Infinite Recursion

* conceptualCosmogony has joined the memo!
<conceptualCosmogony> Hello. I don't usually come here, but I was looking for someone?
* tenaciousTheseus began responding to the memo
<conceptualCosmogony> Hello.
<conceptualCosmogony> As mentioned previously, I don't generally come here, but I'm searching for someone.
* nectarinePsalms has connected to the memo
<nectarinePsalms> hello
<conceptualCosmogony> Hi.
<tenaciousTheseus> Ah
<tenaciousTheseus> Well, that's what we're here for
<tenaciousTheseus> Among other reasons
<conceptualCosmogony> Does it just work if you put their name in?
<tenaciousTheseus> Who're you looking for?
<conceptualCosmogony> lucidChthonia
<tenaciousTheseus> Well, you tell us the name, and we'll -
<tenaciousTheseus> Oh. Aelf
<nectarinePsalms> congrat', you pinged her
<tenaciousTheseus> Aelf comes here from time to time
<conceptualCosmogony> So she /did/ run off here when we -
<tenaciousTheseus> Although not lately
<conceptualCosmogony> 'not lately'?
<tenaciousTheseus> When you what?
<conceptualCosmogony> I'm a blogger. From PrototypeTowers.
<tenaciousTheseus> And what do you want with Aelf?
<conceptualCosmogony> I don't think the aggregate will care to apologize for what happened there after - well, you probably know if you've got her real name - but I wanted to.
<conceptualCosmogony> Like her actions or no, I enjoyed talking to her before this happened.
* lucidChthonia has joined the memo!
<lucidChthonia> Is it important?
<nectarinePsalms> apparently 'omeone'' apologi'ing to you
<conceptualCosmogony> Lucid!
<lucidChthonia> ...Coco what the /hell/ are you doing here
<conceptualCosmogony> Attempting to re-forge a connection, duh.
* nectarinePsalms PMs tenaciousTheseus : ( "o, what'' going on here? )
<conceptualCosmogony> What /else/ was I supposed to do? Delicately tell the Pulse to fuck off?
<lucidChthonia> [...]
<lucidChthonia> [...]
<lucidChthonia> [....................]
<lucidChthonia> [Nope.]
* lucidChthonia has disconnected from the server!
<nectarinePsalms> well that went well
<conceptualCosmogony> ...
* tenaciousTheseus PMs "Therme" (Luccth was was a notable blogger before shit hit the fan and she had a Folly that ended up killing everyone else in her session. Pits exploded and she got a river of flame in her inbox)
<nectarinePsalms> and i thought i wa' bad with frien'hip'
<tenaciousTheseus> Welp.
<tenaciousTheseus> Can't say I'm too surprised
* nectarinePsalms PMs tenaciousTheseus : ( Ooh, Pit' drama )
* tenaciousTheseus PMs "Therme" (Mmhm)
<conceptualCosmogony> Fuck. Um. Plan B: how /do/ you know her?
<conceptualCosmogony> And how is she doing?
<tenaciousTheseus> I was her coplayer
<tenaciousTheseus> My fourteenth, her ninth
<tenaciousTheseus> She's my friend
<tenaciousTheseus> And
<tenaciousTheseus> I'm not sure how she's doing
<tenaciousTheseus> She's rarely on
<conceptualCosmogony> Oh. Well, I /wanted/ to at least wish her well, or similar.
<conceptualCosmogony> If she isn't on, then that means she isn't doing well.
<nectarinePsalms> you kinda made it 'ound like you were only doing it becau'e of the pul'e
<conceptualCosmogony> Sort of? Except not, really.
<conceptualCosmogony> Can I call her again if I put her name in again, or will she know who pinged her? I mean, is there some sort of Caller ID for username pings?
<nectarinePsalms> no caller ID
<nectarinePsalms> but unle'' 'he'' an idiot, i doubt 'he'll come running back on immediately and /not/ think it wa' you

<luccht|offline> [> Aelf: Have your curiosity and your terror battle it out.]
<luccht|offline> [Curiosity wins.]

* luccht|online PMs conceptualCosmogony (What?)
* conceptualCosmogony PMs lucidChthonia (Um, mostly, I wanted to apologize for my conduct and behavior in - in recent and somewhat less recent events.)
* luccht|online PMs "Coco" (You could've just apologized.)
* conceptualCosmogony PMs "Lucid" (...you're completely right, I could have 'just' apologized.)
* conceptualCosmogony PMs "Lucid" (Shall I apologize, then?)
* luccht|online PMs "Coco" (do whatever the fuck you want)
* conceptualCosmogony PMs "Lucid" (Um. Is there a less unwieldy way of doing this than the PM window?)
* luccht|online PMs "Coco" ( #yousayyouwantanapology )

[#yousayyouwantanapology]
<conceptualCosmogony> Well, yeah, of course, certainly, I'm sorry for my relative lack of regard for what /you/ actually felt about the entire affair, because I got swept up in the popular sentiment zeitgeist and didn't actually think about it.
<conceptualCosmogony> [Oh god that's a lot of interjections.]
<luccht|online> ...okay...?
<conceptualCosmogony> So what I want to do for you is - well, I don't /know/ what would actually benefit you if something was in fact done for you, because I have no idea how much it'd help if, say, I gave you an IOU for a kinetic sculpture or -
<luccht|online> [Sigh. This, at least, is recognizably Claire. Or more specifically Claire-realizing-she-made-a-mistake.]
<luccht|online> [She wasn't /this/ wordy in blog comments, though.]
<conceptualCosmogony> Um.
<conceptualCosmogony> I just wanted to apologize for my unseemly behavior after your Tactician's Folly and attempt to make it up to you along any reasonable dimension possible.
<luccht|online> There's not really much you can do for me at this point.
<luccht|online> It's not like I care what you think.
<conceptualCosmogony> That's a lie and you know it.
<conceptualCosmogony> Otherwise would you really be conversing with me?
<conceptualCosmogony> You wanted this, too.
<luccht|online> You - or everyone else, at least - said I /wanted/ everyone to die, too.
<luccht|online> No.
<conceptualCosmogony> Wait -
<conceptualCosmogony> I
<conceptualCosmogony> No, that's not something /I/ said, I just - it was, it was like we'd just discovered someone who was evil in our midst, you know how people are with in-groups and out-groups I've seen some of your public Pits reading list -
<luccht|online> Well, if you've seen some of my public Pits reading list you might also want to quit using dashes like Emily Dickinson.
<conceptualCosmogony> I think I wanted to say I'm sorry I didn't say anything different when everyone turned against you, because I thought that so many people couldn't be wrong.
<conceptualCosmogony> This /still/ isn't something you can say in public, there.
<conceptualCosmogony> Far as Pits knows I'm not /this/ heterodox.
<luccht|online> I believe in WYSIWYG public personas now. I'm me, in public, and if they don't like that then there's something wrong with /me/, not the way I'm presenting myself.
<luccht|online> So thank you, but no.
<luccht|online> I don't need someone to run optics for me.
<conceptualCosmogony> I may be a Dreams player and not a Sight player, but even I'm not stupid enough to believe you don't maintain a public persona - or don't need one.
<luccht|online> I'm /tired/ of maintaining a public persona is what I am.
<luccht|online> I did that for so many years. I kept a blog, curated, queued, reliable, persona, /everything/ you're supposed to have for a blog and a community and what did it get me?
<luccht|online> Jack. Shit.
<luccht|online> Because you are all so /prejudiced/ against an honest mistake perpetuated by a terrified young woman who had a particularly disastrous Tactician's Folly that somehow transgressed your fucked-up idea of what was an "acceptable" Folly.
<conceptualCosmogony> Well, maybe you can change that like you did with the Endless Climb.
<luccht|online> That was ten years ago, Coco.
<conceptualCosmogony> Was our friendship also ten years ago?
<conceptualCosmogony> I seem to recall that I /liked/ talking with you, even, on a regular basis.
<luccht|online> I'm not who I was then, Coco, and I'm not who everyone on Pits thinks I'm supposed to be, and I'm dead tired of changing myself and changing everything I know every few years because of the current of public opinion flowing on, riverlike, eroding at everything I can hold on to.
<conceptualCosmogony> What was the quote you used as header between timestamps 15 and 22?
<luccht|online> "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be."
<luccht|online> Okay, cool. You can have my old mask, the one called Lucid the Mindblogger, and you can keep it polished on a shelf and everything if you like, but I'm not going to start writing Infinite Recursion again just because you want it to be all better with one apology.
<luccht|online> That's beyond the scope of what one apology can do.
<conceptualCosmogony> I understand that.
<conceptualCosmogony> I'm not asking you to put on your Recursion face again, not if you don't want to. I want to know /you/ again, because at your best you're /sharp/ and /incisive/ and damn near always right and I am pretty sure people can't /pretend/ to be smart or write smarter than they actually are.
<luccht|online> What if I said that my best was all an act anyway?
<conceptualCosmogony> I'd be surprised, but I'd let you explain how you think it's an act and where it came from.
<luccht|online> I've had a shiny that didn't regrow properly since an accident of presumably Voidy genesis in my second session.
<luccht|online> I've had an overwhelming abnormal guilt response since my /first/.
<luccht|online> I've had a slick of Knight Syndrome that reinforced all my worst habits and fears and anxieties since my sixth, due to a second shiny accident by the one person that ever demonstrated any loyalty to me.
<luccht|online> I attempted to fix this by preventing my emotional centers from building up emotion to any significant degree.
<luccht|online> Instead, I permanently crippled the emotion nodes' ability to /process/ emotion. The Knight Syndrome moved in in its stead.
<luccht|online> I can no longer feel like a normal person. I can no longer actually, legitimately, be happy at anything approaching the intensity of normal feeling.
<luccht|online> Unless you can fix that (which you can't, not even /Dad/ can fix it, he's had seven rerolls and can't think of anything), I don't think I should subject you to the rest of me.
<luccht|online> Please just let me peter away into insignificance, because I like insignificance a lot better.
<luccht|online> Insignificance doesn't demand anything of me.
<conceptualCosmogony> ...and you're Heart, currently.
<conceptualCosmogony> Why did you give up?
<conceptualCosmogony> What - what /made/ you like this I'm so sorry I /knew/ about most of this but -
<conceptualCosmogony> [> Claire: Struggle to find the words.]
<luccht|online> I said I had Knight Syndrome instead of emotions. Did you actually listen?
<conceptualCosmogony> Yes but that doesn't mean I agree with you when you say you can't be saved!
<luccht|online> Well, I can't.
<conceptualCosmogony> (Who's this 'Dad' you speak of, by the way?)
<luccht|online> (ventricularPipefitter, whose Knight Syndrome I still carry, all these years later. Damn shitty souvenir to have of that roll, if you ask me.)
<conceptualCosmogony> (Oh, right. Him. Yes.)
<luccht|online> And why would someone who occasionally made comments on some conceptual framework I was working out want to help me out of a situation that is as close to inescapable as anything gets in the Game?
<conceptualCosmogony> Because you're still better at theorizing than I ever was. Than most of /them/ were.
<conceptualCosmogony> Because you say exactly what you mean and mean exactly what you say and leave it at that, without dancing around the point for five hours.
<conceptualCosmogony> There is a /reason/ Infinite Recursion's concepts - the shared-memory explanation of Carapace "telepathy", the time-braid theory of timetrav-user convergence, the "least possible loops" theory of self-causal Time player interactions - are still in even the newest FAQs, even though they refuse to use your /name/.
<conceptualCosmogony> It is because they are /right/.
<conceptualCosmogony> Or, as you like to say, much closer to right than anything else we've ever had.
<luccht|online> ...Heir? Of Blood?
<conceptualCosmogony> You're being reductionist again.
<conceptualCosmogony> I am not my title, and neither are you.
<conceptualCosmogony> It is /I/ that cares, not some - not some abstract sympathetic magic that prevents me from doing anything else.
<conceptualCosmogony> You could've spurned me and that would have made things worse for me; you retain that power, if for some reason you want to use it at this point.
<conceptualCosmogony> Though I can't imagine why.
<luccht|online> I can.
<conceptualCosmogony> I'm sorry.
<conceptualCosmogony> What can I do about that?
<luccht|online> Nothing.
<conceptualCosmogony> ...well, if you think of something, you know what my handle is, and where to find something, I guess?
<conceptualCosmogony> I don't even know, I just think there would be /something/ that I could do to fix this or cause it to be fixed for you, because, well, honestly, I don't know what I can do but there must be a way.
<luccht|online> If there was, I'm smart enough to have figured it out by now.
<luccht|online> And since I haven't, there isn't.
<luccht|online> Thank you for the offer, though.
<conceptualCosmogony> [...Okay. She thanked you. Maybe you should quit while you're ahead.]
<conceptualCosmogony> I'll be back on when I can.
* conceptualCosmogony has disconnected from the server!
<luccht|online> [> Aelf: Curl back up and ignore everything again.]