To Fie Claussell

To Fie Claussell

I’m going to write down some words about our friendship, it will not be hostile. I won’t go into a lot of detail, but I do hope it will illuminate some. Just going to note down some factoids about our friendship first and then get into the meaty stuff. Initially I thought of adding a proper story to this, like a “1. This is where it started – 28. This is where it ended”, but I’m not going to do that. Instead I’ll focus more on what you meant and who you were to me rather than a long history lesson about it all. I’ll remember some details incorrectly, and in which order they happened, but I hope you can forgive that. Like I’ll bring up POTD and then add something that happened before it, but I hope that’s fine. This isn’t meant to be chronological but more just an expression of feelings. There were a lot more I wanted to add, more explanation, more situations, but I chose not to. I included some, but mostly I just want to say - I'm sorry. If you go down to “Eternity” you can read the essential bits, otherwise I’m just listing stuff. If you would prefer not to be named in this post, just leave a comment and I will remove you, or rename you.

Where do I even begin? I can start with the obvious facts first:

You joined our FC in late 2016, we didn’t initially become friends but once we did it skyrocketed and hit a peak around mid-2017, and from then on out it declined in batches, it declined and hit a stop, then from there we talked for a while until it declined again and hit another stop. Eventually, with all this declining, we drifted apart. Is that fair to say? I can’t tell.

It has now been 1.5 years since we were friends, closing in on two years soon. Another expansion, a friend less. We never really became anything more than “friends online”, even though we might’ve been very close at one point, it was never about to become something more. And I think that part really characterizes our friendship. “Something more” chained by the potentiality of loss. Now, to clarify, I’m not saying, and I don’t believe that “something more” necessarily equates to some kind of romantic relationship, but more that we had reached a plateau where we either took our friendship IRL or we remained simply online.

“Take our friendship IRL?” - Not necessarily meeting each other, not adding each other on social media, nothing like that. But our friendship craved more than just talk about FFXIV and other games, it desperately required something more personal, and while we both provided plenty of that, it demanded more of it. I’ll get back to what I believe the answer could’ve been.

“What did it need then?” – I’m honestly not sure. I don’t know how we could’ve “saved” our friendship, or at the very least, how I could’ve done so. I’m confident that one approach that I’ll get into a little later, would’ve cleared everything up. But again, I can’t honestly say. I don’t know how you feel about any of this, how you think about this.

Short backstory to my own 2016.

In 2016 I was your typical gamer, I was fiercely anti-SJW, very anti-feminist, believed almost everything negative that I read. I was in a place of severe hatred, but I never showed it to anyone. I was nosediving into the alt-right. A previous commie like me seduced by it. In August leading up to November I took several breaks, one month long, a few lasting weeks. But, I returned. I was, effectively, tired in life. Not suicidal, but just fatigued. I had almost entirely given up.

In early 2017 I snapped out of it, quite shocked by my own answers to questions I began to, more or less, soul search. I considered every position I had held and everything I knew to be the truth. “Why am I responding this way?” and “Why do I believe that?”. This is where you came in.

You came in and added a real sense of something that was, well, real.

When we initially started talking it was more out of necessity, that is to say, I believe we started talking together more frequently because we both did, more or less, the same things in-game. And because we both were synchronized to the same times. Usually prior to this, during my frequently long periods on an awful sleep schedule, I’d be the only one online, but now you were online too. We both were fairly interested in POTD, it being a fairly new addition to the game, and so we did it. Initially, you, I and a friend of yours, but then we added a fourth member. Anyway, it was a blast.  

I specifically remember doing it with our FC a few times. You, I, Tyke and Rivai. Running around the corner only to spot a room full of mimics, do you recall?

We did a lot of POTD thinking back. Perhaps that’s the answer to why we broke up, we just couldn’t remain friends without having something to glue us together. Not sure. Probably not that. This was all prior to Stormblood. I wasn’t too hyped for it, but I believe you were. This period of time was perhaps the best period of time I’ve ever had in-game, at least since I initially started. It was a lot of fun, and it had so many great moments. From pulling everything in dungeons, to messing up trials. When did we do POTD, the four of us? March-April 2017? I remember it took us a few attempts, we wiped on the chimeras a few times, and a lot of really close calls. Chimeras still give me nightmares to this day. After POTD we did some The Diadem, but that was mainly to gather. We did a lot of The Diadem too.

The building of a friendship

In early 2017 Tyke started a Discord server and you, as well as the rest of us, were the first one to join. We had some good conversations on it, the four of us. We didn’t use Discord that frequently, and very rarely when we were offline. That changed in mid-2017. Mostly due to necessity, but also because if it hadn’t, I would’ve lost contact with all of you. I was, and am, still studying and so the period before an exam is always hectic. It starts ramping up in April, but in May and June it is full on focus on exams. This meant that I couldn’t play as much, or at all, which in turn made it impossible to stay in touch without Discord. Wow, it has really been two years since this. I went to Spain on vacation afterwards, but during the summer we really started talking together.

The peak and the tension

This all begs the question, really. When did we hit our peak? I believe very strongly that we hit it twice, once in May or around May, and another in June/July, but after that it was all downhill. Not necessarily only downhill, we had periods where everything was ok again. Or even better than before, but all this tension came bubbling up to the surface. “What tension?” – There were a few things we both believed about the other person, things we couldn’t articulate or properly respond to, that initially crept in due to us falling out. Why we started arguing or why we lost the friendship we had had just a few months before I don’t know. Did we both change? Did our expectations for the other change? Casual drift apart or was there more to it? I believe distance might’ve had a hand in that. Previously we’d spend almost every day playing together, talking, instantly respond, share everything and this created a sort of dependency. Whether that was something only I felt or not, I can’t say, but I do know that I did depend on you greatly during this time, and that when I took a break from the game, that dependency was shattered. Not in that I suddenly didn’t need you, but rather that I did but I couldn’t feasibly attain it. How can I demand instant responses and long strings of texts when I’m not personally online? This daily activity in many forms was transformed into a sort of daily activity in limited form, and that really transformed our friendship, I believe.

Remember when we crafted all that gear? A full set of 51-60 gear for us to level with only to level exclusively in POTD and PvP instead? Good times. I still have a few pieces from this crafting haul, a piece of a time lost.

I remember doing this, and I think you kept it for almost half a year or so. It was very genuine; I don’t remember whose idea it was. I believe we initially just wanted to troll by placing a bunch of them but decided that would be mean, so we created a heart in your art gallery downstairs.

Stormblood

Stormblood launches and we’re more connected than ever before. You weren’t as interested in the story, so you really raced past the rest of us. Skye was in between rushing and watching story, but I remember you helping us out a few times. Helping us through a dungeon, or sharing things about the endgame, but something happened here. Something that would, perhaps, doom our friendships. “Consideration” was a fortitude before, but now it was not.

Did we both recognize this? Maybe it was inherent in the way our relationship developed that things weren’t going to work out? But how it came to be, I have no idea. Perhaps we got too close to each other too quickly. That dependency I wrote about earlier. It all came back now. I remember queueing for a dungeon with Tyke, I believe it was the second to last dungeon, and we both just wanted to get it done. Prior to this you’d join us in some of them but for whatever reason I didn’t ask this time, I’m not sure why. I believe it has to do with the fact that we didn’t talk for a while in FC chat prior to us getting to that point, that coupled with the fact that we just wanted to get it done meant we just queued and got in asap. This created a divide and again transformed the dependency again. “If he doesn’t need me, I can’t count on him”. A simple thing can have that effect.   

A little after (or was it just prior to?) Stormblood launched Habbit Kjg joined, or rather returned to the game. Habbit fit into our mold perfectly, didn’t even need a long period of awkward silence or periods of uncomfortable “do I invite him or not?”, he was just available. When I say that I miss you, Yuufie, I also miss Habbit. Perhaps not quite as much, because we weren’t as close, but I still miss having that. I thought, at this point, that we were going to be a solid group for as long as we all were active. That our group was going to last. Sadly, it only lasted about 3 months or so. The months prior to us all breaking apart I had taken week long breaks and in that time, I had lost contact with most of you, so I didn’t really know what was going on behind the scenes. Yeah, I’d talk to you all in Discord, but I didn’t really “get” what was said.

Housing

When the time came for us to upgrade to another FC house, one of our members took it too far, too personal, I think you know what I mean. This is basically my perspective. I’m in class at uni thinking that everything is ok, I want to be able to return to the game ASAP but suddenly I’m spammed with very heated messages. I haven’t been online or in-game for quite some time so this all takes me by surprise. Habbit and Skye has an argument, a falling out, a severe one. And that sort of seals the fate of our group. It was never really a choice between the two, I believe strongly that things could’ve been sorted out, but it still happened. Right or wrong isn’t as relevant here, rather that it happened. We’d have arguments before, about immigration in which I was more or less in complete disagreement with both Habbit and Skye, and other topics, so we had definitely had a respectable tone in debates before, this was different. I want to stress something, I don’t blame anyone for this, which might be wrong or right in itself, but I can’t. I wasn’t there to see it; I wasn’t online to get most of the worst of it. Skye apologized about it later, though the divide had become irrevocable by that point. Habbit told me that while I was ok, he just couldn’t be in an FC with her anymore. I think he might’ve changed his opinion eventually, but it doesn’t mean anything now.

The housing situation proved two things to me. It showed me the volatility of online relationships, just one bad thing can cause a volcano. It also showed me that I wasn’t in the know quite as much as I’d like. Even to this day the whole housing situation has left a sour taste in my mouth because I wasn’t there to see it. I’d log on later and get to read it after it had happened, maybe see a few screenshots of what happened in-game, but by and large, I wasn’t there.

Interpersonal issues

We both had issues articulating this feeling of wrong. “How can you assign these feelings without knowing?” – Basically, it must be something like that. The way we talked changed, the way we interacted changed, the way we behaved changed. And it wasn’t sudden but a gradual change towards that. How could this occur if not for some unspoken tension building, something sitting just beneath the surface waiting to come out?  I do have an idea of what it could’ve been, but I don’t know. The two incidents of dependency really came out in an awful way, you severed contact through Discord at least twice.

I specifically remember when you added me again, how happy that made me feel. I kept the notification “Fie has added you as a friend” or whatever for a long time. But I was really struggling. I couldn’t deal with stuff IRL and so that translated to not being able to deal with stuff online, I went through a personality change. How or even why that happened I don’t know; I doubt anything triggered it, so I believe it must’ve been a gradual change. A change happened.

I was now much more ready to “get back”, not in a necessarily hostile way, but like I was argumentative about stuff you can’t really have an argument about. If a person feels a certain way you can’t really dictate how they’re supposed to feel, or even why they feel that way. Instead of listening, even if I disagreed, I opted to argue back. You can only argue for so long until it becomes tiresome. That was basically what happened. I told you how I didn’t like ultimatums, but in my last act I issued you an ultimatum. Not directly, but it sure fit everything you’d describe an ultimatum to be.

Eternity

I wrote at the start that I wanted to convey how much you meant to me, not necessarily what happened and such. And I think I’ve failed at that, there are so many questions unanswered so I’m going to restrict myself, and actually write exclusively about what you meant to me. When we initially got to know each other, I was a person who had socially isolated myself for years, I had practically no one. And while I had a very good friendship with both Tyke and Skye it was more of a one-way relationship. How? Well. I knew a great deal about them both and they knew almost nothing about me. Like they knew my opinions on stuff, that I was reliable, but they didn’t know anything at all. So, when you started asking about personal information, I was hesitant at first.

I didn’t tell anyone my gender, my sexuality, my age, I told them where I was from because I knew Swedish and Danish so I had to be Scandinavian, somehow. Other than just the very basic info I didn’t tell people anything. I preferred to get to know them rather than them getting to know me. You changed that. You shared quite a few details about yourself, so I was in turn forced to share details about myself. Initially more in a fun kind of game, like you didn’t want to tell me or anyone else where you’re from, you wanted us to guess. So, I guessed and in turn we shared other details about ourselves. I specifically remember an episode, early on in you joining our FC, where you said something like “Hej” in FC chat sparking some discussion of whether you were Swedish or Danish.

The reason why I bring this up is that through you I had another avenue, I was opened up. Someone actually had the interest beyond just waiting to get the chance to ask “expert?”, I don’t want to dismiss anyone, but I didn’t really feel that pull before you. I had closed myself off and in doing so lost a great many friends. Why did I close myself off? I’m not sure. It wasn’t due to the potential for hurt feelings but more because I just didn’t fully believe in myself. You sort of changed that.

I remember us talking about our names in-game, I don’t think you shared yours at this point, but I just blurted out that my PSN nickname was also my actual name. A huge wave of information came out, and it brought us all closer together. You would often mention wanting to meet up, or how it would happen, or when and why. I don’t think I was very keen on meeting up, not because of you, but because of me. I didn’t fully believe in myself, I had sort of resigned and given up. Where as before I used to be politically active in a party in Norway, I was now just a shell of my former self, you changed that. For the first time in years I had actual ambitions.

When things went bad between us, I was in a frenzy trying not to lose you, or lose the group, but in doing so I perhaps chose to go about it the wrong way. Instead of listening I thought I could force us to revert back to what we used to be. Perhaps we got too close or not close enough. And now I’m going to list the number one reason I believe things went as bad as they did. Voice. Voice? Voice.

Because I had some issues with myself I never used voice chat, not once, while playing FFXIV. I had seen people go from barely knowing each other to becoming best friends through one session of voice chat and I wasn’t about to have that. If you’re not close to people it will not hurt as much if you abandon them or they abandon you. We got very close despite never talking, but I believe had we talked we would’ve been able to solve all our misunderstandings instantly. “What did you mean by that?” would’ve been answered at the spot instead of being answered way after it had happened. Time makes people rethink, reevaluate and most of all, misremember. And so, it was with us. We’d both see, at least it felt like that, the worst parts and ignore whatever else. Had we talked I’m confident we would’ve still been friends. Perhaps not as good, perhaps better, perhaps we would’ve had some other falling out, but through voice it’s a lot harder to misunderstand, especially when you can just easily ask for clarification. My one regret, beyond losing you, is that we never had the opportunity. Why not? Two reasons, as I said – I didn’t want to due to a fear of people getting to know me and further rely on me, and because of my isolation that I would in turn betray their trust. And second, I never had a mic. I had one on my PS4 but it broke due to frequent use and I never bothered getting a second one.

If there’s something I want you to take from this it’s that while I can’t write for your perspective, how you saw it back then and how you feel about it now, I can write about how I feel. Could we be reconciled now? Probably not. At least not in the way we were, perhaps we blew our shot. Perhaps the thing you couldn’t tell me that would make me change my opinion of you was truer of me than you. Perhaps we were simply incompatible, and it only required us to become close to each other for it to become apparent. You have a good heart, and I hope you do figure out things. I wrote to you in mid-2018 promising that it would be the last time I wrote to you. This is, but you’ll likely never see it.

Take care of yourself, and I will continue to hope that somewhere out there you’re doing just fine.

The ending

Now that it has been some time since we talked last, I want to share some unrelated stuff. I remember walking into my house after my long 2-month absence and seeing this. A broken heart, in clear reference to the heart I had created in your house. Maybe we could’ve mended things then and there, but I was still filled with hatred. Bubbles tend to like that. 永遠に.  

Just seeing this “B” made me blush. No reason behind it, but as I saw it, I thought there was a chance. A shot at redemption, and perhaps there was. Perhaps at one point it could’ve been fixed. Initially spurred by this I chose to go about it in a natural way, I apologized, I told you how much you still meant to me, and how appreciative I was of you, and for a time things looked positive. But then something happened to me IRL that made me bitter, and instead of going about this with compassion and love I instead chose revenge and hatred. While I didn’t bash you, or harass you (though, maybe the letterspam was harassment and if so, I apologize), I did change the way I interacted with you. Instead of thinking of a way forward I instead thought of what had happened and it filled me with this burning sensation of “getting even”, despite that being impossible or even quite irrational. That was my approach.

 

It failed, obviously. It only had the goal of failing, and when it failed I was vindicated in the failing. “See, that’s what I thought”. It took me some time to actually think about it, and realize that the way I behaved wasn’t rational, it wasn’t logical, it wasn’t even emotional. It was just cold and bitter. I can now say, sincerely that, I do see you too. ICU2.

“あなたは最高のバブルです” to “Goodbye”. So ashamed. 

Essentially our friendship was like a candle enlightened and burning bright but had an unfortunate and looming expiration date. Could it have all been salvaged? Likely, but how is a mystery. Now that this in all in the past I'm still left with a longing for something that was and I'm not sure if that's even fair to you or to me. In many ways, completely unintended by you, our friendship really proved the possibilities of everything. Fuck, I still miss you. It kinda feels like you've gone far away but you're still there. I guess we'll eventually have a chat.