The Close Up Forever Summer Event’s Real Tragedy

Hi.

I’m Earl, EIC and overlord boss of thefanboyseo.com. Today I’m writing this blog entry to tell you about the real tragedy in the “Close-Up Forever Summer Tragedy”. If you’re not aware there were rumors and hearsays coming out before the event that there would be widespread use of drugs. After all, it was a rave party. The Kabataan=Shit crowds will also be there so there’s no doubt about it. But then people started losing consciousness followed by losing their lives.

And that’s the tragedy of Forever Summer. But more than that, its the tragedy of losing a friend in the form of Lance Garcia.

It’s the tragedy of a wife losing her husband, daughters losing their dad, various Manila-based geek communities losing a valued member, this website losing a fine supporter and contributing photographer and finally a lot of people losing a friend.

That was a lot of commas for one sentence, but that’s exactly what Mr. Lance Garcia was to a lot of people.

But it doesn’t stop with Lance. Four other people died during the event. Four other people who weren’t just a number on a police report or names used to move a story forward. They were friends, sons, daughters and lovers. Now they’re gone. Had I not joined an out-of-town media event and instead took a friend’s ticket, I could have been the sixth or seventh or whatever.

The real tragedy here is people getting robbed at the chance of seeing another day. For Lance’s family and friends, it was him not seeing his little girls grow up. Or tell them stories of why there are two Supermen and two Batmen in his Hot Toys collection.

For me and the rest of the team working on this website and the page, its not being able to see him in a geek event, shaking his hand and saying “hail hydra”. Or bumping into him in Shoppesville Plus looking for good deals on toys. Its the loss now that I won’t be able to message him and ask him if I can deploy him to an event where he can take photos, like his hail mary save during the Philippine launch of Street Fighter V.

Lance with host Mrytle cosplaying as Cammy

We won’t be able to do our plans for Toycon 2016 and Asia Pop Comic Con 2016. It’s painful for us, so I can only imagine how his family feels.

No we won’t be able to do that now.

It’s painful to admit but there is a silver lining to this. Our friend and brother is with the creator now. He’s looking over us and looking out for us. Because that’s what he does.

I remember Lance telling me how time is fleeting. Like one moment we were these two kids rushing to finish our college degrees in DLSU-D and the next moment we were doing a business meeting in Makati for Partyphile. On that crazy traffic along C5 we talked about life, where its led us, how education helped us through and about his family.

Yes time is indeed fleeting. Not just for you but for all the people who died at the event.

This is my eulogy bro. I never expected to do one in this decade but here it is.