Battalia Royale and Dead Bodies

Fair warning: I've lost the capacity to put into words what the hell I think.  It's messy, fragmented and just wrong.  but I need to put down some of the things running in my head.  I don't want to shoot myself in the head just yet.  Not yet.  I'm still fighting.

(spoilers after)



Friday, I saw Battalia Royale another time, and I fucking hated myself for not finishing at CCP, altho, anything goes, truly.

Last minute people coming with me were Sol, Mariel, Laui and Sski.

The game begins with a game.

We begin to kill each other, and then the real game begins.

They start to wake up, and I think, wake up and realize you'd rather be sleeping still.  But they panic and run, just like us, and everyone else -- we're going to die, why you in such a rush?  Why am I excited to die?

First Blood (was Sski) but it was the school nurse before him.

One girl was praying like an exasperating fanatic of the Lord on uppers.  I wish I could tell her: God has nothing to do with this.  It's people who will (not) save you.

And everyone demonstrates that.

Whether you're out to kill, or just keeping away from others.

They want to live.  They might have.

He's gallant.  He's going to die.

I'm cynical, but he is.

And no amount of chivalry will keep him from himself when stripped bare of everything -- he'll do what he can because of what he believes in + his dark passenger surfacing.

He need not wait for his dark passenger, he is the dark passenger.  And he dies.

I began to wonder: why do good people die?  And then, the answer: it isn't about what you do, or who you are.  It just happens.  People will always run after what they want, and we are collateral damage to each other, some just hurt less.  No matter your intentions, you're going to die, and you're going to suffer. Because if the world is not like that, then what the hell did we all suffer in the first place for.  Power struggles are temporary things, but they are constant even in a state of equality.  We will always want what's best for ourselves, and more than sometimes, it means turning others into collateral damage.

*breathe*  cynicism not very good for me.

I ...

Don't really have words whenever I remember this scene.

and then, the dead bodies begin to pile up.

but this is the one death, that scared me the most.



Notes:

On Timothy's Death:

I find it kind of sad.  I voted for him to die.  Because I don't really care about him.  He was a nobody, and he was so distant.  He connected to the audience in only 30 seconds, why would I want him to live?  He'll only be miserable anyway.


He wasn't even willing to fight for his life, why should he be given the chance again -- he's already set to disappoint.


The world is set to kill us all, and we're all each other's collateral damage, what kind of makes it worth while is when we decide to make it hurt less for each other.  We are alone, and that's why we fight against everything.  

My dad in the ICU got me thinking about death and dying, all over again, reconsidering the points I was raising about Timothy's death last night, and still it stands: to me, you don't deserve the second chance because you weren't even willing to kill the first time.  What use does this world have for you who does not even fight?

He's one more person in the world.

Why I think he should live: because, like me, he didn't really do anything.  He just wanted to go about his business, and everyone just made his life messy.  Not his fault.  The world just sucks.  But if he doesn't pick up the gun and do something about it, someone's going to kill him.  I will never be that person again.

I use fight here meaning fight for yourself.  Better yourself.  Traverse the world and win.  There was never a rule in this life that only one winner could come on top (or at least I hope there's none).  Imagine a world where everyone became a winner, because they wanted to be.

Well, Battalia declared just one winner.  What if, everyone who died were the winners?  They're free.  They're game over.  They're gone.

On Politics:

One evening, I was with Sarah, JK, Ienne, Ji-ann and Butchito, and JK asked: "why did you think BR happened?"

I answered: it was never stated, but I always just assumed it was just because someone wanted to do it.  No particular reason.  It would just be interesting to do.  It shows how twisted people really are.  It made me like the play even more.

With the play unanchored from the coordinates in which violence exists in our paradigm, it thus makes it applicable to every kind, every form, every place and no place that exists.  It becomes, at least for me, universal.  We're all fucking twisted for loving it.  And for cheering for Timothy's death.  I wish he didn't have to die.  But if he didn't, and we didn't choose for him to die, it feels like the world would be an even sadder place because there's not reason for us to be terrible.  In a sense, we are good, but we choose to be evil.

It's easier to accept that a storm killed so many people, because it's a function of Nature, rather than accepting that so many people died because a jackass decided to pick up a gun and shoot everyone.