And why I no longer feel safe doing Linux GPU development
Twitter: @LunaFoxgirlVT | Bluesky: @lunafoxgirlvt.foxgirls.gay | 2025-05-05
TW: Emotional and mental abuse, manipulation, gaslighting, threats of physical violence, suicide and self-harm
Hi everyone,
In August 2024, I publicly ended my friendship with Luna the Foxgirl—the creator of Inochi2D and a former collaborator in the VTubing and open-source communities. I had contributed significantly to her project, and for a time, I genuinely believed we shared common goals. That changed after a serious breakdown in our friendship, triggered by repeated incidents of threatening behavior beginning in January 2024.
Following the publication of my initial statement detailing those events, I made the choice to step back publicly, hoping that silence and time would encourage de-escalation. Instead, Luna’s campaign intensified. Despite my complete disengagement, she continued targeting me—both publicly and behind the scenes—damaging my reputation, undermining personal and professional relationships, and ultimately forcing me to resign from Apple GPU driver development, a role I was deeply passionate about.
The impact has been overwhelming. I’ve been in therapy for over a year now, much of it dedicated to processing the stress and anxiety caused by this situation. There have been periods this year where I’ve struggled to function: sleepless nights, severe depression cycles, and days lost to spiraling from the emotional toll of her public posts and personal attacks.
Luna has repeatedly framed herself as the sole victim, leveraging personal mental health struggles to redirect accountability. While I once hoped this behavior came from a place of unhealed trauma, the continued escalation suggests a pattern of manipulation—particularly harmful when aimed at others who are also part of vulnerable communities. I urge readers to examine claims critically and rely on evidence rather than emotional framing.
My intent in writing now is not retaliation, but self-protection—and to set the record straight for the sake of transparency, safety, and truth.
Coordinated Defamation in Private Channels
Public Doxxing and Misgendering
Sabotage Within the Linux Kernel Community
Amplification of Harassment Campaigns
A Pattern of Bullying and Weaponized Mental Health Claims
Following the release of my August 2024 statement, Luna briefly expressed remorse. This occurred only after it became clear that her Discord messages had been captured by Kiwi Farms agents—individuals known for orchestrating harassment campaigns against VTubers and LGBTQ+ creators. Her posts had fueled renewed attacks on me and several others.
That moment of contrition, however, was short-lived.
Luna soon resumed her behavior, now escalating it into sustained public attacks. Since then, she has posted defamatory claims about me and my close friends across at least 13 separate days—often multiple times a day. Her accusations have ranged from calling me her abuser (without offering any evidence), to claiming my entire VTubing career exists only because of her suffering. She has made disparaging remarks about both nullptr::live, the VTuber collective I’m part of, and VT Social, the Mastodon instance I operate—framing both as failures without her involvement.
The situation has gone beyond just public defamation.
Luna has also reached out to personal and professional contacts of mine—mutuals, friends, and colleagues alike—in an apparent effort to discredit me privately and erode my support networks. These targeted attempts to manipulate others into isolating me have caused tangible harm to my relationships and standing within both the VTubing and open-source communities.
This pattern—of public hostility paired with private manipulation—is part of what has made the past year so difficult to navigate, both emotionally and professionally.
In the months following my initial public statement, multiple people—ranging from close friends to professional colleagues—have informed me that Luna has been privately messaging them with false accusations about me. I will not name these individuals out of respect for their privacy and safety. However, the pattern is clear: Luna appears to be methodically reaching out to shared contacts across the VTubing and open-source ecosystems, attempting to discredit me and isolate me from my communities.
This campaign of private defamation has already damaged my professional standing and forced me to engage in ongoing damage control in spaces I’ve worked hard to support. What’s more distressing is the uncertainty—how many others have received these messages? How many may have believed her without ever speaking to me? I now live with the constant fear that my reputation is being quietly dismantled behind closed doors.
Publicly, Luna has accused me of sabotaging her friendships and harming her ability to trust others. But that narrative is a projection. With the exception of a few conversations with close friends for my own safety, I have not contacted others about her unprompted. Meanwhile, mutuals have reached out to me, sharing similar stories of emotional manipulation and toxicity, many of them having already chosen to distance themselves from her before any of this became public. I’ve become her scapegoat, while she actively undermines my relationships and misrepresents our history.
Some of Luna’s private claims go beyond defamation—they are deeply harmful and dangerous. Among the most damaging is a false allegation that I attempted to “date a minor.” This accusation is a fabrication. Luna first made this claim to my fiancée Cyan shortly after learning about our relationship—an apparent attempt to drive us apart. When I confronted her about it, with a neutral third party present, she backpedaled, stating she had “misremembered” a separate event involving an adult, which had no romantic context. I provided screenshots disproving the claim to both Luna and the mutual. Despite this, she has since repeated the falsehood to others—knowingly and maliciously.
Because this claim was made verbally (the times I’ve been made aware), I do not have direct documentation. But the fact that it was repeated despite being disproved makes it clear: this is a deliberate attempt to destroy my social and professional life using one of the most serious and stigmatizing accusations possible.
Understandably, this has left me shaken. When Luna began referencing the Freedesktop.org (FD.o) community—where I’ve been a contributor—in her public threads, I became alarmed. Would she bring these same accusations into core open-source governance spaces?
I reached out to a member of the FD.o Code of Conduct team, who offered to share my concerns with the full team. I agreed. Their response was a generic acknowledgment that they would remain alert, but I hoped it would serve as preemptive protection.
Unfortunately, I later learned that by the time I had raised the alarm, damage had already been done.
On February 7th, Luna publicly doxxed me—first on Twitter, and then by publishing a more detailed document on Bluesky. These posts included personal information that I had kept private for my safety, as well as repeated instances of misgendering, public mockery, and targeted accusations. Though she has since deleted many of these posts, the damage was already done.
She attempted to justify her actions by misrepresenting past interactions and falsely framing me as a threat. Claims that I blackmailed or abused her are entirely unsubstantiated. I have never threatened her, nor have I leveraged personal information as coercion. What I did express was that if she continued spreading false accusations publicly, I would be forced to respond publicly as well—an act of self-defense, not blackmail.
To this day, Luna has presented no evidence of the abuse she claims occurred. There are no voice call logs, no messages, no receipts—because no such abuse happened. Our last voice call was in August 2023, and the last time I communicated with her through text was in April 2024. If there had been any inappropriate conduct, there would be a record of it. There is none.
Equally disturbing is her repeated refusal to acknowledge my identity. For over two years, I have only interacted with Luna as Lina, using she/her pronouns. She is fully aware of this and chose to use my correct identity up until she began her doxxing campaign. Her posts now intentionally misgender me under the guise of "context" or “truth,” while claiming plausible deniability by discouraging harassment in her closing remarks—a tactic that distances her publicly while still enabling it privately.
When we first met in person, I asked Luna directly to use my name and pronouns. She refused. That should have been a red flag, but at the time I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt. In hindsight, her behavior revealed a deeper lack of respect for my identity—something that became clearer as her public statements framed me as a fictional construct rather than a real person.
Perhaps most distressing was what I discovered in a screenshot of her current public Discord server, shared during the period of her doxxing campaign. Members, encouraged by her narrative, dismissed my identity and openly justified the doxxing as acceptable. This space—meant to be a community—mirrored the tone and behavior I’ve come to associate with known harassment forums like Kiwi Farms. While the language was sanitized, the intent and cruelty were unmistakable.
As Luna’s campaign escalated, her public posts began to reference individuals and situations within the Linux kernel maintainer ecosystem—timed in ways that raised immediate concern. I feared she might be directly influencing people in positions of authority connected to my work. Unfortunately, those fears were justified.
It came to light that Luna had been in direct contact with Simona “Sima” Vetter—one of the two top-level maintainers of the Linux DRM (GPU) subsystem, a former board member of the X.Org Foundation, and, crucially, a member of the Freedesktop.org Code of Conduct (CoC) team. This is the same team I had reported Luna’s harassment to in confidence.
Sima, who had the power to shape both my professional opportunities and the community’s response to my concerns, had already aligned herself with Luna’s narrative before I ever filed a formal report. In a private Discord conversation with my fiancée Cyan, she referred to me using incorrect pronouns just as Luna did, and echoed Luna’s accusations without context or evidence. Her remarks bore striking resemblance to Luna’s public talking points—raising serious questions about impartiality and conduct.
Even more distressingly, Sima mocked my decision to report Luna’s actions to the CoC team—despite the fact that I had been encouraged to do so by another team member. She dismissed the situation as a “relationship issue,” despite there never having been a romantic relationship between Luna and anyone involved. This indicated that she had either failed to read my original documentation thoroughly or had willfully mischaracterized it.
I was devastated. Knowing that a person with institutional authority over my work had prejudged the situation based on personal bias, and was repeating Luna’s framing without due diligence, triggered intense anxiety attacks. I was forced to step away from my work on Apple GPU drivers entirely.
I informed an FD.o CoC team member about Sima’s conduct. They assured me the matter would be treated as a formal complaint against a CoC team member and kept confidential from Sima. However, the situation continued to deteriorate. Unable to continue in that environment, I asked Alyssa to quietly remove me from the Asahi Linux contributor list. Word spread quickly, and I began receiving inquiries about my sudden absence, so I felt pressured to make a public announcement. Within the hour, Sima posted a thinly veiled subtweet, reinforcing how closely she was monitoring the situation.
The outcome of the CoC investigation was limited. Sima stepped down from the Code of Conduct team, and I received a brief apology from the team acknowledging her unprofessional behavior—but no apology from Sima herself. Sima remains one of the two Linux DRM maintainers and continues to hold authority over my work on GPU drivers.
More troubling still, Sima claimed to the rest of the CoC team that she had already become aware of the investigation due to a since-deleted social media post by me—one that never existed. I confirmed this by reviewing server logs on my own instance, which showed no such post. This means one of two things: either someone in a small, trusted circle leaked confidential information to Sima, or someone within the CoC team itself breached confidentiality. To protect the leak, Sima then fabricated a cover story.
This revelation left me feeling exposed and unsafe. The Linux kernel community at high levels is tightly interconnected, and I have no doubt that private conversations about me occurred beyond Sima—conversations I was never part of, but that affected my ability to participate professionally.
As a result, I no longer feel safe contributing to the Linux GPU driver community. The anxiety and distrust are too deeply rooted now. Even opening the codebase brings back overwhelming stress.
I’ve stepped away indefinitely.
Since my VTuber debut, I have been a recurring target of online harassment from extremist forums such as Kiwi Farms—an unfortunately common experience for marginalized creators in tech and VTubing spaces. For the most part, I’ve developed strategies to minimize their impact: avoid engagement, block aggressively, and avoid offering material that can be twisted into further harassment.
That approach was effective—until Luna’s public and private attacks began.
In August 2024, Luna leaked private information about me within her public Discord server. These messages were quickly harvested by Kiwi Farms agents, who had been lurking there, and used to intensify their coordinated harassment campaign—against me and several other LGBTQ+ individuals. Initially, Luna expressed remorse. She deleted that Discord server and claimed to take steps toward mitigating further harm.
But this remorse proved temporary.
Soon after, she launched a new server, again made publicly accessible. Within weeks, screenshots from that new server began appearing on harassment forums, indicating that bad actors had rejoined. Despite knowing this, Luna continued posting content about me—statements that were almost immediately co-opted and weaponized.
She knows this happens. She has acknowledged it before. Yet she has continued to post misleading and inflammatory content about me, fully aware that it is being used to escalate targeted harassment campaigns.
Her false claims have now become primary source material for these attacks. Her language—past and present—is screenshotted, archived, and cited across forums and social media platforms dedicated to spreading hate. In this way, Luna’s actions are not just irresponsible; they’re actively endangering others by giving hostile groups the narrative fuel they crave.
(Note: Luna did not “create” me or my VTuber identity. My name, design, and persona were fully conceptualized before I ever spoke to her. The only thing she contributed was an early, incomplete rig in Inochi2D, which I later had to finish and revise myself.)
(Note: There was no “financial abuse.” I voluntarily supported Luna via donations—without conditions, expectations, or transactional demands. That narrative is false and undermines legitimate discussions of abuse by weaponizing them as smears.)
The harassment I now face is many times worse than before Luna’s involvement. These communities thrive in unmoderated or poorly moderated FOSS and tech-adjacent spaces, where there is little understanding of the patterns and consequences of this kind of behavior.
Luna’s continued misinformation, whether intentional or reckless, has made me—and others—less safe.
In her current Discord server, Luna has publicly claimed that I “pushed her to attempt suicide” in April 2024. This accusation is not only false—it is dangerously misleading.
(Note the deliberate misgendering, I was only “Lina” to her for a long time at this point.)
Our final exchange before that incident was a simple request: I asked her for space.
(See the previous doc for more context, and keep reading this doc to learn the story behind the second to last paragraph.)
Cyan and I had made that request many times before, always calmly, always respectfully, throughout the chaotic events of the beginning of 2024. Her repeated refusal to respect boundaries left me with no choice but to go no-contact. The implication that this boundary-setting somehow caused harm is not only deeply unfair—it perpetuates harmful narratives around mental health and accountability.
Mental health struggles are deeply complex, and suggesting that someone else’s withdrawal or silence is responsible for another person’s suicidal ideation is both irresponsible and cruel. These kinds of claims weaponize suffering and silence others who are trying to protect themselves. I am not the only person she has made these claims about—but I am one of the few who has chosen to respond.
The painful irony is that Luna's claim that I “pushed her to attempt suicide” is projection, and she herself has a documented history of harming others in similar ways.
Luna has admitted to mutuals that she once bullied another LGBTQ+ individual into a suicide attempt—a person whose fate remains unknown. These events happened prior to Luna’s transition, and she has claimed that she is no longer the person she used to be. But the methods she is using against me now—gaslighting, projection, deflection, and the mobilization of community bias—mirror the same abuse she once acknowledged and condemned.
This behavior has escalated to disturbing levels. Soon after her admission in the conversation above, Luna referenced the death of a close friend of mine, who died by suicide after enduring a wave of online harassment. She acknowledged that this friend’s death was caused by the same kinds of communities and behaviors she once participated in, and expressed remorse for her past actions. Yet, years later, in an email she sent in 2024, she implied that I might share blame for that tragedy—despite the fact that I did everything in my power at the time to help and protect them. (Note: In the email above where I asked Luna for space, in the second to last paragraph, the conduct from Luna that I was referencing was this implication, which she had made in a prior email.)
That accusation is not just false—it is emotionally abusive. It mimics the very tactics used by hate forums like Kiwi Farms, who have spread similar falsehoods about me in their efforts to discredit and torment vulnerable creators. By echoing their language, Luna has positioned herself not as a survivor of harm, but as a conduit for its continuation.
None of this is theoretical. It is lived, documented experience—and it follows a clear and devastating pattern.
I just want to live the rest of my life in peace, and for Luna to leave Cyan and I alone. That is all I ask for, and that is all I've been asking of Luna for the past 12+ months. Yet, it seems we live rent-free in her head, and she is unable to let go.
Luna knows where Cyan and I used to live in Japan, and we had to move to make sure she can't find us or doxx our address. Another apartment move was the last thing we needed after all the ongoing stress and anxiety this year, but it was the only way we could feel safe at home, especially if Luna ends up moving to Japan, as she has expressed she wants to for a long time.
Cyan and I have retained a Danish defamation lawyer and we are in the process of gathering documentation for legal action. If Luna does not stop her public and private attacks and publicly apologize for her abuse and harassment campaign, we will pursue all available legal remedies to keep ourselves safe going forward.
This has all been so emotionally painful that I can no longer bring myself to use Luna's software (Inochi2D) ever again, so I will be retiring my current model. I will be on hiatus until I have time to heal and I have a new 3D model ready, that I can use with other software. I would like to apologize to all my followers and viewers for the long breaks recently, and I hope you can hold on until I get everything back on track.
If you use and support Inochi2D, please be aware that you are supporting Luna’s harassment, doxxing, misgendering, manipulation, and abuse. If you believe these acts don’t belong in the VTuber and FOSS communities, please consider using and supporting other software.
If Luna has privately contacted you or someone you know to spread her false accusations and harassment, I would appreciate it if you reach out. I can be contacted at lina@lina.yt, through Bluesky DMs at @lina.yt, or through Mastodon private mentions at @lina@vt.social (please do not add me as a friend on Discord unless you already share a server with me, as I do not accept cold friend requests).
Even though my VTubing adventure somehow led to some of the worst abuse and harassment in my entire life, I do not regret becoming a VTuber in the slightest, and I would do it again in a heartbeat.
I started VTubing because I wanted to bring smiles to people, and inspire everyone in computer science/programming and STEM in general. When I started, I didn’t really know what would happen, and I didn’t have much confidence that it would work out. I would never have expected that the response would be overwhelmingly positive. Becoming a VTuber turned out to be one of the most amazing things to happen in my life.
Through VTubing, I made lots of new friends, and had some amazing collabs with wonderful, kind and diverse people. I learned new skills, gained more confidence in my work, and also helped others who want to get started. It even helped my daily life, with scheduled streams making my schedule more predictable and healthy. And most importantly, through VTubing, I met the most amazing, sweet, and supportive person in the world, my fiancée Cyan Nyan.
I have had hundreds of amazing comments and responses to my streams and posts, and that has given me immense hope through all these dark times. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. It really means a lot.
I will heal and move on from the abuse and go back to streaming soon. Regardless of what naysayers and abusers might say, I am Lina, and I am here to stay. Cyan and I have lots of new content and streams planned together, and we will be back in full force soon!
~~ Asahi Lina
Selected receipts from the falling-out doc (click for the full story).
Jealousy, threats of physical harm, and attempts to drive Cyan and I apart:
Verbal abuse, threats of suicide (note: at this point in time I was no contact with her):
I didn't “isolate” her; Luna was, at the time, visiting Cyan in her home. After learning that we were in a relationship, Luna’s behavior suddenly became incredibly distressing and unmanageable, causing Cyan significant harm. As a result, Cyan and I decided together that Luna had to return home, for both Cyan and Luna’s safety.
More threats, manipulation (note the projection, again), abuse:
Regret, pity attempt (after running into financial issues, this was when we briefly started talking again in early 2024). Note that she chose to block my sponsorship herself, and until then I was still sending her money despite her threats of physical harm and verbal abuse:
After I asked her for space and to stop contacting me for the time being, she broke the agreement:
After her suicide attempt (I was fully no contact with her, and have continued to be no contact since then, it’s her who continued to contact me):
After I tried to contribute to an Inochi2D fork (to distance myself from her). I had previously blocked her on Discord but unblocked her to check on some messages, and she took that opportunity to message me:
The narrative that I "constantly berated" Luna is entirely false. What actually happened was a series of escalating attacks from her, including public subtweeting, the eventual doxxing of my private identity, and repeated airing of grievances in her Discord server—actions that directly led to my decision to release my original statement.
The claim that I am “unavoidable” is another example of projection. It was Cyan and I who were forced to block Luna across every platform, including alternate accounts, because she repeatedly sought out channels to contact us—even through mutual friends. It later became evident that at the time of these messages, she still hadn’t blocked Cyan on Twitter and continued consuming content that included references to me for months thereafter. If Luna truly wanted distance, she had every opportunity to enforce it. Instead, she kept opening doors.
Since her suicide attempt, I have maintained strict no-contact. I’ve spoken about her as little as possible, avoided public commentary, and taken active steps to disengage. Every subsequent instance of public drama, private messaging through mutuals, and continued spiral of harassment has come from her side—not mine.
Predictably, I expect that in response to this document, Luna will claim I am the one who “can’t let go”—despite the fact that she has had months to stop and has chosen instead to escalate. I’ve remained silent as long as I reasonably could. This statement is not about retaliation—it’s about setting the record straight and protecting myself and others.
What happened to me and Cyan should never have happened. And unfortunately, we don't believe we'll be the last to experience this kind of treatment from her. Luna has caused significant harm, and as difficult as it is to say, people have a right to be warned. If she attempts to involve herself in your community or network, I urge caution.
All I did was offer her friendship and financial support—helping fund her project through GitHub Sponsors. I believed in her work. I never imagined that would lead to this.
