, maenan HP, membangun peradaban, sampe akhirnya lupa dan kentangnya keburu dingin. Kentang Mcd yang udah dingin itu gak enak, mau diangetin juga ga bisa, karena rasanya malah jadi aneh. Akhirnya kita cuma bisa nikmatin seadanya aja, kentang dingin segepok, dicocol saos 1 sachet sampe abis. Saat ini kapasitas kesehatan di Sunda Empire hampir menyentuh titik puncaknya, dan itu dipercepat dengan kepergian tenaga medis yang gugur di bangsal isolasi. Untuk ngadepin pandemi ini, kita ga bisa asal comot relawan meski dia sendiri tenaga medis. Mereka harus udah terlatih ngadepin penyakit menular, dan itu jumlahnya sedikit. Makanya, yang bisa kita lakukan sekarang adalah dengan mengurangi beban tenaga medis, diem di rumah, biar semua yang sakit bisa dapet perawatan. Dan semoga, kita bisa melandaikan kurvanya.

Kekaisaran emang udah berusaha banyak buat ngelawan pandemi ini, tapi itu semua belum cukup. Dengan tipe masyarakat yang ngeyel sebelum congornya dipopor ujung senapan, penerapan PSBB juga cuma jadi pepesan kosong. Checkpoint yang dibangun cuma jadi gimmick buat lapor ke atasan dan dokumentasi di medsos, sementara orang-orang masih banyak berkeliaran tanpa masker. Jalanan juga mulai macet lagi. Seandainya aparat bisa lebih tegas dan keras seperti mereka ngelawan pendemo dan petani yang berusaha nyelametin tanahnya dari penguasa tambang, mungkin orang-orang bakalan takut buat keluar rumah. Larangan mudik juga terasa percuma, orang-orang keburu pulang kampung bahkan sebelum PSBB diterapkan. Dengan lemahnya contact tracing saat ini, mereka yang pulang kampung berpotensi jadi sumber penyebaran wabah baru di kampungnya.

Gak perlu gelar Phd Epidemiologi buat nebak hasil akhir dari pertarungan ini. Dengan gagalnya mitigasi risiko di awal pandemi, masyarakat yang bebal dan doyan ngerokok, serta terbatasnya jumlah fasilitas kesehatan, sepertinya apa yang diprediksi dalam jurnal-jurnal ilmiah itu akan terjadi. Tanpa adanya vaksin dalam waktu dekat, kemungkinan besar Herd Immunity adalah jalan keluar yang gak sengaja kita ambil. Dan ini terjadi hampir di seluruh dunia. Pemimpin-pemimpin dunia udah mulai kewalahan. Sialnya, cepet atau lambat, masyarakat terpaksa bayar harga yang sangat mahal akibat ketertutupan informasi.

Sebenernya kalo para pengutuk kegelapan mau fair, para petinggi bukannya gak mau lockdown ataupun gak mau ngelakuin rapid test ke semua orang di Nusantara, tapi karena emang terbatasnya kemampuan finansial dan logistik yang dimiliki Kekaisaran Sunda Empire. Terlebih hal yang paling ditakutin dengan adanya lockdown ketat adalah banyaknya korban kelaparan dan meningkatnya angka kriminalitas. Kekaisaran gak bisa ngasih Bantuan Langsung Tunai (BLT) secara terus-terusan, kecuali ngutang. Itupun dengan asumsi bahwa ada negara atau organisasi di dunia yang masih bisa diutangin, karena hampir seluruh dunia kena wabah yang sama.

Mungkin, inilah kenapa satu-satunya upaya yang masih bisa dilakuin adalah PSBB dengan physical distancing yang ekstra ketat. Selain itu peningkatan kapasitas PCR swab test, contact tracing, dan self quarantine buat mereka yang berstatus PDP/ODP juga harus digenjot. Jadi orang-orang masih diperbolehkan beraktivitas, tapi dibatasi dan diwajibin jaga jarak dan pake masker kapanpun dan dimanapun. Orang-orang yang kedapetan gak make masker dan gak jaga jarak wajib ditangkep dan didenda. Kalo aparat gak mampu, lepas aja satwa liar dari Ragunan atau Taman Safari di tempat umum buat ngilangin kerumunan.

Selain penganut anti vaksin, ada satu lagi jenis makhluk hidup yang dianjurkan untuk jadi tumbal penangkal corona, mereka adalah para penganut teori konspirasi. Ketimbang nangkepin aktivis macem Rafia Parta, seharusnya aparat lebih giat nangkepin penyebar disinformasi dan teori konspirasi macem Yanglek dan Jerink. Mereka ini cukup berbahaya, karena bisa mengurangi upaya preventif pemerintah dan tenaga medis di tengah pandemi ini.

Bayangin, dengan modal akun yutub sekian juta subskreber mereka bebas nyebarin konspirasi teori corona dari yang hampir masuk akal sampe dengan yang bener-bener gak masuk akal. Seperti pernyataan seorang Dokter hewan di Yutub mantannya Aril yang bilang kalo virus corona itu sebenernya gak berbahaya. Cuk, matamu. Itu sama aja kaya bilang HIV gak berbahaya karena gak ada korban yang mati cuma karena AIDS. Belum lagi interview sesat dari Yanglek yang mengada-ngada bahwa pasien yang mati belum tentu terkena corona dan bisa jadi data kematian akibat corona dibesar-besarin macam lubang void di dalem isi kepalanya itu. Atau teori konspirasi dunia tentang asal usul corona dari akun pemuja bumi datar yang makin gak masuk akal dengan komentar-komentar di videonya. Kalo emang gak percaya dengan keberadaan corona, ya silahkan, simpen sendiri, atau kalian coba ke bangsal isolasi dan nikmatin sendiri sensasi meregang nyawanya. Orang lain yang ketiban bego, mereka yang dapet duitnya. Dan yang lebih menyedihkannya lagi, kita masih harus berbagi oksigen dengan orang-orang kaya gini. Kalo para peraup adsense itu masih berkutat di sekitar Teori Konspirasi tentang Bill Gates, Elite Global, WHO, Bumi Datar, dan Iluminati, itu masih mending lah. Bisa buat bahan lucu-lucuan sebelum buka puasa. Tapi kalo nyebarin teori konspirasi bahwa Corona itu gak berbahaya demi sesuap adsense, sementara korban terus berjatuhan di bangsal Rumah Sakit, itu adalah suatu bentuk kejahatan atas kesehatan publik. Dan orang-orang kaya gini cocoknya dimasukin ke kandang Dajjal. Kalo mau nyebarin konspirasi, minimal bikin penelitian dulu. Kalo masalah sains, ya dilawan dengan sains. Gak bisa kamu lawan dengan ilmu "seandainya" atau "kira-kira", karena ini bukan nebak skor togel. Lagian mustahil juga nyuruh mereka debat teori konspirasi secara ilmiah, sementara mereka bacaannya masih "Garut Kota Iluminati", "Dialog dengan jin muslim", dan teori-teori tentang Bumi Datar.

Tapi kenapa Bill Gates di 2015 bisa tau masalah corona?

Udah nonton video TED TALKS ft. Bill Gatesnya sampe selesai?

Ga tw, aq krang suka dngerin org ngomong pke bhsa inggris. Q g ngerti. Ini kan cuma konspirasi elit global dan perusahaan farmasi raksasa yang pengen ngurangi populasi dunia sekaligus nyari untung gede?

Sebenernya ada banyak sekali teori konspirasi tentang kenapa virus ini dibuat, dari mulai usaha pelenyapan baby boomer, orang-orang lemah, dan kaum marjinal yang tinggal di gang-gang sempit berdesakan, atau virus ini sengaja dilepas oleh CCP di China untuk menaklukan dunia, sampe teori bahwa virus ini berasal dari Tower Sinyal 5G. Dan setelah dibaca-baca, semuanya sampah.

Banyak orang gampang percaya sama teori konspirasi karena dalam diri mereka terdapat perasaan ingin tau dan jiwa kritis yang nyeleneh, yang selalu menginginkan jawaban yang menyeluruh meski gak masuk akal, ditambah harapan akan adanya perasaan puas dan bangga jika suatu saat nanti teori mereka terbukti benar. Padahal, gak semua hal yang belum ada penjelasannya itu selalu berarti ada konspirasi di belakangnya. Gak usah jauh-jauh ngomongin konspirasi virus corona. Kalo lu liat foto jadul jaman SD, lu ngerti gak kenapa mayoritas rambut cowo bisa belah tengah berminyak kaya jamet kuproy gitu? Udah gitu poninya ngebentuk segitiga sama sisi kaya lambang iluminati.

Denger, tugas pemerintah sekarang ini udah berat. Tenaga medis juga udah mulai kewalahan, jadi tolong jangan ditambahin lagi dengan teori-teori tolol yang gak masuk akal. Apalagi kalo kalian berpikir bahwa manusia emang pantas menerima wabah ini, karena percaya dengan apa yang diucapin Agent Smith di film Matrix. Bahwa manusia adalah virus, penyakit bagi bumi ini. Dan pandemi yang sekarang menyerang umat manusia adalah antibodi yang dikirim bumi untuk mengeliminasinya.

Ya, kalo kalian percaya bahwa manusia adalah virus, silahkan mulai menyemprot diri anda dan sekelilingnya dengan disinfektan 2x sehari. Jangan lupa semprotnya ke mata, biar ilang virus tololnya.

Sebenernya, dengan maraknya fenomena orang-orang ngebahas teori konspirasi di internet, ini adalah salah satu indikator bahwa negara kita ini sebenernya makin makmur. Karena orang dongo aja sekarang udah bisa beli kuota buat pamer ketololan mereka di Internet. Kalo gunting di rumah masih bau bumbu indomie, mending gak usah banyak gaya. Pake belaga ngatain WHO goblok karena gak bisa ngatasin pandemi ini. Lah ngitung 3x5 aja masih pake sempoa. Dengan adanya fenomena ini, seharusnya kita protes ke Kaisar Zukowi kenapa Kartu Indonesia Pintar gak pernah sampe ke mereka.

Berakit-rakit ke hulu... Berenang-renang ke tepian... Kapan kita bisa bangkit dan maju... Kalo generasi penerusnya goblok gak karuan...

Setelah berbulan-bulan baku hantam dengan virus ini, akhirnya kita sadar tentang dua hal. Yang pertama, kita sadar bahwa kali ini kita menghadapi 2 pandemi sekaligus, yaitu Covid-19 dan kemahatololan umat. Yang kedua, kita juga harus sadar bahwa pemerintah itu gak sepenuhnya salah.

Jadi sebenernya siapa yang salah?

Yang salah? Ya Tukang Buah lah. Akuarium seharusnya diisi ikan malah diisi buah.

#+62 #corona #virus #socialdistancing #girls who lift #COVID19 #galau #quotes #rebahan

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