update from sparkleup

misc/from-zacharias.md

@@ -0,0 +1,31 @@
+%title From Zacharias to True Name
+
+The Only Time I Know My True Name Is When I Dream#Ar3 of the Ode clade,
+
+I am writing as promised to offer a better explanation of what happened over the last few years and to ask for your help.
+
+As we discussed several times over the last few decades, the actions that I took after being forked from May Then My Name were still undertaken willingly. I was not so pressured against my will that I needed to be dragged kicking and screaming into forming a relationship with you, nor was I all that put upon to influence the direction of your life. It is what I do. It is what May Then My Name did. It is what I was made to be, in a way.
+
+_And_ it was not as though that was my sole existence, for I had my own hobbies and my own enjoyments in life, and, as I said that night before everything went down, a good many of those surrounded you. If I am built to love, then it is perhaps no surprise that I really did — and do — love you.
+
+We both could likely tell the vague direction in which things were heading over the past few months. Pressure was coming down from on high and from all around the System, and we were both struggling. You far more so than I, for while I was dealing with the strange requests of a Jonas who was slowly losing his shit, you were dealing with that as well as this inexorable attempt to push you out of the picture entirely, and it is a surprise and delight that you were able to hold on as you did for as long as you did.
+
+I saw that, True Name. It was inescapable. So, I started to pull together my own little plan, for am I not an Odist? Am I not of the eigth stanza? Am I not a dirty little schemer, just like you? I did not know the particulars of what Jonas was going to do, but I could tell the direction of the wind, and so I acted on it.
+
+When I asked if you would like to go out for drinks that night, yes, it was in part due to Jonas's suggestion, but it was also of my own volition, for those plans collided. He told me that he wanted to shake you up a bit, spook you into being more on your toes, and so he gave me a knife laced with CPV and told me to "fuck like foxes do or whatever it is you do in the bedroom" — because of _course_ he knows our predelictions. I did not know this was to be a broad-scale assassination; I thought it was just me being tasked with having a very specific sort of fun with you, with a script provided by Jonas.
+
+You will remember that, at one point, I suggested that we send a few forks off to relax in some hot springs, yes? It was only an hour or two before that knife made its appearance, so I see no reason why you did not receive a merge would not ping on your radar.
+
+My goal was to bring you to those springs and convince you to leave everything behind. It was to be with me, yes, and I assume that there was some soreness in that discussion, but I wanted to get you out of there, even if only as a fork. Not this particular situation — remember that I had been planning for some time, too — but politics as a whole. I wanted to nudge you out into the world so that we could just...leave. Fuck Jonas. Fuck the stanza. Fuck politics, we were just going to go relax and do literally anything else. Who knows what that would be.
+
+Of course, then we — you and I — had our fun, and not two minutes after, your core dump sat on the bed, I was cleaning up, and I got a few frantic notifications from the other Zachariases about what was happening with you, and I sent a message to my up-tree, telling him to keep you away, change his name, and convince your up-tree to do the same.
+
+I do not know if they succeeded. I instructed him to never contact me out of concern for his safety as well as that of your up-tree. All I can do is hope that they continue today.
+
+This does not absolve me of being what I am, what you have accused me of being: a person built specifically to be loved by you. It does not even absolve me of that morning with the knife. It was our habit to play with those feelings, yes, but I _was_ given the knife by Jonas and I _did_ use it without telling you why. It does not absolve me of having to play my part of the cartoonish supervillain in the months that followed, of bringing your core to Jonas to let him gloat and keep it and all the others piled up in a closet like so many trophies. And hell, you know I like the villainous aesthetic.
+
+But even without that absolution, I do want you to know that it was more complicated than simply "fox hunts skunk". I do want you to know that there is some hope that an instance of you lives on, sys-side, and an instance of me.
+
+Sincerely,
+
+Zacharias of his own clade

misc/index.md

@@ -9,6 +9,7 @@
 * [SL Exposition](sl-exposition)
 * [FWG Bio](fwg-bio)
 * [Skunks&](skunks)
+* [From Zacharias to True Name](from-zacharias)
 * Descs:
     * [Makyo](makyo)
     * [Maddy](maddy)