My story with Luna

My story with Luna

By Asahi Lina

TW: Attempted suicide, self-harm, emotional and mental abuse, gaslighting

Note: This doc is about Luna the Foxgirl (@LunaFoxgirlVT). Sorry for the confusion, I know there are way too many Lunas around…

This is a story of a friendship broken by severe untreated mental health issues. Nobody is evil in this story, and nobody is a monster. As you read this, please consider how difficult it has been for everyone involved. My only wish is for everyone to be happy and get along. Unfortunately, sometimes that just becomes impossible. You can only help those who want to be helped.

At this point, I just want to be left alone and move on from this. Beginnings

Almost 3 years ago, I ran into Luna on Twitter. I had started looking into becoming a VTuber, but I was appalled at the closedness of the Live2D ecosystem. Inochi2D was exactly what I was looking for, and I genuinely believed it could become the future of live and game 2D animation, with its permissive license and better design.

As I got to know her better, I realized that she was in a very difficult living situation. Living with her (sometimes abusive) parents, making money only off of government benefits, working a mandatory part-time job she didn’t truly enjoy, and dealing with crippling depression… I really wanted her to be able to pursue her dreams and break out of the hole she was in, so I started financially sponsoring Luna through Patreon/GH Sponsors.

Eventually, this support grew to around $1500 per month. I figured this would give her some stability, and make her able to focus on her passions without having to worry about losing everything. I knew it wasn’t going to make her fully financially stable all on its own, but I thought that, together with support from others and promotion/monetization of Inochi2D in other ways (customers, grants, etc.) it would let Luna eventually grow and become more financially independent. And I hoped this would also help ease her depression and bleak outlook on life. I never put any conditions or requirements on my support, and it always came with no strings attached. Not once did I ever even slightly hint that I might withdraw my support for any reason at all, nor imply I might take such an action in any way, nor ask for anything in return.

The weeks before my debut in April 2022 were crazy. I joined in to help develop the Inochi2D parameter binding system, and we worked together to help me be the first VTuber to debut using Inochi2D. We both definitely burned ourselves out a little too much the last 2 weeks of the crunch, and I thank Luna for sticking with me and helping me pull it off. I am immensely proud of our accomplishment and I will never forget what we were able to do. The last-minute bugfixes, delaying my debut by hours to re-rig my mouth and re-record the intro video, the jankiness of my original setup… these are all very fond memories to me that I will never forget.

Over the next couple of months I helped out with Inochi2D a bit, mostly writing the physics engine and helping out with editing tools and other misc things (though it wasn’t my primary focus, as I had my own projects to work on). Troubles

Around the winter of 2022, Luna was not doing well. She had ended up in a depression cycle, feeling that she was expected to make progress on Inochi2D but could not, which created a self-perpetuating cycle where the depression made it hard to work on Inochi2D itself. I realized that I could not help her remotely, so I invited her to Japan and bought her tickets for a 1-month trip to stay with me (where I would cover all of her expenses).

I wasn’t the best possible host for her. I was trying to help, but I was really busy with my own work, so I couldn’t just take off 1 month to travel with her or hang out, and I had to fit things into my existing schedule. As my first time hosting someone with autism and in a difficult mental state, I had a lot of trouble understanding Luna sometimes. We had some disagreements and difficult situations, and I know I hurt her at times. At the time, we talked things out and I learned some things about what to expect from people with autism, and how to better understand her feelings. Despite these difficulties and the rocky start, Luna was so happy with the trip that she decided to extend it by another month to 2 months. It was admittedly a bit exhausting by the end (hosting anyone for 2 months is a chore, even someone neurotypical) but I'm glad she enjoyed it and I could at least get her to relax a little bit. As far as I knew, the rough times we’d had during the trip were resolved, I had apologized for my mistakes, and we had moved on. Calm

In the summer 2023 I hosted Luna again in Japan, so she could attend Comiket as the Inochi2D circle. By then I had moved to a larger place, I was a bit less busy, and I was in a better position to hang out with friends, and I think she ended up having a lot more fun hanging out with more people. There was the part where we all got COVID and had to isolate… but we pulled through and Luna ended up staying a bit longer to compensate too. Everyone had fun having her around and we were looking forward to her visiting again.

Over the fall of 2023 nothing major happened. We had our usual chitchats but I was too busy to work on Inochi2D, so all I could do was continue to offer my financial support and leave it to her to work on things and recruit other contributors. I did try to offer some advice about how to delegate work to other people, but Luna was never really able to let go and allow other major contributors to have a larger influence in the project direction, so Inochi2D remained strictly her own baby. This worried me, since it meant she would always feel responsible for everything and put all the weight on herself, and it was clear she couldn’t mentally handle the workload and responsibilities of the project single-handedly to the extent needed to make it take off… but there was nothing I could really do at this point, so I just left her alone and let her run things her way. Cyan

Around November/December 2023, I had become friends with Cyan after our macOS bug collab stream. We talked about Luna, and I vouched for her to Cyan. She also started talking and having voice chats with Luna, and they also became friends. Cyan would later confide in me that she had been scared of Luna due to a few red flags in the past, but she took my word that she was a good person and started talking to her.

Cyan herself had also been going through some rough times due to mental health reasons. Around the end of the year, Cyan invited Luna to visit, and Luna suddenly agreed to fly over to the US to meet Cyan and help her with her issues (note: Cyan would be paying for Luna’s flights). This was out of character for Luna (having never visited the US, being visibly trans with the social instability there in recent years, etc.), but at the time I didn’t think much of it. In retrospect, I should’ve remembered a conversation that I had had with Luna where she admitted she felt she might catch feelings for Cyan a few weeks earlier…

(Note: “squish” means feeling strongly like you want to be friends with someone without it being romantic. She also probably wanted to say “aromantic” instead of “asexual”. I do have friends whom I treat almost like family, but without any romantic feelings whatsoever, and she is referring to this.)

The flight was planned for early January 2024. In the week or two before the flight, Luna’s mental health further deteriorated. She was on a reduced dose of HRT due to a shortage, and this was making her gender dysphoria worse. Cyan and I tried to help her get in contact with a US doctor who could prescribe her HRT for the trip, though Luna eventually figured out that she could still get a different form of HRT prescribed locally in Denmark and decided to go for that.

Meanwhile, Cyan and I kept having long conversations… and eventually we both realized that our relationship was becoming more than just friends. Travel

Luna landed in the US on Jan 11th and met up with Cyan. Luna wasn’t exactly doing great at this point, but at least she seemed happier to be with Cyan. They had been going to a lot of places together to cheer her up (even though it was Luna who was supposed to cheer up Cyan with the trip), and Luna was happy to have such good friends:

(These were gifts from Cyan to cheer her up)

(Note: Cyan also gifted her a Mac. Her reasoning being that since Luna was generally struggling financially, even with my support, she would appreciate gifts of value like that and feel more cared for.)

Meanwhile, it really hit Cyan and me that we were pretty much official by that point, and we felt it was only fair to tell Luna, since we thought she was cheerful enough to take the news. Threats

(Sensitive personal details redacted)

Immediately after hearing about us, Luna threatened me with physical harm.

To this day, she stands by this conversation, and claims it was purely a protective reaction, since she felt our relationship would be harmful to Cyan (despite not knowing anything about how I act in a romantic relationship, or how our specific circumstances might go). However, this doesn’t make a lot of sense, because even if she thought we wouldn’t work out, other people’s relationships are none of her business and it’s not her job to try to break us up preemptively. To me, and everyone whom I’ve asked about this situation, it’s clear that Luna was having a major jealousy reaction, even if she rejected this possibility herself (and she rejects it to this day).

The situation with Cyan quickly took a turn for the worse. Luna started going into anxiety and suicidal spirals, which affected Cyan herself. Far from helping, Luna was now making Cyan’s mental state much worse. All I could do was continue talking to Cyan, and I spent many hours distracting her and stopping her from harming herself. She now had to take care of Luna on top of all the other stressful stuff that had been simultaneously going on in her life.

Luna started acting in very strange ways. She tried to get Cyan and I to break up, going as far as telling Cyan lies about me and my past. At one point Cyan mentioned she’d heard from her a story so shocking that it left me speechless, and I had to go back and dig up the Discord chat with her to prove to myself that what she told was absolutely not what had actually happened nor what I’d told her. (*I will not be posting the screenshots of this since it’s personal and involves an innocent third party, but if needed I can provide a reference for someone who has seen the logs and can vouch for me.)

I think it was around this time that Luna started forming ideas that I am an abuser.

As all Cyan could do was talk to me to stay sane herself, Luna became jealous of our conversations. She told Cyan she was upset she was spending so much time with me and not her (even though Luna herself was one major cause of Cyan’s anxiety leading her to rely on me). She started doing things like sitting right outside Cyan’s room door while we were talking, as if deliberately trying to stay within earshot and expose herself to our conversations. Cyan was so troubled that she resorted to going into the car in the unheated, cold garage to talk to me, staying out there freezing talking to me for hours on end since it was the only safe place where Luna wouldn’t hear.

Luna also started being weird towards Cyan herself. She started talking about doing a blood oath with her, swearing themselves as forever “sisters”. This was really bizarre and creepy to me, especially since they had barely started really getting to know each other a few weeks before. I know the feeling that some friends are as close as family members, but it’s something that takes months to years to develop. Luna literally wanted them to prick their fingers and exchange bodily fluids, even though Cyan was literally struggling with self-harm thoughts, which this kind of action could trigger (never mind the obvious health and safety implications). Eventually I convinced them to at least make it a “bloodless blood oath”, which they did in fact do - and Luna then immediately publicized it in detail on Twitter. In retrospect, I think this was yet another crush-driven attempt at forcing Cyan to be closer and create a bond that would be harder for her to break in the future, in addition to “one-upping” me by publicly announcing some form of relationship with Cyan before I do.

During this time, Nethyr paid Cyan and Luna a brief visit. Nethyr was an angel, and actually helped a ton with things like household chores, while Luna could not function and Cyan had a very hard time due to Luna’s effects on her. From this point onward, Nethyr was aware of this story and both Luna and I were talking to her. They acted as a mediator between us, though eventually they couldn’t really help Luna.

Cyan and I both realized that Luna had to go back home, and simultaneously, also that Cyan wasn’t safe in her home due to other stuff happening at the same time. Luna asked whether she could fly back to Japan instead of Denmark, to have a little vacation and cool off again. We somewhat reluctantly agreed (it wasn’t clear how Luna would do in Japan by herself, but at least she had a few friends she could hang out with and it’s safer than the US), and paid for her flights again. Meanwhile, I booked a flight to the US so I could actually help Cyan through this mess. Luna’s flight left in the morning while my flight arrived in the afternoon of the same day.

While I was on the plane, a bunch of traumatizing and stressful stuff happened to Luna and Cyan (not Luna’s fault) and us three ended up in a highly stressful situation, where all I could do is watch remotely from the flights (using in-flight wifi) and hope I could get there in time before something escalated badly. At this point Luna and I had a brief truce, since we were both trying to keep Cyan physically safe.

Eventually, both of them made it safely to the airport on the day of the flights. Luna was past security, and I was chatting with both of them from the plane. Cyan was going through a major emotional crisis, while Luna just kept dumping her troubles on me and talking about what to do in Japan. She asked if I could ask a couple of my friends to hang out with her, despite that I had told her earlier that those friends were away from home and very busy with personal stuff, and absolutely not available. I was starting to realize that Luna has a major issue with boundaries and tends to only think about herself, without considering others’ situation at all. I told her, firmly but politely, that she really needed to work on that problem, and went back to trying to console Cyan who was still breaking down. In response, she replied that we weren't ready to be friends again.

Then she immediately told Cyan that she didn’t think she could be friends with me any more. Despite knowing that Cyan was going through a hard time right now, all Luna could think of is her own struggle with me, and decided to dump that on Cyan within seconds of my message. At this point, I had had enough, and I exploded at her. I told her that she was selfish and always only thinking about herself, and that she was hurting Cyan with her antics. In retrospect, I should not have done that, but I was myself in a very stressful situation, not having slept for 36+ hours and inside a plane not being able to do anything to help Cyan…

(Technical note: Due to a very complicated situation, Cyan and I were temporarily sharing a Telegram account at the time, while I was personally using another one. Luna was fully aware of this situation and the privacy implications. For this reason, I got a notification for Luna’s message to Cyan, which is why I knew she sent it immediately. Despite having been fully aware that it was my account and I had access, and that this was a temporary emergency measure, Luna at the time accused me of privacy invasion when this happened, and called me a “creep”. For related reasons and because Telegram allows remote deletion of chats by the other party, I also no longer have these logs.)

Luna claims that this explosion triggered what she now describes as a month-long autistic meltdown. None of my autistic friends agree that what she was about to do, nor the duration of the episode, are what is understood to be an autistic meltdown. The “Meltdown”

Luna arrived in Japan, but wasn’t doing well. She started going into suicidal spirals. Simultaneously, she kept talking to Cyan, telling her I’m a horrible person, that I can’t help her, and that we shouldn’t be together.

Cyan, just like me, has a strong savior complex, and she finds it very hard to stop supporting people even when she is being hurt herself. She was afraid that if she ever argued or contradicted Luna, or stopped talking to her, she would commit suicide. Luna brought suicidal feelings up many times, and all Cyan could do is again try to be her emotional support while ignoring all her attempts at tearing down our relationship.

Meanwhile, I was not messaging Luna at all and would not for a long period of time, as I feared that anything I said would just make her condition worse.

Luna went into a suicidal episode at a hotel in Japan. I couldn’t help her directly, but Cyan was relying on me to try to get help to her. We both believed that, at this point, Luna really needed to go to a mental health hospital, since she really wasn’t safe anywhere by herself. It was the middle of the night in Japan, and I couldn’t call emergency services from abroad, so I desperately tried to contact all my friends in Japan until I could find someone who could help (people in Japan tend to leave their phones on silent mode, so waking them up is difficult…). Eventually I managed to go through a chain of 3 people to call the police and send them her way, which we both felt was the right call given the gravity of the situation. We also finally managed to wake up a mutual friend, but it would take an hour for them to reach Luna. In the meantime, police arrived and kept Luna busy until the friend arrived. Luna declined to go to a hospital, and she also claims calling police was a terrible idea, but I disagree. The police were the reason we could keep her busy and safe until a mutual friend managed to reach her. (Do keep in mind that Japanese police are nothing like US police, and they are much more helpful and aware and there is no risk of physical harm to Luna from a police encounter.)

After a second suicidal spiral in Japan, it was clear that she also wasn’t safe there nor able to improve by herself (and was refusing medical help), so we decided to send her brother out to pick her up (again, with us paying for all the flights) and take her back to Denmark. (I should also point out that at several points there were changes of plans and Luna made no attempt to cancel or refund her previous flights, so thousands of dollars were also wasted for no reason.)

Luna then dropped a vague accusation of me being an abuser into the nullptr::live internal Discord chat, almost causing a major crisis and breakup of the group. At this point I had to tell the story to the other members, who understandably were on my side after hearing the full story. This happened despite Nethyr having told Luna not to drop a bomb like this, that if she wanted to leave she should do it calmly and without throwing accusations around.

Eventually, this led to Luna leaving nullptr::live, initially temporarily. She admitted that she needed to work on herself, and she agreed to see a therapist once she got back to Denmark.

Unfortunately, the therapist idea would not last. This was one of many flip-flops from Luna that would follow, going between guilt and anger, and between considering actually getting help and then refusing it.

Eventually she made it back to Denmark, and she was still traumadumping on Cyan in private, slowly depleting her mental spoons as well as causing her dangerous levels of anxiety (which I experienced first-hand, as I was by her side at this point).

At some point, Luna was finally convinced that her state was dangerous enough to admit herself to a mental health hospital. She went in, spent a couple nights, and talked to a psychologist. She somehow got them to yes-man her into agreeing that I was the problem in her life, and nothing else. It seems this “confirmation” briefly took her out of the suicidal spiral, replacing the depression with more hatred towards me. She left the hospital after just 3 days, without having meaningfully healed in any way other than just not being immediately suicidal.

Luna then reverted back to meddling in my personal life and continued to try to hurt my relationships with others. She used her self-harm and suicidal ideations to keep Cyan under control (consciously or not, I’m not sure), so she could get away with what at this point was becoming verbal abuse of us. She told several friends privately that I was an abuser and that I had mentally abused her for years. Cyan told her to try therapy, but Luna rebuffed it saying that therapy “doesn't work for her”.

Luna even brought up our (presumed by her) sex life, which was honestly disgusting to me and none of her business.

Meanwhile, all I could do is help Cyan through her own very stressful situation. It felt like every time we thought we could catch a break from running between AirBnBs with 3 animals, dealing with administrative procedures, trying to find her a new place to stay, and all kinds of other crazy stuff I won’t go into here, another Luna message arrived and robbed us of what little peace we thought we might have at this time. I could sense Cyan’s mood and mental state worsen every time this happened.

Cyan politely asked Luna for space, to not message her for a week for her own mental health, but Luna didn’t even last a day before messaging her again. Flip Flops

At this point, Luna started trying to undo everything she'd caused. She tried to rejoin the nullptr::live discord, despite having me personally blocked (how would being part of a VTuber group while blocking one of the members even work?). She then shared her point of view with the group as a two-page PDF.

Her version of the story had several demonstrable mistakes:

She implied that a considerable time had passed between her arrival at Cyan’s place and learning that we were dating, while it actually was only 3 days. She said that Cyan and I had been having long phone calls during that time, while in fact the long calls (where I was trying to console her and help her) only started after the explosion that began due to Luna’s reaction to the news. She implied that she was already unhappy and hearing the news was the final straw, while in fact just the previous day she was happy and thankful for having such good friends, after having gone shopping with Cyan and received a bunch of gifts.

It was clear to me at this point that her mind was constructing details from vague memories, and that her recollection of events wasn’t reliable. This is not unusual (we’re all human, and humans are notoriously bad at remembering details, and I certainly can’t claim everything I’ve stated so far is 100% accurate) but we need to be aware of our own limitations, and Luna clearly wasn’t.

Luna did half-admit her reaction was caused by jealousy in her document, though she would later take that back and claim she felt coerced by the situation to say that to avoid further arguments. But even then, she qualified the situation, claiming it was not romantic despite having previously admitted to having growing romantic feelings for Cyan. She also said that she was helping Cyan while I was taking her away and hurting her, which is in fact the exact opposite of what actually happened. It seems like, in Luna’s mind, she was still the savior to help Cyan, and she just could not fathom the idea that she was actually a burden herself.

(Sidenote: Note the deliberate usage of “they/them” throughout. Luna knows that my pronouns are “she/her”. I thought she’d know better than to do this, as a trans person.)

Then Luna recollected some of the things that had happened a whole year prior in Japan, which I thought we had already resolved. It is true that in the beginning it was rough and I couldn’t spend all of my time taking care of her, and I didn’t understand just how much of a struggle she’d have doing something as simple as going to the convenience store to buy something. However, she was much better after the first couple of weeks, and I thought we had resolved our issues from back then. Despite her having, at the time, been so happy with the trip so as to extend it to two months, she now painted it as a terrible time from beginning to end. Apparently she had held grudges on me the whole time.

The Bocchi situation was particularly telling, because it helped me understand why Luna felt I had “abused” her for years. What had actually happened was simply that we’d verbally talked about watching that anime together at some point (without committing to any time or promising anything). Then, one day, another friend spontaneously invited me to watch it with them on the spot, and I agreed. Luna felt deeply betrayed by this, as in her mind we had promised to watch it together for the first time. This was simply a miscommunication, and it should’ve ended at that. However, Luna’s mind twisted it into something much more sinister:

(I’m skipping the parts of her doc where she described other negative situations she had in Japan, as they don’t seem to be relevant; the one “breach of trust” situation we had, which she has brought up multiple times after this point too, was the Bocchi one. Everything else she mentioned was something I was aware of, had apologized for at the time, and thought we had resolved.)

My “breaking” of the “agreement” to watch Bocchi with her, was now a source of anxiety for her, because she thought I might also break the agreement I had to fund her.

Needless to say, watching anime and sponsoring her for $1500/mo are two very different things. I have never threatened her with stopping my sponsorship. I have never even slightly suggested that I might do that. I have barely asked of anything from her over the years after my debut (our relationship was largely unbalanced, with her relying on me emotionally but not so much in the other direction), and what little things I may have asked for (e.g. Inochi2D feature requests) were in no way tied or implied to be tied to my sponsorship. It was free money for her to do whatever she wants, with no conditions, and it always was. It is true that, on paper, I had power over her due to my sponsorship. But I never, not even slightly, exercised that power against her.

In Luna’s mind, me sponsoring her and having had a minor breach of trust due to a misunderstanding at one point, had now been extended into being psychological abuse for the whole year since the incident. She also has claimed I abused her for “two years”, which seems to be just a retroactive extension on her part, since she has never mentioned anything negative that I did to her prior to her first Japan trip. She believed that painting me as an abuser to friends and acquaintances was warranted, despite me having literally done nothing other than watch Bocchi with someone else first. Everything else was in her mind, and I had no idea about what was going on.

Up until this point, even through all of the abuse that Luna had sent towards me and Cyan, I hadn’t even considered cutting off her sponsorship. I knew she was in a bad place mentally, and I would’ve never forgiven myself for pulling that support out from under her at a time like this. I knew she could literally die.

However, she took things into her own hands, and blocked me on GitHub, ending my sponsorship herself.

(Note: She never saw that therapist, she went back to saying therapy doesn’t work for her after this.)

At this time, she also posted a series of public tweets, essentially subtweeting me publicly as an abuser, and saying she solved the problem.

Luna now found herself with most of her income gone, entirely out of her own decision and action, right around tax season. This wasn’t the wisest decision on her part, and it led directly to her major financial struggles in the couple months that followed. I understand that she was feeling bad about me giving her money, but she clearly didn’t think this through.

It was evident to everyone else in nullptr::live that she needed months, if not years, to heal from this, and that being part of the same group would not help her state at this point.

Throughout this whole time Luna went through several flip-flop cycles, blocking and unblocking me on Twitter, blocking and unblocking others on Telegram, etc. At several points others asked her for a bit of space since she was depleting their mental spoons (not just Cyan’s at this point, other people were involved), but she repeatedly ignored this, and continued to talk to people and pay no attention to their own mental state and requests. Struggles Luna started trying to get in contact with me about Inochi2D (since I had her blocked on Discord at this point and she’d banned me from the Inochi2D Discord, so I was no longer there). She started evading blocks by emailing me and using alt accounts (e.g. DMing me from @Inochi2D) to get my attention. She wanted me to unblock her on Discord so we could talk about Inochi2D bugs/etc. This made no sense to me. If she wanted me to be able to contribute to Inochi2D, she could just unblock me on GitHub and let me participate publicly. I was not comfortable having any private conversations with her at this point, especially considering that anything I say could trigger a suicidal spiral, and at this point I was afraid that she might blame something like that on me. I told her this:

She first replied just “Understood, bye.”, but a few hours later sent this:

Later more flip-flops happened, and she started talking to me on Telegram again a week later. First she sent me this:

I never replied to her, since I had nothing else to say at that point, and I had already asked her to give me space (which she was again ignoring, as she always does). The somewhat cordial tone would not last, though.

She was now directly blaming me for her potential suicide.

All I wanted at this point is to be left alone. But she wouldn’t.

The crash Unsurprisingly, Luna hit major financial trouble. Her bank account was in the red due to some tax payment issue. She claimed that Cyan and I ruined her life. That she wouldn’t survive the rest of the year and it was all our fault. She blamed me for other people who dropped out of her GitHub sponsors, even though I had never talked to anyone about this whole situation other than to two very close friends, and everyone else she had involved first on her end. The most likely actual explanation is that people dropped out of her Sponsors because she was, at the time, doomposting on Twitter, and that’s a really bad PR look and would definitely prompt a few people to drop off. Someone told her this, but she brushed it off, because in her mind everything wrong in her life had to be my fault at this point.

Throughout all this, including the verbal abuse Luna was sending me, Cyan had continued to talk to her to keep her alive, fearing that cutting her off would trigger something. I had to actively try to get Cyan to cut Luna off. The effects of her chats on Cyan’s mental health had been very, very clear, and even Cyan was starting to realize it. Luna had ignored her pleas for space. It was time to let go, and let Luna handle her own issues, since we really couldn’t do anything more for her. Cyan agreed to send Luna $1k to get her out of debt, then block her and call it closure.

Cyan ended up sending her $3k instead, and blocking her.

Immediately after that, Luna again switched to an alternate account combination to message Cyan again, despite the block. She doesn’t seem to understand the concept that blocking someone means you don’t want to receive their messages. I had to go and help Cyan block every account pairing possible to make sure we could finally get some rest from Luna. (Flashforward: This was not enough, I missed one of Luna’s alts and she ended up using it to message Cyan later, again.)

The next thing Luna did is buy an iPad with the extra money.

I honestly had no words at this point. Luna was clearly financially irresponsible. Considering she had never built up any savings even despite the significant increase in her income from my sponsorship over time, I started to wonder if she was actively wasting money on things she couldn’t afford, and living at the very edge of her means even though she could definitely cut back a little bit and at least save up an emergency fund. Of course I had never asked her about what she spent money on, but after this, I started to wonder. Recovery… for a bit Finally getting blocked by Cyan seemed to cause Luna to finally snap out of her self-described meltdown. A week after the Telegram messages, she sent me an email:

I pondered whether to reply or not for a few days. I wasn’t sure if she was still suicidal. It sounded like she really had “snapped” out of the hole and could handle an honest conversation, though, and other mutuals told me so. Eventually I decided that it seemed like she was honestly coming to terms with what had happened, so we had some email exchanges where I described everything I had been holding back in the most polite terms possible.

Our initial thread focused on her “meltdown”. She insisted that this was truly an autistic meltdown (even though nowhere does anyone describe an autistic meltdown as a multi-month tirade of abuse towards friends and self-harm, it’s a very different thing, and all my other autistic friends tell me so). She apologized for her actions, but essentially put the burden of dealing with them on me and others: The only way we could be friends with her, is if we learned to recognize the signs of a meltdown and helped her deal with it. She couldn’t control it, and it was up to others to handle it. She still refused therapy and dismissed that she might improve herself.

At this time, I did manage to (at least briefly) convince her that her labeling of me as an “abuser” was unfair and unjustified, and she did contact some mutual friends who she had previously told I was an abuser to take it back. I thank her for that.

A few days after the initial thread, she sent me another wall of text. Even though I told her I needed space, she insisted on “fixing” everything soon and talking it over. I was still dealing with some very stressful stuff, trying to get Cyan over to Japan at this point, and Luna continued to ignore my requests for space. So again I asked her for space:

And she replied a few days later, saying she “doesn’t have that much time”, and then following up with this:

Reading between the lines, it was clear she was trying to get me to pity her, and start sending her money again.

Sorry, Luna. You can’t just undo everything that happened like that, including pressing the funding block button yourself. You need to learn to deal with the consequences of your own actions. I’m open to being friends again, but I need space, and you need time to properly heal, not just apologize in a panic because you’re running out of money again. And until then, you need to take control of your own life and figure things out yourself. And maybe next time don’t just spend the $1200 that you could’ve used to pay the tax service on an iPad. You actually had that money, and you wasted it.

That's what I thought, but I didn't tell her that. I told her I didn’t have much to say at this point, and didn’t reply to a bunch of follow-ups from her. She sent me this on April 22nd:

Once again, she would not respect my plea for space: She had to get closure now, it was eating her up from the inside, and it would eventually blow up, and it was on me to reply to her. Japan At around this time, Cyan and I landed in Japan, after a very stressful process getting everything sorted out for the move.

Luna and I had had a verbal agreement that she needed to work on her respect for boundaries, so I would unblock her everywhere, but she was not to message me except via email until I told her otherwise. On April 24, she broke the promise via Telegram:

Again, it was her needs above others’. I had to deal with her because it was affecting her mental health. I was not entitled to even just a few weeks of space. She just could not let go.

She also started messaging mutuals to try to convince them to get me to reply to her.

She then sent me an email, where her tone became negative again, blaming me saying I’m clueless about mental health and trans healthcare, continuing to deny being jealous at Cyan and I dating and more. All these things were my fault again. I had had enough, and by this point I thought she was well and truly out of her suicidal spirals, so I replied with a piece of my mind and told her that she needed to deal with her issues herself and stop expecting others to do so. This didn’t help, and she replied with this:

Again, not taking responsibility for her meltdown. Spoiler alert: she would not stop bothering us.

She then sent multiple follow-up emails, including this one:

Until then I had thought that her meltdown started when she learned of Cyan and I dating, but it turned out not to be the case. Apparently it started after the airport conversation, and she considered herself “normal” before then. She stood behind her threat of physical violence against me, continued to say it wasn’t jealousy, and implied it was entirely warranted and not out of line.

By this point it was clear I could do nothing to help her. Neither positive nor negative words would get through. I just wanted to be left alone.

She also started trying to reach Cyan through multiple mutuals at this point, to evade the blocks. Luna truly knows no boundaries.

She then sent me yet another email:

My reply:

At this point she replied a couple more times, not taking responsibility for anything again. At least we both agreed that making this public would not help anyone, so I thought I could just finally let this blow over and move on with my life.

Then, she immediately made a public subtweet thread again hinting at us.

I was so tired.

She replied with another huge wall of text, again deflecting responsibility for most things, and painting me as having an evil image of her. She made an absolutely evil and abhorrent comment about something horrible that happened to a friend of mine in the past, implying that she might blame me for it. At this point, I had had enough. I just wanted it to be over.

A few hours later, she made a surprise offer.

Unfortunately this was too little, too late, and still ignoring boundaries and not taking responsibility for anything, and I was done and over with her. We crossed emails, and she sent another wall of text:

(Rest of story omitted.) She got some things right and some things wrong, but it doesn’t matter because I had already replied to the previous email:

She replied:

“Sorry I sent that email before I saw you had replied. But yeah, I’ll stop bothering you. Sorry for the long winded talk.”

She then attempted to kill herself.

Despite everything, I don’t want Luna to be hurt, or to die. I’m glad she survived.

I just want to be left alone at this point. It never ends Luna took a break from social media after her attempt. Unfortunately, just a day or two after coming back, she again tweeted a thread subtweeting me as her abuser, and implying I am the root cause of most of her mental issues over the past years. She also sent Cyan a message on Twitter from yet another alt to evade the blocks. She also sent me a Discord message:

(I don’t remember what the “comments about her femininity” were. As far as I remember I always tried to be constructive and positive about her issues with gender dysphoria.)

I have not contacted her since her suicide attempt. I have never implied I wanted to make anything public if she doesn’t.

From what I can piece together, Cyan’s announcement of her comeback stream triggered another anxiety spiral in Luna. She believed I might talk about her in the stream, despite having repeatedly told her I have no intention of making any of this public (as long as she doesn’t), and despite all the subtweets and public references coming from her, not me. Every single time this story has been further spread to more people, it was due to Luna involving them, not me. Cyan even made it clear in her announcement tweet that we would not be talking about any involved third parties. Apparently this wasn’t enough for Luna.

It seems anything I or Cyan publicly do can now arbitrarily trigger an anxiety attack in Luna, and have her construct arbitrary scenarios in her head that aren’t real, and then attack us publicly and privately for it.

Some people are already connecting the dots on Luna leaving nullptr::live, on me not publicizing her stuff, and on all the public subtweets she’s been making. She also posted on her Discord about all this, again painting me anonymously as some kind of horrible abuser that has hurt her for years. I don’t even know if she’s off telling all our mutuals that I’m an abuser again too.

I’m tired. I’m scared.

Please leave Cyan and me alone, Luna.

Please. Epilogue While writing this document I unblocked Luna on Discord to get some screenshots and forgot to block her again. On June 10th, Seagetch (arguably the second most important contributor to Inochi2D) forked the project due to differences in project direction. Luna had, at this point, spent the past 9+ months working on support packages for a major refactor, completely neglecting the core existing and unfinished product, and rejecting contributions directly to the main branch I believe. So it’s understandable that contributors, blocked from contributing directly to the future of the upstream project and forced to contribute to what will eventually be a dead legacy branch (v0.8) anyway, would want to fork. I agree with the idea of a fork (I don’t think Luna has been managing the project effectively) and obviously I had no desire to contribute upstream and have to deal with Luna, so I was happy that this happened (even though I had nothing to do with it) since for better or worse, Inochi2D is/was a core part of my VTubing setup.

At this point I’d been using an old snapshot of Inochi2D and I had just rebuilt my streaming setup, so it was a good time to upgrade. I want to switch from my weird bespoke hardcoded model viewer app to Inochi Session/nijiexpose (like VTube Studio), but in order to do that I needed a few features (that I’d asked Luna for in the past but she never got around to implementing). So I told Seagetch I wanted to contribute, and he was worried about that possibly upsetting Luna, so he asked her. Luna agreed to me contributing to the fork, but this then triggered yet another spiral in Luna.

I don’t know what she expects of me at this point. Should I disappear from the internet? Stop VTubing? It’s like she wants me to suddenly disappear entirely from her life and our shared online spaces despite the fact that I’m the first serious user of her software and a major advocate until now. Doing things like contributing to a fork is me trying to distance myself from her. But it seems she just can’t stand the thought of me, at all… and blames it on me again: she can’t leave me alone because she keeps seeing me around (even though her being triggered by my existence is her problem, not mine, and unlike her I haven't been messaging her or evading blocks at all).

If I take her words at face value, it means Luna has pretended to be my friend since her Japan trip, in order to get resources/funding from me. I thought we had a genuine friendship… but it seems she didn’t, and was just faking it so as to keep the money flowing. This really hit me when she sent me the pity emails earlier, trying to patch things up with me ASAP because she was running out of money. Honestly, this makes me really sad. And now that she no longer is getting money from me, she’s just trying to retaliate against me.

July 20 update She sent me an email. It started out in a conciliatory tone, but halfway through she went back to saying I “abused her” and “left lasting wounds on [her], [her] self worth and mental health.”

I have blocked her email address, so further attempts to email me will bounce. At this point I have not contacted her nor sent her any messages since her suicide attempt. I do not believe she has truly healed, and I don’t wish to interact with her in any way until she does (which will probably need professional help).

August 1 update Luna had not been using her VT Social account (which makes sense, given that I run that instance). A few days ago, Luna came back and started posting mildly inflammatory messages criticizing Asahi Linux, nijilive (the Inochi2D fork), and VT Social itself. Other nullptr::live members and mods noticed her posts and started discussing them in our mod channels. I chimed in with more references.

Luna then publicly posted that she's leaving Mastodon again. This would certainly help reduce the drama, since I want nothing to do with her at this point and I don't want her posts on our instance. However, I was not confident that she would actually leave our instance for good. It seemed like this whole thing was bait to get us to take mod action and paint herself as the victim again.

We decided to send her a formal message to push the process along and ask her to move to another instance, as we would suspend her account in 4 days (Mastodon allows carrying over your followers to another instance, so it is customary to let people move away in cases like this of moderation disputes where blatant rule violations are not the issue):

The message was sent from a shared admin account, not any individual, using the Mastodon warning system, so replies would go to the entire mod team. She immediately replied with this:

Despite the warning having been sent from an unnamed account, she decided to direct her reply personally to me, and dox my full real name to the entire mod team.

At this point I'd had enough. She had already deleted her personal account by the time I noticed the reply, so I deleted @Inochi2D which was still active at that time.

Ironically, dropping real names like that is itself a classic Kiwi Farms harassment tactic…

Earlier the same day Luna also started spreading FUD about nijigenerate & friends on Twitter, saying they're a dead end and the maintainer doesn't care about UX and they will be incompatible with future versions of Inochi2D. It's worth noting that, at this point, Luna has done absolutely zero feature work on Inochi2D and its core components for the past 9 months, instead choosing to work on unrelated support code for a major refactor that is arguably unnecessary and misguided. This is why it was forked, and it's honestly quite upsetting seeing her try to put down seagetch’s fork when he has been doing actual feature work and trying to make the software truly usable for vtubing for average users, including implementing features like sprite item support in nijiexpose (like items in VTube Studio). Inochi2D doesn't even have such an obvious and necessary feature, but Luna thinks working on that is a waste of time apparently…

Just leave me and everyone around me alone. Please.

Final update I've seen screenshots of Luna making the story public in her Discord, including doxxing me publicly and sharing personal details about me and Cyan, our relationship, and our personal life decisions. It's worth noting that we are both adults over 25 and our private life is none of her business. At this point, I have no choice but to make this document public. Sorry, Luna. You forced my hand here. Now please just leave me alone, forever. I do not ever want to receive a message from you again, and will not be involved in any of your projects.

Note that I have not sent Luna a single message since her suicide attempt. She keeps claiming I don't leave her alone, but it's her who won't leave me alone, throughout this whole story. I want that to be very clear.

Aside: My pronouns are she/her, I know Luna has a problem with that, and that is her problem, and not anyone else’s. I would appreciate it if nobody jumps on the misgendering bandwagon that she is trying to start to further smear my image. It is beyond appalling that she is doing this as a transgender person herself. Endorsements and comments From Cyan Nyan (nullptr::live member): I thought I could help Luna but it is really beyond me. Due to the impact of the event, I lost everything in America and Lina helped me move to Japan. I trusted Luna but I have seen her twist facts in malicious ways. Everything in this doc is what Lina and I have experienced and truthful. We want the trauma to stop here – please just let us rest and move on.

From Nethyr_AI (nullptr::live member): Regarding the Lina and Cyan document, I endorse it. I initially wanted to be neutral regarding this as I was friends with Luna but after being a witness in person and online, I can attest to what Lina & Cyan have stated as true.

I personally wished that all parties involved were able to move on, but Luna has been referencing the issues between them publicly on social media without naming them and hasn't stopped. Please stop harassing them. We all want to move on.

From Duck (nullptr::live & VT Social mod): I can be yet another autistic person confirming that Luna's definition of autistic meltdown is very inaccurate.

From dragonmux (nullptr::live & VT Social mod): likewise.. that's.. not autistic meltdown.. dealt with that several times and it's not what Luna did

From ZyeByte (Lina & Luna’s friend): I've been moderating between Lina and Luna for quite some time now, I also took care of Luna's Twitter for a while, and tried to help her as much as I could. I have absolutely no ill will towards Luna, as I've seen her as an idol for the longest time.

However, I have noticed that Luna kept reaching out to Lina time and time again. I've tried multiple times to tell her to stop that, but it seems it's going in an endless cycle, where periods of calm and panic/anger switch regularly.

I so desperately wish for Luna to seek professional help, as I also started to feel burned out and helpless for some time now. I really don't know how to help further. I only hope that nothing bad will happen now.