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troger · 4 years

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Two grandmas from the future

“Grandma, did people really not wear masks when you were a kid?”

“No, they didn't. People didn't start wearing masks until I was 33, in 2020. Reuben, your daddy, was 4 when it all started.”

Bobby wrinkles his nose at me and picks up his mask by the door.

“You mean you didn't wear a mask at ALL?!” He says, swinging his around on his finger.

“No, not ever.” I say.

“But how did you stay safe?” Bobby says, setting his mask down.

“Oh, we got sick a lot. Your daddy had the flu when he was 3. It was scary, but he pulled through. He's had his share of colds as a child.”

“That's scary. It's bad to get sick.”

I stop, and think. Is it time? Yes, it must be time. Bobby will be eight soon, and there are things he needs to know. Things it might not be safe for his father or his mother to talk about, things that are safer shared from an older mouth.

I snuggle him up on the couch and try to think of where to begin.

“Now Bobby. I'm going to tell you some things. I want to you to hold these things inside of you and don't talk about them to anyone else, you hear? Some of these ideas can be misunderstood if the wrong person hears them.”

I think he understands. I hope he understands.

“Back in 2020 there was a virus. You probably learned about it in school.”

“Covid 19.” Bobby says. He isn't smiling. “I did.”

“Yes, Covid 19. That was when everything changed.”

“Is that why you had to go to jail, Grandma?”

Now my heart sinks. He's getting ahead of me.

“No, not really.” I say.

“Daddy says you had to go to jail when he was little and he missed you a lot.”

I feel tears prick the edges of my vision, but I blink them away.

“Yes, you see, Grandma didn't like vaccines. I didn't want to vaccinate my children, but a few years after covid-19 we lost the right to choose things like that. But Grandma didn't give up. I fought for the right to keep Reuben and Rebekah free from vaccines, so I went to jail for awhile. It was hard for your daddy, he missed me a lot.”

Bobby holds my hand, and I remember another little boy, so many years ago who also sat on this couch and held my hand. And I remember his tears as the police took me away from him. I don't want to remember this.

“But vaccines are good for you, Grandma. They keep you safe. We learned about them in school.”

I sigh.

“That's what they say.” I say. “Yet, back when I was a kid, sometime people died after they were vaccinated. Sometimes people were damaged by the vaccines. And we still don't know what is in them. No one will tell us.”

I turn to look into Bobby's eyes. “People still are damaged by vaccines now. Just no one talks about it.”

Bobby scrunches his eyes up. He's trying so hard to wrap his mind around my words.

“The world was a very different place when I grew up.” I say. “We had coins, like the ones in my collection. We spent those coins as money, instead of using the chips we have today. No one wore masks and you didn't have to get vaccinated if you didn't want too. Parents could teach their kids at home if they wanted, and school wasn't year round. You could think what you wanted, no one was arrested for speaking their mind. People met in churches to sing to God.”

Bobby still looks confused. I wonder if he can even picture a world like I am describing. I wonder if he can even understand.

“Kids played together in the streets. We had birthday parties where people would come to your house and hang out. I could hug my friends whenever I wanted.” Now I am getting a bit choked up. It must be my age. I'll be 76 this January.

I swallow.

“Now, Bobby dear, don't go repeating anything I've told you. Keep it hidden in your heart, like the verses we learn over breakfast.”

“Like the bible under the planks in the shed?” He asks. I nod, yes, like the bible hidden in the shed.

Bobby slips from my side. I let him go, hearing the legos tinkle from the other room. The legos his dad collected as a kid.

I sit for awhile, thinking back. Times sure have changed. I don't think they have changed for the better, no matter what the government says. I wonder what other things will change, before my bones go into the Earth. Soon the memories of that other world, that world of freedom and breath... will be buried in my tomb with me. And only the young will remember.

If they can.

“Granny, is it true that some people refused to wear masks during the COVID-19 Pandemic?”

This was the question that my wide-eyed pre-teen granddaughter asked me one day when she visited me on her way home from school.

My granddaughter often surprised me with such questions about the past. She was a precocious child and hungry for knowledge, we had a special bond given my history in academics. Our philosophical conversations were some of the best I’d ever had even though the child was still so young - it was refreshing to appreciate the perspective of a younger generation and she had reverence for those of the older generations.

I cautiously asked her what else she had learned about that point in history and the few decades immediately preceding it. She rolled her eyes at me in annoyance.

“Granny, you’re going to tell it your own way anyway so just answer the question.”

I chuckled. The kid cracked me up.

“Ok. Back at the turn of the century, we were riding a rollercoaster of increasing height as far as human achievement from a technological perspective was concerned. But for every technological advancement or medical breakthrough, there were those that lauded the achievements and those who proclaimed that the end of days was fast approaching. Religious dogma and scientific discovery were at odds and many people couldn't discern what information should be trusted.” I paused, checking her expression.

Her brow furrowed, “You mean people that think that scientists think that they’re gods?”

“Not quite. It was more to do with people becoming confused about what to believe, what the media and the scientists were saying, what the Bible said, what wasn’t being said in the news. So many people had access to the internet across the world, it was a novelty then, and when it became accessible from your phone! Oh boy! People started wanting to double check things, especially if they didn’t agree with the message. The internet often brought like-minded people together. And, as you know...”

“Fools seldom differ?” She smiled.

“Exactly. One conspiracy bore another, until eventually fact, opinion and fantasy were so irretrievably mingled that even those of sound mind and education could fall prey to a well worded propaganda piece, abandoning previously applied logic and developed critical thinking skills.”

“You mean like when you had to tell off your dad about being scared of GMOs?” She asked.

I nodded. Then continued. “Another factor was the disparity between the rich and the poor. It was vast, so vast that the figurative gorge dividing wealth and poverty couldn't be filled even if all the tears ever shed or blood spilt in human history were to be poured into the void. Many of the wealthier people, having easy access to so much information and considering themselves to be clever based on their statuses, started to oppose the status quo. They thought that they knew better than doctors and scientists because they weren’t fooled by the mainstream media or paid off by big pharmaceutical companies.”

“Oh. Antivaxxers, right?” She said, twisting her mouth in a combination of irritation and amusement.

“Yes, antivaxxers.” I replied. She took a deep breath, anticipating an oft-repeated spiel. “But, not only antivaxxers. There were a lot of people who thought that they knew better. There were people who thought the earth was flat. People that thought that drinking urine could promote health and immunity. So when people were told that they had to wear masks to try reduce the spread of COVID-19, these people who thought that they knew better said that they wouldn’t wear masks. We were in an age where there was so much knowledge and so very little insight and education. Something I learnt early on when doing my doctoral thesis was that academics is about balance.”

“Like balancing equations?” She interjected.

“Well, balancing equations is very important for a lot of science, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Balance between being confident and humble in your knowledge. A good academic should be able to promote their work and knowledge, but also ready to accept their knowledge gaps and constructive criticism. So here’s where I’ll let you in on a shocking detail during the story - at the beginning of the pandemic - I didn’t wear a mask!”

“What?!” She gasped, horrified that I could say such a thing.

“You heard me,” I smiled. “But don’t judge me too harshly. At the beginning of the pandemic, there were mixed views on wearing masks. A lot of people thought that they should wear masks to protect themselves from becoming infected. They put supply of protective gear in jeopardy for people who really needed it, like healthcare workers. A lot of people also didn’t know how to apply the masks or would regularly adjust and touch them, making it far less effective to serve as any kind of protection. But as the virus kept spreading, with a lot of people not showing symptoms of being sick, the message changed. Everyone was asked to wear masks. Not to protect themselves from infection, but to reduce spread of the virus in case they were infected. And then, then I wore my mask. It was a mark of respect to others around me that I would try to reduce their risk of being infected in case I was sick. Does that make sense?” I asked, seeing that her expression had relaxed from its horrified position.

“Ok, so you realised that you hadn’t got the full story and then listened when you did?” She asked.

“Yes”, I nodded.

“But why did other people still not wear masks?” Her brow furrowed again.

“As I said, a lot of people thought that they were very clever. Instead of acknowledging their great privilege to have access to the very best preventative and curative healthcare, they felt that they were oppressed by the requirement to comply with the recommendations and guidelines of healthcare organisations. They invoked that such stipulations were violations of their human rights for free choice.” I said, shaking my head.

“How could people be so selfish?” She said, more to herself than to me.

“My darling, people created oppression where there was privilege as a means of justifying their victim mentalities. They claimed that wearing a mask caused carbon monoxide poisoning. Some even claimed that it resulted in drying out of nasal passages to cause damage to the nose. It was like antivaxxers all over again, blaming unrelated issues on things that they objected to or didn’t want to take responsibility for. Now, if masks caused so much damage, surely surgeons would be severely impacted from wearing masks so much? When your great granny broke her leg, her surgery lasted for hours on end. Her surgeon was an older doctor, he retired about 2 years after he treated her. How could he practice for so many years, as a top orthopedic surgeon if he was suffering the effects of carbon monoxide poisoning every time he walked into an operating room?”

“People are selfish. And stupid. Liars.” She said, visibly annoyed.

“Exactly, my dear. Sometimes we need to do things we don’t like or that require effort so that other people aren’t harmed. Things like not throwing medicine into the sewer. Asking people if they have allergies if you’re cooking food for them. Putting shopping trolleys away and not leaving them on walkways where people in wheelchairs might have their way blocked...”

“Getting vaccinated?” She added, raising her eyebrows at me in that knowing way.

“Getting vaccinated.” I agreed. “It’s about social responsibility. A minor inconvenience for you should not be justification to deliberately put other people at risk. It’s about respecting everyone’s rights and not just your own. Do you understand, sweetheart?” I asked, drawing her close to hug her to my side.

“Yes, Granny. But it still upsets me how many people don’t understand.” She said, putting her head on my shoulder.

“I know. But what’s important to me is that you understand. And that you’ll be a good person and make sure that your children understand when people like me aren’t around anymore to help them understand.” I said, patting her hand.

“I will, Granny.”

#covid19 #story

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kira-sucks-lawlipops · 7 years

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My pitch for an American Death Note movie

And now I would like to take a break from angry posting about how shitty the upcoming noteflix movie is going to be to pitch my own, not perfect but less shitty, version.

WARNING: This is REALLY long. I was only gonna fix White Yagami and make up a few sentences of plot but then I got really into it. (Also I was just making it up as I went so if it’s good maybe Netflix should hire me.)

First up, I’m not trying to retell the story of the manga/anime, because there are already movies that do that. I’m pitching a story for an American audience, with some big changes. My intent is that this would work either as a standalone film (for an audience that is unfamiliar with the series) or it could exist in the same universe (for the existing fans/the new fans who go back to the source material because the movie is good.) More on this later.

Okay, so there is no White Yagami. In fact, there is no Light at all because I firmly believe that his character/story makes no sense if you take away his Japanese upbringing. And if I’m going to change Light, then I may as well change all of the characters/world around him. I have put like zero thought into naming or creating new characters tho, so for now I am just going to call our protagonist Proxy!Light. (Bear with me guys, there’s a lot of this.)

Act 1: The Fall

Proxy!Light is an African American student in his late teens living somewhere in the USA where there is a high crime rate, racial tension, religion and a corrupt police force. (I’m Australian so I don’t know the exact location. Maybe somewhere in the Bible Belt?) He is more likely to make an emotional decision than a rational one, he comes from a happy nuclear family and he is not an apathic genius. He is optimistic, caring, a bit naive but overall a genuinely good guy who wants to make the world a better place. He is in his senior year of high school and is trying to get his grades as high as possible to land a scholarship, because he has no chance of attending university without one. He wants to be a lawyer, but failing this will probably try for the police force. No matter what, he wants to be in the justice system, protecting and serving his community.

He finds the death note, and Ryuk or a Proxy!Shinigami (again, more on this later) explains what it is. He refuses to use it, because killing people is wrong, but keeps it so it won’t fall into the wrong hands.

This would be a good place to throw in some religious imagery: Proxy!Light attending church with his family, Ryuk and the power he offers are presented as being an evil, corrupting force, etc. But Proxy!Light hasn’t fallen yet.

One day, Proxy!Light’s father is murdered by the police. It’s the same story we’ve seen before: he was doing nothing wrong, but was racially profiled and the police used lethal force. Proxy!Light’s world is shattered. His father, a good man, is demonised by the media while the police force, which he has always seen as a protective presence, fabricates a case to make the innocent man they killed seem guilty in the eyes of the world. Proxy!Sayu places herself in the front lines of a social movement which demands justice for her father and is labelled as a criminal who incites riots. Proxy!Sachiko tries to go the official route and hold the officers who killed her husband accountable, but the case never even makes it to court. Eventually she is forced to drop it when she starts receiving threats against her children.

Proxy!Light is unable to cope with what happened. His grades drop and he loses any chance of a scholarship. Law school is out of the question now and he has been thoroughly disillusioned on the police force. Everything he believed in has been turned on its head and he knows that there is no way that it can be made right again. He decides to take justice into his own hands and uses the death note to kill all of the police officers involved in the death of his father.

And now we enter Act 2: the arrival of Proxy!L and Proxy!Misa.

We open in church again. The preacher (priest? minister? wizard? idk) is praying for the officers that died, and encouraging people to remain calm and sensitive in this difficult time. Someone asks if the heart attacks that killed all those officers was an act of god. The preacher says no, because god is a loving force, not destructive (or something to that effect.) Most people seem to approve of this message, including Proxy!Sachiko, but there are some in the crowd who disagree. They argue that the officers were murderers, and if god did kill them it would be good old-testament justice. Proxy!Light likes the sound of this.

Proxy!Sayu gets up and addresses the crowd. She does not care about the religious implications of the police officers dying of heart attacks, she cares about the facts that their deaths did nothing to solve the problems embedded in their community’s broken justice system. She will be continuing to organise peaceful protests until their concerns are heard, and she encourages everyone to stand with her.

Throw in some more religious imagery here. Proxy!Light has now fallen. The support of the crowd fuels his belief that he is doing the right thing, but when he sees that his remaining family are opposed to him he begins isolating himself from them.

And now the real fun begins.

Proxy!L is not the World’s Greatest Detective, and he is in no way similar to the Ryuzaki persona we all know and love and/or hate. He is an FBI agent and a complete fucking asshole. Maybe he’s a genius, maybe he’s just really good at his job, but he definitely arrogant as all fuck and a nightmare to work with. I am picturing him as older and surly. Like, he thinks he should have been promoted above field work a long time ago but it’s never happened because no one can stand him. But if you want to cash in on that sweet lawlight fangirl goldmine (yes pls) then he could be a young, attractive prodigy. Either way, he shows up to this terrified and racially divided town and takes over the investiagtion into the sudden and unexplainable deaths of several police officers.

Proxy!L is accompanied by his partner Proxy!Naomi. She is basically exactly the same and is definitely still Japanese or Japanese-American, because that will be important later. She is the only one who can stand Proxy!L because she takes none of his shit. These two care deeply for each other and are an unstoppable team, but things are tense between them right now because Proxy!Naomi just got married, and after this case is wrapped up she will be leaving the FBI.

The partners show up in the wake of some violent backlash from the police. The surviving officers are angry over their friend’s deaths and believe that Proxy!Sayu and the other protesters are responsible, so they declare the protest to be a riot and shut it down, placing Proxy!Sayu and as many other prominent protesters as they can grab under arrest.

Proxy!L and Proxy!Naomi arrive at the tail end of this mess. They berate the officers for their hysteria and over the top violent reponse, and immediately take over. All of the low-level protesters are let go, but the FBI agents want to interrogate any of the organisers that they have in custody.

This is where we are formally introduced to Proxy!Misa. She is one of Proxy!Sayu’s friends who has been organising protests with her. We have seen her participating in collective action with Proxy!Sayu a few times before but this is the first time we have spoken to her. The girls have not been treated well in the arrest and are already hostile. Their interrogations are cut together, and now it’s exposition time!

We see Proxy!L and Proxy!Naomi working together, using different strategies with each girl and we start to get a feel for their dynamic and the fact that they are a great team. They tell both girls that there have been more deaths than anyone realises. All over the country, police officers and other people in the justice system have been mysteriously dying of heart attacks. Everyone who has died has been accused of corruption and/or the unlawful deaths of POC. No one in the public has connected the dots yet, but it’s only a matter of time, and then there will be nation-wide hysteria and violent crackdowns on POC communities like the one we just witnessed at the protest. No one wants that, which is why these two are here where it all started trying to hunt the killer down. Proxy!Sayu reacts with anger and disgust. She knows that things are bad and wants to create change, but doesn’t believe it can be accomplished with violence and death. Proxy!Misa’s feelings are more complicated. She take the position that the deaths are the result of divine retribution, and while she doesn’t openly endorse the killing, she thinks that people who do bad things should be held accountable no matter what. During the interrogation she reveals her backstory; she survived a home invasion as a child. A criminal killed her parents and took her hostage, but the police managed to subdue him non-lethally because he was white. The fact the the man who terrorised her and destroyed her family is alive and in jail while POC are being killed by police for no reason is what drove her to join Proxy!Sayu’s movement.

Meanwhile, Proxy!Sachiko has learned from one of the protesters that were released that her underage daughter has been placed under arrest and she is furious and frightened. She and Proxy!Light head to the police station and demand that they be able to see Proxy!Sayu. The police are dismissive at first but when pushed become openly hostile. Proxy!Sachiko is torn between the need to protect her daughter and not wanting to escalate the situation and endanger her son. Proxy!Light doesn’t give a shit. From the way he starts spitting his new anti-cop rhetoric in this place full of armed cops you might think that he has a death wish (spoiler alert- he kinda does.) Luckily, Proxy!Naomi and Proxy!L arrive just as things are about to turn ugly. Proxy!Naomi smooths things over while Proxy!L just stares at his shiny new N#1 suspect. The girls are free to go, and on the way out of the building Proxy!Misa introduces herself to Proxy!Light and asks him to walk her home. When he agrees, there is a split second where her eyes flash red.

Proxy!L and Proxy!Naomi discuss the case. He wants to focus on Proxy!Light but she thinks their best suspect at this point is Proxy!Misa. This is where we can introduce some of the tension between them over the fact that Proxy!Naomi will quit and leave him soon. They come to agreement over how to proceed with the investigation. They are both encouraged by the fact that they seem to have zeroed in on the killer so quickly, but are frustrated because they have no ideas about how the heart attacks are being caused. Neither of them seriously consider the supernatural angle.

On the way to her home (I’m imagining that it’s night now, and the two have wandered into some visually interesting/appropriate location) Proxy!Misa tells Proxy!Light that she knows he killed the police officers who killed his father. He tries to lie his way out of it but he is a bad liar. She reveals that she has her own death note and was able to identify him by using the shinigami eyes (which she also explains.) Finally, she tells him that she has followed his example and started killing people all over the country. At first, Proxy!Light is opposed to this. It was personal for him, and he claims that justice has been done and she has screwed things up by attracting the attention of the FBI on to them. But he very quickly comes around to Proxy!Misa’s way of thinking. The two of them have been given a great gift, and they should use it to bring justice to everyone in the world who has been denied it up until now. He even pushes the rhetoic one step further. If they are re-making the justice system, then it will be their job to take over as judge, jury and executioner until things have re-stablised. They should start killing crininals too, and gradually remove all bad people until they have created a new world full of only good people.

It is clear that Proxy!Light has been building toward this for a while, and was just waiting for an excuse to go full-Kira. Having a willing partner is the catalyst which gives him the confidence to push on. I am trying to downplay the obsessive and stalkerish nature of Proxy!Misa, so let’s assume she is willing to throw herself into this cause like she threw herself into the protests. The two teens feed off each other’s bloodlust and we become aware that we are witnessing the creation of something terrible. More religious imagery, as we cut into a montage of several days worth of the two planning and creating their world together, scribbling in notebooks while the death toll climbs into the hundreds and dramatic orchestral music plays.

And from here I don’t have a detailed plan on how the rest of the story would play out. I know that I want to have Proxy!Light and Proxy!L interact directly and have a bit of chemistry (probably Proxy!L fixates on him as wants to get close to figure out how the heart attacks work.) How their dynamic plays out will depend on the age gap between them and some other factors which I haven’t put a lot of thought into. I have downplayed the genius aspect but I want there to be at least one big dramatic mindgame showdown between the two of them, as a shout out to what we all loved from the original story. Proxy!L wins the battle of wits, but Proxy!Light plays a trump card in the form of his supernatural advantage, allowing Proxy!Misa to kill Proxy!L at the end of act 2.

Act 3: Everything goes to hell

Proxy!Naomi is reeling from the loss of her partner. She has now been forced to accept that the supernatural exists and she needs to take down two meglomaniac teenagers who literally weild the power of death itself.

Proxy!Light and Proxy!Misa continue to go mad with power and try to reshape the world with death.

I want some more social/religious commentary around wether what is happening is right or wrong and some hints of a cult of followers building and meeting violent opposition from people who condemn the killings. This is going on in the background while most of the third act is focused on Proxy!Naomi and Proxy!Light trying to kill each other.

The twist is that Proxy!Light can’t kill Proxy!Naomi with the death note because, while she goes by her married name, the name that he needs to kill her is her maiden name. Proxy!Misa can’t read it with her eyes because it’s written in kanji characters (which is why it’s important that she’s Japanese!) I don’t know exactly how it plays out but the film ends with Proxy!Naomi killing Proxy!Light. Roll credits.

Okay, now remember how I said there would be more stuff about how this could possibly fit into the canon? That’s because I have two main ideas about how you could do this. 1. This movie is set post-canon. I definitely think this could work, with only a few tweaks. Proxy!Light and Proxy!Misa would be inspired by the original Kira, the police force would know that someone had a death note and was coming for them, etc. This would probably make the movie more rewarding for the fans of the original story, because we would see how things are in the post-Kira world and you could have cool stuff like the shinigami who drops the notebook being a reincarnation of Light Yagami. The disadvantage to this is that it’s more alienating to audiences who aren’t familiar with the original story. 2. The story is set pre-canon, probably 90s or earlier. I think this is the better way to do it, because we know from Ryuk that death notes have ended up in the human world before. In this case you would take away Proxy!Misa’s notebook, and bend the rules a little. She is just a supporter who makes an eye trade using Proxy!Light’s notebook. You would also have to dial back the scale of death, make it that all the murders happen in one place instead of nation-wide so it coukd feasibly be hushed up later (which is why it’s not mentioned in canon.)

OKAY WOW. This was a much longer ride than I meant it to be. I’ve really tried to tell an American-ised version of the Death Note story which is interesting and rewarding for fans and new audiences alike. (If we have to have one, at keast make it good, right?) I hope I’ve stuck to some of the core themes of the story while also making the adaption original and not compete garbage. I would love to hear other people’s ideas!!! Either for more changes/ideas for things we could do with this pitch or a pitch of your own! I’m going to track the tags:

#saynotonoteflix #saynotowhiteyagami

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