So BoltOLightnin and I Broke Our Friendship... History Lesson Time!

Edit: We became friends again on Christmas 2021. I finally calmed down.

Read the original post here.

Aby is also known as BoltOLightnin.

As a yandere with Asperger's syndrome, I greatly enjoy talking about friends in public...usually for no good reason other than to satisfy myself...and maybe have fun speculating who would win in a real or fictional fight.

One such friend...or, rather, former friend, is Aby. He's a 16-year-old from India who I met in Minecraft and shares some of my interest in RPGs. You may know him in my Hytale plans as the mage in our Fighter, Mage, Thief trio with YoSquid as the fighter and me as the thief.

"Boring" History of How We Met

I'm being ironic because of the idea that the history subject in school is "boring" because it's about memorizing dates of events and famous people.

Ironically again, I find history fun.

When we first met in August 2018, I was a moderator at the Minecraft server Aby played in. He asked a question out of nowhere about what kind of music the players liked. Because I wanted to establish the persona of the friendly moderator who's always ready to listen to and entertain others, I replied to him in private, "I like Pokémon music."

I can't remember how he continued or how this friendship truly sprouted in the first place, but my wild guess is that we both had qualities that distinguished us from the crowd. In this case, I thought that most "cool kids" listened to pop and rap music while I was edgy for liking music from what's typically considered nowadays a "kid's anime/game" from about 20 years ago. On the other hand, Aby was an uncommon example of someone who has played in the server for a long time but rarely talks in public chat, suggesting social awkwardness.

We later branched out into various other topics on private Discord conversations, particularly the weirdness and unpredictability of social interactions in general, as well as the ridicule we get due to our exceptional English skills.

In my case, I'm a Filipino of Chinese descent who is 5'8" (taller than the average male Filipino height of 5'4" and the average male Chinese height of 5'6") and has a natural American accent when speaking English but below-average Filipino vocabulary and a seemingly robotic Spanish accent when speaking Filipino. As such, I frequently get asked if I'm Chinese or, less frequently, Korean.

Even since childhood, Aby was unusual among his classmates for his English skill. I can't remember what extra work or ridicule he had as an elementary school student, but in high school before the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, he was frequently told by his teachers to speak publicly despite his intense introversion making him...deathly afraid to do so.

Aby was also bullied, both verbally and physically. After all, he describes himself as a stereotypical nerd. I didn't understand exactly why he got bullied, though I'm guessing the main reason is something beyond being skilled in English.

Gamers Doing Their Usual Thing

We spent much of late 2018 and early 2019 playing video games together, as one would most likely expect of two gamer friends.

Minecraft was what brought us together, so that's what we mostly played in 2018. Since I was the older of the two who established his LunaticTactician identity in 2017 while Aby was the younger player and stauncher introvert, I was naturally designated as the commander. In co-op Survival games (both vanilla and modded) where we chose to plan ahead, I built almost all our plans from scratch before discussing them with Aby.

Being a terrain specialist, I focused on providing accessibility and tactical vantage points for our bases. Some of my favorite features were balconies and terraces for admiring the outdoor view and blocking melee foes during ranged combat, and multiple entry and exit points in case one way gets blocked off and we need to escape.

Aby, on the other hand, was a mostly chill player who did the dirty work like mining. He did the most fighting as well due to my inconsistent Wi-Fi connection.

In later games, when we explored caves, I was always the first to go ahead to scout. I understand that ores are so tempting that they can distract from incoming mobs, so I made Aby do the mining for me.

Also in 2018, we had a handful of Pokémon Showdown battles. Aby has no experience in competitive battling so, despite me going easy on him with low-tier Generation I Pokémon (since that's the generation he's most familiar with), I curb-stomped him with my knowledge of optimizing movesets and EVs. He used Mega Gengar and Mega Lucario in some of our battles, by the way, despite him probably having no familiarity with Generation VI. I deliberately avoided Mega Evolution and Z-Moves.

In early 2019, we sometimes played the browser first-person shooter Krunker.io. While it was not as often as Minecraft due to increasingly difficult school work (mostly on Aby's part) and Aby growing tired of Minecraft, we still had moments.

Standard Krunker matches last 4 minutes but we play custom 1v1s for 20 minutes at a time, often stretching past an hour since we played multiple games. One would often curb-stomp the other; at first, it was Aby due to my lack of practice, but in later months, I curb-stomped him. I specialized in the assault rifle and submachine gun while Aby was most effective against me with the sniper rifle...despite him liking SMGs more. Needless to say, I was the superior SMG user.

So why don't you play anymore?

Asperger's Syndrome: Ultimate Fanboy Edition

This is where a major difference between me and Aby set us further apart steadily.

As Aby himself described in his own blog post, I "develop a fierce interest" in things I like. This is a defining trait of Asperger's syndrome. It should therefore come as no surprise that I've liked Minecraft for 7 years and Pokémon for 17 years. Heck, the Hytale announcement trailer has stagnated at 57 million views for many months yet I'm still actively following the game's development. As for Genshin Impact, Aby and YoSquid played it before I did, but they stopped playing for several weeks starting mid-October while I continued to play; I'm now at Adventure Rank 40 while they're sitting in the 20s. (For crying out loud, they pulled Diluc and Venti, arguably the best characters in the game!)

Aby, on the other hand, is more similar to a typical person. While he is a core gamer (as opposed to a casual gamer) who remains interested in video games in general, he is often quick to gain and lose interest in games. As such, games that I think he likes and/or knows a lot about often are, for lack of a better word, unreliable choices for co-op and "sparring". With Hytale in particular, we speculated on it in detail back in our 2019 Minecraft playthroughs, but as the months went by, when I shared my Hytale blog posts, he made few to no comments. (He does, however, remain interested in Terraria and VALORANT. I don't play Terraria, while for VALORANT, the learning curve is too high for me and I've grown tired of competitive multiplayer in general.)

In short, we ran out of game-related things to talk about. Actually, we ran out of things to talk about in general; we exhausted all our social interaction-related topics.

You Call This "High School"?

School work truly started biting Aby's butt in September. He's still in high school now, but judging from his frequent rants and absences from D&D sessions, it's like he's in college. Unfortunately, the vast majority of my non-multimedia courses focus on sociology; there are very few courses related to mathematics and the natural sciences and none so far have told me to "balance chemical reactions" or whatever. As such, I can't help Aby with his school work.

To be fair, India has a significantly more rigorous education system than the Philippines. If I remember correctly, India is in a rush to improve its own economy.

As such, Aby's free time is so limited that, if I remember correctly, most of his messages involve him asking questions or assistance from me.

Speaking of assistance...

Building on Old Memories with a Lunatic Tactician's Ideas of New Beginnings

Aby has a work-in-progress Wattpad novel called "Old Memories, New Beginnings". His proposed titles sounded too generic to me, so I gave him this title to be edgy and mysterious while remaining meaningful.

The story follows Elias Graham, an adult man who, if I remember correctly, died a convicted man. God reincarnated Elias as Joshua Summers, a teenage boy with Asperger's syndrome. Joshua's life struggles include being bullied in school, struggling in public speaking, having a school principal who believes Joshua is faking his Asperger's syndrome diagnosis, and his mischievous younger brother Derek.

I don't know how many other nerds Aby is friends with, but as far as I know, I was the only one among them who still actively does long written works. Combined with the "superhero" persona I built over the years, it's no surprise that Aby sought my help and I readily provided.

Admittedly, it was a headache the first time I tried to help because I sometimes struggle with thinking of names. (Heck, I lazily gave my fictional New York City-themed city the name "Craftsman City" because of Minecraft and because I wanted to illustrate the industriousness of Americans.) 

I can't remember why, but I was confused by the first four chapters, so I...pestered Aby for clarifications. He was nice enough to provide them to me...especially since I was his editor so I have the right to see spoilers. :p

When September hit, Aby still found time to work on his novel despite school stress. I became more engaged in the story once Aby told me Joshua had Asperger's syndrome. He often initiated conversations with questions about Asperger's syndrome and, although I had to reread Tony Attwood's The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome (2007) to jog my memory since I'm different even from other people with Asperger's syndrome (one major difference being my great dexterity and handwriting), I was easily able to share my experiences and knowledge.

As the chapters went on, I started looking for expies of real-life people. Aby provided no clear answer as to which character is based on which real person, but that didn't stop me from speculating like the lunatic tactician I am.

Joshua is basically Aby with Asperger's syndrome. Both are morbidly shy students with a fear of public speaking, a bullying problem, and average dexterity. Joshua even referred to Sean as "my good sire"; a phrase Aby's fantasy Author Avatar, Telnior, would often say to my Author Avatar.

Sean Keaton, Joshua's best friend, is likely based on LunaticTactician. His room has "several posters of video game characters" (actually, I don't have posters 'cause I share a bedroom with my younger brother and we're saving paper and money), he said "Welcome to Casa de Sean!" in a "cheery voice" and I'm a Large Ham, both of us say "touché" and "you-know-what", and we both like ramen. At the time, Among Us was a recent craze, so I described Sean as "sus" while I was reading the chapter that introduced his house.

I tried to look for signs that Ellie Kessington, Sean's love interest, is an expy of my former crush "Mareeta", but there's so little info about Ellie that I concluded she's not based on "Mareeta". Darn shame. I wanted to feed Aby the details so I could laugh maniacally at Joshua questioning Sean about Ellie. Heck, I want to see Ellie and Sean fight physically in the end; I'd be entertained regardless of the winner.

So if you enjoyed helping Aby with his novel, what's the problem, LT?

In terms of gaming, I did not do my part in the friendship by playing the video games Aby likes. But then again, I don't have to be interested in others' interests.

In terms of writing, for me, Aby did not do his part.

During the first several chapters before Elias was reincarnated as Joshua, I was addicted to following Hytale's development but judging from how Aby wasn't reacting to my blog post sharing, I thought he needed a break from the game, so I tried to delay my personal gratification by helping him with his novel.

I then did the first of what would become a series of major blunders on my part: I demanded Quality Time from him where we would only talk about Hytale. Roughly halfway into the conversation, Aby finally spilled the beans and said he was no longer as interested in the game and he was intimidated by the sheer effort and knowledge I had showcased in my blog posts.

So what did Aby do wrong in my lunatic yandere opinion? He rarely gave any contribution or criticism to my blog posts despite the sheer effort I put into criticizing and correcting his novel as well as playing the role of a psychotherapist when he was feeling down. Literally, the only contribution I can remember is his opinions of Venti in part 2 of my Genshin Impact opinions.

To be fair, I didn't clearly explain my needs to Aby.

Dungeons & Delays (and No-Shows)

Since my UPOU friend Ghean can't play D&D with me possibly due to her parents regulating her gadget use, I introduced Aby to D&D since we're both RPG fans. I started by sharing Don't Stop Thinking's CYOA adventure that determines D&D class, and he got Sorcerer.

I taught him how to play the game and ran a test game. He said he had a ton of fun, if I'm not mistaken. He was eager to play our first official game with YoSquid on Discord.

Weeks later, we did play, though it was mainly just us eating in an inn in Phandalin. Aby injected his own story segment where some scary men got mad at us, but in the end, they walked away 'cause we weren't worth the trouble.

Prepare to see a trend of "one encounter per session".

On our next session, after a rest, we had our first quest: go to Umbrage Hill to tell a midwife to go back to Phandalin; it's much safer from a dragon attack than the midwife's lone windmill home.

Because all of us are Pokémon fans, in the middle of the trip, I triggered a random encounter with two wolves. It lasted 3 rounds which ended with a Mortal Kombat-style fatality.

The fight lasted about 1 hour in real time since it was done through text messages and both players relied heavily on what I told them to do when it comes to the D&D rules.

Sly Flourish suggested making the manticore attacking the windmill injured since it would be a difficult monster otherwise, so I messed around with my Hytale fandom and temporarily replaced the manticore with 3 Trorks. The fight was split into 3 segments.

On the first, the party actually assassinated a pair of goblins with LT's help before reaching Umbrage Hill and encountering the Trorks. As soon as one Trork died and fell downhill, the session ended.

On the second, the party took down the last 2 Trorks with another fatality. The manticore appeared afterward and rummaged the Trorks' bodies for food. Telnior intimidated the manticore, provoking an attack...and the session ended there.

On the third, despite LT and Telnior getting KO'd, YoSquid carried the team with his super effective arrows. I gave Telnior a second wind that revived him because of his Divine Soul, allowing him to follow up with super effective frostbite attacks. I also gave LT a temporary second wind just for the fatality before KOing him again.

YoSquid jokingly insulted the midwife, Adabra, by shouting, "HEY, VERY OLD LADY!" This deafened her and attracted a flock of stirges whose fight was split into 2 sessions.

The objective was to survive for a set number of rounds. Wave 1 of stirges was easily beaten down, but in wave 2, Aby got bad rolls and LT's blood got sucked until he fainted. YoSquid carried the team again with every last stirge going down in session 2.

Also in session 2, Telnior and YoSquid left LT's body behind. Unfortunately, LT failed all three death saving throws, causing him to die. Aby and YoSquid metagamed at this point by going back to try to resurrect LT despite their characters not knowing that LT died or realizing LT might die. 90% of this session was just talking between the two characters and Aby's homebrew god of time, Kelpian. The session ended after 40 real-time minutes when LT was resurrected.

This last D&D session was what caused my real-life rage to reach its breaking point.

The stirge fight, if I'm not mistaken, was the first session in which I didn't ask for a D&D game; Aby did. (At that time, I vowed to never ask for a D&D game again first because I knew how insanely busy the two were with their studies and VALORANT.)

Problem is, I REALLY like D&D, so when either Aby or YoSquid asks for a D&D game, I ensure they stay true to their word. I frequently reminded them when their own scheduled games were coming up...only to find out at least one of the two isn't available. I was willing to wait for players who were late by hours, but clearly, the ones who did show up were unable to wait long and usually disappeared without warning.

On November 8, we finally got a D&D game started...only to find out that my Wi-Fi became extremely slow to the point even Discord messages didn't send. The session ended in the middle of a battle where Telnior used the Superconduct elemental reaction to help the physical-attacking LT and YoSquid defeat two Electro-infused dwarves.

Wi-Fi regained speed about an hour after that session, angering me so much to the point I thought God was teaching me a lesson about not being needy. As such, I abstained from non-important social interaction until November 23. Turns out, my friendship with Aby finally crashed at this point...

Break-Up: Friend Version

On November 12, I wrote an angry blog post announcing my abstinence and the delay of part 2 of my Genshin Impact opinions. I needed time to forget about this dumpster fire of a D&D session and calm down so my emotions wouldn't adversely affect my opinions. (If I did write at the time, I would've screwed up my similarity to Xingqiu real bad.)

I made up for it with a short blog post on why I haven't talked about Hytale in a long time.

Aby messaged me out of nowhere, asking, "Am I the one who ghosted you?" I was honestly bewildered. I did not share that blog post on any social media platform besides Blogger and I tried to be vague about my ghosters to respect their privacy.

I first asked him, "Why do you ask?" just in case he got that thought off the top of his head. Considering the lack of comments from him about my blog posts, I assumed he didn't stay updated and I didn't see a good reason for him to do so considering I'm a Hytale nerd and he only just got back to Genshin Impact at the time.

But he mentioned my blog post. As such, I immediately and bluntly spilled the beans. "Yes. It's you. You ghosted me." (I wanted to add a swear word but I have a strict no-insulting and no-swearing self-policy for conversations with friends.)

He asked me for a solution--how he can help me feel better.

I appreciated the offer in my head, but my anger blazed so much, I bluntly told him, "We should do a friend version of a break-up." In other words, let's stop being friends.

As expected, Aby was "bitter and angry at [himself]" and this drove him to write "Friends and expectations" explaining his perspective on our ended friendship.

I still helped him on that blog post though since I still wanted to maintain my superhero persona.

Don't worry--I only told him about the facts and asked him to clarify unclear stuff. I tried not to change Aby's ideas to make myself look good or make him look bad.

Finally, you're done with the background, you freaking lunatic! Now, can you tell us your opinion on Aby's post?

Even when Aby showed me his first draft, it was...deathly accurate. Forgive me for being selfish, but I admire his chivalry when he still mentioned positive things about me while not holding back on my negative traits.

"[LT's] views were purely logical and often a fresh perspective [for] me."

Thanks, man! (I mean that sincerely.)

Ever since another UPOU classmate, Eya, described me as an "edgelord", I've willingly lived up to that persona. I strive for originality and innovation whenever I could.

Being the lunatic tactician I am, I often shared Mark Manson's ideas with Aby while injecting my own ideas.

"He helped me out unconditionally..."

I forgot to point out to Aby that this is wrong.

I may look like I'm giving unconditional love, but in reality, I always secretly want something in return.

To repeat, I helped with Aby's novel because I wanted to talk about Hytale in return. In the case of D&D, I respected his alone time and study time in exchange for him (and YoSquid) showing up on time for D&D.

But again, I didn't explain these clearly.

"LT asserted a very high importance to his friends and he expected the same in return."

You're darn right I did. That's a yandere for you.

"...it is critical--and I mean absolutely critical--to understand that I solely blame myself for the loss of this friendship."

Makes me wanna feel bad for grilling both of us in my own post, but screw it. I'm not a journalist, a lawyer, or a true follower of Mark Manson.

Well...better than me taking SOME blame, I guess.

"A suitable example would be if he scheduled a certain [event] a couple of days ahead and if I didn't make it he would often be bitter but in spite of his feelings he would maintain a calm demeanour and usually be flexible."

Aby is mainly referring to D&D sessions in this sentence, I think.

What do you mean by "calm demeanor"!? I've violated my own self-policies several times when I gave Aby and YoSquid angry lectures about punctuality and "wasting my time". So much for me respecting freedom like the Anemo Archon...

"I simply started to see our conversations like a chore..."

Frankly, I don't remember what motivated Aby to say this, but this hit my ego the hardest. I want to explain that many of our conversations before that were mostly me helping him with a life issue of his, but as The 5 Love Languages recently taught me, I shouldn't be defensive and I should just listen to Aby.

"Bear in mind [my] post cannot possibly explore our friendship into as much detail as I want it to be."

I got that covered, pal. (Oh, look, I'm being a jerk again.)

"Perhaps I took our friendship for granted and that was wrong of me."

I disagree...begrudgingly.

Your studies are far more important. Also, I can't stop you from playing VALORANT or bonding with your other friends.

(Am I hypocritical for saying this along with lecturing about punctuality?)

"I still wanted to keep our friendship alive."

Your actions look to me like you don't.

"In conclusion, the loss of this friendship has left me feeling sad, but in a strange sense of the word relieved...However, it may be I have learned much from it and I will strive to be better at this stuff."

GOOD! I'm glad you're relieved! (Totally not being sarcastic.)

I'm frankly curious about what this broken friendship has taught you.

Just beware of yanderes next time...especially lunatic tacticians with Hair-Trigger Tempers and writing talent.

Do you plan on getting back together with Aby?

No.

(This is a recent edit to my original draft so it may be inconsistent. In case of conflicts between this section and the other sections, this section wins. I'm just really busy and angry.)

One of my core values is always being available for my friends and people I like whenever possible. Unfortunately, after re-reading Mark Manson, particularly about personal boundaries, I think that very value of mine is being challenged.

As I said, I always want something in return for the voluntary generosity I give. Turns out, merely wanting something in return is already a glaring sign of neediness.

I've also blamed Aby for my own problems, even on this very post. It's my problem that I tortured myself for him in the first place.

So from now on, I won't simply stop my friendship with Aby; I'm cutting off ALL non-professional friendly relationships and stopping myself from doing ALL kinds of non-important friendly interaction. This way, I can't tempt myself into torturing myself for an illusion of something in return.

I will only swear my allegiance to two kinds of people: my employer(s) and my family; employers because they pay me and my family because it's my God-mandated responsibility.

Trope-wise, I've Taken a Level in Cynic.

So what's next for your life, LT?

Now that I've been accepted as an online English teacher for Japanese students, I'm gonna be extra busy this November and December, on top of my usual school work.

I have another Genshin Impact post planned for this Sunday. After that, I'll take a break from blogging until Christmas so I can get used to my new job.

Religion-related Side Note

In this post, I referenced both the Christian God and the fictional Archons in Genshin Impact.

Keep in mind, I treat fictional gods similar to superheroes or supervillains. I like or dislike them as fictional characters with flaws just like human beings.

I acknowledge the Christian God exists and is the most powerful being in the universe, but I'm a Nay-Theist. Doing faith stuff and avoiding sin are too much for my lazy chaotic neutral brain...and why my Author Avatar is completely incapable of using light magic, no matter how much he wants to use it to protect the people he loves.

Article III, Section 5 of the Philippine Constitution says "No law shall be made respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. The free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference, shall forever be allowed. No religious test shall be required for the exercise of civil or political rights."