WARNING: There are some emotions in here.

DISCLAIMER: I AMN'T LEAVING!!! YOU CAN'T GET RID OF ME, YOU FOOLS! I AM TETHERED TO YOUR VERY FLESH, LIKE A LEECH! LIKE A CLAM!!!

It's gonna be a little scattered.

Okay, so, I've hopped from community to community quite a few times. Only when I started reaching forum roleplays did those communities really start to matter in a good way. In forum roleplays, despite my judgement, the set-up always made it so that I ended up getting attached to the people I wrote with, rather than just the game itself. I don't know how much I should delve into about the online friend group I had stuck with for what, 4 years? Do NOT worry, they were wonderful people, and they still are. Many of them are just really really busy right now, kind of scattered to a few places. Some of them came HERE! That's how I got here. Anyways, friends are a strange, convoluted thing for me. Even online friends.

For many reasons, I keep every detail I can about my actual self a secret from people online. It's a separate world from the physical one, you know? I don't have a problem with this. I don't think anyone does. Where I start to have trouble is when people online are just so incredibly, astoundingly kind to me. When somehow, I am feeling a personal connection to a little icon on the side of a screen, and the words it writes. Or to a disembodied voice in a voice chat -- "another dimension of friend", as luca said. I never know how react. I never really say anything, and it always feels bad.

I am reluctant to tell you about the issues, for me, that come with forming personal attachments. To tell you would be to let a stranger know about something personal to me without even having given them an idea of my face first. I don't know how to feel about that. So I've elected to try to be as vague as I can.

This is meant to be a thank you letter. Because I can't express all the warm fuzziness that I've felt via Discord message or a series of DMs. Thank you for being so kind and interesting. Thank you for being hilarious and preposterous and fun. Thank you for talking to me and trying to educate me and trying to cheer me up or make me smile. Thanks for just making me smile, and for making me laugh really hard when you all go feral at night when we really should all be sleeping. Thank you for sharing your music and your writing and your characters and your stories. I've been given so many gifts and??? Let me pay for them please???? I would like you all to be paid in real money actually because way too much of this artwork (and writing!) is professional level. Not that it should be a job, just a useful payback for your gratuitous crimes of appreciation and care.

I'm writing this because I feel guilty about receiving so much and having so little that I am willing to give back. All I am able to say is thank you until I finally get the guts to do something with that. I don't know when the next spine shipment is coming in but I want one. Jokes aside, thank you for being a lesson in community and creativity and how to care about someone even when you can't imagine any physical detail about them. (Besides height I guess.) Why do you all have so much love to give? What is the deal? I wish there were some way you could just keep some of it for yourselves and know how much you deserve it and how much other people want you to have it.

I don't really know what else to put here. Maybe I'm just a little surprised? It's been 5 months for me and 5 years for some of you. Happy 5-years-in-the-secret-multidimensional-cave-war anniversary to those of you that had it on the 22nd (Zevruu, CJ? I mean CJ is a co-owner so I don't know but something they said made me question)!

I think my final message here will just be, it is a genuine pleasure to tell stories with all of you. You have been relentlessly wonderful and I can't take it. Have fun in the real world knowing that somewhere out there, you have brought not just someone, but many people, great joy.

- don