Post by DGX on Oct 8, 2007 19:18:58 GMT -5
Violence.
It has many forms, it’s not even really a definable term when you really think about it. So many people think that violence is everywhere, you’ve been around. You’ve probably heard the bleeding hearts out there about “violence” and how it’s taking over and “corrupting our youth!!!!” None the less, you’ll never get rid of violence as a form of entertainment, it’s as old as the Roman Empire, hell I’d say that it’s even an arguable case that cavemen probably got their kicks bashing each other over the head with clubs. And the funny thing, people have always fed into it.
Back in the day, of Romans it was their version of going to the movies. Combatants, usually slaves would meet in the fighting pit of the Roman Coliseum and battle one another to the death, and after that barbaric contest was all said and done, and one man was brutalized, beaten to submission, the Emperor or the audience would stand and if the fighter had impressed them, give him the thumbs up to spare his life, or give him the thumbs down to signal his demise. There was definite audience participation in those contests, it gave them an intoxicating feeling of power knowing that in their mere hand they held the life of whomever the losing fighter was that night, and just like most fighting or combat sports today, each had their favourites. And as the sport and the theme of violence as a form of entertainment evolved along with the rest of civilization, blood sport spawned other non lethal forms of entertainment as slavery was abolished eventually in most parts of the world and it was hard to find people willing to sign up for something that carried with it the possibility of a gruesome death.
None the less, as mentioned before, human beings as a species, as a people are fairly static in time. And while there is a lot more protection for professional athletes, we as a viewing public still carry within us that sadistic nature that we revel in. Sure football has padding and hockey does too, but you know you feel that adrenaline rush, you feel that sense of entertainment and satisfaction down deep when you see that haphazard running back or receiver laid out by a brutal tackle, you know the ones, the ones where they get clobbered out of the air that turns them inside out! Or how about that projectile player check to the head in hockey? You know the one, where they leap or just get going fast and just plaster that sap to the ice! Or what about fights in hockey, you can’t not love it when the players drop those gloves and start to throw hands! Godard concusses Boogaard, classic. But when we come to the sport of professional wrestling, we kick it up to another level.
Some forms of hardcore are tame, others more extreme. But you know when weapons are flying and blood stains that mat, you and the people around you get whipped up. It’s like we lose ourselves to some odd form of frenzy, like we’re so emotional involved in the base act taking place before our eyes we turn to our most basic, primal selves. But violence as an act and violence as a feeling are two different spectrums really. Kids who play violent video games aren’t going to go out, get a firearm and go to their school and Columbine it up. Speaking from personal experience, it was beating the ever loving crap out of someone in a fighting game that kept me from smearing the cocky little taunting bastards at school all across the lockers. It was an outlet. And that’s really what violence is, an outlet to get all one’s frustrations and anger out on someone. We’re all angry, at least on some base level, that seed lies in all of us. You might say that violence, and all the strong emotions associated with it, are hard coded in us as a people. And why would that be? Theoretically, it’s our nature. While as human beings we still have consciousness and free will, don’t forget at our base levels, we’re just mammals. And as such we’re privy to the same base instincts and urges any lion, cow, bird or insect are, the urge to eat, the urge to mate, the urge to survive. It’s because of the last one that we really feel these base feelings, survival in nature is often a violent and primal process, so when we see this it speaks to that instinct in us. To see that blood of a foe, to see them lay beneath you, broken, mangled, destroyed, is to survive. As you are still standing, and really what? You don’t think a falcon has a sense of satisfaction when he snags that leaping fish in his talons? That a wolf isn’t pleased when he takes down a sheep? It’s not really provable, but I would bet money that they do.
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Johnny Valentine is seen sitting on the top of the door of his car as he slowly tapes up his right hand with wrist tape. Roxy is seen looking at him, but she is not wearing her usual smile and actually has a quite worried look on her beautiful features. Johnny looks up and notices this from her and turns back to fixing the tape on his hand, internally he’d love to stop and pacify her, tell her that he loved her and all would be alright at the end of the day. But he couldn’t, that was not the way, it didn’t work like that. He couldn’t do these things because he had an image, he had to keep it close to his chest. It was always that way with people like him, when it was just them there could be room for all the sweet things to say, but that can’t happen now. He knows that it’s not long before he goes into a fairly large brawl. Exploding weapons, what a big kick but there were things about this contest that made him uncomfortable. Sure there was the potential to get hurt, there always one to, one had to suck it up and meet that head on. You either were afraid or you were to be feared. Finally it bubbles in Roxy long enough and she clings to Johnny’s leather jacket causing him to look up from fixing the tape to his hands and look at her. Even worried she’s the picture of beauty, the girl that one day maybe he could have some kind of serious form of life.
Roxy> I don’t want you to do this baby! You could…
Johnny’s face betrays no emotion as he blatantly finishes her sentence.
Johnny> Get hurt?
Roxy is silent as she looks at him with her worried expression before she meekly nods. The look in her eyes, the tears that glisten but are held back by her fighting to not look weak before him, stir within him the emotions that he feels make him far less of a man than he needs to be. Men don't cry. Men don't go around getting all weepy and tearful and vulnerable. It was below the character of a man to be that way, or at least that was what Johnny had always been raised to believe. Sometime he wondered if his grandfather had ever gone through this with him, where Johnny in his youth had been concerned about his drag raceing or his fighting or some of the hobbies he kept up on or even the company he kept. Had he, looking down at the little boy with a mop of sandy hair and teary eyes gazeing up at him felt compelled by anything within him to take that boy in his arms and reassure him? Tell him everything would be fine? Or was he really as hard as he had been, did he really feel completely unconcerned and frankly insulted that his grandson would think him unable to handle himself in any situation? He had always wanted to ask him, have a heart to heart with him, but that was not the way. And even on his deathbed, when Johnny had last sat with him, the last time they would be together on this earth they had sat in silence. Stone faced, emotions shut off. The details of the estate were given, his responsibilities to his grandmother outlined, his final instructions. His last orders from his general. And here and now, with the woman he loved looking upon him with the same look, he felt within him the need to be different...
Johnny> What, you don't think I can handle myself? You think any of these goofs have the ability to do me in? Is that what you think?
His tone is confrontational. Her eyes quickly turn to saucers as she backpeddles in her diatribe considerably. She stumbles over her words and stutters, he can tell that her heart is in her throat, she's intimidated. Somehow that gives him a brief feeling of power, and just as quickly as that sensation hits, it turns to a revulsion so strong it twists his stomach from the inside out. Good God, he'd turned into him!
Roxy> No...no baby! I just don't want those nerds hitting you with all those weapons! Any Clyde can swing a bat or a chair and these things have explosives in them! But they won't have a chance! You're the baddest! You're radioactive baby! You got the classiest chassis in town and no one can stand up to what a in orbit hep cat you are!
She tries to stroke his ego. To appease him, focus his irritation and anger on someone else. It was eerie looking at this arguement from this side of the fence, he had usually been the one who had done all he could to appease his granddad when he got that way, to take himself out of the sights. He wanted nothing to do with the trouble that his granddad could have given him, and he had quickly puffed himself up and sung his grandfather's praises, stroked his ego and turned his attention off himself, just to make sure that nothing happened between them. He couldn't stand to be critisized by his grandfather, told he wasn't a man, told that he was a disgrace and should have been a girl. Oh how his grandfather had infuriated him by calling him Joanna, right up to the day he slapped his dentures out of his face for it and asked if he had some kind of a freaking problem! He'd been put down rather quickly with a right hook from the old man, but when he pulled him to his feet there was almost a moment of respect there. Almost as though there, before him he now finally stood as a man. That was when his teaching, his transition from the meek little boy into the leather clad ass kicker had happened and that little boy, while beaten and worn down to a nub, refused within him to die. That's why the urge to take Roxy in his arms, coo in her ear and stroke her hair, appease her and pacify her still screaming within him. That weak little fream still lived, and Johnny sometimes wondered if he'd ever be fully rid of it. Sometime he even wondered it he wanted to be rid of it, it somehow made him feel more human...
Johnny> Damn right baby! All these freams are crusin for a bruisin, and I don't care who it is. It can be that hip hop fream that I kicked in the face last week, it can be that horror flick reject that thinks the devil is cool, it can be the freaking WFWF champion himself, doesn't matter where these nerds come from, I'm on the stick! I will walk out the Hardcore X champion not because I care about nor even want that piece of leather with tin on it, but because I will do what I do best. Bust them in the teeth, cream them, pulverize them, serve them knuckle sandwiches until I'm the only one left standing!
Roxy nods and forces a smile, the moisture behind her eyes gleaming in the light the only sign that she is fakeing for him. Inside him, the little boy screams at him to take her in his arms, tell her that everything will be fine, that he loves her, do something to give her the idea he isn't upset with her nor doesn he take her concerns lightly...
Johnny> Now let's aggitate the gravel, I got nerds to crush.
But that's why he's inside. Not out. Johnny takes Roxy and lifts her like fire wood and deposits her in his corvette before he rounds the vehicle and jumps in the drivers seat before starting the car and heading out.
It has many forms, it’s not even really a definable term when you really think about it. So many people think that violence is everywhere, you’ve been around. You’ve probably heard the bleeding hearts out there about “violence” and how it’s taking over and “corrupting our youth!!!!” None the less, you’ll never get rid of violence as a form of entertainment, it’s as old as the Roman Empire, hell I’d say that it’s even an arguable case that cavemen probably got their kicks bashing each other over the head with clubs. And the funny thing, people have always fed into it.
Back in the day, of Romans it was their version of going to the movies. Combatants, usually slaves would meet in the fighting pit of the Roman Coliseum and battle one another to the death, and after that barbaric contest was all said and done, and one man was brutalized, beaten to submission, the Emperor or the audience would stand and if the fighter had impressed them, give him the thumbs up to spare his life, or give him the thumbs down to signal his demise. There was definite audience participation in those contests, it gave them an intoxicating feeling of power knowing that in their mere hand they held the life of whomever the losing fighter was that night, and just like most fighting or combat sports today, each had their favourites. And as the sport and the theme of violence as a form of entertainment evolved along with the rest of civilization, blood sport spawned other non lethal forms of entertainment as slavery was abolished eventually in most parts of the world and it was hard to find people willing to sign up for something that carried with it the possibility of a gruesome death.
None the less, as mentioned before, human beings as a species, as a people are fairly static in time. And while there is a lot more protection for professional athletes, we as a viewing public still carry within us that sadistic nature that we revel in. Sure football has padding and hockey does too, but you know you feel that adrenaline rush, you feel that sense of entertainment and satisfaction down deep when you see that haphazard running back or receiver laid out by a brutal tackle, you know the ones, the ones where they get clobbered out of the air that turns them inside out! Or how about that projectile player check to the head in hockey? You know the one, where they leap or just get going fast and just plaster that sap to the ice! Or what about fights in hockey, you can’t not love it when the players drop those gloves and start to throw hands! Godard concusses Boogaard, classic. But when we come to the sport of professional wrestling, we kick it up to another level.
Some forms of hardcore are tame, others more extreme. But you know when weapons are flying and blood stains that mat, you and the people around you get whipped up. It’s like we lose ourselves to some odd form of frenzy, like we’re so emotional involved in the base act taking place before our eyes we turn to our most basic, primal selves. But violence as an act and violence as a feeling are two different spectrums really. Kids who play violent video games aren’t going to go out, get a firearm and go to their school and Columbine it up. Speaking from personal experience, it was beating the ever loving crap out of someone in a fighting game that kept me from smearing the cocky little taunting bastards at school all across the lockers. It was an outlet. And that’s really what violence is, an outlet to get all one’s frustrations and anger out on someone. We’re all angry, at least on some base level, that seed lies in all of us. You might say that violence, and all the strong emotions associated with it, are hard coded in us as a people. And why would that be? Theoretically, it’s our nature. While as human beings we still have consciousness and free will, don’t forget at our base levels, we’re just mammals. And as such we’re privy to the same base instincts and urges any lion, cow, bird or insect are, the urge to eat, the urge to mate, the urge to survive. It’s because of the last one that we really feel these base feelings, survival in nature is often a violent and primal process, so when we see this it speaks to that instinct in us. To see that blood of a foe, to see them lay beneath you, broken, mangled, destroyed, is to survive. As you are still standing, and really what? You don’t think a falcon has a sense of satisfaction when he snags that leaping fish in his talons? That a wolf isn’t pleased when he takes down a sheep? It’s not really provable, but I would bet money that they do.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Johnny Valentine is seen sitting on the top of the door of his car as he slowly tapes up his right hand with wrist tape. Roxy is seen looking at him, but she is not wearing her usual smile and actually has a quite worried look on her beautiful features. Johnny looks up and notices this from her and turns back to fixing the tape on his hand, internally he’d love to stop and pacify her, tell her that he loved her and all would be alright at the end of the day. But he couldn’t, that was not the way, it didn’t work like that. He couldn’t do these things because he had an image, he had to keep it close to his chest. It was always that way with people like him, when it was just them there could be room for all the sweet things to say, but that can’t happen now. He knows that it’s not long before he goes into a fairly large brawl. Exploding weapons, what a big kick but there were things about this contest that made him uncomfortable. Sure there was the potential to get hurt, there always one to, one had to suck it up and meet that head on. You either were afraid or you were to be feared. Finally it bubbles in Roxy long enough and she clings to Johnny’s leather jacket causing him to look up from fixing the tape to his hands and look at her. Even worried she’s the picture of beauty, the girl that one day maybe he could have some kind of serious form of life.
Roxy> I don’t want you to do this baby! You could…
Johnny’s face betrays no emotion as he blatantly finishes her sentence.
Johnny> Get hurt?
Roxy is silent as she looks at him with her worried expression before she meekly nods. The look in her eyes, the tears that glisten but are held back by her fighting to not look weak before him, stir within him the emotions that he feels make him far less of a man than he needs to be. Men don't cry. Men don't go around getting all weepy and tearful and vulnerable. It was below the character of a man to be that way, or at least that was what Johnny had always been raised to believe. Sometime he wondered if his grandfather had ever gone through this with him, where Johnny in his youth had been concerned about his drag raceing or his fighting or some of the hobbies he kept up on or even the company he kept. Had he, looking down at the little boy with a mop of sandy hair and teary eyes gazeing up at him felt compelled by anything within him to take that boy in his arms and reassure him? Tell him everything would be fine? Or was he really as hard as he had been, did he really feel completely unconcerned and frankly insulted that his grandson would think him unable to handle himself in any situation? He had always wanted to ask him, have a heart to heart with him, but that was not the way. And even on his deathbed, when Johnny had last sat with him, the last time they would be together on this earth they had sat in silence. Stone faced, emotions shut off. The details of the estate were given, his responsibilities to his grandmother outlined, his final instructions. His last orders from his general. And here and now, with the woman he loved looking upon him with the same look, he felt within him the need to be different...
Johnny> What, you don't think I can handle myself? You think any of these goofs have the ability to do me in? Is that what you think?
His tone is confrontational. Her eyes quickly turn to saucers as she backpeddles in her diatribe considerably. She stumbles over her words and stutters, he can tell that her heart is in her throat, she's intimidated. Somehow that gives him a brief feeling of power, and just as quickly as that sensation hits, it turns to a revulsion so strong it twists his stomach from the inside out. Good God, he'd turned into him!
Roxy> No...no baby! I just don't want those nerds hitting you with all those weapons! Any Clyde can swing a bat or a chair and these things have explosives in them! But they won't have a chance! You're the baddest! You're radioactive baby! You got the classiest chassis in town and no one can stand up to what a in orbit hep cat you are!
She tries to stroke his ego. To appease him, focus his irritation and anger on someone else. It was eerie looking at this arguement from this side of the fence, he had usually been the one who had done all he could to appease his granddad when he got that way, to take himself out of the sights. He wanted nothing to do with the trouble that his granddad could have given him, and he had quickly puffed himself up and sung his grandfather's praises, stroked his ego and turned his attention off himself, just to make sure that nothing happened between them. He couldn't stand to be critisized by his grandfather, told he wasn't a man, told that he was a disgrace and should have been a girl. Oh how his grandfather had infuriated him by calling him Joanna, right up to the day he slapped his dentures out of his face for it and asked if he had some kind of a freaking problem! He'd been put down rather quickly with a right hook from the old man, but when he pulled him to his feet there was almost a moment of respect there. Almost as though there, before him he now finally stood as a man. That was when his teaching, his transition from the meek little boy into the leather clad ass kicker had happened and that little boy, while beaten and worn down to a nub, refused within him to die. That's why the urge to take Roxy in his arms, coo in her ear and stroke her hair, appease her and pacify her still screaming within him. That weak little fream still lived, and Johnny sometimes wondered if he'd ever be fully rid of it. Sometime he even wondered it he wanted to be rid of it, it somehow made him feel more human...
Johnny> Damn right baby! All these freams are crusin for a bruisin, and I don't care who it is. It can be that hip hop fream that I kicked in the face last week, it can be that horror flick reject that thinks the devil is cool, it can be the freaking WFWF champion himself, doesn't matter where these nerds come from, I'm on the stick! I will walk out the Hardcore X champion not because I care about nor even want that piece of leather with tin on it, but because I will do what I do best. Bust them in the teeth, cream them, pulverize them, serve them knuckle sandwiches until I'm the only one left standing!
Roxy nods and forces a smile, the moisture behind her eyes gleaming in the light the only sign that she is fakeing for him. Inside him, the little boy screams at him to take her in his arms, tell her that everything will be fine, that he loves her, do something to give her the idea he isn't upset with her nor doesn he take her concerns lightly...
Johnny> Now let's aggitate the gravel, I got nerds to crush.
But that's why he's inside. Not out. Johnny takes Roxy and lifts her like fire wood and deposits her in his corvette before he rounds the vehicle and jumps in the drivers seat before starting the car and heading out.
