Someone Ceases to Breathe Tonight: Anakin

[pirate_anon]

Someone Ceases to Breathe
Tonight: Anakin

Anakin Skywalker is otherwise known as Darth Vader. I
presume he needs no further introduction.

Anakin creates his Livejournal on April 2, 2008. Like
other system members before him, he has a fixation on children
and the act of fatherhood, but he’ll take it further than previous
system members. A boy called Blaze gets the dubious honor of
being the system's next "son."

At the age of twelve or thirteen, depending on the
citation, Blaze first appears in testimonial for Neo on February 22
(citation available upon request). Then, Neo calls him merely
"someone with more to lose than almost anyone," but after a
month, Blaze has been promoted to "bestest bud" and "the son I
never had a chance to have," as though Connor never happened
(2008 March 26). Come April, Anakin is also describing Blaze as
"my apprentice," even creating a video as "tribute to my real-life
student and 'psuedo-son' - whom I love very much" (citation
available upon request). Anakin specifically credits (or perhaps
enforces) responsibility for his moral reformation as resting on
Blaze's young shoulders: "He just may be my redemption. Or
maybe the tears in my eyes when he hugs me and says 'Thanks
for teaching me... Dad'" (Draven, 2008 April 23).

Blaze disappears in a couple of months (2008 May 24).
I'm not sure why. It's possible that Blaze's parents intervene,
uncomfortable about their child going to visit the hotel room of a
homeless man in his early thirties to be his son/padawan and have
indoor light saber fights. Or perhaps Trinity going to court again
scares Blaze off (Trinity, 2008 April 21). Regardless, he thankfully
vanishes.

And what of Connor? She's still around and still devoted,
but Anakin treats her as abominably as Neo and House did.
More on that later.

In late April, Anakin joins a Vader/Palpatine slash
community and starts advertising his new role-play community,
mynewempire (2008 April 27). Both mynewsmpire's description
and Anakin's advertisement of it makes it sound like a perfectly
normal RP, though seeded with the usual breadcrumbs and
grandiosity. In his ad, he says, "This may be one of the most
ambitious LJ RP's out there... if only for both the supreme
darkness of the overall tone... and the disturbing allowances,
'pairings', events, and implications." Once, in the comments, he
admits his Anakin is "a step beyond character" and asks, “Are you
familiar with the term ‘soulbonding’?” but that's only more of
Draven's insinuations and suggestions, intended to entice rather
than disclose.

Here, incest is not just an undertone; it comes to the
forefront. Under the cover of the RP being mere fiction, Anakin
feels safe describing Palpatine's role: that of father, BDSM partner,
and lover. In him, Anakin "has found the praise, acceptance, and
yes, discipline, that fall over him as naturally as an old worn
cloak. 'Always a slave; you just change Masters once in a while'"
(2008 April 27). He also states that the accepted pairings of the
RP will be Obi-Wan/Anakin, Palpatine/Anakin, and
Padme/Anakin, two of whom act as fathers to Anakin and all of
whom Trinity will channel, along with Mara Jade, Anakin’s
daughter-in-law… though the only time I see him clearly refer to
her is as his “underling” (citation available upon request).

True to form, and in the same pattern as Angel and
William before him, Anakin comes out about the role-play all
being real a couple months later (2008 June 15a). In "A
Metaphysical Coming Out," (2008 June 15b) Anakin says, "this
journal is not a role-playing journal for me. It is not a muse
journal, it is not even a headvoice journal. When I created the
mynewempire RP, it was an outlet for my pain." He claims that all
the players knew this going in (2008 August 25a, paragraph 2),
but I doubt it. Why advertise a game to strangers as a role-play if
he’s going to tell them what it really is? And if it’s all supposed to
be about Anakin’s pain, why remark in the comments, "Now, if I
could find some equally talented and dominating writers-slash-
muses for the game, to dominate my poor, er, Vader" (2008 April
28, formatting his)?

No, it’s obvious what Anakin’s intent is: to lure in strangers
who think they’re playing a fun little game, because he knows
that openly admitting what he wants will send them screaming in
the other direction. They are to play the role of Anakin’s
reflection, his audience to his redemption, because, in Anakin’s
words, “how does one actually DO that, in THIS world, with a
decided LACK OF PEOPLE to be involved in it?” (2008 August
23b).

To make matters worse, Anakin specifically states that he
serves Palpatine in “ways that are not always entirely voluntary”
(ibid). So role-players in his group aren’t just playing at kinky
coercive sex through fiction; Anakin is painting them as his real-
life abusers, when he’s the one actively seeking them out, lying to
them, giving them their roles, and calling it a game!

But back to Anakin’s coming out about the game being
real. In his video he cleans his slate of any wrongdoing
committed by past members of Draven, reframing such
accusations as acts of bigotry: "it's uh not only hurtful but
offensive to accuse, assume, or hold responsible one person for
another when they've made a lot of effort to let you know that
these two people are individuals" (2008 June 15a). In this way,
Anakin tries to erase all the jail time, domestic violence charges,
orders of protection, and threats of violence that other Draven
members have accumulated. He's a new person! He can't be
judged by Neo, William, Constantine, House, Angel, Angelus,
Sirius, or Kurt's examples! The slate gets washed clean, again and
again and again.

But Anakin’s slate isn’t clean to begin with. Even at this
early point, he claims to have murdered many children and can't
even say for sure that it was the wrong thing to do. In his coming
out, he talks about how he's here for "making amends for all the
dead children," (2008 June 15b) but most of the time, he tries to
make excuses for himself. When Connor calls him our on killing
innocents (Draven, 2008 May 31) Anakin replies, "No one is
innocent. No one!" and goes on a megalomaniac rant about how
"the Jedi killed, too; your precious Jedi," and how that makes
them just as bad as him, and how he has brought peace to the
Republic. In August, Anakin asks if anyone knows the names of
the children he slaughtered—apparently it has never occurred to
him to wonder before (2008 August 25b). He even states he’s not
that bothered by what he did: "I'm crying no tears of remorse, at
this second in time. But some equivalent of the 'still, small voice'
had spoken within my heart, and so I had to ask." Not exactly a
great sign of his potential for redemption.

Strip Anakin of his space opera trappings, and he's just a
self-declared torture artist (2008 May 10), whining about how
Obi-Wan doesn't condone mass child murder (May 23). But
because he's Anakin, it works. Not many, but some Star Wars
fans are taken in by the idea of participating in the redemption of
their favorite tragic villain, and they treat Anakin like his worst
excesses deserve reward. After Anakin makes a post about
torturing people to death that day, a follower responds with, "I'm
sorry you suffered so much today. *more hugs*" (Draven, 2008
May 10).

Anakin does not make such sympathy easy. Besides
blaming Obi-Wan for his behavior and trying to claim the Jedi are
just as bad as he is, he tries to pretend his current behavior
doesn't count against him any more than Draven's past behavior
does. He even makes a poll as to whether it's ethical to try him
for the war crimes he hasn't performed yet (2008, August 23a).
(He also frames this poll as "hypothetical" so as to get ordinary
Star Wars fans to vote, not realizing what they are truly being
asked.)

Of course, the answer he's obviously looking for is no,
except Anakin has already committed war crimes by his own
definition! He admits to slaughtering children, murdering adults,
and torturing others, all the while insisting that the Star Wars
world is real! He wants to have his cake and eat it too—all the
charisma and allure of the possibly redeemable bad boy, but not
the jail time. He's trying to blur the lines of not just role-play and
reality, but also good and evil, to see if he can manipulate other
people into accepting it.

One follower catches wise to it too. In the comments, she
says, "the person in question has already: 1. Murdered innocent
children. 2. Abused (and possibly contributed to the death of)
his pregnant wife. 3. Acted as an accomplice in the death of Mace
Windu. 4. Killed the Separatists. ...Given that the first item on
this list alone would be enough for a life sentence, I wonder if
adding in subsequent crimes (to be committed in the future or
not) would just be superfluous" (Draven, 2008 August 23b).

Anakin takes it unusually well, but it’s a fluke. Another
follower, lumy12, protests how Anakin’s accepts that criticism,
“but dare I mention it, I'm a horrible person. Why is that?" (ibid).
Like Kurt before him, Anakin goes into spin and deflection mode.
He tries to claim that lumy12 is reacting to a completely separate
issue, an email from before. He makes it out to be lumy12's fault,
saying, "I love the insecurity that results in 'Ouch' = 'You're a
horrible person'."

Lumy12 points out, "The time stamp is after you got my
email," but then caves to the guilt trip like so many others before
her, saying, "I'm sorry. I don't want to fight with you" (ibid).

Another follower, jedinemo, finally has enough of
Anakin's behavior, and on July 9th pegs him perfectly: "I will not
succumb to the endless call to prove my loyalty/friendship/caring
by performing what ever tasks you deem necessary. Friendship
does not ask the other to 'decode' the hidden meaning in a post.
Friendship does not intimate that caring is demonstrated only by
jumping through the requisite hoops. That's not friendship, that's
manipulation" (2008 July 9).

Just as with the poll, Anakin clutches his pearls and claims
that the problem is jedinemo’s interpretation of his writing style,
that they’re being "fucking ridiculous." Trinity's headmate Mara
Jade also immediately steps up to bat to defend Anakin: "you
have gone a bit overboard, and that is an understatement." It's a
complete repeat of Kurt's behavior on Usenet a decade prior, and
proof that none of Draven have changed in the interim.

Jedinemo would know better than almost anyone
Anakin’s demands, seeing as they role-play as Emperor Palpatine
in mynewempire, and thus Anakin’s dominant. For someone
who claims to be a "lifestyler" (2008 April 27) whose discipline
"[falls] over him as naturally as an old worn cloak," (April 28)
Anakin proves to be a whiny, disobedient submissive who resents
being asked to do anything he sees as beneath him. When
jedinemo’s Palpatine requests Anakin to do the Star Wars
equivalent of turn on the air conditioning in their online role-
play, Anakin acts as though he’s being asked to siege Rome,
whining, "am I so expendable that something of this minor
magnitude requires my personal attention?" (2008, May 18).
Trinity's Mara Jade jumps in to also protest the unfairness of this
entirely digital request, asking, "What do you think he is? A
delegate for the Pony Express?" Anakin shuts her down, but
continues complaining, "I'll fix it, Master, if you insist, but I am
not a child... either figuratively or not. I say this endlessly,
endlessly! How do you expect me to be efficient at anything"
and never actually does it. Eventually, Palpatine gives up in
disgust.

With such complaints over a minor request, the
imagination fails at Anakin's reaction to being asked to do
anything time-sensitive, important, or offline. And indeed,
Jedinemo eventually stops commenting.

On August 2nd, Anakin registers himself as owned
property to Sidious... (2009 September 25) but this isn't
jedinemo's Palpatine, but Trinity's. Like Neo with the Smith
switch in the past, Anakin treats both doms identically, and
roughly a year later, he posts the video of his collaring ceremony,
claiming it a "TPE [Total Power Exchange] Declaration" (2008
August 6).

Note that TPE is not a dynamic where the sub is expected
to be bratty, whiny, or disobedient. Indeed, in most forms, the
sub is supposed to give up all ability to say no, leave the
relationship, or do anything without his master's approval; the
submissive is considered to be the master's property with no
limits or boundaries. In fact, it's come under fire from other
lifestyle kinksters for violating rules of consent; as Cliff
Pervocracy says, "if it really does exist as advertised, with no
limits and total obedience, it would be a goddamn travesty to do
SM play under these circumstances" (2008).

Seeing how Anakin obviously doesn't care for total
obedience, the title seems more to express how hyperbolically
kinky he is. Nobody in Draven can bear to go halfway or be
mediocre in anything; they always have to be the most extreme,
the most intense. And so, Anakin can't be simply an ordinary
sub; he ostensibly becomes Sidious's legal property and child, and
even fills out adoption papers (2008 December 2, after paragraph
37).

Ageplay or parent/child role-play on its own is not
necessarily abusive. But the whole point of it is for a consenting
adult to role-play the role of a child, not literally be one. The
only way to do it safely is to be free to stop or step out of role at
any time. But Anakin is absolutely adamant that there is no
difference between role and reality, and he is determined to
declare himself Sidious’s legal son and property in perpetuity. He
has no conception of separating his fantasies from reality—which
makes his eagerness to be a father in turn to children like Blaze all
the more unsettling. What exactly are his intentions regarding
them?

Speaking of BDSM and groomed children, Connor never
does manage to please Anakin for long. When her beloved
grandfather ends up in the hospital, Anakin chews her out
because “I spent the night in th ehospital [sic] night before last,”
plus he’s emotional, sleep-deprived, and more tellingly, “out of
pain medicine” (Connor, 2008 June 23). Really, his ostensible
poor health is just the excuse; what really seems to enrage him is
that Connor might care about someone besides him. When
Connor stands up to him, she gets slammed with bile and
sweared at in Huttese.

It’s neither the first nor the last time Connor gets screamed
at. After Anakin posts some bloody photos of BDSM without a
cut or warning (Connor, 2008 June 27), poor Connor makes the
mistake of asking, "OMG! Are you okay?!" only for Anakin to
treat her with disdain and sarcasm. When she apologizes, he
denounces her behavior as "immature and it's rude." When
Connor then tries to empathize with Anakin's suffering by
talking about a time that she herself was beaten in the Angel
universe, Anakin just jumps on the attack, furious for implying
anyone has suffered as much as him.

This isn’t the only time that Anakin posts gruesome
photos without warning, nor that he excoriates someone for
being upset by them. On September 11, he posts more bloody
photos of himself, again without a cut or warning (2008
September 11c, after paragraph 25). He mentions Darth Sidious
being there and taking the photo, but takes grave offense when a
commenter reasonably assumes that means BDSM. The
commenter has since deleted their comments, but Anakin's rage-
out remains: "this ISN'T SEX PLAY. IT ISN'T LIFESTYLE PLAY.
Nor a hobby, a kink, or anything else. It is what it is. If it bothers
people, they don't have to read it; that picture was OLD, and
might have been a SHAVING CUT- you didn't ask, did you?" He
leaves the photos public and un-cut.

The household still has the same money issues as before.
In July, Anakin spends $85 on a custom Star Wars tunic, which
puts him short for the rent (2008 July 2). Despite his claims that
he couldn’t have possibly known and the landlords are “insane
people,” such financial instability will lead to the household
getting evicted a couple months later.

On September 8, 2008, Draven and Trinity move to small-
town Nebraska. This is not intentional. They intend to go back
to Draven's family in Maine but never finish the journey. Anakin
states, (2008 September 26) "we were […] dumped here with no
warning by the 'friend' who was driving; he packed his car in the
middle of the night and left us." He tries to make this sound like
an act of terrible irresponsibility on the driver's part, but driving
from Washington to Maine is roughly five days each way, and
Anakin certainly wasn't paying the driver. More likely, being
trapped with Draven and Trinity in a car for days on end became
so intolerable that the follower bolted.

Draven and Trinity will only spend a few months in
Nebraska, but the time will prove significant, because it will
signify the wheels finally falling off the bus of not just Neo's cult,
but Draven's life in general.

For a little while, Anakin plays the whole thing as a joyous
accident, fate at work, saying, "I'm starting to believe that all that
has happened to me comes back full-circle to my own...
redemption? Amends? Second chance?" (2008 September 18).
Within a week of his arrival in Nebraska, he makes a Deviantart
account to open up fanart commissions (2008 September 11a). He
also claims to be working towards volunteering at a battered
women's shelter and building a rocket-powered pod-racer for an
all-ages fundraiser (2008 September 16); it won’t be the last time
Draven tries to position themselves as an ally to abused women
and children, but it’s certainly the most brazen. He also plans to
start "LIVING A DREAM," creating a junk shop business for
upcycling junk for repair and art (2008 September 15). Taking
the name of "K.A. Draven," he makes business cards (September
18), buys a domain name, and sets up his IRS business
documentation (September 15). He and Trinity also discuss
buying a house, for Neo's long-awaited monastery (September
18). Things seem to be looking up.

But despite Anakin's manic assurances, there are signs of
things not being quite right. Anakin is no better an artist than
Angel was; his gallery has barely anything in it, only two
mediocre sketches copied from Star Wars screen-caps, along with
Hannibal's old drawing of Clarice and an unfinished self portrait.
Also, Anakin seems more focused on the trappings of his
junkshop business—the business cards, the website, his outfit—
than the substance. He has many plans, but no products. And
since Trinity is on SSI, which forbids saving any more than $2000
at a time, it isn't clear where the money to pay for the house will
come from, especially since they were just recently evicted due
to financial instability.

On top of that, Anakin mentions being on poor terms
with the hotel management right off the bat, due to the noisy
BDSM he and Sidious get up to: "[Sidious] worked... very hard,
the last two nights, to find [...] an implement that would make the
least amount of noise... don't want to disturb the neighbors,
would we" (2008 September 12). But disturb them they do: a
week later, Anakin reports that "my master will emerge from the
woodwork to beat me senseless […] because we've gotten
complaints apparently about the repetitive whacking noises from
our room in the middle of the night. So we slowed down a little
until we find a better place" (2008 September 17). Apparently
the idea of taking a break or switching to a silent form of play is
unfathomable.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Trinity and Draven are evicted
from their hotel room a week later. Draven leaves a rambling,
incoherent voice post about it (2008 September 25), claiming the
hotel management to be completely unreasonable: "Well, the
mother who was the owner was right; her son the psycho really
was a psycho. He apparently complained because we were up all
night." He claims that the hotel broke anti-discrimination laws for
taking his dog from him, and that their complaints were total
nonsense.

The rest of the voice post is tangled and muddy, with
Anakin making contradictory claims. They've been evicted and
they're in a Motel 8, but he doesn't know where they'll be living;
he and Trinity still have the house for the Monastery, but not
until November, and he still seems absolutely convinced they can
pay for it. Despite the harried circumstances, he wants to get
back into role-playing, and he insists that the podracer fundraiser
is still going and the junk shop will still get created. He also
insists he's not on drugs, except for things given by his dentist,
which is a strangely specific denial to make.

The next day, Anakin does the thing Draven claims to
never do: he solicits donations, both on his own Livejournal and
on a community called glbtq_disabled, which he joins purely to
beg for money (2008 September 26a and b). But even when he's
trying to get sympathy and money for wrongful eviction, he
keeps letting slip hints as to what actually happened. He
mentions, "people had complained about 'strange thumping
noises' coming from our room at night," but neglects to mention
that there was any validity to them. In the comments, he goes
further, claiming to have a "hairline fractured" cheekbone from
an "accidental blow to the head" (September 26b). When he goes
to the hospital and asks for Ultram, which he insists is “a NON-
NARCOTIC PAIN RELIEVER, and the only one I will TAKE” he
claims the doctor calls him mentally ill and gets the cops to escort
him out.

Once again, a short statement contains a lot of
disingenuity. Draven first posted about the broken cheekbone
way back in April (2008 April 18), five months prior. Normally
that would be enough time for it to heal. However, June 26th is
when he posts photos of his post-BDSM face, which includes
blood dripping down his cheek. If the cheekbone injury is real,
then doing impact play at all, especially involving his face, would
be a terrible idea. Why on earth would he be taking such a risk?
Maybe because Anakin admits to taking painkillers with
his beatings (2008 August 19). This is never recommended. After
a "session that lasted AN HOUR AND A HALF," Anakin quotes
Sidious as saying, "don't take your medications right after a
correction, one would think that... defeats the purpose, doesn't
it?" while Gabe (Anakin’s “medic,” probably also channeled by
Trinity) says, "Are you a fucking PSYCHO? HE HAS A PRE-
EXISTING CONDITION, BACK OFF!!" The pain pills get taken.

Furthermore, Ultram is not non-narcotic. It's—you
guessed it—an opioid, like so many of Draven's preferred drugs.
Combined with his addiction issues, it is not a pretty picture, and
the doctor’s reference to mental illness and request for the cops to
escort Draven out of the office suddenly makes more sense.

Anyway, through begging and selling of their possessions
(including donated items from followers), Trinity and Draven
manage to rustle up roughly $200, but Anakin reports in a series
of voice posts that he can't access it because he has no bank
account or credit card (2008 September 27a, b, and c). He wants
a friend to come and take the money and then transfer it to
another card, which they will then send to him, but
unsurprisingly, this convoluted solution doesn't work out.
Draven and Trinity end up in a Christian rescue mission for a few
days, until Anakin claims he can’t handle the anxiety of being
separated from Trinity, and insists he'd rather be on the street
than stay three more days. They move into a different hotel
when Trinity's disability payment comes in (Draven, 2008
October 1).

All through this, Anakin still insists that everything is
going great. Their new place is great, the house in November is
still going to happen (ibid), the junkshop is going to happen
(October 2), and the pod-racer is almost done (ibid). He creates a
radio show for himself, called Radio Free Anakin and describes
himself as "proud, thrilled, psyched, hyper-excited-crazy"
(November 7, paragraph 11).

None of it ever happens. A couple days later, Anakin
leaves a distraught, short post: "I am alone. [...] My Daddy is
gone" (2008 November 9).

Stripped of Anakin’s narcissism, what that means is,
Trinity’s in jail, and she won't be returning home until the 19th.
Without Trinity, Anakin has no money; he only has his hotel
room due to the rescue mission, and that will only last until the
15th. Anakin asks, "I don't suppose anyone, you know, wants to
loan the recovering Sith Lord several hundred dollars to bail
someone out of jail?" (November 11a). Nobody does.

This is the only time that Anakin even obliquely refers to
Trinity being arrested. The way he acts, a reader could be
forgiven for thinking that Anakin is the truly wronged party. He
bemoans his loneliness, his health problems (ibid). He doesn't
eat, doesn't sleep, worries he'll die without her (November 12). "I
can't stand being alone," he says (November 11b) and indeed, this
very well might be the first time he’s been alone since 2004. In
Nebraska, his sole acolytes are Trinity and the follower taking
care of his dog, both of whom are unavailable. Barely anyone
comments online. Without followers constantly affirming his
identity and reflecting it back at him, he seems unable to cope.
Nevertheless, he keeps blogging, despite sporadic phone and
internet access.

On November 13, 2008, there's a surprise in Anakin's voice
posts: he and Neo have integrated, becoming one being.
However, both continue posting in their respective LJs regarding
their respective goals and going by the same names, and neither
ever makes mention of it again. Strange.

The moment Trinity gets out of jail on the 19th, she rushes
to Draven's side to care for them; one would think he had been
the one confined, not her. "I want to thank everyone for taking
care of Anakin while I was away," she says in a voice post
(November 19b). But the bad news isn't over yet, though none of
it comes as a surprise: both junk shop and the monastery house
are stillborn. Trinity rants, "The house we were supposed to get?
The dream house with the basement I promised Ani for the
junkshop [sic]? The one we told the woman that NO MATTER
WHAT, NO QUESTIONS ASKED, WE WERE ABSOLUTELY
100% IN OUR WANTING OF? [...] do you think she held it for us?
Do you think that she [...] tried to get a message to us? No...what
this lovely woman did was called our cell phone ONCE, got no
answer...and rented the house out from under us to someone"
(November 19a).

I'm still not sure how they thought they could afford the
house in the first place, considering the circumstances. And it
sounds like the woman did her best to get in contact with them,
but considering their homelessness and phone issues, why should
she have bent over backwards to hunt them down when she had
a buyer already? She probably dodged a bullet.

Regardless, Draven and Trinity become homeless yet again
and Trinity goes to the LJ community glbtq_disabled to beg for
more money (November 19a). When one person comments
sensibly, "I don't feel that LJ is an appropriate place to ask for
money, as it's impossible to check people's credentials"
(littlejen123, 2008), Anakin tears into them with characteristic
defensive rage and martyrdom. "We may the the [sic] only
people online - at least, according to your cynical view of it - who
actually ARE who they say they are," he declares (November 20).
"It's SNOWING. Unscrupulous. Yeah."

On December 2nd, Trinity’s disability payment comes in
and they scrape into another apartment. Anakin still insists he'll
make the junk shop happen, but by now, even he doesn't seem to
believe it. And sure enough, come the 19th, they're given yet
another eviction notice. This time, Anakin claims it's entirely
due to discrimination against him and Trinity's sexualities,
genders, and disabilities, (December 19) but who knows how
true that is? And even now, Anakin focuses on how all the stress
is making it hard to be a good person: "We have not a cent, no
food in the house, and nothing for Christmas [...] even as I […]
strain for redemption" (ibid, paragraph 18).

After that, the household loses phone and Internet, and
posts become sporadic. Finally, on January 25th 2009, Anakin
announces that they're back in Maine, living with Draven's little
brother—though within a week, Anakin announces he's short on
rent yet again, with pneumonia and a mass of tissue in his lungs
(January 31). Total time spent in Nebraska? Four and a half
months.

Anakin posts for a while still, but it's basically curtains for
him after this; the Nebraska months have left irrevocable damage.
Trinity and Draven’s legal, housing, and health troubles only
worsen from here on out.

Without a reliable Internet or phone connection, Draven
can't influence their followers like they once did. Not that there
are many left by this point; since Anakin has no mission except
maybe possibly hypothetically becoming a decent person at some
unknown point in the future, many of Neo's followers take no
interest in him. Neo himself posts so rarely that some followers
honestly think he might be dead (ex-follower personal
communication, 2016). Even the devoted fall away. It's one thing
to distribute fliers, pay for web hosting, and try to save the world,
another to attend to Neo's constant financial woes, especially
when it's no longer clear if Neo even still exists as an independent
person after his and Anakin's integration.

By September 2009, Anakin is basically gone; he makes
one final "I'm still here" post almost a year later (2010 August 5)
and then disappears completely. Neo mostly follows suit. But
before they leave Livejournal, Angel has one last hurrah…