okay so

um. there ended up being a reason i needed to stare at my shadow so much recently.

we found, well, our antisocial-yet-brilliant hacker mystique self. who we had to be to keep the Machine from completely breaking us. and we dared not keep him around, because he had some fuckin trauma and we feared he would be a really terrible abuser if we didn't counterweight him.

and, well, we did. too much. and we realize that we kinda as a system need him around. and... we talked. felt. he's ... better now. we're aware of the worst tendencies and we balance it out, so he's just kinda fronting and out here now while witchy mystic kit takes a rest.

that's some healing we did, so fucking fast, to be able to do this and be relatively confident it'll go well.

we've ... got our edge back. our slightly-sketch trickster nature. our ability to hack (we think. need to trial this) and our mind of a thief.

and now we know why we've felt called to infosec, and frustrated we couldn't find the right way in. this is something we want to do.

we can handle ourselves now. no need to be overly fearful or tightly controlling.