song :3

After this, there weren't any large fights until January. This was for 2 reasons:

a) I had received anxiety pills from my psychiatrist, which I started using anytime a conversation with Luna would make me very anxious again

b) During the period of late November - end of December, she became busy on working on her large holiday fic. Our conversations became more sparse as she was, apparently, completely consumed by it.

But we were brought back together as Luna, out of nowhere, suggested working on a fic together.

This was... weird to me. For context: Luna and I had attempted to work on fics before. We'd have an idea in DMs, talk about it, create a shared doc, and then... NOTHING from her. I am not joking when I say I would write up to 4 thousand words in a document without a single contribution from her. This was back at the beginning of our friendship. As a result, I had given up on ever writing anything with her. So for her to just suggest working on a fic together out of the blue was... really weird.

(Side note: Luna and I had a lot of fic ideas in our pinned messages. At the time it completely slipped my mind that the only reason I brought up a/b/o had been because I'd just read a fic and wanted to talk about something similar. So our discussion of the idea happened months ago - it was only after the whole fiasco was over that I remembered, oh shit, it had originally been inspired by something else. So I apologize for the unintended idea stealing.)

I am including the following screenshot as 1 - proof we really did talk a lot about so many ideas; and 2 - as the most likely theory for why she was suddenly up for writing a fic with me.

She wanted to write something, but didn't think she would have time to do it by herself. So she hit me up. This becomes ironic later on because she ended up completely destroying my ability to work on the fic.

Bonus: her changing things I myself had written in the fic and only asking me if it was okay afterward. I... didn't really feel like I could disagree and argue with her.

In the middle of everything, an event occurred which I can only refer to as The Like Drama. This event is going to have its own post because it spans 10 screenshots and is, even more than anything in this whole series of events, incredibly inane, hard to follow, and it's insane it was ever made a big deal in the first place. It is, however, a very fantastic example of Luna's casual manipulation and general obsessiveness with public image.

The Like Drama post HERE:

Back to the fic saga:

A short time after this, after editing my words and only asking permission afterwards, I was scrolling Twitter and an announcement Tweet from Luna popped up on my timeline. (I don't have the capacity to go make an alt and try to search through her account for it, but it was public and many people can certainly remember it.)

It read, in summary: that she was working on an omegaverse fic and to stay tuned. A couple of things to highlight, specifically:

a) there was no mention of me, or any co-author in the tweet

b) this tweet was made without any sort of discussion with me

c) I have an Actual Massive Trigger around pressure; something I would talk about extensively in her server. Both Raelle and Cass (vegaspetesupremacy / sketchyshit) are willing to back me up on this. It used to be so bad that I could not tell anyone what I was working on, otherwise I would be unable to finish it.

(if anyone is wondering about the legitimacy of such a trigger - I used to attend a massively abusive private school for almost 8 years. It fucking sucked.)

Luna knew about this trigger. And not only did she post a tweet like that, in what follows after, she proceeds to stomp all over my boundary.

On January 19th I woke up to the message that a friend had committed suicide.

At the same time, the fic had gone up during the night - but it wasn't what I focused on because I was emotionally broken up. I made a Twitter post about taking some time off to grieve.

After crying, I was left alone with my thoughts. And my email notifications were pinging with people commenting on the fic. So I thought: why not reply? Luna had previously mentioned finding comment replies draining; I felt like I could do something useful.

And this is where things went wrong. As mentioned, I was not in a good headspace. So when some comments featured the typical begging for more ie "please please write a chapter 2!!" I was very blunt with reinforcing my own boundary; telling them quite frankly that it's uncomfortable and if they keep going, I will block them.

Were my replies graceful? No. But I was grieving and did not have the capacity to care.

Here is my final conversation with Luna, after which we never spoke again.

That's it. That's the end of our conversation.

Luna did not reply to me for 2 entire days. During this time, she wrote and published a drabble for one of the commenters.

Formerly, this conversation also had a message or two from me along the lines of "Luna? Please respond, please." I deleted these after seeing that. (That entire conversation, I was waiting on a single "I'm sorry for your loss" from her; at one point I specifically tried to allude to my situation to see if she knew, but she did not acknowledge it.)

After 48 hours, I unfollowed Luna on Twitter and left her server; mostly to see if it would make her react.

In response, she hard-blocked me. She chose her followers and fame over our friendship for good.

During this 48-hour period, I had also thought to message Raelle regarding my general frustration, almost as a last call for help. Because to be clear: this interaction left me sobbing and wailing on the ground. In essence, I had lost two friends on a single day. I could not fathom why she was treating me this way, what horrible thing I may have done to deserve this.

Not to be sappy, but: I really, really want to be clear how much I owe to Rae. She allowed me to vent and show her what happened: I asked her multiple times if I was out of line, because I thought it must be something I had done. She was my first outside perspective on my interactions with Luna; she was the one to tell me "you don't deserve to be treated like this." Without her, I would have probably ended up crawling back and begging Luna to forgive me, possibly trapping myself in months more of miserable friendship.

And here is something incredibly scary: If Luna had just.. given a single reply. Just a single "Wait for me a few days, we'll talk later." I wouldn't be here right now.

Even months after everything happened, I was still wracked by guilt and felt like I would sacrifice anything just to have that friendship back. My friends had to talk me down, sometimes, from messaging her begging her to take me back. After the first few days, I unblocked her on Twitter and kept her unblocked for close to a month - just in case that maybe, possibly, she ever wanted to talk to me again.

I'm not under any illusion as to what this treatment is comparable to. Some people, when shown everything, have told me the word "abuse" could apply - but I hesitate to use it, and am actively choosing not to include it as an accusation; because it is heavy and loaded and I do not want anyone to misunderstand.

Unfortunately, the story doesn't end here.

After leaving the work, something happened: despite me leaving, Luna had not edited the Author's Note to include mentioning me. In fact, it almost seemed like she wanted to avoid mentioning me; since the fic has been deleted, I am including proof through old DMs with Raelle (me reacting to this situation). (I become quite angry in these screenshots. I apologize for the name-calling.)

Quick context for what I mention here: After I became unable to work on the fic, Luna would reassure me "it's fine, you already did so much" when I expressed guilt. So... yeah, seeing this comment was a betrayal. PLUS the fact she froze it.

So, in my anger and frustration I decided to make a Twitter post; SOLELY because of the no-credit issue. At that point, I didn't want to expose Luna's treatment of me because I still had trouble accepting that it wasn't mostly my fault.

Here is the post I made, which turned into a thread as she made her own thread and misrepresented what I said: https://twitter.com/reptileofdoom/status/1616908647048613888?s=20

As a response to this, Luna created her own thread which she started sending to everyone. And not just everyone she knew, but asking those people to share it with everyone they know. (The thread has since been deleted, presumably after people pointed out inaccuracies and/or she realized she was just giving the issue more publicity.) The main piece of misinformation in the thread was her claiming I was credited in the Author's Note: this only became true after my post went public and she did it, presumably, as a way of covering her ass.

Proof, provided by kiwibin (thank you so much):

(shown through discord search because the chat was extremely active at the time and there are a million unrelated messages)

Additional proof of the thread being sent to Rae, her defending me to Luna, and Luna's response (screenshots provided by Raelle, thank you so much):

Bonus points: Misgendering lol. You only have my word on this, but her thread also featured a screenshot of a conversation with one of the "upset commenters" who misgendered me and Luna did not correct them, instead reassuring them she still loved them or whatever. She posted it as proof of how much I upset her followers.

These next images are of Rae crafting her response at the time, but it is what she ended up sending:

(As mentioned before, Rae is an angel.) (Cut off because stupid image limit, so I had to prioritize more important conversation.)

Finally, last of all:

There is a reason I have called all this a "continued pattern." In the time afterward, as I was dealing with my own emotional fallout and had trouble processing everything, I reached out to someone Luna had mentioned to me as a "former best friend (who abandoned her)." The conversation was... illuminating, and gives information about Luna's time in her previous fandom, MDZS.

Thank you so much, lunarwriter, for allowing me to add your voice to this.

As mentioned in these screenshots, there is a pattern:

Luna approaches someone, usually someone with some sort of "value" - either with many followers, or because of their writing/art. (in some ways, I was the exception: she messaged me because we wrote an impromptu threadfic in replies) (this would later be turned into her fanfiction Mortifying Ordeal, once again without credit to me, which I didn't think to question at the time. )

She pulls them into her circle. When we were friends, it was "invite them to the server" - which may be dead now because I was the one usually working very hard to keep it from going dead. But this part features a lot of compliments, asking to sprint together, gushing about how she loves their work, messaging a lot, etc.

Then comes the part where she gets value out of someone. Last I heard, she was doing it through collabs.

Here is where it gets... fuzzy because this part is usually in DMs. But people I have spoken to have mentioned experiencing some form of manipulation or another, usually to satisfy Luna's ego - constantly comparing followers, statistics, etc. Or in my case, becoming a sort of sounding board, someone to be a cheerleader for her and constantly comfort whenever she needs it - but heaven forbid I ask for some comfort back.

Just to be clear: the amount of manipulation used varies person to person.

Since I was vulnerable and easily taken advantage of, she used a heavy hand with me: which is why she was able to completely destroy me in such a relatively short amount of time.

If you are someone who is older, or has more "star power", maybe you haven't noticed these things! Or she hasn't felt the need to use it on you! Or you are special, or I am somehow mistaken about everything.

There is a very good reason why, in our final conversation, I pointed out she would not be acting the same way toward me if I was older and had "popularity."

At the end of the day, Luna is someone who, when allowed power over someone else, uses it to hurt people over and over again.

I expect her response to be something like this: Pick a point or two to focus on, ones where it was harder to find proof, or ones where I did not think to include some related conversation beforehand. Make her entire point around that. Claim I am trying to hurt her; paint herself as the victim. Vent to everyone around it, make very sad posts, share her inevitable "defense" with everyone. (If I'm wrong, I'm gonna donate $20 to charity. Not joking.)

As mentioned before, this isn't a call for "cancelling" or whatever. First and foremost, it is a PSA, a way to show these techniques and to help people guard against them more effectively. Second of all, it is a way for me to heal: the nature of everything made it hard to talk about these things openly without having proof lined up. By making this post, I am allowing myself to open up, to be clear about my boundaries, to be able to be honest with people and say "sorry, I can't follow you because you reblog her stuff sometimes and that makes me have panic attacks." Yes, there is some small amount of petty satisfaction to be made making this post; but that is only its very last purpose.

I want to end the post on some positive information:

I am doing alright now. I was able to move out in March and adopted a kitty in April. I am in therapy and have been able to discuss this whole issue extensively. I have a close friend group within the fandom now, who I have been able to rely on, again and again. Thank you so much, everyone - you know who you are <3

So, here are the basic details, presented first from my own point of view:

Luna and I used to be quite close fandom friends, in the period of August 2022 - January 2023, when our big "breakup" happened. During that time, Luna created an extremely uneven dynamic within our friendship: constantly talking about her own problems, trauma-dumping, and complaining about various things. My own personal issues, when brought up, were either never addressed or I would be outright berated for bringing them up.

Additionally, and I am using this word with its full intended meaning: she would intentionally gaslight me, making me question the reality of our friendship, claiming that I was "emotionally manipulating" her, all the while trampling over my own boundaries and not being able to give even basic courtesies expected in friendship. She blatantly took advantage of my autism, gaslighting me by telling me that social norms didn't work the way I thought.

For full context: I am autistic. At the time of our friendship, I lived with my parents, who have for years emotionally abused me for said autism. There were many unsafe things about the environment I was in. On top of that, there is an 8 year age difference between myself and Luna. (She is older.)

I bring up my own age not as a "gotcha", but as important context to keep in mind for the conversations you are about to read as we get into the meat of this. I am aware that Luna is also neurodivergent but 1) that is not the same thing as autistic and 2) I gave her many, many benefits of the doubt throughout our friendship. Please keep in mind neurotypes are not an excuse for continued horrible behavior.

(About my own age: I am 20 years old. When entering Kinnporsche & Vegaspete fandom, I was under the impression the show is merely 18+ and it is labelled as such in most places. I did not even hear of it supposedly being 21+ until a few months ago. Nevertheless, I do my best to respect everyone's comfort and leave spaces not intended for me.)

One last disclaimer: I am not trying to frame this as a "cancellation post." Most of all, I intend for this to be a warning for anyone in a similar position to myself, easily taken advantage of. If, on the other hand, you read everything and see no issue with any of Luna's behavior, then I will not argue with you. I am not asking people to abandon their friendships with this person - merely to guard themselves from being hurt the way I was, over and over again.

Timeline of event (summary):

Luna and I first started talking in August or so. Unfortunately, due to the mutual blocks, a lot of our Twitter history is inaccessible to me; but I know the rough timeframe because at the end of August is when Luna and I sent each other our first DMs on Discord. Most of the events happened there; some others happened in her server, which I left after our breakup and have no interest in returning to.

In October is when the first concerning behavior popped up; on the 31st of October I attempted to pull away from the friendship, not quite realizing what was happening but becoming aware that every interaction I had with Luna left me feeling anxious and panicky. I was guilted into staying and feeling bad for ever trying to do that. Our worst interaction happened in November. After this things calmed down throughout December, precipitating again in January when we made the decision to work on and post fanfiction together. The posting of this fanfic became the straw that broke the camel's back.

A deeper dive into these events:

A lot of this is going to seem like very personal drama. Unfortunately, it is only through showing all this that I can show the horrible manipulative tactics she would use. Please bear with me.

As mentioned previously, the beginning of our friendship was on Twitter, where we have now blocked each other. As such, I have lost access to our DM history. I have tried downloading my Twitter archive and various other methods, but nothing I have tried has allowed me to regain access.

Proof that I can't message and/or look at DMs from her:

Proof that our DM conversation did, at one point, exist (yes, unfortunately I have to use vegetable porn here to prove my point):

Since we were not too close during the Twitter era, there thankfully isn't much that needs to be brought up from those days. However, there is one extremely critical fact in those conversations: It was there that I told Luna about my living situation and trouble with parents. Most of all, I very specifically told her I would get called "emotionally manipulative" just for having meltdowns.

It is now impossible to retrieve that conversation, unless by some miracle she unblocks me. I do not have high hopes for this happening. For now I ask: please just believe this happened and keep it in mind.

With that established, we get into when the manipulation started blatantly showing. It first came about as a result of... a GC, of all things. That Luna would frequently post screenshots of and I felt envious of. Perhaps it was my own mistake to not resort to clear communication immediately, but here is a conversation where I first brought up the topic, implying I would really like to join.

Her responses aren't.. bad, per say. Obtuse, more like. There is nothing incriminating here, but look at what she focuses on, what specific things she does not address - and where the conversation ends up, with who comforting whom.

(From now on, passages of interest will be circled in yellow.)

So Attempt #1 was a bust, right? Okay, no biggie, we commiserated a little over mutual insecurities, I just have to ask my friend outright so she knows what I mean-

Right. I am not quite sure how to commentate this entire exchange, even half a year later, but let me give it my best shot.

At this point, you're probably still giving her benefit of the doubt. "She is just really, really bad at knowing how to communicate" you might say. That is what I told myself at the time. (Note: I am hyper empathetic so please know that at every point I was primed to believe her and empathize.)

It's really, really awkward to have to make this point through conversation about people essentially unrelated to this, but this unfortunately became our driving issue. For context, this famed GC had all of.. 5? 6? people apart from her. So if you are imagining a massive server with strict rules? Nope.

Next, notice how instead of just. Admitting she can ask her own friends a question, she tries to make me seem unreasonable. "What, you want me to stop mentioning my friends?" basically. She then also, specifically, makes a point of saying "You are not being rejected." This will become important later.

At around this time, I came to realize: this friendship wasn't good for me. I did not have the words for it, nor could I believe any of the blame was on her, but I knew a few things:

I was always the first one to start conversations.

It would take Luna long amounts of time to reply.

When she did reply, it still ended up being an unbalanced conversation, with me doing about 70-80% of the talking.

Every time I talked to Luna or was waiting for a reply, I would feel horrible, anxious and, in short, like shit.

Now, I turned all these issues inward and looked for the root of the problem inside myself. Having been blamed for my autism all my life, it ended up being my justification for many of these things, sometimes in creative ways.

This is the message I sent Luna on October 31st and the ensuing conversation:

My first message doesn't fit the screenshot; full text is in image description.

She then proceeded to post MULTIPLE screenshots of her latest conversations with not only fandom friends, but real life people including HER ROOMMATES. As proof of her lowered capacity for responding to people. I will save my commentary for the end; Let us continue:

A screenshot of her Twitter DMs to show who she has responded to and when.

Interjecting that at this point she still had not done the extremely basic thing of just. Asking her friends if she could invite someone. And notice the use of the word "manipulative."

Let's take a pause here because I shit you not, that was the end of the conversation.

Did you see the immediate guilt-tripping? The language implying I am to blame for everything? "If YOU think our friendship is toxic" "if YOU think this is best for you"

There are many things she says here that are, in hindsight, INSANE. But chief among which is her insistence on hierarchy and social dynamics.

Do you see why I wrote that she took advantage of my autism?

"I'm not the one at fault, YOU are the one who is fundamentally misunderstanding how group dynamics work."

I talked to my friends about this. I vented to them about being so dumb and stupid I couldn't even understand a basic thing, without showing them the conversation of course. I felt immense self-hatred because she convinced me it wasn't her being weird and unreasonable - it was just me being dumb and disabled!

And a necessary reminder: She was very clear about the fact that she WASN'T rejecting me. She really DID want me there! It's just she had no options :(

Why did I make myself seem so pathetic as to practically beg her to let me join her group? Because at the same time, she'd tell me shit like I was her favorite person and encouraging me to go make friends with the other people and surely THEY would want to then invite me.

Last of all, please notice how the conversation ends. Two apologies and no response. But a prompt idea? Something fandom-y? Yeah, she'll engage with that and make no acknowledgement of anything before.

A lot of these conversations are so frustrating to look back on in hindsight. Obviously, she had no interest in me and did not actually care for a proper friendship. I was somebody to conveniently vent to and get fanfic ideas from; otherwise, I don't think she had much interest in me as a person. (Something further supported by the things we're gonna be getting into next.)

Now, where we last left off I was guilted into continuing this friendship. A friendship, I emphasize again: I had multiple times stated was unhealthy for me and was actively causing me frequent breakdowns.

The following conversation happened as a result of something in the server. As mentioned: I no longer have access to those records. In short, however: Luna and I had a short disagreement where she stated she didn't like something I was saying. Which was fine! I felt very apologetic and apologized. To which she responded "okay" and... nothing else.

So I sent a few message in the server chat. Waited. No response for hours. My anxiety went through the roof - I started having an anxiety attack and, in desperation, DM'd Luna multiple times privately because I had no idea what was happening: whether our disagreement was resolved, or if she was still mad, or what. I would like to make it clear the only thing I was looking for was just a confirmation of: "are we good?" If the answer had been "oh, yeah, I accepted your apology" there would have been zero problem. Instead, this is what happened:

This is the conversation, in its entirety.

Do you see why I used the term gaslighting? In its full, actual definition as an abuse tactic?

It is hard to write a commentary for this. Look at how many times she twists what I say and mean. To be clear; I am fully aware of how passive aggressive my language in this conversation becomes. I am not proud of it. But as mentioned, I had been worn down by months of constant anxiety; in a weird way, I do feel proud looking back, that I was able to stand up for myself in this moment. In the end, I put all the blame on myself again, which led to a.. small concession from her.

I hope it is clear from these images that I was never looking for more than 5 seconds of her time, whenever she was able to check her messages. The expectation with messages, in general, is that the person will get to them when they get to them. Her insistence that I was being selfish, messaging her while she was at work, comes out of nowhere and is especially strange because.. she would message at work all the time. It was not a boundary she had ever enforced before.

I am not coming here from a position of "we argued once and now I hate her." I am coming from a position of "this is a person who messed me up for months in a way that has required extensive therapy." THIS is why I am making a post like this, about how dangerous she is and how much I want people to be aware so that they can please, please protect themselves.

She would constantly come to me with more intense problems, all the time. She had me talk her down from panic attacks at work. (Not shown because 1 - image limit, 2 - it is very personal, and I still feel bad exposing her personal stuff.) But when I had a single time it got bad, when all I needed was "yeah, I'm not mad, don't worry"? This was the response.

There is more. It gets worse. Unfortunately, I have hit the 30-image tumblr limit: this will be continued in a second post, that is linked: