…how much of the truth we have to forget just to keep the plot moving.

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Every community, every online space, is a stage. We enter with a script in hand, hoping to play a part that earns connection and approval. But the process of genuine belonging is nothing but a messy, unscripted reality.

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I remember reaching out to Soujun in September 2025 with a concept in mind. I already know how Verity’s story will end, and I already know what the anniversary art concept will be. There’s something about puppeteers that’s always fascinated me: the delicate tension between control and release, and the way strings can make something beautiful move while also being the very thing that constrains it. I commissioned Soujun with that image in my mind: a puppeteer, blood-red strings, and puppets dancing below.

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When Soujun finished the art, my first thought was about how the strings show ‘control’. But the more I looked at the commissioned piece, the more I realized it was about something else entirely.

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It was about choosing to dance anyway.

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This past year taught me things I didn’t ask to learn, and I won’t pretend otherwise. There were moments when information found me - the kind that changes how you see the scaffolding behind something you deeply care about, the kind that makes you wonder if you’ve been dancing to a rhythm that was never quite as honest as you thought it was.

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This is exactly what Verity’s lore is about. She learned why certain people were deleted by the ‘Somnotether’. She saw faces that she wasn’t supposed to see. While writing the lore, I understand that decisions were made behind closed doors, and at the back of my head, I was asking myself if the decisions had more to do with convenience than principle. And I realized that some strings are held tighter than others - not because of merit or loyalty or any of the values we’re told matter, but because of transactions I’ll never be privy to, and frankly, shouldn’t need to know about in the first place.

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It’s a strange kind of weight, carrying knowledge you can’t speak about. Not because someone told you to stay quiet, but because saying it out loud would make you the problem. It would turn reflection into accusation, honest concern into drama. And I’m not interested in being that person. In the grand scheme of things, even if the whole thing doesn’t (or shouldn’t) concern me, all I care about is the truth and the values I have as a person.

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But silence has its own cost, doesn’t it?

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I thought about leaving. Of course I did. There were days when the dissonance between what I knew and what I was supposed to pretend I didn’t know felt unbearable. Days when I’d look at announcements, at carefully worded statements, at the theatre of it all, and think: How can I stay in a place where the integrity feels this compromised?

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The answer is both (annoyingly) simple and complicated.

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I stayed because of the people, the ones who show up in VCs at ungodly hours to watch a movie. The ones who share their art, their vulnerabilities, and their stupid jokes. The ones who make the place feel less like a performance and more like a home, even when the foundation feels shaky.

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I stayed because I believe in supporting people who get to do what they love for a living - who get to ‘create’, to build worlds, to pursue something that I can’t pursue myself. I chose practicality over passion a long time ago, and maybe that’s why I’m so protective of spaces where others get to choose differently. Even if those spaces aren’t perfect, and even if the person at the center of it all isn’t perfect.

 

Especially because they’re not perfect.

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I stayed because leaving would’ve been easier, and I’m not interested in easy.

 

I’m interested in worthwhile.

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The thing about being in a theatre is that everyone has a role. Some people are on stage, performing under lights. Some are in the audience, watching and applauding. Some are backstage, managing the mechanics that make the whole thing work.

Some of us are just…somewhere in between - aware of the strings, aware of the illusions, but choosing to suspend our disbelief anyway because the alternative is walking out before the final act.

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And then I think most are just…happy being there, clapping when they are expected to clap, smiling and laughing at another day, basking in the simple thought that ‘I’m happy here. This is a good place.’

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I’m not naive - extreme self-awareness (as I’ve told you before) is a disease. I know what I’m doing. I know that my choice to stay isn’t a moral triumph or a grand statement of loyalty. It’s a messy, human decision made with full knowledge of the contradictions it contains. I was even called a hypocrite - which is completely fair. Maybe. But I know my north star: I’m choosing to dance while carrying the weight of things I know I shouldn’t have to carry. I’m choosing to support something imperfect because the perfect doesn’t exist, and waiting for it would mean never supporting anything at all.

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There’s a strange kind of freedom in that acceptance, actually. Once you stop expecting ‘perfection’ from people, communities, or even situations, you can engage with them on more honest terms. You can care about something without needing it to be flawless. You can hold space for both appreciation and disappointment, for both connection and critique.

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You can learn the art of forgetting - not in the sense of erasing or ignoring, but in the sense of choosing what to carry and what to set down, what to let shape you and what to let pass through you.

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I’m writing this and glancing at the commissioned art once in a while, while listening to Amelie’s ‘Comptine d'un autre été, l'après-midi’, and the puppeteer image is ingrained inside my brain like those glowing, hot branding rods that they use to brand cows. 

I used to think the strings were the problem - that freedom meant cutting them entirely, walking away from anything that felt like manipulation or control. But maybe that’s not quite right. Maybe the dance isn’t about cutting the strings.

 

Maybe it’s about understanding that we’re all holding strings and being held by them in different ways. That communities are messy networks of influence and dependency, of power and vulnerability, and of all the things said and things left unsaid.

 

And maybe the masterpiece isn’t in pretending those strings don’t exist. Maybe it’s in knowing, and dancing anyway.

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I don’t know what 2026 will bring. I don’t know if the things I know now will eventually surface, if the contradictions I’m living with will resolve themselves, if staying will ultimately feel like the right choice, or just the choice I made.

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But I do know this: I’m tired of purity politics, and I’m tired of expecting communities to be perfect and people to be saints. In my eyes, everyone has committed their own crime, and I’m tired of the ‘all in’ or ‘all out’ mentality, as if nuance and complexity aren’t valid ways to exist in relationship to things we care about.

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I’m here, in this imperfect theatre, with these imperfect people, making an imperfect choice to stay. I’m here because my friends are here. I’m here because I care about the community, even when I question the integrity of its foundations. I’m here because leaving would be a different kind of dishonesty - a refusal to sit with the discomfort of caring about something complicated.

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So I’ll keep dancing. I’ll keep creating worlds. I’ll keep showing up for the people who matter to me, even in a space that doesn’t always align with my values.

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And people ask why I choose to change OC every year. The answer is ‘compartmentalizing’. All of 2025 goes to Verity and her silence, her lore, and her world.

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And I’ll keep practicing the art of forgetting - of letting go of the need for everything to make sense, for everyone to be trustworthy, for the stage to be free of illusions.

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Because sometimes, the masterpiece isn’t in the perfection of the performance. It’s in choosing to dance despite knowing exactly how the show is run.

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Here’s to the messy, complicated, beautiful act of staying. 

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Here’s to dancing with our eyes open.