as the name says, this AU is built upon on a metaphor - the phrase "pembunuhan karakter" (lit. character assassination - defamation). while most of the AU here is about ABW, it's pretty much applicable to every other politicians (or even citizens!) that went through defamation. it just happens to be A Lot about him due to the 8945945 goofy ahhh slanders he's getting (he even has his own meme). wdym guy is being considered both as a baptized christian and extremely religious arabic lackey LOL

the reason why i decided to write this is due to how i'm assigning some rhythm songs (read: literally only arcaea and phigros, as these are the ones i play the most ATM (i swear, i have played more rhythm games other than those)), which is... these are obscure stuffs!!! so i'm writing it.

each main act (read: what i have drawn) gets a rhythm song as the "main theme". as of now (hopefully the only thing i WANT and WILL write here), there are 4 songs for it. so... 4 acts, i guess.

ACT 1: the murder (attempts) [marenol - leaf] (TW: self harm, drug abuse, gore)

"if you can't kill them, kill their reputation, kill their name, kill their character." - prabowo on the slanders about "rigging the elections" he received

the kroco (troops) of the big boss (the president) got ABW after an attempt to fight the big boss with ganjar, and is now attempting to murder him (don't ask me how come he's kidnapped, make it up yourself!!!). but for whatever reason, he doesn't die. can't be killed, even.

now, while you probably already know why, i want to put a quick write up about the AU's weapons to "murder" and some other mechanics. there are 3 kinds of weapon:

red colored: has funky, metaphoric shape, mainly red colored, glows. this weapon, while could make you bleed and leaves physical injuries that are much, MUCH HARDER to recover and dissappear, will not kill you - the most fatal blow will only send you into a coma. this weapon is manifested by yourself. didn't thought what precisely manifests it though, due to my reluctance on dabbling deeper into pemilu '24 fandom

white colored: pretty much is like the red colored ones. the only difference is on the appearance and ownership. it shapes like regular, normal inanimate objects, all-white colored, and doesn't glow. these are lent by someone, AKA not made manifest by yourself. consider it like the "fake form" of the red colored weapons. originally, this is meant to symbolize how jokowi throws the blame that should have been directed to him to someone else, and how he used his "subordinates" to mess someone up. but everyone can do that now, i guess.

normal/real-life colored: exactly the same with the real-life counterpart: WILL KILL YOU PHYSICALLY. just your daily life, non-magical objects.

can you recover from the coma/get the injury marks away? how long does it last? the answer is, yes. you can recover from it. coma lasts until you're recovered. someone in coma/injuries can be recovered nearly completely by the help of their peers. how their peers will support you to recover from your coma, and how their peers can convince the people that they can wake up - clearing your name from the defamation. and you have to believe that you can wake up from the coma too, deep in your coma slumber - your peers' support could be useless if you don't believe you can make it.

as for the song - by context, marenol is an antidepressant that, while is powerful at not making you depressed anymore and all happy, has a side effect: making your dreams a death nightmare. you'll dream about dying in various ways.

well... that doesn't sound really paralel-able with this section of the AU, other than, uh, multiple deaths that don't actually kill you. but hey, song vibes very well, so what can i say. the fact that guy just letting the slanders be in the name of free speech prooobably can be attributed to the depression-free aspect of the medicine.

ACT 2: crossroad/persimpangan jalan [disorder - hyun, yuri]

"when you have a character made out of your identity - your own true reflection - no one can kill that character, as it is the true reflection of the real persona in you." half-assed translation of anies' response on the massive defamation done to him

OKAY. so i got A LOT of questions and misconceptions on one thing about this AU: "is ABW immortal? can you make him "dead" due to the supreme court outcome?" the answer is no!!! 😭

first, to notice, all the weapons here are red or white. no real-life colored ones. so he (or anyone) won't die by these. second, as of why these weapons doesn't seem to affect him at all:

depends on how often have you been through this. the more often you go through it, the more you can mitigate and get used to it ("alah bisa karena terbiasa")

the quote above: he believes strongly that the defamation won't tarnish his name. yes, you can be "immune" from the coma effects of these weapons, by believing in yourself, that the defamation done to you will not affect you, and push through. and... peer support too, i guess. so, say, if ABW one day gives up on believing so, then these weapon will send him into a coma. simple.

now that he's alive and nothing can really be done... the boss and his higher subordinates will have to do something else!

the moment the two stars overlapped, I disappeared

while the big boss and ABW actually used to work together (trivia: anies was part of jokowi's 2014 TKN), he probably don't want ABW anymore (re: his short 2-year ministry of education and culture tenure -> "mentri buangan"), and directs all the blames for his program issues to him instead.

after swallowing the pain towards the path I must not take

contradictive, as the path ABW took now is the path a lot of people think he should take - the path to oppose the government. but still, it's painful to go through, according to whatever the hell that guy's going up against to do his jakarta governor programs (see: E1 circuit, reclamation AGAINST LUHUT???)

when I lose myself and wander

now that the elections over... dunno, but it seems he still wants to attempt the presidential race again. he'd need something to keep his political momentum, though. he has some choices he can attempt, but what would it be?

i would be looking for you who would be out of existence, forever

according to some rumors (tempo mag?), prabowo offers a ministry position, or whatever it is to him. a crossroad is presented at ABW. which road will he take: accepting the offer and be part of the future government, probably a dream to be with the big boss again (that's probably impossible to reach now - or refuse it and stay as an opposition (or maybe gelandangan politik, who knows)?

ACT 3A: route if he accepts the offer [desive - misomyl]

"the light is in your hands. hasn't it always been like that?" - desive's tagline

but what if he doesn't believe so, or has given up?

this is insane (everything about this AU is, though), but i have an animatic of this route with this song in my mind. clock ticking as he waits for his next round of murder attempt and goes through it (0:00 - 0:35) , injury time/interval to offer the position (0:36 - 1:28), accepts it and goes through medication to heal it (1:29 - 1:52), and finally be reborn - but as an anomaly* to his fans, who sees him as the supposed "symbol" of change (1:53 - end). some even speculates, maybe as his successor, even (funny! but not impossible either! some say he's close to prabski and just a malu-malu kucing kind of guy!)

*also i don't actually know precisely the story of the character attributed to this song yet (ayu), but apparently, she's someone who is meant to eat anomalies in her world? what if he joins the rezime to eat the anomalies from the inside

ACT 3B: route if he refuses the offer [logos - polysha, miyo takashiro]

"whispers of sorrow leaked into the clear water and dissolved. having lost many clue, its arcane code... is still unresolved?" - logos lyric

for whoever looking for someone other than mf ABW in this AU, they're here!!!1!

he gets kicked out from the torture room because well, there's nothing left can be done. useless, for now. "let him be, no one would trust him with such godly amount of injuries." the big boss said. they landed somewhere outside the boss HQ, where he found his silly amin peers that tried to rescue him, imin and tom. he gets his injuries temporarily healed up (will still need to go to the hospital to recover from the blood loss).

but then, ABW asks something to these 2: he wants to rescue someone else that's stuck in the HQ - ganjar. enter the gama gang.

when they fought the big boss, they lost, got stabbed by some kind of long massive sword. they fell to a blood pool made from the blood of everyone else who were sent into a coma before. they fell to different places however, and for whatever reason, only interested in beating ABW's ass?

tip tap dripping the drops keep on drawing the ripples tic tac flowing the time only that one echoed in while emptiness

stubborn wish, but they do it anyway. so they reentered the room again to go to the big blood pool area to find ganjar. and surprise, they find him with mahfud and whoever-is-the-thomas-of-gama in the deeper areas of the pool. a flood, even. and some trashes and debris around. it's meant for 1) how the demak flood is blamed into him when he's not in his tenure anymore*, and 2) how the MK responsed to the amin/gama indictment's evidences as "we're not your trashbin (due to the evidence given being weak)".

*there could be more, but... i'm not sure. i don't feel like metaphoring more of his slanders into the AU, given how undertalked his slanders/scandals are (U-20, wadas) and ending up making some people feel that he's actually "running away" from being blamed, aka he does have faults in it. unlike ABW who is, ya rabbi, can you stop talking about him FOR ONE SECOND? so i digress. do whatever you will, though.

run away from the dazzling dawn walk to west while stumbling on the way, I met you all alone your face was depressed, and ...about to cry

mahfud didn't precisely know how to wake nor heal ganjar up, because well... he seems to be someone who has the least issues and conflicts with any of these people. maybe other than the ma'ruf VP issue in 2019, idk. thus, at this point, the only person that knows exactly how to save him is... well, fellow defamation victim, anies himself. so he gave some pep talk/affirmation words to wake him up from his coma. not sure about the methods bc again, didn't think deep enough into it.

and... yippee, he woke up! now they gotta escape because... whoopsie, the guards found them. "why are you here bro, GET OUT OF HERE NO ONE WANTS YOU IN DA YARD!!!!" so they ran, yet... bam. they got hit by them. they manage to get out though, at least. just, with injuries now...

aftermath

in this AU, gama gang's story ends the same in both routes. ganjar and mahfud later part ways, as they realize that this is all they can do the most. except ganjar is probably planning to invade the big boss' smaller HQs with his red bull gang (PTUN).

amin, on the other side, ends differently. in this route, ABW woke up and found himself in a hospital, bed rested, with tom next to him (he has mostly healed from the injuries, quite minor). he wondered where imin is.

and speak of the devil, imin came in to visit, but his injuries are 100% healed instead, doesn't seem to be someone suffering from being hit by a massive hammer. in their convo, they found out that when everyone was hit by the hammer and got kicked out, imin was brought to the big boss' place instead, and was offered a position, in which he accepts. so he's all healthy and on the govern's side now. they also decide this is where they part ways. as imin leaves, he told the two that they can let him know, if they want to join the government someday. he can help arrange it. ABW and tom just sat there with unreadable expression.