Life Without Integrity

* epiele|online PMs "Zei" (I should apologize for what I said to you yesterday.)
* staApp|online PMs "Ri" : ( ??? )
* staApp|online PMs "Ri" : ( yOu sUre iT's nOt tHe oTher wAy 'rOund?)
<staApp|online> [You're just so confused about why he would need to apologize to you at all.]
* epiele|online PMs "Zei" (I reacted inappropriately to the fact that you were uncomfortable with what you did - hoping to keep you young, and small, and not so jaded by the way Sburb pours us into molds.)
* epiele|online PMs "Zei" (But I can't /do/ that. You've 'cooned. You're being forced to do some things that make you question your very identity and basic moral structure. I cannot protect you from that.)
* epiele|online PMs "Zei" (You are my /sister/, not my daughter.)
* epiele|online PMs "Zei" (The fact that I desperately wished - and to an extent still wish - to keep you from the terrible knowledge that we will do much for survival and more for each other, is not an excuse to blame this on you.)
* epiele|online PMs "Zei" (It is not an excuse to ask leading questions in an attempt to mold you to my will.)
* epiele|online PMs "Zei" (It is not an excuse to scream and cry about the fact that I should not have tied some important bit of my self-worth to the concept of your relative innocence, however flawed and imperfect it may have been.)
* epiele|online PMs "Zei" (So - so I'm /sorry/, and I want you to know that. That whatever happens to you and whatever you choose, I will still be here to care about you.)
* staApp|online PMs "Ri" : ( i )
* staApp|online PMs "Ri" : (/me hUgs yOu tIghtly)
<staApp|online> [Try not to sob.]
* staApp|online PMs "Ri" : ( i'M sOrry tOo)
* epiele|online PMs "Zei" (...can we drag this off to a sidememo, and I tell you more?)
* staApp|online PMs "Ri" : ( #yes )

#yes

* staApp|online has opened the side-memo!
* epiele|online has joined the side-memo!
<epiele|online> So
<epiele|online> I think I have some things to explain to you.
<staApp|online> OKay.
<epiele|online> I... it's not an exaggeration, to say that Loose replaying breaks you far, far faster than playing with a network will.
<epiele|online> Out there, we counted "veteran" at seven or eight sessions, not at ten plus like we do here. This because people simply didn't /survive/ as long, before.
<epiele|online> Rare was the person who survived much further than that.
<epiele|online> It is no coincidence that the first documented 20+ session veterans who are substantiated, and not thin rumor, were the two good men who set up Transamphibian, back in the day.
<epiele|online> Rare were the rumors before then, too.
<epiele|online> Which leads to -
<epiele|online> By the time I'd reached sessions four, five, six, Loose Replaying had nearly destroyed me. This is what I say, in public.
<epiele|online> What I don't say is how.
<epiele|online> I don't say how in five, I had to choose which player was going to die of an ambiguous prophecy, and interviewed both to attempt to determine which one of them would be less of a loss to the Replayer aggregate.
<epiele|online> I don't say how in six, I too had a Tactician's Folly that, even in the days of the Seer Network which would understand and close ranks around me, I could not (and still cannot) say a /word/ about it, for it would paint me as villain rather than hero.
<epiele|online> To deal with one of these situations, by itself, could be the work of a lifetime for an adult, pregame. For us, for us /here/, we cannot escape these things being force-fed to us by the hundreds, like being raised for a hippocampal version of foie gras.
<epiele|online> I have made many decisions that I, before the Game, and even I, in my earliest years, would assume made someone a terrible person - and all these under the scant, threadbare comfort that the only reason I did them is because either I did not know better, or I was preventing worse.
<epiele|online> It's quite a thing, Zeimah, to have your sense of self disassembled and thrown away, piece by piece, for you to scramble for which parts are still /you/, glowing pink on the seafloor of a thousand thousand crushed souls.
<staApp|online> [You whine softly as you listen, still quite convinced, in the depths of Aggrievance and guilt, that what you have done - what you will still do - makes you horrible and beyond redemption.]
<epiele|online> And to know what your missing parts /look/ like, and how they felt when they still nestled within you, and still never quite be able to find them ever again, because you've been forced to do it again, until you've learnt the bare minimum you need to find of yourself to keep going with a minimum of effort expended.
<epiele|online> And to know that anything more will be taken from you, and you must therefore jealously guard that which remains of yourself for the rest of your life, because you cannot get more.
<epiele|online> The only reason I think of myself as a good person is because I can still protest, even if internally, when terrible things are done, when people are twisted to design and thrown away, when what I value is destroyed.
<epiele|online> But guilt is precious little to tie yourself together with, a barely-maintainable, barely-understood behemoth piece of software pressed into service for a use case so different from what it was designed for that I have given up on many things I once considered essential of myself.
<epiele|online> I cannot recommend it. But I know you may be forced to do the same to yourself, because there is no other way.
<epiele|online> If ever there was, I'm sorry to say, I would use it for myself first.
<staApp|online> i cAn't bLame yOu fOr tHat
<epiele|online> Because, you see, one of the things I've lost - permanently - is the ability not to second-guess even those I love.
<epiele|online> It took half the voyage, before I understood that you would not get up and leave and hate me, if I said wrong, or if you changed.
<epiele|online> Myra had a /vicious/ streak, the one where she shitlisted people at the drop of a pin if they said wrong to her, if she thought they were stupid, if she thought they weren't worth their time.
<epiele|online> I would be a /fool/ if I did not think I had the same instinct within me, however padded away from my behavior it may be with a long and weathered set of conscious connections, of crosslinks with empathy - they're probably a person too, Dunbar's exists, ignorance not stupidity, fundamental attribution error.
<epiele|online> I have grown to understand that /many/ people here have this - this doubt within them, somewhere, buried or not buried as it may be depending on the hour and the circumstance.
<epiele|online> You did not.
<epiele|online> For all Sburb sent you through Time back-to-back, for all Law forced you to stare unblinking at how terrible the game was until either you or the Code looked away - there was something within you that you had not yet lost, and that was your ability to trust, innocently and whole-heartedly.
<epiele|online> And I finally forced myself to understand, in the code within myself, that it was not a personal failing of mine that, where you gave me trust, I gave you only doubt and hedged answers and "I don't think that's appropriate to talk about right now".
<epiele|online> It would -
<epiele|online> It would be true, soon enough, and then you'd understand /why/ I would say things like that, and then it wouldn't be the /same/ but I could speak to you like an adult.
<epiele|online> But then
<epiele|online> But then the voyage went on, and on.
<epiele|online> And I trusted you anyway, and you gave me so much more when I forced the shell open that I finally managed to trust someone, for the second time in my life.
<epiele|online> But now you hate yourself. And now you'll be acquainted with the terrible truth that is buried within Sburb, that for all that we are given here, power and glory and /meaning/ to life, we pay for it with the rest of our souls, piece-by-piece or else all at once, in death.
<epiele|online> And what I understood of your love applies no longer. You'll always wonder if those you know have ulterior motives, now. You'll always wonder where the strings are attached. You'll always wonder when this brief joy is going to stop, and Sburb throw twice as much tragedy in your face for your inattention.
<epiele|online> You'll become quite acquainted with the feeling I have, at everything that is a decision, that I wonder: which of these options is a trap? How do I tell? Or, are /all/ of them traps, and I merely choosing between Scylla and Charybdis, being eaten by the monster or being eaten by the deeps?
<epiele|online> This is what you have lost, already, and I cannot protect you, and it is not my inadequacy, it is not yours, it is not /anyone's/, for this was inevitable - if not by Mindblogger's hand then soon enough by someone else's.
<epiele|online> The terrible thing is that if I told you this before, you would not have believed me, fully. You would have wished, with me, that you could somehow reach competence without the self-doubt and shame that accompanies it by anyone old enough to be considered veteran.
<epiele|online> It would have killed you sooner.
<epiele|online> That you have now taken the first step, that you have resolved to continue on the path that leads to life without integrity rather than integrity without life, means that you now understand.
<epiele|online> And I'm sorry I could not have said anything about it, and I'm sorry your world is changing forever, for knowing that you too are going through this makes me ache, helplessly, for the injustice of the world we live in.
<epiele|online> But we now have arms linked, and you do not stand against the darkness alone, like I once did.
<epiele|online> I would not subject you to replaying Loose in a thousand years, and that I, too, acquired the jaded patina of veteranhood far before I ever reached the point at which the session-count number would certify I could be respected like a veteran, is something we now both share.
<staApp|online> [You wish you could think of something to say. Something actually useful, that isn't gross sobbing, or attempting to apologize for something that isn't your fault.]
<epiele|online> I'm not going to tell you that it isn't your fault. Sometimes it isn't, and sometimes it is, and for all that we might chase down whose fault it is, the fact remains that the impulse will terminate uselessly here.
<epiele|online> After a while, you'll learn to stop the buck, for the sake of it stopping /somewhere/, and just deal with the consequences.
<staApp|online> i
<staApp|online> i tHink tHat's pArt oF wHat i'M lEarning nOw
<staApp|online> [That you wish you weren't goes unsaid and, for that matter, does not need saying.]
<epiele|online> ...Well, tell me how you feel.
<staApp|online> lIke bEing wIlling tO bE tHe oNe wHo dEals wIth tHe cOnsequences mAkes mE aWful
<staApp|online> bEcause iT mEans tHat i'M wIlling tO dO sHiny rEpairs tHat hAve dUbious cOnsent aT bEst, iN tHis cAse
<staApp|online> eVen tHough i kNow sHe's nOt wEll aNd tHat tHere iSn't a bEtter oPtion tHat lEts hEr gEt wEll
<epiele|online> For the record, I do not think Mindblogger will consent again.
<epiele|online> She is avoidant, and this is the kind of thing she avoids.
<epiele|online> It'll be easier, after the second or third or fourth time you do it.
<staApp|online> ...iT wOuld bE, wOuldn't iT
<epiele|online> You'll figure out how to force yourself not to feel anything about it, though the trick is learning to turn your feelings back /on/ again, after that happens.
<epiele|online> One of the many cautionary tales her existence lends itself to.
<epiele|online> I'm sorry I can't protect you. But nobody else can, either, and we may as well peel away the false illusions and look into the terrible light of day, for that is what is real and reality is what we are forced to work with anyway.
<epiele|online> Do /not/ let your self-hatred lead you into self-deception; that way lies Heries Croton.
<epiele|online> Do not let your self-hatred lead you into inaction; that way lies Mindblogger.
<epiele|online> Do not let your self-hatred lead you into withdrawal; that way lies Myra.
<epiele|online> It takes more effort this way, effort and pain, but you've already chosen life instead of sanity, so you may as well now privilege sanity over incomprehensible Ophelian babbling.
<epiele|online> It's only fair to the inside of your shining pink ball of what, after all.
<epiele|online> [You feel strangely light-headed, after saying this. Or that might just be the dehydration from crying.]
<staApp|online> nOt sUre hOw wEll tHe nAtive cRyptic cAn dO cOmprehensible
<staApp|online> bUt i'Ll tRy
<epiele|online> Just make sure I can understand your honest response when I ask how you're doing, and we'll go from there.
<epiele|online> I am not leaving you for this. You can be assured of that much. It'll help.
* staApp|online hugs
* epiele|online hugs
<epiele|online> [You sit, staring silently, at this conversation, for a very long time.]
<epiele|online> [And then you minimize the window and walk away, silently enumerating to yourself what quests you need to do today, minimum, to keep just far enough ahead of the ARC curve for single mistakes or catastrophe not to kill you.]
<staApp|online> [You struggle to come up with anything that's seems like he'd actually understand it, without you needing to unpack the metaphor and making him worry.]
<staApp|online> [Talking about swords and armor breaking before they could be used feels like it'll need too much unpacking.]
<staApp|online> [When one of your 'clones comes over and fogs him, you cling and give in to the urge to weep.]