You'll be fine. I will get left behind.

So, those of you who have stuck with me the longest may or may not be wholly aware of the history of my interactions with people on this site. In particular, this involves the messy history of people whom I had given no small degree of dedication to over the years, only to end up high and dry, or social manipulation by others so they could get what they wanted out of me, or whatever else. These are the things that had caused me to ultimately become incredibly selective and sequester myself away from the larger RP community on this site as a whole. I only wanted to expend my efforts and creativity on those who seemed like they would appreciate it past a point, because it really sucks to constantly keep putting myself out there and being convinced to invest in other partners, both in terms of interactions and on personal notes, only to basically get shoved aside when things got inconvenient, with minimal or lackluster communication provided as to why.

Disclaimer: I do not intend for this to be a callout. Do not treat it as such. I don't expect this would change minds or crumble relationships any further as it is. Those involved have made their choices already.

In comes lacedmagic, who some of you may know as Zero, Neko, or what have you, who approached me out of the blue a few years ago and who seemed rather intent on shipping my character with hers.

I will be completely transparent. I initially did not trust her whatsoever, especially with how strongly she impressed her character onto mine with our initial few replies. After all, how many times have people approached me, so keen on pushing for an instant ship, only to end up pushing me aside once they get that gratification? I don't like being used like that, and my interactions with countless others on this site have made me incredibly guarded against that sort of behavior.

Thus, I decided to put her to the test. I had written some extensive, IC resistance to her efforts to establish this ship she seemed to want so badly. This usually seems to deter people rather quickly in my experience. But, wouldn't you know it, she pushed through and kept writing extensively with me, and I believe we were on the road to creating interesting interactions and well-fleshed out writing as a result of this.

She soon approached me OOC to get to know me and talk about our stuff, and we ended up hitting it off fabulously. So fabulously, as some of you are aware, that she became a centerpiece of this blog's activity for quite some time. Zero worked to put in the effort to earn my trust and good faith. She went above and beyond for me. And we each seemed to find out we had more similarities than we both thought, as well as similar grievances with the community and similar struggles.

We bonded. And when I introduced her to my XIV character stuff, she became immediately smitten with my XIV character, and went out of her way to lavish me with writing, gposes, and even pushed the hardest to completely upend my XIV character's backstory and give him happier circumstances as a result.

At the time, I was also going through a personal, low period. My IRL best friend's dad had died, someone who was a close family friend of ours, and, just before Zero had come along, I was feeling low and I was seeking just... Someone to talk to about it. Some kind of comfort. And despite how supposedly "caring" and "supportive" the XIV RPC on Tumblr was to that sort of thing, I got total radio silence. Nobody cared to offer me an ear or a shoulder to lean on. And, for the record, I had been going out of my way for almost 2 years straight by that point to be kind and supportive to others in that community, both in the game and outside of it. I helped who I could during that period... And received absolutely no appreciation or camaraderie for it. I felt totally used and uncared for among those people.

When Zero latched onto my XIV stuff so hard, she also heard me out on those woes, talked with me about them, sympathized with me, and, ultimately, she was the one who pushed me to stop writing in the XIV RPC. She pushed this idea on me of just, "We'll just do our own thing, and everyone else can just miss out on all the good things they never gave you the chance to have." I decided it was better, then, to refocus my efforts on someone who actually seemed to care about my writing, my characters, and myself as a person rather than continuing to agonize myself with putting myself out there and trying for a bunch of strangers who would never really care about me to begin with.

And, as we shared our respective, general roleplay woes with one another, this ended up extending to my main stuff with Zech. So much so that Zero ended up creating a Discord server for our stuff, claiming that she was done with roleplaying on Tumblr, and that we would just do our own thing in private, which we explored and fleshed out quite thoroughly. As we found out over time just how much chemistry our characters had with each other, Zero would constantly tout to me that she wanted to "give me everything I wanted" and "how happy she was to have met me". How she "wished we would've met sooner". How it "felt like we've known each other for a very long time."

For a time, I was happy. I slowly started to trust her even more and more. I had the sort of friendship with someone I had always wanted. She made me feel safe to confide everything in her, and the feeling seemed to be mutual. I felt safe to explore some of the more self-indulgent roleplaying things I always wanted to explore, but no one would ever give me the chance to explore. She gave me so much, even outside of writing, and I tried to repay it as best as I could. When my mother passed away a little over two years ago now, Zero was the one pushing the hardest to support me through that time, to take my mind off of things, to comfort me. She encouraged me when I decided I would start being more open about myself to others, for better or worse. She was the one who agreed with me that, at the end of the day, all we really had in this world was each other as people, and we needed to cherish the time we spend with our friends and family and keep them as close as we can because life is, ultimately, too short.

Although we had our moments which, in reflection, may have been total red flags I was choosing to overlook because I wanted to trust her, I still supported her – both socially and financially. A mutual friend (Scythe) and I constantly bought her games because she wanted to become a vtuber, but she seemed like she couldn't afford to get the things she wanted to stream, as well just stuff she wanted to play on her own – not to mention stuff we could all play together. And not long before things took such a drastic turn for the worst, I even bought her a new, somewhat pricey microphone as her old one had started dying on her as she was trying to finish one of her games she had been streaming.

I was always good to her. I always tried to be good to her. I believed in her and I wanted to support her wholeheartedly, and help her work towards the success she wanted to achieve. I always heard her out, and I almost always found most of her own stances sympathetic and relatable. And, more than that, I wanted her to be happy in her own life. I knew she was engaged to someone else for the last 14 years, and had been living with him for almost as long, from my understanding. I wanted nothing more than for her to be happy in her relationship. If the time came where we needed to set aside our roleplaying hobbies while she focused on her real life business, I could accept that with the hope that we could still stay good friends in the meantime.

I thought I had found something akin to "family" in her, as well as my own small circle of friends for the last few years now. "Family" who had been better to me than my actual family had been. People I loved and trusted, that I could count to be there for me as I would be there for them. Being there for each other through all of the bad and all of the good, supporting each other.

Something changed over the last year. I can only guess at what the cause for it was in her personal life, based on what I was told, but she was slowly becoming less and less of a friend to me, and the rest of us as well. She would make plans, fall through on them constantly, constant failures to communicate, constant snappiness at us for negligible things, constant ditching. While I can understand plans falling through every so often, once it starts becoming a frequent pattern, it becomes an undeniable problem.

I was getting frustrated with her. Especially when I was still making financial decisions involving her and for her sake. I had put a lot of investment into her as a person because she had encouraged as much, and she was on a bad streak of doing things that were making me uncomfortable and, in some smaller ways, hurting me.

Rewind to late April of this year. Once again, we had made plans to do something, and once again, she ditched on them. After the last year of this consistent behavioral pattern, I had reached my high water mark with this behavior and I let her know, simply and plainly, that I couldn't trust her when it came to plans anymore. She proceeded to spend the next two weeks avoiding me, barely acknowledging me, barely hanging out.

I only grew more frustrated that she had decided to respond in this fashion. That sheer degree of avoidance just felt like too much, coming from someone who once agreed wholeheartedly with me on the importance of communication, especially after I had already dropped even more money on a small thing that I was hoping to make her happy with just before this. I vented a bit about it on my XIV blog, as it was relevant to that, and this was finally the spur for her to approach me and talk to me again about it, completely misinterpreting what I meant about what I said in the process.

This was how I ended up finding out just how bad things really had been. I know if she finds out about what I'm saying here, she'll only begrudge me further for "talking about things she told me in confidence" out in the open like this, but, at this point, since she's finally cut loose every last tether between us, it really doesn't matter to me anymore. Those who've decided to continue supporting her despite how badly she's talked about them behind their backs, both knowingly and unknowingly, have drawn their own lines in the sand by this point. I have no reason left to honor or respect the wishes of someone who has demonstrated absolutely no respect, and even subtle, completely undue hostility, for myself.

I will also acknowledge, as one last disclaimer and in total fairness (that I probably don't even owe considering the treatment I've received), that there are two sides to any story. Mine may not be the end-all, be-all, objective fact of the matter, but I have not been allowed to know Zero's exact circumstances for months now because she has refused to tell me or anyone else who had been talking between both of us anything whatsoever. Thus, I can only make my case.

Zero admitted to me that she had "met someone". She claimed her fiance knew about this, and had even eagerly "pushed" this arrangement onto her despite her own, alleged misgivings, but that she had ended up "bonding" with this other person. She attributed this little arrangement as a "kink" that her and her fiance were trying, and claimed it simply "backfired". "Backfired" so badly that it ended up with a huge fight between the two of them and Zero nearly getting kicked out of her house as a result. However, they apparently decided to work past this and start going to therapy – individual sessions for each other and couples therapy together. She then started declaring that "everything would be fine" despite both the gravity of the situation and the fact that it was still a fresh issue, that she would "learn and grow", and that her and her fiance would work past this together.

I couldn't abide that sort of response. I felt it was horribly irresponsible and lacking in any personal accountability to chalk up mistakes this severe as being things which could be so easily resolved, especially with her insistence that things would be fine so soon. This lead to more self-justifying excuses about how she didn't have anything really going for her in her life, as well as more personal matters that seemed to be onus for this trend of bad decisions and impatience on her part that lead to all of this blowing up. I lost my patience with her attitude and I tried to remind her of all the good in her life as well as just how far she's come, which she ended up throwing right back in my face, which got me completely fed up with her. What she was telling me triggered, admittedly, a trauma response in me, as someone who has dealt with several broken relationships that resulted from infidelity that I've been subjected to, not to mention hearing countless stories of similar situations, so I got a bit harsh with her, even while trying to keep things positive.

She proceeded to completely ghost me and others for the whole weekend, which scared me as to her wellbeing under the circumstances. I tried to offer some assurance that, despite the fact that I was upset with her, and that she was likely hurt and upset about what she had said to me, that we could work on things if we just gave each other some time and then eventually talked things over. She eventually got back to me, thanks to mediation provided by Shay, and told me that she was taking Shay's advice that she needed space because "I had hurt her at her most vulnerable", telling me that she would "approach me when she felt capable of having a calm and honest conversation", which I initially agreed to. I had also put up the condition that, while we're giving each other space, we should both refrain from lashing out about each other in our private dealings, as I knew that would only deepen the wounds between us. Considering the fact that I had already caught her doing this on her private Twitter, which she promptly blocked me from after I had asked for that condition, I had every reason to assume that this venting and demonizing would continue behind my back, which is why I proposed that condition at all to begin with.

In the meantime, though, I needed to sort out how I felt about everything that happened. It felt as though I was being punished for being open and honest by the very person who had encouraged this out of me. I felt as though my feelings and good intentions had been completely invalidated, that my voice was being denied to me. And after dealing with this out of so many other people in my life, including family, friends, and lovers, it honestly broke me to have this happen out of someone who I had confided all of these things about me to, who had previously sympathized with me, allegedly to the point where it used to make her so viscerally upset that she'd get sick to her stomach thinking of how I've been treated by others. It felt like she was taking all of my insecurities and traumas, and throwing them right back in my face. I questioned why I was being punished for someone else's mistakes. I barely ate. I hardly slept. I had at least a few, total breakdowns because of it.

And, needless to say, I was completely uncomfortable with the idea of keeping her presence so prominently tied to my own presence while she was treating me like this, so I slowly started distancing myself, both for my own sake and for the sake of "respecting that space". First, in small ways – negligible. But, with the way she had continued treating me over time, it eventually escalated into how things currently stand.

A week passes, and I talk with my friends about everything that happened. I seek guidance. I was hurt and confused, and I trusted talking to my other friends about everything to make sure whether or not I really did say or do something so terrible to her. Most everyone agreed: I was a bit harsh, but everything I told her was completely understandable and I wasn't wrong for what I said. I was harsh but fair. I had her best interests at heart. And, despite what she ended up telling herself both at the time and later on down the line – as I had come to find out – I was absolutely not venting about her or trying to disparage her behind her back. Those of you reading this who I had talked to during that time can surely attest to this much. Surely you all could see how devastated I was by all of this, how confused I was that this had happened. How I wanted guidance for how to navigate this situation I'd been put in.

Soon enough, I begin to consider that maybe I really did misunderstand something fundamental about the situation, and I felt even more terrible because of it. I wanted to apologize to her, and I finally got over my initial anger and discomfort, wanting to properly hear her out this time. I wanted to own up to my own actions. I wanted to take accountability for myself and try to make peace with my closest friend in years. At the same time, I also finally started making my peace with giving her the space she asked for and respecting her wishes. If I had truly been so awful to her, then I owed it to her to give her all the time she needed to recover.

I suddenly received a package from her by the end of that same week, containing all the little gifts she'd been hanging onto and intending to send me for almost a year. I felt so conflicted, like I was being given mixed messages. I had wanted to try reaching out to at least pay her the courtesy of thanking her for the package, and I had even been encouraged as much by family, but I decided to continue holding my peace in order to respect the space she asked for. It ate away at me doing so, and it certainly didn't help after a few days seeing her make what felt like really guilt-trippy status updates on Discord and such for not reaching out.

Nearly a month passes afterwards, and Shay, who was trying to talk to her and be there for her through all of this, finally agreed that, after a month, it'd been enough time and space for her to sort out how she felt and try to reach some form of reconciliation, or, at the very least, closure between us. Zero, instead, decided to lash out, and completely went back on her own word to me, stating that she couldn't decide whether she'd ever really talk to me if she got better or if she was simply scared to have that conversation with me, so she wouldn't do either thing and I would "just have to keep waiting", coldly dismissing the fact that this situation was causing our entire friend circle so much stress that it had made Shay sick just before she had to attend a major event.

Only after that, I decided to finally try and break the silence, reach out to her and extend an olive branch. I thanked her for the package, explained my actions, owned up to how I reacted, apologized, and tried to make the concession to her if we could just go back to talking casually, like the friends we were supposed to be. No talking about the heavier things, no addressing the problem between us for the time being until she was ready to talk about it, but just talking and sharing things casually – no drama. That we could at least start mutually making the effort to mend things between us slowly.

She, instead, acknowledges that I'm sorry, but that she's "uncomfortable talking like how we used to", and that I just needed to "stop worrying about her", that she was "doing what was best for her". It... honestly made me feel so hurt and betrayed. Like I'd been lied to. Like she never had any intention of making peace with me, and that she was actually punishing me, affirming my fears and insecurities.

As we start reaching almost two months of this "space", I had decided to be completely transparent with Wami, another longtime mutual friend of Zero's and someone who has thrown countless blogs at me in all of the time that I've had this blog, as I came to find out both through Zero and from talking to Wami herself, that Zero had previously expressed a long-standing grudge to me against her for roleplay things that had happened between them, believing this to be a time that warranted total honesty – especially if Zero really wanted to "learn and grow" as a person. This... on top of hearing my perspective on the situation, did hurt Wami terribly and shook up her own perception of Zero, not realizing Zero had been keeping all of this from her for almost a decade. It drove her into losing friends of her own out of paranoia in constantly seeking reassurance, and while I tried to be there for her, I encouraged Wami that she should be honest with Zero and settle their issues between them, since I could plainly see just how much this whole thing was eating her up.

At that time, and as I understood it, Zero also ended up losing a family member, while also insisting to Wami not to tell me a single thing about it, all the while fluffing her up as she confided in Wami about how "Wami has always been there for her". This two-faced behavior, along with my own continued advice that she needed to confront Zero about their outstanding issues, finally pushed Wami into admitting the truth to Zero... In a way. Wami informed Zero that I had told her "something happened between her and her fiance", as well as about the grudge Zero herself held against Wami for years about their early roleplay business.

Zero chose to lash out at Wami as well over this, telling her how disappointed she was in Wami for not talking about any of this to her sooner, gaslighting her about how they weren't the "good friends" she thought they were because Wami felt uncomfortable telling Zero sooner that I had been talking to her about all of this because she was scared that Zero would hate her. Zero made the accusation that "everybody was taking my side" and that "nobody was listening to her or respect her wishes". What's more, she claimed that her and I had a "toxic relationship" which, in fairness, she made the caveat that maybe she was the one who made it toxic, but she also seemed to place the blame on me for souring her relationship with her fiance because "she talked to me and spent more time with me in the last three years than she ever did with her fiance", whom she lived under the same roof with and spent almost every day with. She also insisted that I had "no reason to be hurt" by what she's said and done and that I was "making everything about me", even though she's been the one doing that herself, on top of accusing me of being the one "not respecting her space whatsoever" despite the fact that she was the one sending me packages and making these really guilt-trippy status messages on Discord. And when asked if she ever thought we could make amends and try to be friends again, Zero vehemently insisted that it "wasn't possible". "Not like this". "Not while I'm venting about her to others behind her back" – which, as some of you may know, I certainly wasn't doing. Zero made the declaration that she "didn't give a fuck about any of this anymore" and that Wami was "free to tell me whatever she wanted" since she was obviously "taking my side".

As a side note, just before this conversation had taken place between Zero and Wami, Scythe was getting fed up on his own with how long Zero was dragging things out between me and her. He believed almost two months was far too long not to try and at least talk to each other and work things out between us, so he decided on an ultimatum of his own. He would give Zero two more weeks to straighten herself out, and try to approach me herself so we could hash things out. If she didn't, then he was dead set on leaving the group DM we all shared and banning her from our own Discord server, leaving her with a strongly worded message about how she needed to fix herself and own up to her actions before he'd consider letting her back in.

Seeing how dire things were getting, I once again tried to reach out to Zero before that conversation took place between her and Wami. I firmly insisted to her that this "giving each other space" thing wasn't working out, and that we needed to talk very soon. I told her I wasn't going to let it slide this time – we didn't have to talk right that instant, but she needed to set aside some time and space to talk to me so we could work things out between us – and if she continued trying to ignore me, I would keep bringing it up to her. I put the ball in her court to decide what to do about this – if she didn't want me bugging her about this, then she should do what she needed to do.

Following that conversation with Wami, Zero immediately blocked me on Discord, then slowly proceeded to unfollow me across her accounts on Twitter.

I decided then that I wasn't going to tolerate this sheer insanity any longer. I was going to tell her what I needed her to hear in all of this, and then begin my own process of moving on from this. I left her a lengthy Twitter DM, as it was one of the few means I had left to directly contact her, expressing my condolences for her loss and the fact that I wanted to be there for her, just like she had been for me, but clearly explaining that I am not responsible for her or her relationship. That I had wanted nothing more than to be friends with both her and her fiance, that I wanted to make sure it was mutually understood between all parties that everything was copacetic. That I wanted her to be happy in her relationship, that I never wanted nor intended to jeopardize her engagement with our friendship. That I only cared for her and loved her in a strictly platonic sense, as a friend, as family – and nothing beyond that. And if she couldn't understand that, and if she was intent on blaming me for her own problems, then I had to move on from her. I gave her one final opportunity to say her piece, and though she seemed to try and start responding, she stopped, then proceeded a few days later to stop me from being able to DM her at all – something which I had no intention of doing whatsoever in the first place past that message.

Meanwhile, Scythe, true to his word, and in light of those recent developments, waited out the timer he had placed on Zero, despite being sorely tempted to take action sooner. Zero, of course, made no attempt to seek reconciliation with me or communicate with either Wami or Shay about the state of things, and so, when the time limit he imposed ran out, he proceeded to boot Zero out of our Discord server, leaving a somewhat modified version of the ban message he intended informing her that he wasn't going to tolerate Zero gaslighting not only myself, but Shay and Wami as well about her own problems. He had also booted another mutual friend of hers, Yumi, from our server as well in the process – something which I had gotten onto him about since Yumi was blameless in all of this. If anything, Yumi themselves was being wronged by Zero over the last several months over an incident that Yumi honestly had done nothing wrong in – resulting in Zero burning her bridges with them and refusing to talk to them whatsoever for last few months now, even refusing to acknowledge what attempts Yumi had made (before the problems started between Zero and myself) to try and reconcile things and explain what happened to Zero.

Shortly after this fallout, Eli brings Shay and I into a call to try and sort everything out, and, what with things being as they are by this point, Shay finally tells me everything Zero had said to her during the time in which she had been trying to do her own counseling with Zero. And it turns out, I was completely right in all of my fears and insecurities about how Zero had been treating me behind my back. Despite our agreement not to lash out about each other, from week one, Zero had done nothing but completely demonize me for what I said to her. She blew everything I had told her completely out of proportion, accused me of saying just awful, unforgiveable things to her, practically blaming me for everything that had gone wrong with her relationship with her fiance. Honestly, it was astounding just how completely out of touch and delusional she had sounded in her private vilification of me, and to be sure that wasn't the case, I made the painstaking effort to dig back and verbally read out our entire conversation between each other to both Shay and Eli in order to verify if I really did say the things Zero had been accusing me of saying to her. And, as we all mutually realized, I hadn't. Once again, they agreed, I was a bit harsh with her, but not a single thing I said to Zero was even remotely similar to the things she was accusing me of and vehemently begrudging me for. I was not unfair to her in the slightest. Both to them, and to literally everyone else I had ever confided in and talked to about this whole mess, it came across like Zero was just so utterly desperate to blame me and make me the problem for her own actions instead of taking any accountability or responsibility for herself – not to mention the fact that she was treating me like some kind of online boyfriend who had somehow betrayed her and was "abusive" to her when that wasn't even remotely the nature of our relationship to each other.

And so, I began the process of attempting to move on. Because she had begrudged me for "not doing things I should be doing myself", I started going to the gym. I reconnected with an old friend group. I filled my days since then with spending time with my old friends, playing games, trying to have fun again, tackling my backlogs, watching things with my old friends, finding other things to focus on while sorting out how I felt. Trying to heal. Trying to move past all of this. I confided a lot in Wami during this time period, as we were both hurting from the things Zero has done and said to both of us. I looked forward to the idea of doing our own things together, as we had talked about. Pursuing our own ideas, writing our own stuff, without that fear of Zero's approval and jealousy hanging over both of our heads.

Weeks pass, and during one of our conversations, Wami makes the decision to try reaching out to Zero once again. She comes back with "good news" that she's super excited to share with both myself and another mutual friend, and informs us that Zero seems to be in a much better headspace this time around. Zero admitted that she was under a lot of stress previously and that had been affecting her attitude, but she's suddenly very friendly and communicative with Wami again, and that she was "making good changes" to her life. However, when asked if she thinks things could be mended between the two of us, Zero expressed that she "didn't know at this point", because "I couldn't wait on her to do what she needed to do".

That mutual friend and I believed Wami's enthusiasm about things to be misplaced, and we had a hard conversation with her about the fact that she seemed like she was immediately folding on the fact that she thought the things Zero said and done all of this were wrong, all because Zero was being nice to her again, which Wami herself agreed that she was folding, and admitted to us once again how scared she was of "losing Zero" and "making Zero hate her". At the time, I had also wanted to extend one last olive branch, especially if Zero was supposedly returning back to her right mind and becoming reasonable again.

In truth, I didn't want to be the kind of person who's unable to completely forgive someone. I wanted to keep that door open for communication and reconciliation. Even after all of this, if the opportunity was there, I wanted to be able to resolve our problems. I know it's possible. I had literally just done so through the fact that I had reconnected with my old friend group, because despite my history with them, despite everything that had happened between us, they ultimately proved willing to let me back in and let bygones be bygones between us. Being around my bros once again and having fun together reminded me of what's important: Having people in your life. Being able to do and share things with each other. Having fun. That it's possible to move past whatever bad blood may exist in order to rekindle friendships and enjoy things together.

Thus, I had asked Wami to try reaching out to Zero again to let her know that, despite everything that had happened between us, I was still willing to try and work things out between us. That I was ready and willing to listen to her properly, like I had been for the last three months ever since I believed that I may have treated her unfairly. And if Zero truly remained unwilling to try and mend things between us, if we could at least talk to try and sort out outstanding business between us – namely, what was to be done about our Discord server and the XIV housing Zero twisted my arm into buying for the both of us, not to mention the wealth of in-game currency she had left in our in-game guild chest. Because, if things were truly over at this point between us as friends, then I wanted to trust that Zero would at least have the courtesy and decency as a mature and a reasonable adult to have that conversation and allow me to collect all the references I had been keeping in our server so that I could back them up to my personal files, along with whatever personal writing I had left therein, as well as collect all the furnishings and finances she had placed into our XIV housing, as I had no wish to keep them nor deny her access to them given that all of those things were hers. In that, we could have at least gone our separate ways with no bad blood between us, our affairs in order and everything accounted for. No reason to begrudge one another any further, as we would have had a fair exchange in settling our dealings.

Wami believed it was too soon just yet to approach her again, and asked that we should wait for a week before she makes the attempt, which I agreed to, and that I would be there for her when she made her attempt.

However, as the week passed, that same IRL friend I had mentioned earlier reached out to me, wanting to hang out in person the day that Wami would make her attempt to reach out to Zero. Not wanting to push aside an RL friend for internet drama, I agreed, and I made sure to inform Wami that I might not available should Zero wait too long to respond to her – not at least for a few hours. I was hoping and trusting that if Wami was still willing to have that conversation with her, she might either put it off one more day, or she would at least be brave enough to handle it herself while I prioritized my RL friendship – as I hope is an understandable choice for most.

Unfortunately, their conversation did take place as soon as I had left to hang out with my RL friend, but, to Wami's credit, she did prove brave enough to relay my request to Zero. As I was returning home for the evening, in an admittedly unsober state, Wami gave me unfortunate news that Zero's sole answer to my final olive branch was a succinct "I'll think about it". And knowing the fact that Zero's given similar responses in her prior conversations about all of this with Shay, I knew that answer was as good as a "no".

Quite frankly, I was crushed by that response. Dejected. In my inebriated state of mind at that time, I had moped a bit about it to Wami before resolving that I suppose I would just have to accept that answer and simply "exist" in the meantime. Wami took this quite personally, getting very upset with me over the fact that I was depressed about this. I left things be and simply went to bed before I said anything more, because I knew I couldn't say anything to make things better in that moment.

I woke up to a confrontation with Wami about my dejection and depressed response. I tried to explain myself reasonably to Wami, which resulted in something of an argument as she disregarded my own hurt about how things had shaken out as well as the fact that all of this had completely ruined my ability and desire to want to trust and reach out to anyone new at all. Wami accused me of letting just "one person" dictate all of this for me, something which I had confided to her multiple times in the past is not just the result of Zero's actions towards me, but because of how I've been treated by so many other people both on and off Tumblr. She also tried to insist that we "both" needed to keep putting ourselves out there, making the attempt to connect to others, even if that means we keep getting hurt and damaging our mental health over and over again. I maintained to Wami that doing this wasn't a healthy course of action for either of us, reminding her of the fact that we're grown adults and we're only getting older. That our friend circles shrink as we get older and we should be getting more and more selective about who we let into it, that we can't just maintain this whole insistence on putting ourselves out there. We're not young anymore. We're not teenagers or fresh adults. We're in our mid-30's. We find our tribe and we stick to it. Chasing strangers for the sake of validation and the hope of comfort is self-destructive for both of us at this point, especially with consideration to the fact that she had just spent the last few months herself losing friendships because she was subjecting other people to her baggage over Zero.

I had hoped she could see the wisdom in this, but she instead denounced me for my "negativity", insisted that she would keep trying "no matter how much she got hurt". And when I simply said, "We shall see", Wami decided she had enough of me. That "this wasn't it" for her. That she couldn't deal with my "negativity".

I left the matter be for the time being and did not push it any further. And, in the following week, she had deleted every single one of her messages to me in Discord, and ultimately left me a wall of text stating she no longer wanted to be friends with me and that she couldn't trust me. That she "wasn't doing this to punish me", but "for her own sake", attributing our friendship to something "codependent". That I was too negative for her.

Once again, in light of everything else, and despite her claims, I felt like I was being punished for opening up to someone. Despite my transparency and honesty, I was once again being made to be the bad guy and I was untrustworthy. That my feelings were invalidated. That the things I wanted weren't right and didn't matter to anyone.

It's around this same time you may have seen my last post on here, about how I was taking an indeterminate break from roleplaying on here. I explained myself there sufficiently, I believe. Things really had just gotten too ridiculous at that point. Just the fact that I had one of my longest on-again, off-again followers, who had seen me at all stages throughout the years that I've run this blog, suddenly throw me under the bus, disregarding whatever friendship we tried to build, telling me that the only reason they threw so much at me for this long was because they "liked our interactions" and nothing more... I couldn't keep doing this, man. Like I said, I don't like the feeling of being used by others, especially when it means they can discard me just as easily. And I especially can't deal with people just blaming me for their own problems continuously like that.

I vented about this a bit on my own Twitter, doing my own little "screaming into the void" since I had no expectation that neither Zero, who had cut her own ties to me completely on Twitter, nor that Wami, who seemed to have no interest whatsoever in my socials, would care to see it, and because I felt like I had no one else to confide in by that point, but I needed to get things off my chest. I mentioned about how Wami herself folded to Zero showing her a sliver of "kindness" once again, and felt like Zero had gone out of her way to force this "taking sides" game she seemed to be playing. And I can tell you for sure nobody else really reads or cares about the things I say on my social media. "Screaming into the void" is about all I can do and have been able to do for a very long time now. I'm pretty sure nobody else even knows my dealings elsewhere either nor cares to look into them.

After getting that off my chest, I once again try to move on and return to my own healing process. Playing games, hanging out with my old friends, doing what I can to take my mind off everything, going to the gym, what have you. Another week or two passes, and my 34th birthday (August 22nd) rolls around. Once again, I'm doing my own thing with my friends. I'm trying to enjoy my birthday in relative peace and quiet, playing a game, streaming to the bros in our own Discord server.

And then Wami messages me out of nowhere. Once again, I end up having another long, dramatic, unnecessary, drawn-out confrontation on my birthday, because Wami decided to lurk my Twitter, saw that vent thread, and completely blew the contents of what I said in it out of proportion, accusing me of claiming all these things about her that I didn't say (mixed in with the ONE thing I did say, in which she had folded, which, again, she herself had admitted to prior). Despite the fact that I did not namedrop her nor allude to her identity in any sort of telling way, and that literally nobody on my Twitter (save for maybe Scythe, Shay, and Eli) even knows her or anything about her, much less what I could be possibly be talking about – even less so that they might care about anything I say – Wami turned it into some belief that I was starting a hate campaign against her and ruining her image. Or... Something, I guess. And after we had a brief conversation coming to the understanding that, first, none of that is the case and that, second, her decision to delete all of her messages to me and declare an end to our friendship wasn't influenced by her therapist whatsoever, but was a decision she came to all on her own, we proceeded to have an incredibly circular conflict that dragged on for hours about how she totally still cares about me as a person, but she never wants to talk to me again, with her flipflopping about accepting any compromise to simply stop engaging in the confrontation, go and cool her head, calm down, think things through, and then decide what she wants to do, which ultimately, after several hours of quite frankly sheer hysterics on her part, resulted in her forcing my hand to block her – which she seemed to want in the first place.

After this, I find myself living in anxiousness from that point forward. Throughout this whole, utterly insane debacle involving Zero, something always seems to pop up on a one or two week cycle of "new drastic thing happens" every time I keep deciding to let things be. My mental health is absolutely destroyed, and I dread the next unexpected blow to it, because the pattern has been well established five months into everything. And it seems I was right to dread, ultimately.

A week after the fallout with Wami, I wake up one day to find that the Discord server Zero made for all of our writing and roleplaying things is gone. To this day, I don't know whether she simply kicked me out of it and is keeping everything for herself, or if she decided to just delete the whole thing, but I most likely won't find out one way or the other. However, with that being done, Zero has effectively taken away years worth of my own writings and references I was keeping solely in there, because I made the mistake of trusting that it was a safe and sure place to keep them. Because I wanted to believe that, from everything we had talked about over the years, she had cared enough about that sort of thing not to simply throw it all out like that, especially when she had begrudged other partners for doing the same thing to her in the past. Because, despite everything, I wanted to believe that our writings could at least be some kind of bridge someday to help us reconnect and reconcile once she finally got her own problems sorted.

On top of this, I find that Zero has completely abandoned her identity as "Zero" by this point and has gone back to her old identity across all platforms as "Neko". Likewise, she had finally blocked me from Twitter. And that she is continuing to present herself as though nothing's wrong, that she's the self-righteous, self-martyring victim who's continuing to "do what's best for her" and pretending absolutely nothing is wrong.

Another week or so after this, I wake up to find that I'm now also gone from Yumi's server, in which "Neko", Shay, Wami, and myself were mutually a part of, and one that I had left alone in all of this explicitly because I didn't want to bring drama into that space either. Despite my assuming the worst, I decided to politely approach Yumi about all of this and ask about what happened. I was rather dismissively and coldly informed that "Neko" had told them that "we aren't friends", so Yumi decided to just boot me from their server so as to "avoid drama in that space" (something I was already refraining for the last six months from dragging in there to begin with). Yumi also asserted that they "didn't care to hear about what's happening between us because they have their own problems to deal with". I still made my case to Yumi that all I ever wanted to do was talk things out between myself and "Neko", but, once again, Yumi dismissed me as "we weren't close enough" for them to care about any of this, and that it sucks that "Neko" decided on her own that we "weren't friends" any more, but "what can you do".

I was left feeling so utterly betrayed and backstabbed by all of this. Especially considering how I was sympathetic to the way Yumi had been treated, and how I was willing to go to bat for them. I did not push the matter any further and left them be, but there's something undeniably two-faced and, quite frankly, completely disrespectful about the fact that "Neko" has begrudged Yumi for this long and refused to talk to them whatsoever for practically half a year now, but the one time she finally talks to them again, it's to get me kicked out of their server, which Yumi gladly obliged.

Finally, a week or two after this, and following a warning of auto-demolition on our XIV house that Shay, bless her heart, took care of, I decide to check my XIV stuff only to find that "Neko" had logged in at some point in the last two weeks and removed her Lacie alt from the Free Company she insisted I make for the two of us, taking absolutely nothing with her (despite how I wanted her to at least take her own stuff back if she did decide to go). Similarly, I also finally decide to take a glance on here only to discover two things: One, that "Neko" has finally blocked me on "lacedmagic", and Two: That she's decided to label her blog as "officially retired" and render it inaccessible.

And, with that final stroke, Zero/Neko has taken every last thing away from me when it comes to writing. She's stolen away three years worth of my writing and references when she got rid of our server. Despite how strongly she pushed to make Lacie this central figure piece and completely overhauled Roland's lore and characterization, she threw away both Roland and Lisbeth. Despite how strongly she tried to push to also completely monopolize Zech's lore and characterization, she threw away Zech. And she stole away the last shreds of hope, good faith, patience, and optimism I had in any social interaction I could possibly have with others on this site.

I can't go back to Roland anymore. Not after this. With the way she manipulated things, it's simply too cruel and heartless, both to him as a character and his daughter, who she had set Lacie up to become his new wife and the new, supportive, adoptive mother of his child. How would I even begin to contextualize this going forward? How Roland was senselessly abandoned once again by another wife? How Lisbeth was once again abandoned by a mother? It's too painful. Roland doesn't have in him to continue after a blow like this. Lisbeth's heart would be absolutely shattered, feeling truly unloved and unwanted as a child. She never deserved this treatment. Roland never deserved this either.

I can't forgive Zero/Neko for this. I can't forgive her for taking these things away. I can't forgive her for building not only my characters up, but myself up for the last three years, only to end up treating me like this when things got hard and throwing it all away. I would even go so far as to say that I hate her now, and I never wanted to end up feeling this way, but here we are. I loved her platonically as a cherished friend, and as family after the way she had been there for me in my roughest moments, but she went and turned all of that on her own end into something it was never meant to be.

She's wronged me horribly at this point. She's betrayed me. Backstabbed me. Every last thing she accused me of and begrudged me for, she's done to me now. And I've never done any such thing to her whatsoever to warrant it. I've always been supportive of her. I've always been a good friend to her, despite how she's decided to define what she considers to be "trust". How she's choosing to define what she considers to be "friends".

Despite the fact that she's accused me of "making everything about me", she's done that herself, and she refuses to see that's the case. She's blamed me for problems she's brought upon herself. She's made me the source of all of her problems. She's scapegoated me for everything that's gone wrong in her life in the last year, and she turned all of her own friends against me.

I didn't deserve this. My characters didn't deserve this.

I no longer want her back as a friend. I no longer want what we had as roleplaying partners back anymore, because there's no way I can trust her ever again with what she's chosen to do. With everything she's chosen to throw away. Over what? Over a problem of communication that lies entirely on her. A problem you see drastically overblown in so many Google Docs and callouts that get spread around this site by other people. By teenagers and adult children who launch crusades against one another over the fact that all parties involved simply failed to talk things out with each other, and then proceeded to blame each other for all of their problems.

I never expected this to be the case here too. Not with how much we both agreed how ridiculous that behavior is. Not with how much I thought we understood the importance of communication, how much we both attested to it. How much we balked at others for similar mistakes. How much we both realized we didn't like how the people on this site were when it came to maintaining roleplaying and friendships. How much we've experienced the same abuse, the same neglect, the same feelings of being used and abandoned by others.

But, ultimately, Zero/Neko is the one who chose to make things this way between us. She's the one who decided to commit to all of the same mistakes she's begrudged and criticized in others from this site. She's the one who decided to throw everything away – not me.

All of my scrubbed activity with her was never deleted. It was, and remains, and will remain, privated – because how could I so proudly feature her and her work upon my blog when she blames me and demonizes me for everything that's gone wrong in her life?

I've never thrown away a single thing she's given me, physical gifts or otherwise. Not even after all of this. Despite how much I hate her, despite how much I want absolutely nothing to do with her from now on, I've seen how another self-absorbed, egotistical, narcissistic individual who also made me the source for all their problems do exactly that to Shay. And I couldn't bear to emulate that kind of behavior. As much as I self-deprecate, and as much as all semblance of my self-esteem and creativity has been utterly destroyed in all of this, I'm still better than that.

No matter how much of an asshole I might let myself become because of everything that happens to me, I'd like to believe I'll always stay true to my moral fiber. And, really, it sounds like my moral fiber is what seems to have instigated all of this. Because I refused to break it or compromise it even for a close friend.

I had honestly and truly hoped that, before she had expended the last of my good will towards her, there would at least come a day at some point where she might finally approach me, as she promised, to reconcile things between us, and when that day came, I would've been more than happy to restore everything. Happy to call her a friend again. Happy to be proud of her place in my space. But, she's chosen to throw all of that way herself.

To what end? Only she can say. And she's not been particularly keen on communicating whatsoever on that front. I won't get any answers out of her, and I no longer expect – or even want – to.

And, with this long story of completely senseless and needless drama out of the way, all of this is to say that, ultimately, I can't do this anymore.

Despite the periods of good times I've had here on Tumblr, they've always seemed to ultimately lead to bad times in the long run. I've been built up and torn down by so many people in all of the years using this site, including by the once close friend who convinced me to get back into roleplaying all of those years ago and encouraged me to make this blog in the first place. I've been used countless times. Had so many potential friendships just crumble apart because nobody on here seems capable of communicating like grown adults. Had so much dumb drama spring up one-sidedly that I've been blamed for. Have had toxic people lie and spread rumors about me behind my back, about how I'm some "notorious stalker that block evades and harasses people" even though I've almost always stuck to my own corner and did my own thing – which is something my longest mutuals can attest to being the case. I've been directly attacked over this for the first time in the last few years. And I've had multiple people create drama about me despite me having absolutely nothing to do with them. This isn't even the first time I've been blamed for someone else's problems and had someone completely shut down their own blog over it.

I've always tried not to bother anyone directly. I mind my own business. If I don't like something or someone, I block and carry on about my own business. But even curating my own space has lead to drama and rumors being generated around me. People attempting to steal partners (and succeeding in some cases). People sabotaging friendships. People sabotaging even the potential of finding other roleplay partners.

I can't keep doing this to myself. I'm getting too old. And, after this massive fallout with someone who I had been built up to trust as a close friend and confidant, I can't see myself even remotely trusting anyone new. I can't see myself reaching out to anyone else anymore. How can I, when I can't even trust other adults in their mid-30s or older, the same age as me, to carry themselves like adults?

When I've personally seen people ruin their own lives and their own personal relationships because of this site and the roleplay that goes on in it multiple times now? And when some of those people try to make me responsible for it, no matter how much I either try to be a good friend to them or have nothing to do with them whatsoever?

I can't keep subjecting myself to getting hurt by the people on here. I never wanted Zech to keep getting used like this. I never wanted Roland to get used when I took the chance of trying to bring him on here.

And so, I have to finally call it quits here.

To those of you who have stuck with me the longest, and to those newer few of you who haven't alienated me over this insanity, thank you. Sincerely. I've said it multiple times before and I'll say it again, you're the real ones. And I'm genuinely sorry that I can't keep going like this for your sakes. I'm sorry if it feels like I'm leaving you all behind over what may seem like problems with just one person (with really messy circumstances behind it), but believe me when I say this has been a mounting problem for all the years that I've been here.

Most of you still have me on Discord and have ways of reaching out to me. And while, right now, I have absolutely no desire anymore to write or roleplay, to throw Zech at other people, I don't know if I can guarantee that will always stay the case. Maybe someday I'll recover from even this, and should that day come, I would be willing to explore things again.

But not here. I really don't think I can come back to this site or this community. I can't make my characters available here anymore or engage with the people on this site directly. Too much has happened now. And despite how many times I've considered quitting, expressed my frustrations, and the extensive breaks I've taken as a result, this time will well and truly be the last time I commit to it.

Where do I leave off? I feel like there's so much more I could say. So many more woes I could regale to elucidate the sheer pain and madness this site and its dealings have brought to me. So much more I could use to illustrate just how deeply this last, major thing has affected me. Just how much I've been wronged. How much I didn't deserve this treatment.

Perhaps it's best to leave it at this, though. Nothing more I say will change anything. And it's not likely this will get read in full by most anyone, as is usually the case.