Dear readers, Daiyu Tang here… It has been about a month since I and five other Hathian citizens were kidnapped by a ruthless gang lead by Tori and made to compete in their sick rip-off of Battle Royale, The Hunger Games or Saw. Forced to choose between often hopeless scenarios we were made to expose our souls to Tori and her band of delinquent sociopaths while they watched on their cameras and ‘directed the show’. You had read a piece leading up to this when I reported on the disappearance of Emily Rose… little was I to know she was one of six that would be chosen, along with myself.
Many of you saw the livestream of the tasks that we were set and how they tormented us with them. For those of you who didn’t, the gang had taken over the Hathian Theatre and live-streamed their sick event to all of Hathian.
I think readers… that in order to heal, I might need to talk about some of this… Thank you for maybe reading it and if you don’t care about me, or the others involved you can always press skip. An option we didn’t have when we woke up in hell.
Many (most?) of you have been exposed to the darkness in Hathian and you will have seen my previous stories about some of the crime here; all kinds… assaults, kidnappings, even murder. If you follow my official Twitter account you’ll also have seen the spats and disagreements I’ve got into with some citizens; often those who espouse violence or use coercion to support their goals and think that might equals right. People have limited sympathy with those who are hurt and Hathian breeds a mentality that says victims deserved it, or that they should be stronger. Do they tell that to their family when they’re the target? Do they stop and think before they act to bury the blade into the next generation who in turn will sell hate forward? Have we forgotten that we as a society, are strong together and with humility and decency than in a demented Battle Royale with no rules (except those set by the strong) and no safety except as doled out as favours or rewards by gang leaders or psychopaths?
Even after this event, some of the Twitterwarriors wanted to defend the nature of the a games, or defend the choices that had been taken, often by ‘Number one’, aka Joshua Kaufman… the man who often as the games progressed choose the easiest option to cause hurt quickly…
“One day Daiyu will understand that I saved her life. Do I need to remind her and replay that bomb ticking down sound and the rattling of the building right afterwards? We would have died.”
Joshua Kaufman debating with me on Twitter that he *had* to kill an unarmed girl. That that was the *only* option… I don’t agree that it was.
This.isn’t.right! Nothing about what was done to any of us was right… yet as I sit here writing this I understand that Tori and some of her gang haven’t even been arrested yet. She would say that shows the rot in the system, I say it shows the rot in the system *here* that we, collectively should change. Maybe this article will shame our society and motivate the HPD to ensure Tori, Mu, Chastity and any others involved face justice; which to me isn’t bloody or wild justice, it’s time away, punishment of loss of assets and wealth through civil restitution and should likely involve enforced psychiatric care.
I will get into my views on this, share with you what I remember and how the ‘games’ went and then I will conclude with my thoughts over this two part series. I also intend to follow this up with interviews (if wanted) with my fellow victims. Why should we suffer in quiet? Why should they not be able to peacefully, say what they want and why should be not let you, Hathian Citizens know about who to avoid and how abuse, trauma and hate won’t win. It.can’t.win. because – it.isn’t.right!
The ‘games’
This was a hard piece readers… In order to be a good writer I had to watch the tapes of my own abuse and that of the other contestants again. I’m sorry it took time to do… I just needed to be somewhere other than hell first before doing it. Thanks to love I felt strong enough eventually and now here we are many weeks later, but with the psychological safety to confront the monsters.
((The following link is the full transcript of the ‘Sin to Win’ event, formatted with some images. It has been edited and compiled by Bentley ‘Scout’ Braveheart – weebraveheartt – FULL SCRIPT LINK – for those wanting the ‘TLDR’ version, this is reproduced in the sections below))
Room 1 – Shocking Discoveries
I had been held in captivity for nearly a week prior to waking up in these so called ‘games’. During that time I had been degraded, treated like nothing and seen of as nothing more than something to dispose. I guess I am saying this now, thinking about it now, because in some ways I didn’t expect to survive but in other ways, it gave me the strength to know that Tori’s methodology, her way of thinking was really nothing more than ‘might makes right’. They could and did hurt me prior to the games but why was this different to others who wanted their pound of flesh from any one of us, myself included in the past? I tried to hold onto that mindset… that this was nothing different. I just needed to be myself… keep myself intact and help others. There was no ‘trick’ to win, just a race against time not to die?
I’d actually had a long chat with Tori before they beat me down and carted me away. She is not some low-rate cheap criminal. She is scary and I have a healthy respect for someone able to get away with what she does and not pay the price that perhaps she deserves. Make no mistake, this is not admiration or adulation; the woman is a sociopath without an understanding of how society works, (or should work) and whatever trauma or ills have been done to her doesn’t ever justify her decisions that impact others. Readers, if you see her… be warned. A smart, good looking, well spoken killer is still a killer… that’s the word you should focus on, not the trappings and distractions of the rest of her.
We woke up together in this first room, confused, angry… disorientated. Why were we there? What had we done? Perhaps I had had more time to reflect in the week of captivity; some were however freshly taken and all of us were scared, even if some showed it less.
“Why do we have to do anything? What if we all just refuse. They won’t kill us all.”
Jordan Rizzo
In the first room, we mostly had our humanity, we could be instructed to ‘sin’ or to hurt or kill or tear or rip away each other while Tori laughed in the background, but why would we? Jordan had the bravery to say it and it was a thought that maybe all of us had to start with. Afterall, it was easiest to shock each other together which led to our escape and in Room 1, despite the pain, the literal and mental shocks, we did work together as a team… no one shocked the other to reach the magic ‘3 shock’ number by themselves first as each of those shocks would have been worse than the joint shocks we all got when we pressed the buttons together at the same time.
Were we innocently naïve to think that ‘winning’ here was good enough? It wasn’t and already the fractures were showing. Readers who have followed me on Twitter will know that I blame Josh for a large part of what happened subsequently (although as a kidnap victim he was blameless on arrival). I felt he rushed and cut corners and was too eager to harm to move forward, rather than to think, consider and only harm if all else failed. Room 1 was a demonstration of how his approach could be ok… but his reaction afterwards… upset that I wanted to help… was a foreshadow of things to come
“Shut the fuck up. Talk like that when you do nothing but spread lies and slander in your columns. And you likely wonder why you’re in the state that you’re in?”
Josh to Daiyu
Room 2 – Burning Ambitions
We were scared, angry and now with only limited food and water we were forced into the next game room, which at the start looked fairly benign. But it didn’t last… not only was I picked on by the gang for responding naturally to the situation, they then introduced us to the red light / green light concept… Clearly ripping off the Hunger Games and Saw wasn’t enough, now it was Squid Games as well.
Again… we tried to start working together as a team, but fire is a great leveller of people and I and Emily were in particular challenged by it. Many of you have seen my face and the fear fire brings me is just… not something I can control. I did what I could, helping Em Bundy up onto the pipes and then I was stuck and hurting… Did my decision hurt others more, because I didn’t move? Or did the games ‘masters’ cheat, because my movement was helping others and they still shocked us all anyway… Even Josh tried to help me here but then he went through a red light and we were all hurt… I know I also cracked and ran and then we found out:
“That was fucking intense. Had one of you cheated from the damn get go, you could have ended this game at the start! But congrats on surviving.”
Tori & Group
What was this readers? This was total bullshit! The lesson was that if someone had cheated we could have all got out? But the control room was behind the next door so we didn’t know! I confess I struggle now thinking back to the burning, the smell of flesh and the desire to get out, get out fast… of course shocking the other five before the fire so that we could win would have been a better outcome, but that lesson is just basically ‘break the rules to save yourself and sometimes you might save others by chance’… it’s not a philosophy you can live by… it’s not moral and it’s leaving people’s lives to chance… who gives us the right?
With the room over, we were now heading into the next room with injuries, burns and increasing division within our group. I was burnt on my feet and knees and from the video as my memory is not so great, I look awful… no one deserved this.
Room 3 – Truth or Dare
“We’re going to play a game of true or dare. However, do not think you can choose truth and refuse to answer or lie to us. If we feel you are lying, there will be punishment to follow!”
Tori & Group
Truth or Dare… a break from the physical danger of before surely? No. No it was not. We were tired, beaten and hurt and with the medicine rationed we needed a breather, but instead beginning to rush ahead was Josh who rather than think about whether a truth would likely lead to less physical hurt for himself or others, rushed into it. The contestants broke along these lines:
- Josh – A dare
- Emily – A dare – Emily was dared to punish Bentley so that he would make a choice, in ‘any way she chose’
- Jordan – Truth
- Bentley – Neither! Although after shocks were delivered all round he chose a dare.
- Myself – Truth
- Em B – Truth
“What if your bullshit testosterone has condemned one of us to be hurt at your hands? What if your ‘dare’ turns out to be that huh and it’s not like you’ll refuse will you?! What kind of secrets can any of us have that we don’t want others to know about if our life is on the line!?””
Daiyu addresses Josh after he ‘rushes’ into a dare
Jordan was asked who he would leave behind in the room and who out of the six should deserve to live…
“I’d rather say myself. For the same reason. If people are going to get out of here alive… it’ll be with his leadership. So… I’d leave myself behind. Doesn’t mean I’m giving up. Or saying I’d be left here to die. But I’ll stay behind to get past whatever the hell it is you have planned that you THINK is going to break me. And whatever I say doesn’t even matter right? This is just another fucking test you’re trying to give me right? There is no right answer. No matter what I said, you’d find a way to make it wrong. A reason to punish someone. I think that’s the real game here. You’re not trying to see if you can break our morals. Because you know you can’t. You’re just trying to see how long you can get someone to play with you in the sandbox!”
Jordan choosing his fate… or at the time what the rest of the players thought was his fate
Just after Jordan answered, Tori’s goons came in and executed him in front of us all... while later we (and you) know this was faked, at the time it was awful… you can’t imagine readers unless you’ve seen death up close and not been able to do anything about it even if you want. We couldn’t even charge the guards; we were down on the floor being shocked.
I told the truth as best I could and told it like it was to Tori… I know later that perhaps my angry answers, my attempting to break the rules could have hurt us all, but at the time I just wanted it to stop and thought if anyone was at risk it was me and perhaps by being smart and clever I’d save us all the pain…
Em B was told to pick a lucky number and who she disliked the most in the game… I hold her no ill will for choosing my number as lucky, it was what she thought was right… I also would have agreed with her choice of disliked… Josh.
“Now, Player One. You still have your dare. And as you are Player Six’s least favourite, you now have a choice for your dare. Your dare is to hurt another player. But you have a choice between Player Six… or her favourite of Player Five. Have fun. Make it good, or we will not count it.”
Tori as she manipulated the group, using Em’s moral selection to then try and show her that now she was at risk from the person she disliked the most.
Josh decided to stab Em and it was awful… just awful. I did not want to be hurt of course, but was Josh going to do this room after room after room until we were dead? That was my thoughts that he’d do what was asked and at the end he’d be the only one left alive. That wasn’t a lesson except in brutality and might is right and as I said above… that’s a shallow lesson. He could have hurt us with words, with something other than violence, but he choose to use a knife, even if it appeared that he used it carefully. How would we have known? Could he imagine Em’s fear?
Emily, distraught at the loss of Jordan did something selfless (at least as it appeared then), she hurt herself with a knife in Bentley’s hand and gave him the pain of having hurt her, but she didn’t deal physical pain out to anyone; she took it for herself. She sacrificed…
“THERE! You wanted him punished! Now he gets to live with the regret that he caused this!”
Emily after cutting herself with a knife in Bentley’s grip
But alas, our captors were not done with cruelty to Bentley (or any of us), they instructed Bentley to break the fingers on Emily’s hands; five of them because that was a special number given earlier and Emily because she had tried to cheat and outsmart the game… Bentley couldn’t and then Josh did. He became the leader, slicing, stabbing, breaking one instruction at a time. Who wants to live in a world like that? I find it really hard.
And they’ve not arrested Tori as at the time I’ve written this? What the hell readers?
Taking stock
Readers, I think I’ll leave you with this now. You don’t have my full thoughts and you don’t have the other three rooms, or the details of how HPD finally saved us. Likewise I don’t feel ‘done’. It’s good to talk, but I’ve not covered so much of the things that got even worse… I guess I need a break and when I return I’ll do more.
For now… live, love, laugh readers. We’re humans and we hurt and bleed and long. We can also stop much of that through choice. Tori wants you to think it’s her world out there and that I would screw you over without thought or that HPD officers are *always* deserving of a beat-down, or Emily was too innocent to live in Hathian, or countless other dehumanising outcomes when we see someone else. She doesn’t want a justice and fairness based society because she is the real reject in Hathian. Not the gang with that name.
No one is perfect, some are monsters. But monsters go away at night when light banishes them and if we work together then there is more light and less darkness. Even when a light goes out… take a look up at the sky, billions more right reader?
Room 4, a ‘life for a life’, Room 5 ‘Inject or ingest’, Room 6 ‘Moral to the end of corrupted by chaos’ along with the details about the HPD raid will be published in part two of this series, only in the Observer! ((After the typist’s holidays))
((With amazing thanks to the amazing players and of course Tori, Mu, Chastity, Elben, Murphy, Jayden and many more
Number one played by: ᴊᴏꜱʜᴜᴀ ᴋᴀᴜꜰᴍᴀɴ (xfortvnex)
Number two played by: Emily Rose (02persocom)
Number three played by: Bᴇɴᴛʟᴇʏ Sᴄᴏᴜᴛ Ɓʀᴀᴠᴇʜᴇᴀʀᴛ (weebraveheartt)
Number four played by: Jordan Rizzo
Number five played by: Daiyu (faithtang)
Number six played by: Em Bundy (sugarninja) ))
