Dear Friends

Dear Friends,
12 years ago, I came up with a character for a MMORPG by Funcom called the Secret World. This character was a man named Connar Green, an Unremarkable Irish physicist and mathematician born in 1810 in the fictional town of Greenfield outside of the real town of Portmarnock Ireland. I initially wrote Connar as a starting point for roleplaying in the wider Secret world community. At first, he was kind of awkward (as I am awkward) and some people considered him more of a nuisance with his rambling speech style, long winded stories and his clumsy interactions with official NPC’s and other players alike. But for reasons that are still beyond me, he soon found friends among the wider community, particularly after he began investigating the disappearance of a boy named Ricky Pickman. The investigation would bring together a trio of agents, Varedin Blaise, Mackenzie Sterling, and Kate Michaels, these agents would join Connar on a crusade against one of the communities first villains, an organization called Third Sunday, led by a corrupted Templar Grand Master named Joseph ‘Nicodemus’ Comstock, a man who I tried to make Connar’s opposite in every way possible but above all else I wanted him to seem unbeatable. He ended up being the embodiment of all the worst aspects of the British Empire, so I think I accomplished that, but through skill, perseverance, and the power of friendship (as corny as that sounds), over the course of 3 years they brought Third Sunday to its knees and ultimately Connar (after expending every last trick in his arsenal) was able to trap Nicodemus in a black hole.
During this time everyone also got to meet Connar’s girlfriend, a woman named Yuuko Shirakawa. I cannot say that Yuuko is truly my character because she started her life as a side character in a visual novel called Katawa Shoujo, Yuuko is described in the novel as “Someone who has serious problems with managing her life, which makes her the perfect person to ask for help to manage one's own. She funds her university studies by working part time at a popular cafe. The lengths she goes to avoid being fired for her natural clumsiness bewilder other people, along with her neurotic attention to detail and frequent streaks of depression.” This is where she started but soon, she found a following on Twitter and grew past her beginnings, she acquired a love of cooking, became a gamer, a lover of stuffed animals, as well as an envoy for the Council of Venice as well as their archivist in Dublin. And of course, she took flight as her alter ego the Candy Witch, who dispensed fun to agents and children alike via exploding scarecrows and soon became beloved by the community beyond my wildest expectations. She would also go on to help the Anima Cats in their fight against Browni Jenkin (another of my villains), and the Mi-go in Chernobyl. Yuuko also acquired her parents who also proved to be quite popular, Hiro Shirakawa the curmudgeonly former regional vice president of human resources for Nintendo Japan (a man who is a more than he seems) and Mihoko Shirakawa, a woman who cannot read a room with a penchant for misnaming anime and unintentionally asking uncomfortable questions about Catholicism. Through all this Yuuko interviewed different characters in the Secret world giving others a chance to introduce themselves and flush out their characters. She also invited the community to participate in the interviews of others (including Santa on three separate occasions).
Many of you have watched Connar and Yuuko build a life together in the secret world in Greenfield and many of you have also participated in that life, be it in wrangling magical chickens, helping the cult of the Candy Witch recover magic VHS tapes, and of course helping hold back the forces of darkness. Through this process I have made many friends and met many truly extraordinary writers and written an extraordinary amount of lore. I would like to think that I have also improved as a writer. Together we have shared great joy at watching projects come together and we also shared great sorrows, many of us (particularly the old timers) have also lost friends that we made here, we have also faced the darkness in real life together.
In 2022 Elon Musk purchased Twitter, at the time I said I would remain on the service as long as possible, and I would help everyone that I could to leave. I was hesitant to leave the platform due to the friendships I made there but the longer I stayed the more toxic the environment grew, Third Sunday characters that i originally wrote as over the top have started materializing in real life, I have seen people preaching hate and intolerance, disregard for truth, expertise, and learning and most horrifying of all the very idea of kindness. In particular, the last 24 hours have made me realize that I can no longer use twitter in good conscience. I have seen the site's owner take a hatchet to everything I hold dear and I have seen the twisted glee he takes in inflicting pain on others and I am mortified beyond belief and by extension so are my characters. Connar’s account started off locked for a reason, I am a autistic man and have been a advocate for autistic people most of my adult life, in the process I have made many enemies who would love nothing more then to make my life a living hell, to keep them out I have kept the account private, now I find I do not have the privilege of living in a walled off space. I have locked Yuuko’s account and I will be moving my activity to the universeodon.com instance of Mastedone and strongly encourage you all to follow me. If you are on Bluesky please bridge your account to Mastedone by following @ap.brid.gy so that our story can continue. I will save my curses for another medium where I can use a more colorful vocabulary but before I sign off one last time, I want to leave you with something.
Over the past decade or so I have seen communities that I love fall prey to fascism. I have seen science fiction, fantasy, comics, video games, anime and technology, all be infiltrated by agents of darkness, spaces that should be welcoming to others regardless of how different they are, have been infested by these nocuous trolls posing as fans. They have slithered their way into these communities, whispering brain rot into people’s ears, telling them that they will lose the things that they love if they do not purge the perceived outsiders from the community. And horrifyingly, I have seen these agents attempting to use this fear to prey on autistic people both in attempts to recruit them to their vile causes and to somehow associate them with this putrid ideology they preach. I will not  stand for it! I will not stand by and allow the things I love to be taken from me or any one else by this cancer spreading through the world and you shouldn’t either. Do not let them take the things you love, when Fascist (and yes, they are truly Fascist no matter how much they cry about it) must be chased from every community be it heavy metal, punk rock, comic books, anime, video games, technology, mythology, whatever you love, do not let them take it from you! We must also take care to be patient with those whose hardships have caused them to be seduced by the darkness and to use kindness and reason to lead them back into the light when possible (though I fear this is a luxury we are losing rapidly) but never allow their crocodile tears to deter you from doing what is right.
One of my core beliefs is that there is a hero in everyone and if there is one thing this community has shown me it’s that those heroes come in every form imaginable. You are all much much much stronger than you believe, and while it may feel hopeless now, I know through my years of observation and in my heart that you are all more than capable of throwing back the darkness that has enveloped us. The dark days have found us my friends, but we are a people who are not easily purged. There will be happiness again, there will be light, love, and magic, the Candy Witch will continue making her rounds, Connars journey will continue, and I hope you will all join me in continuing the story. Today we all grieve, but tomorrow, we will pick ourselves up, spit out blood, look the dark days in the eye and snarl “Is that all you got!” I promise you from the bottom of my heart, there will be more.
Téigh leis an solas a chairde
Go with the light my friends
Xencraft aka Xenomorph816