Vesselhood requires caricaturization: this we know. Quirks become behavioral patterns; weaknesses become tragic flaws; temperaments become key to redirection of that great Intent.
Virtuosity requires skill, but its purest Intent may be filtered as it shines through my Cognitive nature. Not art alone I aimed to govern, but those skills which may aid the persistence of my Vessel after this event: arcanistry, negotiation, performance, and— above all— politics.
This I embodied in what may become my second aspect: that entity known as 256.
AND I TOTALLY GOT YOU GUYS
At least up until when I’m writing this post. YOU HAD NO CLUE fdjsjhfhs
Partially because I was lucky. I had been asking as Kiki about wanting to watch trivia contests before I even thought of this harebrained plan. Inferno called me “spawn of the midnight mother” (HELLO??) and I KNEW I had to relieve fae of faer power!! It was literally only two asks up until then. I had been momentarily amused by the whole idea of signing anonymous asks and had to point out, in my own stupid way, the contradiction.
When I submitted my challenge to @mizeress — further inspired by Inferno’s own public questions about holding multiple Shards— it was about the same time that Inferno finally replied to my badgering on Discord and sent all the trivia questions from the last trivia contest, against Burrbeast. Promptly fae invited me to watch this coming contest. I confess I panicked somewhat. How to deny unsuspiciously?
Well, I didn’t deny. I accepted the invitation, joined the trivia contest, and spent more than half of the event making sarcastic and irrelevant commentary about my own trivia answers. Those of you on that server are welcome to go back and read it. I was often very careful to be seen typing at the same time using both accounts, I worked to stagger what times I was active, and then gloriously I won the contest. It was so fun.
Mizeress actually did know who I was through all this. That first ask, which I sent when I was unpracticed and careless, I forgot to make anonymous. I then pleaded with them not to reveal the truth. It helped that they also thought this was very funny. I was fortunate to have such discretion in an ally.
Oh also, typing style? I already alternate between writing very informally and very formally, I have for awhile, I used to do quite a bit of creative writing. It was just a matter of centralizing each style to my respective identities, and making them more extreme than usual. Kiki was informal and typed in lowercase, with lots of emoticons and some typos and a lot of stupid jokes; 256 was very formal and a bit overwritten, with some British English (aluminium, honour, 24 hour time— tragic nobody noticed this pattern!!) and their humor was deadpan. I am so glad I got to develop this. I got very worried initially that the trivia contest would be held in voice chat, so I actually dragged one of my friends in to help because effective voices are something I can’t fake in the same way. Thankfully I didn’t need her help, although she thought the entire thing was pretty funny.
From talking to Inferno, I gathered the impression that Kiwi had been pretty confident 256 was fae— so through the whole thing, I tried very hard to gently imply to fae that 256 was, in fact, Kiwi. This met with absolutely no success and I eventually stopped trying for fear of incriminating myself. At the end of the contest, Inferno took two guesses at my identity, both wrong, neither Kiwi. (Jochi & Mightymo.) I maintained conversations with Inferno and Kiwi emphasizing my own confusion as to whether they were screwing with me and who the anon could possibly be. Weirdly, neither of them seemed to consider me— at least I don’t THINK they did, it’s still possible that, even while I was loudly telling each of them in their respective DMs how suspicious they were, they chose not to share their doubts of me.
I announced smugly my success and went to bed. The next morning, an indignity! Someone had challenged ME for Ruin! I had thought this was not going to be allowed, and I’d actually meant to suggest in my acceptance speech that I should be challenged for Virtuosity (although of course I couldn’t say it was Virtuosity.) Mizeress was allowing it, and of course I started the whole thing because I do just like trivia contests, so I was up for it. I spent the day inside mostly playing video games, trying to solve the mysterious challenger’s cipher to no success, and waiting for my challenge acceptance ask to get posted— I eventually figured I should just send it to Kiwi, who was online and who would post it. Later I got into a conversation with them where I discovered they knew the identity of my challenger. This I could not let rest! I spent hours pestering and badgering but Kiwi, Stonesinew, would not break.
This culminated in what was the most difficult deception yet: 256 carried on conversations with both Kiki and Kiwi while Kiki and Kiwi themselves shared screenshots and commentary of said conversations in their own DMs. THIS WAS SO HARD GUYS. I know it slowed down my typing speed! I am a very fast typist, but there’s only so much I can do when I’m carrying on four sides of a conversation at once and writing completely fake dialogue on the fly for half of them. I was only able to keep this up for about 20 minutes before 256 abruptly, and rudely, vanished. This was conveniently in character.
Before going, I sent myself a final and vague hint as to the identity of my challenger, which I then sent a screenshot of to Kiwi. The hint had to be vague, of course, because I still didn’t know who it was! The whole endeavor discussing with them had been thoroughly fun, but I was still really hoping I could get the identity of my challenger so I could know who I was up against. A mercy I of course would not afford them. Kiwi unintentionally helped me get it down to a few suspects, which then turned out to be totally unnecessary when I messaged the person it was and they just … they just outright told me. To which my reaction was— I quote— “AHAHAHAHaaaa”.
Which brings us to today, when I am writing this post. Well, I’d like to keep going with this, but I can’t. Inferno is badgering me about revealing my identity, this mysterious other person must now deal with the fallout of all of this, and none of you will ever trust me again with these sorts of things. That’s ok! I know that, and so I don’t plan to pull something like this a second time— the best I can hope is that I provide an admirable red herring for someone else’s journey of mass deception.
So basically, what I’m trying to say is that I’m Inferno the Lying, and That Anonymous Lightweaver, and Wholly a Kiki.
I will now be accepting questions and awards.
I take responsibility for only the following asks:
(All are screenshotted, with the exception of one ask I sent to Inferno which just said “biting you”, since, 10 screenshots per post.)
areudirty
jacobvanloon
kaledo-art
titsay
jbbartram-illu
ellievsbear
stormborns
yousharknotpass
tangentwithtanner
kianamaiart
