#remove indeed reviews

[reputematter]

How to Remove Reviews from Indeed

Step-by-step guide to removing unhelpful reviews on Indeed. Keep your professional reputation intact.

[reputematters]

Understanding Fake Removal Reviews: What You Need to Know

Your online reputation can significantly impact your business in this digital age of marketing. Negative Google results can deter potential customers, damage trust, and hurt your brand’s image. At Reputematters, we specialize in helping businesses remove or suppress unwanted negative search results to protect and enhance their online presence

[negativecontent]

Top Solutions to Remove Negative Content from Google Search Results

Your online reputation can significantly impact your business in this digital age of marketing. Negative Google results can deter potential customers, damage trust, and hurt your brand’s image. At Reputematters, we specialize in helping businesses remove or suppress unwanted negative search results to protect and enhance their online presence.

[jassdigitalmedia]

Guide to Negative Google Review Removal

Repute Matters offers a wide range of services, from monitoring your online presence and removing fake reviews to addressing negative feedback and improving ...

[dark-moonlust]

Bunny Teasing her Minotaur

Pairing: Minotaur x fem bunny reader

Summary: you tease your Minotaur boyfriend while he is on a business call. He teases you back

Warnings: minors don't interact, 18+!!!!, explicit smut, oral (fem receiving), p in v sex, big 🍆, lots 💦.

This is the full one-shot. It was posted first on Patreοn as my patrons get early access to my Tumblr posts! Enjoyyy!!!! Join me there for more exclusive content! 🖤

It was a quiet evening, save for the sounds of your boyfriend talking on the phone. He was sitting at his desk, focused on his call. And you lounged quietly on the plush sofa opposite his desk. His tall, powerful form was relaxed, his free hand playing with a nearby pen. His deep voice echoed through the room as he discussed company figures and strategies. You watched him, your eyes tracing his broad chest and his firm expression.

The day had been boring and he had been focused on work calls for hours. He was supposed to rest and spend some time with you. An idea sparked in your mind, heat stirring within you at what you were about to do.

Shifting on your seat, you sat with your thighs spread open; you wore nothing but an oversized hoodie of your boyfriend’s. Innocently, you slid your hands down your sides, between your legs and began to fondle your pussy. You opened your outer labia, exposed your entrance—

A hand slammed hard on the desk.

You jerked a little, a small smile on your lips. Your minotaur had taken notice of your mischief.

Indeed, he was watching you intensely, his brows furrowed.

Hiding a big grin, you continued the show, your fingers tracing your slit then up the bud of your clit. There you whined a little. And he did, too. His eyes were dark with desire, but he quickly cleared his throat and returned his attention to the call, his voice strict as he continued to speak. You thrust a finger into your pussy and then you heard a low growl.

“I have to hung up. I’ll review the documents and get back to you,” he said, his voice clipped. He ended the call and tossed the phone aside.

Your heart thundered when his eyes locked on you, his nostrils flared. You spread your legs wider, giving him a better view. You added a second finger inside your now drenched pussy, pumping them with deliberate slowness, showing off your slickness and puffy cunt.

In an heartbeat, he stood up, kneeling in front of you, eyes on your pussy.

“You want to play, bunny? Hm?” he growled, his large hands gripping your wrists and suckling your juices off your fingers.

“I was feeling lonely so I treated myself,” you said breathlessly. “Since you were too busy.”

His rough fingers traced your ears, a predatory smile spreading across his face. “I’m never too busy to fuck my bunny."

With practiced skill, he removed the hoodie from your body, your smooth body completely exposed beneath him. His hands kneaded your pert breasts, tongue flicking your swollen nipples. You arched and sought more friction but he stayed there, devouring your breasts, his tongue leaving red marks all over your chest.

It was blissful torture. Sweet torment.

His touches traveled low, leaving wet trails on your soft belly and into your bellybutton. Hands gripping under your ass, he brought you closer, draping your legs over his wide shoulders. His breath teased your folds before he buried his face in your pussy. You thrashed and wiggled but he kept you open to his shameless prodding, his tongue licking up your essence, his nose rubbing your clit.

“Keep your pretty cunt open for me,” he ordered bringing your fingers down to part the lips of your pussy.

Dazedly, you did that, drawing apart your outer labia and almost immediately a whimper left you when he licked a thick stripe up your pussy. He was relentless and you trembled, your fingers shaking, no longer baring your pussy to him.

“I said keep yourself open for me,” he ordered again, taking your hand and bringing it back down your folds.

With a soft nod, you obeyed, fingers opening your folds for him to devour. Time lost meaning as he circled your clit with the tip of his tongue then sucked at it. You squirmed, trying to get away but he kept his hold firm around you while he prodded your entrance, his tongue teasing you, but never quite dipping in.

He made you go breathier and breathier.

Suckling, teasing, prodding with his tongue. But never giving you what you craved. He always stopped when he sensed your orgasm building.

“Pl…ease,” you whimpered, your body trembling with need. “Please— hnn—n…. need you.”

“I want you to writhe and soak my face with your juicy cunt,” he said, his voice a low rumble. “You will not cum until I’m satisfied.”

And indeed you didn’t. He pleasured you but only to a point. He always drew back just in the nick of time. Restless and impatient you succumbed to him while he had his way with you. You very nearly sobbed and tugged impatiently at his shoulders.

“Too…mhh… too much!”

“That will teach your slutty pussy not to tease me again.”

“Sorry, baby,” you muttered, your eyes red and misty. “Wanted you so much—and you were so busy—“

“My little bunny wanted attention?” He drew back, his eyes sad. “Then I am to blame. Come little one. Your mate will give you what you need.”

And with that, he bent back down and began to suckle your poor clit in his warm mouth. This time he didn’t stop. His thumb added to the play and at the mere touch against your pussy, you came with a blissful cry, your whole body shaking, tears of joy at your eyes. It was the strongest, most intense orgasm and you rode it gratefully, his vibrating moans spurring you on.

You barely registered when he shifted, his pants were unfastened and his hard cock pulsed between your legs. Without a word, he thrust powerfully inside you and you cried out, hugging him tightly as he filled you to the brim. His veined shaft kissed your depths, fucking you fast and deep. The force of his slams made you see stars. You matched his movements, buckling and arching, your bodies moving in perfect harmony.

The room echoed with the sounds of you fucking— wet slaps, your moans and his growls.

Blindly, his lips captured yours and you tasted yourself in his sloppy demanding kiss. Your tongues brushed and tangled as both your pleasure rose higher and higher. You climaxed together, an explosion of sensations for both of you. He cried out your name as you milked his cock, a roar of satisfaction escaping his lips as he filled you with buckets of his seed.

“Well fucked and seed marked,” he drawled, his touch gentle as he stroked your ears, each movement making you melt further into his embrace.

Did you like it? *shakes tin can* maybe you’ll give me some hearts/comments/reblogs, please? 🥺🖤 Hugs!

[strangely-written-desires]

CW: Non-Con/Dub-Con

MINORS + AGELESS BLOGS DNI

You get one on pure impulse. The lure of it was tempting indeed, yours with one simple click of a button, and this one’s on a discount. How could you resist?

Slimes began trending just recently, with videos popping up on your page raving about how loveable they are, how they don’t require much, and how they are perfect pets if you’re away a lot.

Life has been stressful, and incredibly lonely, and this seemed like the perfect thing to help you get through it; it would be nice to have something to take care of, to look after. So you bought one.

It arrived quickly—one-day delivery is truly something—and in pristine condition. The packaging was odd—a single metal cylinder in such a big box—but you supposed that slimes could handle it; they’re resilient monsters, after all.

The cylinder is fancy—a smootn cream color, practically futuristic—and it has instructions on how to care for it. These include what to feed it (practically everything; rat poison is not recommended), how to play with it, and what to do if it starts to feel ill (very unlikely). You hum as you read it, pausing once you get to the red lettering.

‘Do not kiss or bite—’ Who’s biting these things? ‘—Human saliva contains bacteria harmful to slimes; if it ingests any bodily fluids, immediately keep your distance from it and call this number. XXX-XXX-XXX’

You furrow your brows at this, finding it odd, to say the least. Slimes are known to have the ability to eat anything, any poison having little to no effect on them; they’re virtually indestructible. But human saliva is what does it? You shrug, figuring that perhaps domesticated slimes are different—weaker, more prone to harm.

You open it, and the side of the container slides open with a hiss. It’s not long before it begins to spill out, latching onto your fingers before sliding onto your hand—cool and smooth to the touch.

You marvel at the sight of it, in awe, as it continues to climb up your arm, studying the feel of your skin and your scent. Its touch ticklish; you laugh at the feeling. It practically purrs at that, pleased as it tries to inch its way toward the source of the sound.

“Woah, woah, getting a little too close there, bud,” you comment, gently removing it from you, the warning still fresh in your mind, “wouldn’t want you to get hurt on your first day.”

You set it down on the ground, stepping back when it attempts to climb you once more. “How ‘bout you explore the place instead? It’s your home now, too, you know.”

It pauses its movements as if understanding you (you wouldn’t be surprised if it does; slimes are quite intelligent, or so you hear) before seemingly looking around the place—you can’t really tell because it has no face, no eyes to gaze upon. You leave it to its own devices, wanting it to adjust to your home and not crowd it too much.

Yet everywhere you go, it follows, never straying and always attempting to climb you. You eventually relent, letting it stick to your shoulder as you go about your day. It’s awfully clingy, not that you mind, but the reviews never said anything about that.

Slimes usually come in many different colors, but domesticated ones are vastly limited; those ones come in green (the classic), blue, and purple, but yours is different. It’s an unusual hot pink. A pretty color, but not common, not at all. Maybe that’s why it was on sale.

It feeds on anything, enjoying everything you give it. You’re sure if you gave it trash, it would munch on it happily—not that you’d ever do such a thing; your slime only eats the best of the best, the best of the best being whatever you eat. However, over the course of several days, you’ve found out its odd need to try and consume everything you put in your mouth.

Your toothbrush? Cups you’ve drunk from? Utensils you’ve used? You’ve had to bat it away, wrestle it off the counter, and keep it from devouring your discarded trash. You’ve even caught it trying to go through your dirty laundry.

Whatever reviews that said it was low maintenance and barely had any problems are fucking liars. Not that you would ever send it away; you adore it and its little odd quirks.

You specifically bought a slime-proof cage for when you have to step out and are unable to keep it devouring everything you touch. The container it came in would’ve done just fine, but you wanted it to have some space to move around in—to not feel contained and trapped in one tight place. You never thought it could escape; after all, it is “slime-proof,” specifically designed to keep it in place.

Those stressful days never do vanish, but its presence makes it better. Bearable. And you don’t feel lonely anymore. Instead, your days are filled with a sort of warmth that hadn’t been there before.

You're grateful for that.

Although, on particularly stressful days, you turn to more primitive ways of relief and relaxation.

Today’s one of those days.

And it’s on one of those days that you don’t hear it slipping out of its cage in the other room—glass broken and shattered, scattered across the floor. You don’t hear how it slithers to your bedroom, desperate to taste your arousal in the air. It slides under the crack of your door, basically speeding to get to where you are as you chase yourself to the edge—try and fail.

Your vibrator’s dead, and your fingers aren’t doing the job; they are too short to hit that gooey spot just right to make you shake with pleasure. Your frustration builds as you pump them in faster, swirling your clit in a desperate attempt to push you over.

You jolt when the slime creeps onto your leg, your orgasm falling flat. Your lip quivers, eyes blurring from the frustration of another failed attempt. Shock and anger burst through you, bewildered at how it escaped its cage.

“How did you even— What are you…stop it, get off,” you hissed, moving to pull it off your leg.

But your hand goes right through the slime; it doesn’t stop, continuing its ascent up your thigh. You panic, foolishly using the hand, still slick with your need, to move it. It pauses, your fingers tingle as it slurps up what’s left on it. You try to take back your hand, but it latches on, keeping it in place.

“Let go—”

Dread fills your chest, waiting for something to happen, but nothing does; if anything, it looks bigger. Once it's had a taste, you can feel it shiver for more. It unlatches, fingers thoroughly cleaned from your arousal.

You see small parts of itself reaching for your wet cunt, little tendrils reaching to taste the juices dripping from it. You try to bat it away, get it off you, but it doesn’t budge.

“Wait, don’t. Don’t—”

It’s too quick for you to stop it, soaking up the juices beneath you before moving onto your cunt. It’s eager, pushing itself into you with a forceful thrust; a choked gasp escapes your throat.

It buries itself in you, drowning itself in your slick just to taste it—devour it. Its want for more is almost monstrous; you feel it slowly growing inside you. It starts to move, doesn’t give you time to adjust, to process, before plunging deeper and deeper into you.

It has you writhing on your bed, gripping the sheets to have some sort of anchor. It retracts before diving back in.

You cry out, pleasure wracking you with each thrust, hitting that spot over and over again. You frantically rub your puffy clit, trying to reach that high that’ll have you falling over the ledge.

You should probably stop to think about how you currently are getting fucked by a slime—your supposed pet slime—but after multiple failed orgasms, you don’t think to care at the moment.

You feel it expanding, stretching you open with no remorse. Besides, you can’t stop it; it feels too good to stop, not that you could even if you wanted; it seems in no rush to slow down.

It’s not long before you fall over, toes curling, back arching as your eyes roll back. It fucks you through it, drinking up your cum like its last meal, leaving you panting and spent. Yet it doesn’t stop; it continues, despite how overstimulated you are. It makes you cum three more times before it decides it has its fill for the day.

It continues this routine everyday, there’s a day where your cunt isn’t stuffed full of it, milking you for all your worth. It doesn’t consume any food, deciding your cum’s enough to satiate its hunger.

You can’t tell if your decision to get a slime was a good one or not.

[taylorswiftstyle]

MTV Video Music Awards | September 11, 2024

Dior Resort 2025 Lorraine Schwartz earrings Stuart Weitzman ‘Ultrastuart Maverick Leather Boots’ - $1,550.00

Dior’s latest cruise collection was an ode to Scotland and the house’s first runway show held there in 7 decades. Creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri said of her inspiration, “Scotland is an important reference in the fashion world and I wanted to interpret it in a different way. For my generation, it’s so associated with punk.” The result was an offering full of voluminous skirts, dramatically cinched dresses, and hourglass jackets rendered in historically accurate tartans and, indeed, set off with certain punk sensibilities thanks to studded leather accessories and clompy buckled boots. 

The VMA dress code typically leans towards the wacky and the outrageous. Hence why Taylor has felt comfortable appearing in alphagetti soup baby onesies (aka The Incident, circa 2014). I’ll put it on record again and again that I may pull a face at that look (and still do, a decade later) but I will always appreciate a risk (relative to the wearer). Fashion should be fun! 

The collection filters Scotland’s most historic women into its fabrics. Namely, Mary Queen of Scots: a fiery Sagittarius woman I’d like to think Taylor might feel kinship with. During her years of imprisonment in England by QEI, Mary would insert veiled - often political - symbols into her embroidery. At one point even the phrase, "In my end lies my beginning" was embroidered into her state's clothes. Doesn’t that feel, “In the death of her reputation, she felt truly alive”? 

In his review of this Dior runway, Mark Holgate for Vogue described the collection as one that “drew on the geopolitics of fabric[s …] and the way [Mary] gave political commentary through her embroideries.” He described the series as full of “defiant beauty and an equally defiant energy. It felt uncompromising. But then maybe women can’t afford to be anything but that, especially now.” If a possible connect, I admire this evocation in the wake of Taylor’s major political endorsement. Especially given Chiuri worked with the iconic Harris Tweeds for their artisan, loomed wool. This teed her up nicely for an onstage call to action to remind viewers to register to vote.

All-in, this felt like a cohesive night of looks to underpin TTPD’s aesthetic. The runway’s interplay of proportions and bustier-like top are very TTPD - sensual, emboldened, playing with what to reveal and what to hide. A look that’s dark academia adjacent. 

I do find the biker gloves (also by Dior) confusing and I’m searching for insight on their ‘why’. At the Grammys, I could buy into the ‘Albatross’ reference in her black elbow-length gloves. These? I’m still trying to make sense of. A straitjacket allusion, perhaps? Were I to make some styling tweaks, I would have removed the gloves, opted for the coordinating tartan shorts from the runway, and changed the boots out to an equally tall but caged style to tie into the patterned effect of the ensemble.

Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris via Getty Images

[starillusion13]

Hi! can I request an ateez 9th member poly au but the scenario is they make her feel left out, being mean and entertains another girl from another grp and she was painted as the villain by that girl! so they gang up on her, she suddenly left the group and now they’re chasing her back!!

Missing Piece

Pairing: Ateez!ot8 x f!reader

Genre: Idol au, Angst, Mature

Warnings: ignorance, tired, mention of drugs( just a rumor), leaving the group, feeling left out, light arguments, anxiety, evil intentions(a pick me not y/n), a mess of emotions nothing more.

W.C: 6.9k

Note: please I want to thanks to people for reading and reblogging. Reviews are always appreciated. Spread love not hate. After writing this fic, I realized that I don't know how to write 9th member fics😔. I hope this what you wanted anon<3.

Network: @cultofdionysusnet @k-vanity

Now let’s take a moment to appreciate my dear friend @dreamsoffanfics Thanks for helping me out and being my proofreader. A dear friend indeed <3.

"Congratulations Ateez!"

Whenever this phrase echoed, you always felt proud and satisfied with yourself for coming a long way. It's obvious that your hard work and determination made it possible for you to stand strong and shine on this ground.

But, a wave of emotions was running inside you today because of the feelings that are itching your mind.

The scandals you are in lately.

The staff and other idols who are passing by while making your way towards the private room are constantly congratulating you and the members of your group. They all are having a wide smile across their faces but you just hesitantly smiled towards others. You know very well that everyone is aware of the scandal you are currently dealing with.

You excuse yourself from the washroom and Hongjoong notices you stepping away in another direction. He called out your name and asked where you were off to but you didn't reply or turned back.

All the members were gathered in front of their room to enter but when they saw their leader---the captain was standing in front of the door and looking in a particular direction. They all looked towards your fading figure into the hallway.

"Where is she going now?" San asked the captain but quickly noticed the anger on his face.

Hongjoong slammed open the door and others followed him inside the room, "I don't know. She didn't reply to me when I asked her. She is really becoming stubborn."

"What's her problem? Isn't she acting so childish all the time?" Mingi slumped down on a cushioned chair and closed his eyes when placing himself comfortably.

Jongho shook his head while removing the mic and earpiece from around his neck and placing it on the wide desk in front of the mirror. "What about the updates on her scandal? The way she is sneaking around here and there, I feel like believing those are not just scandals."

"No. I don't think that's possible. I don't see a sign from her taking any drugs." Seonghwa stated and looked at the leader who was leaning against the wall after removing all the unnecessary items from him. When he caught his eyes, the one standing sighed.

"But she didn't even deny it." Hongjoong said and raised a brow.

Yeosang nodded and spoke up, earning others attention to his words,"When the manager asked her to explain the matter she remained silent and was staring down as if she was high on drugs. Even when the company tried to answer the question about her on the internet, she refused to make a statement."

Some of them nodded and others had confusion visible on their faces.

Wooyoung pointed at your bag beside his and asked, "why did she bring this bag again?" He lifted the bag and found it to be the same bag which you're carrying everywhere, "it seems like she has a lot of stuff inside it."

"Open it." Hongjoong orders the younger one but he hesitated to the command. "I said open it. I am asking you for it and she has no say in this."

"But it's a girl's bag."

"Don't act like we don't stay together. Even if I ask her about bringing this bag, she won't reply. And if something inappropriate is there then we would apologize to her later."

The younger nodded but before he could open the bag. The manager entered. Hongjoong signaled to put the bag down.

It was always a bit challenging for you to be in a group where you are the only female member. All the fans accepted you very willingly and gave you lots of love on the day when it was announced you would be the last member of the debut line. Yeah, the competition had always included the five girls with the boys but you didn't expect back then to be in the lineup of the final showdown. As you were very sure of Minnie to be debuting with them. Her talents and looks are always remarkable and you admired her dance moves and vocals so much. And, you're sure others loved her more than you. They have a strong friendship with her even after her debuting in a different group 'Stray Kids'.

But your members never made you feel left out or different for being a girl. At first they were a bit hesitant to have you as the member but gradually you all became close and had so much fun together during the first MV shooting. Your debut was memorable with you all traveling to a different country and experiencing several new things.

Moreover, your members treated you like the baby of the group. They pampered you so much and of course, they won't leave a chance to annoy the shit out of you. You felt closer with Jongho because he was around your age so you were always paired up with him. And that's how the deep friendship started between you both.

Ateez are very close with Stray Kids and for that you all often meet them to dine out and hang out on off schedule days and after encore and promotion stages. You loved Minho's company a lot because you both clicked together perfectly. But there was something you noticed: San doesn't like you spending time with Stray Kids and sometimes, he and the others often drag you away with your members telling them that they need to hurry back to the dorm because something urgent came up. Only for you to get scolded later by Hongjoong that being so friendly with others would lead you to get into a lot of scandals.

What about them?

They often can be seen talking with Minnie after the performances or concerts and even two or three of them hanging out with her. Did you ever say anything? No. Then how come the dating rules only apply to you? You had enough one day and screamed at her and them, telling them that because of her Ateez would soon be under controversy but she quickly apologized to you and cried to them.

That was not the end. Because of her Hongjoong treated you really badly. He and other members used harsh words on you and others supported him on the fact that you had overreacted for no reason. They really started to go out alone without you - you were already used to it. But after the incident, they purposely made you feel left out. That didn't even stop them being friendly with her. They even did the new dance challenge with her and the way she was leaning on Seonghwa's arm made you glare at the video longer until the manager announced the practice time.

All these struggles really made you exhausted day by day and it's even showing in your performances and interaction with others. One afternoon, you were in the middle of the preparation for the comeback when you suddenly got to know about something trending under your name on all social media platforms.

'Is y/n really taking drugs?'

And the comments under the post - some supporting your side saying it's fake but you were shocked to see the amount of people believing the post and making strong comments that your recent appearances do look like you are under its effects. You ignored the news, you ignored everyone. You thought about the trainee days and then after debuting. You had lots of fun with Ateez. There are a lot of good memories and there are a lot more than just memories which couldn't be revealed everywhere. You tried to talk with others but never had the courage so you kept everything to yourself. Whenever you were asked to clarify on this matter, you remained silent.

One day, finally you had a talk session with your manager to discuss the ongoing situation. Many of your fans went against you and you accepted their opinions because you didn't make any strong denial statement on it so it's obvious for people to suspect you. You are being a bad influence on the industry.

"Are you sure about this?" the manager had concern and worry etched across her face but you just nodded and sighed when she kept staring at you.

"I don't want to change my mind. I have come up with this decision after thinking a lot."

She opened a file on her tablet before passing it to you to read, "read this. And, what about them? This is a big decision so please think carefully."

"I know."

"Will you be fine after this? People might blame you more."

"I don't have any other option. Even if I have, this is the only thing that seems right to me right now."

She just nodded in acceptance.

.

.

.

As the manager entered the room, she noticed Wooyoung placing your bag down to the side of the chair. Hongjoong stepped forward to greet her and she sent a quick smile to everyone present in the room, also noticing your absence there.

"You all don't have any more upcoming schedules this week so hurry up, we have to leave for the dorm. You guys look so tired. You all didn't got enough rest the last few days." She announced and stared at Hongjoong who seemed to want to ask her something.

"Do you want to say something?"

He nodded, "Y/n is not here since we came back from the stage. She went towards the stairs and I asked her but she seemed a bit lost. Where is she? Do you know about it?"

She sighed, "she is probably in the restroom, don't worry."

"Before the day of the comeback, she had a talk with you. What did she tell?" Seonghwa asked, who was now wearing a black t-shirt with just a washed face. He wasn't wearing his stage outfit anymore.

"You all will get to know about it tomorrow morning."

"What is it that you can't tell us now?" San asked her curiously.

She shook her head, "it's not like that. I can tell you but she doesn't want me to tell you. Don't get your hopes up. Just know it's nothing good." She handed over the food bag to them so that they could feed themselves inside the van while going back home. She asked the last two members to quickly change into a comfortable outfit and took your outfit to the restroom.

.

.

As soon as she handed you the outfit, you thanked her and asked her to wait outside. Changing into the comfortable soft fabrics made you sigh in relief. But you felt tears welling up in your eyes while staring down at the mic, earpiece and the stage outfit in your hand. A lot of emotions coursing through you but your mind was only focusing on the fact - this was your last stage performance.

You wiped your tears and put on a fake smile before exiting the door. the manager took the things from your hands but before you could step forward, she grabbed your wrist and looked at your face, scanning the smudged eyeshadow and liner. You were crying and she caressed your hand.

"Y/n, you are not okay with this. Please, I would suggest that you change your mind."

You shook your head before removing her hand. "Trust me. I will be okay without all of these problems." She watched your retreating figure until you took a sharp turn.

When you reached the door of the private room, it was expected to hear their loud laugh or them having weird singing competitions that could be heard from outside. But now, it's so quiet. Are they that tired? Or did they already leave for the dorm without you? That's not possible, the car was for you nine so it won't leave until nine of you have entered it.

You tightly held the handle before pushing the door open only to find them gathered around the couch but staring at you. You noticed Wooyoung holding a bag at the end of the couch.

A bag, wait, your bag. No!

You hurriedly went over to the couch to find it was your bag and the things were already scattered on it. You tried to pull the bag from his hold until Yeosang grabbed your wrist and turned you around.

"What is this?" he asked you in a demanding tone.

You licked your lips before prying his hand off from your wrist, "nothing. you don't have to know." You snatched the bag, "and why did you even touch my bag without my permission?"

"Since when are we asking each other to touch our things?" Yunho asked and got up from the chair to make his way towards you. You tried to pick up the things and place them inside the bag but Hongjoong blocked your hand and signaled Mingi to take the things away from you. The tall man finally stood in front of you, "and you better explain what all these boxes are for?"

"Nothing..."

Yunho exhaled sharply and grabbed your biceps tightly, "Y/n, what are you hiding from us? what is it that you can't tell us?"

Mingi was glancing between you and the things which he was putting inside the bag. Seonghwa stood beside the man holding you and stared at you sharply, "are these the drugs?"

"Please just shut up!" you screamed at them.

They slightly flinched at your sudden outburst but it was not noticeable by you as your teary eyes blurred your view. You put your palm over your ears and closed your eyes tightly.

"Please shut up. I can't hear any more of this. I know you don't trust me like before but please don't blame me every time. Because of me, this group is already under so much controversy and I'm really sorry for that."

You were going through a lot and having them all cornering you in the room, confined to a little space was too much.

San pushed Yunho so that he could hug your crying form, "It's okay, y/n. No one is blaming you. But why are there so many boxes containing various pills in your bag? You can tell me if those are distractions." he continuously rubbed your back.

You were crying in his hold, clutching his white t-shirt tightly. He didn't care that his fresh t-shirt was getting wet because of your tears when you were crying helplessly. It was breaking their heart to see you like this but what could they do. If you are doing something wrong then they must solve it and for that they need to talk to you but here you are not telling anything and always ignoring them since the incident happened between you and Minnie.

Realizing you were holding San tightly, you quickly removed his arms from around you and glared at him. Everyone observed your sudden change in mood and Hongjoong held your biceps to turn you towards him. At the tight hold you said harshly "let go of me."

"Y/n, enough. What's wrong with you suddenly?" His demanding tone was obvious and your glaring eyes didn't faze his expression. "Don't show me that look."

"Then leave me."

"Joong, leave her hand. We are all tired and we need to go to the dorm. We can ask her about this there." Seonghwa said calmly and placed his palm on the younger's shoulder. the latter sighed and you snatched your hand from him.

Everyone's eyes followed how disheveled you were looking while picking up your things and no one tried to stop you as you were all going to the same place after all. When you pulled the zip of your bag, Wooyoung stepped forward to offer you the food but you rejected it and went outside the room, slamming the door. They flinched at the loud noise but no one noticed your tears and emotions while exiting the private room backstage for the last time.

"I will be good without all of them." You have repeated this line to yourself a lot of times but still you felt the emotions to return back all over again.

Wiping your eyes, you raised your head only to find Minnie standing in front of you with folded hands and innocent eyes, the way she always looks at others. She was still wearing a faerie stage outfit and smiling at you. Ignoring her presence, you tried to turn around but her voice made you halt.

"Are you carrying those drugs in the bag again? So should I post it clearly that you are being spotted taking drugs?" she was smirking when you turned around.

"What are you saying?" You gripped the bag tightly when she glanced at it and chuckled. Stepping forward to you, her smirk grew wider, "it was me who posted that about you. and even if you say this to anyone, no one is going to believe you."

"It was...you." you watched her in disbelief when she lightly laughed and twirled a strand of hair between her delicate thin fingers. She pouted and blinked at you, "you shouted at me in front of them so I had to take my revenge."

"And it's just-"

"It hurts my pride." She made a disgusted face at you and bumped against your shoulder, "well, thank me for not doing something else but....I just ruined your career. Goodbye!"

You saw her walking like on a cat walk towards the corridor and smiling innocently to everyone in her way. She turned a little and smirked at you before taking a turn leaving you there in shock.

"Y/n...you're still here." You heard Jongho's voice and then saw others exiting the room but before they could ask you something, you ran towards the elevator and fortunately it just opened for the staff members queuing in front of it and you got inside with them. They were all glancing at you because of your weird behavior and you being alone with a sad look.

As soon as the ding sound indicated the arrival to the ground floor, you wasted no time and speedily walked towards the car. You got inside and sat in the far back, waiting for others to come.

.

.

After they got into the car, they found you sleeping peacefully at the back. "She is sleeping." Yunho told others and placed your head on his shoulder while adjusting in the seat beside you.

"Let her sleep. She is extremely tired." Hongjoong said and scolded Wooyoung who was about to say something loudly.

Seonghwa shook his head, "but she has to eat."

"I will feed her after we reach home. Leave her for a while. Let's not ask her anything more today." Yeosang started and closed his eyes while leaning back.

Yunho kept stroking your head so that you don't wake up and he felt you nuzzling into him and he smiled while looking down at you.

>>>><<<<

You stretched your arms, you heard their voices coming from a distance. You groaned and rubbed your eyes. Your body was aching so bad that you felt like going back to sleep again. But then you remembered your plans for this night.

You got up and stepped outside the room, their voices were coming from the living room and when some of them caught your sleepy figure entering the room they sent a smile towards you.

"Y/n come eat with me. Others have already had their dinner and I will accompany you while the rest keep doing whatever they do at the moment." Yeosang called you from the table and patted the chair beside him. You were hungry but you didn't feel like eating anything because of all the emotions you had inside.

Is my decision okay?

You shook off the feeling and walked towards the table. Some returned back to discuss the topic they were busy with and the youngest of the two joined you both at the table.

"So, as we don't have a schedule this week. How about we go on a trip somewhere?" Wooyoung suggested and Yeosang nodded before urging to start eating.

Your heart ached when you heard the joy in his voice and how they were planning for the week.

"But can we not spend time inside the dorm? I don't feel like going out." Jongho whined.

"What do you say, y/n?" Yeosang asked and you glanced at him to your side but remained silent.

He shared a glance with Wooyoung before the younger one spoke up: "Hey! Do you want to stay inside or go out? We will decide after what you say."

"I......whatever you all will agree on." You mumbled softly.

"But-"

"I said whatever you guys will agree on! It doesn't matter what I say. You all will be off on your own." You stood up from the table and took deep breaths, "have fun without me. Whatever you guys do, enjoy yourself and live a happy life."

"Y/n...if-"

"Yeo I don't want to hear anything. I'm going to sleep. Goodnight."

The moment you had to pass the couch where others were sitting but their attention was on you after you shouted at the table, Mingi grabbed your hand, "Are you okay?"

You glanced at the grip and to the others.

"You all are always meant for each other. The eight of you are soulmates and I'm just an extra character who acted as a villain in the group and destroyed your success with my scandal."

Hongjoong stood up, "Don't think like that. We can sort this out together."

"No. People already hate me for this and even if I try to claim myself innocent then all the fame I have already lost is never coming back. I'll still receive more hate. It wouldn't have happened if you guys really cared for me." You whispered the last line.

San scratched his neck and spoke up, "But you have us. Even if they hate you, we will show them that you are the best."

"But you don't have me. I can't do anything in return so it's better for me to move away from the scene so that you don't have a problem on your way to success. There's still a long way to go and I can't stop you all from that."

Seonghwa shook his head, "You are not stopping us. You keep us motivated, Y/n. You'll always be with us like the final missing piece of the puzzle."

"Sometimes there's an extra piece to distract you and confuse you and I'm that extra piece. You are already complete without me."

"Why are you thinking like this?" Mingi asked you softly.

"Because you all made me feel like this." You sighed and turned back but before stepping forward, you said loudly, "Just remember that even if I'm not with you all in this journey you all will move forward and achieve everything. You deserve a lot and on top of that, be happy. Don't let yourself fall apart because of a missing piece."

Your quick steps led you to your room and you fell on your bed. Cries getting muffled by the sheet and you pushed your face into it more. When you were saying those words earlier, you stood strong but deep down, your heart was heavy.

Time passed and you didn't realize when you fell asleep. A figure stepped inside your room, he smiled at your sleeping figure, his dimples peeking out even in the dark and his sharp eyes staring at you softly. He adjusted your body to a comfortable position and pulled you closer to him, lulling you to sleep. You mumbled something in your sleep and he smiled and patted your head. Soon, he fell asleep with you in his arms.

Now, this is the secret that nobody knows yet. You're dating all of them. Since the day of the debut you all found comfort in each other's arms. This can't be mentioned in the public media and nothing can be obvious if you are really dating one of them - let alone all of them. They're always so protective and showered you with love, making your heart warm and a wide smile visible on your face.

In many shows and interviews, you've referred to them as your strongest pillars of life and that you would be always thankful to them for being with you.

But lately it turned into a disaster after you all met her again after a year at the show when Minnie introduced herself to them and they became friends quickly. You didn't mind the friendship at first but when they started to blame you on whatever she tells them, they started pointing out her right proving you wrong in every aspect.

She really had to destroy your career---even your relationship with them.

<<<<<<>>>>>>

"You are here?" Yunho yawned while nodding his head and rubbed his eyes while making his way towards the table after greeting the leader. "I thought you're the one sleeping with her."

Yunho shook his head before gulping down the water, "No. San told me that he wanted to sleep with her." Hongjoong nodded and turned his attention back to the food on the table.

The rest of them soon started to gather around in the living room. Wooyoung saw San coming last into the wide space but all alone. He creased his brows and asked him, "Isn't she coming for breakfast?" He put down the plate on the table.

"It'll soon be lunch time." Jongho said and laughed. Yeah, it's true that they woke up so late that they have passed the morning and it's already noon but they're still preparing breakfast.

San, who was still rubbing his eyes, looked at him and then around the room, "She isn't here?"

"No..."

"When I woke up, she was not in the bed."

Hongjoong stood up and took the phone in his hand before watching everyone in confusion,

"Did she tell any of you where she is going today? Does she have something to do?"

He dialed your number but the line was dead.

Mingi skipped to your room to see if you had left any sticky note but nothing was there. Wait. Not even your things were there. Only a few items were there but the photo frames with a few boxes were missing too. He went back into the living room to inform the others about it. They were so lost and confused about the situation when suddenly the doorbell rang.

Jongho quickly opened it to be greeted by their manager whose appearance was more serious than usual. She walked inside and looked at everyone before sighing and sitting on the chair near her, "Have you checked your phones?"

When they shook their heads and told her that they had just woken up. She turned her phone screen around to take a look at it.

'Y/n, the member of Ateez is leaving the group...'

San snatched the phone from her hand and scrolled down the whole post only to find out the news was announced by their own company and there was also an apology letter from your side posted. So many things happened just in the morning.

"What is this? Where is she?" Hongjoong demanded a clarification of this situation from her but she only shook her head before brushing some strands of hair back.

"She has already left the place. These past few days, you were busy and didn't notice her preparing for this day so I was there to help her collect everything. I tried to change her decision, make her understand but she had already lost hope in this. She was so disturbed with the whole scandal and all."

"Can't we contact her?" Wooyoung asked her while tears were threatening to fall from his eyes.

"No. Your company has banned you from having any contact with a former member. I don't think it's good for your image."

"I don't care about my image. I want her back. How can she leave the group? And she didn't tell us anything about this the whole time..."

Seonghwa looked at the leader and sighed, "That's why she was saying things like that last night."

And now, they realized how they have ignored you all these past months just to believe that girl whom they had befriended and trusted so much that they doubted you on taking drugs and being jealous of others too much.

But their career can't be stopped here. They need to move forward on this journey - even if that means with a missing piece in their group.

>>>><<<<

[2 years later]

"8 makes 1 team...Hello we are Ateez."

The whole audience in the arena cheered. Ateez with wide smiles and sparkling eyes were watching their fans from overseas greeting them by shouting out their names. They felt so loved at that moment that they forgot the pain inside their heart, not getting to be loved by you anymore.

They love their fans a lot but your love was the precious one and when Yeosang realized that you were not there beside him in the choreography, tears fell from his eyes. It's already been 2 years but still everytime he cries during this step where you are no longer smiling while spinning with him in the center.

The concert went for two hours and they quickly changed into some casual wear afterwards and decided on takeout for the day.

The next day, at night they planned to stroll around the city and take in the view of the new place overseas and enjoy the place. They were not given any schedules for the vlog so they were free to roam around.

"I have seen this place just across the street that has a good variety of foods. Let's try it out." Yunho stated his search for this place and others agreed quickly.

All of them entered the big glass door of the restaurant and eyes roaming around in appreciation of the new place. The things decorating the tables, shelves and each corner with the soft melody of the overflowing music with the right amount of warmth and light were a perfect setting. Many customers turned towards them, a table with four girls recognized them but the rest just watched them curiously as they were standing awkwardly until a waiter offered them a helping hand.

They opted for a table at the very end as it was a bit away from the other tables and a bit hidden by a wooden rack.

They all settled down and the waiter waited for them to order. After a lot of complaints, whines, bickers and scolding, they had decided on the menu to be ordered finally.

For the time being, they were waiting for the food to arrive. They gossiped on a lot of stuff, few scrolling through Instagram and taking aesthetic pictures of the place but they don't forget to see any update from your private account. nothing. Jongho sighed and switched off his phone.

"Here is the food!" A cheerful voice made them look up at the person with two others trailing behind her. The girl didn't look at their faces but the eight boys from around the table were staring at her. she was joking with the girl beside her while placing all the bowls down the table. the other two left her when she turned around, "is there some-"

her voice got lost in her throat when she finally locked eyes with the ones watching her intently.

"y/n. you are here."

oh. they're having tours in this country. you're so busy these past few days that you didn't notice that they have announced the tour dates. yeah, even if you have left the group and moved away to a different country, you keep yourself updated with them.

you just can't get over them and this kills you inside.

"uh...um...congratulations on the comeback."

"Why did you leave the group? You don't even contact any of us." Hongjoong asked you from just the opposite direction from where you were standing.

"Isn't it obvious that I left the group not to keep in touch with you all?"

"But why?"

"Now your group is free from scandals and under no controversy. You all are having comebacks and your fans even forgot about me and giving you all the love you guys deserve. So what's the point of me being there." You chuckled in an unamused way.

Wooyoung stood up and suddenly hugged you catching you off guard, "you don't know how much we missed you. Everyday we thought that you'll call one of us or will show up to the front door. But you totally disappeared."

"It hurt us, baby. It hurts to not wake up to your side. It hurts not to see your smiling face and you walking around the dorm. Heck! I watched all the videos of you to hear your voice." San bit his lip to prevent himself from crying.

It hurts me too...

You just curled your fingers, wanting them to stop or you might break down in front of them. You thought after joining at your friend's restaurant that you won't ever come across your past life but who knew after two years here, you would be facing them again.

Licking your lips, you pushed Wooyoung off from you and eyed him before turning to them, "but you all became used to ignoring me then why suddenly you all are acting like this."

"No it's not like that."

"Really Mingi? Are you sure you're not the person who blamed me that for me all your hard work will be gone."

The chatters around the place increased with the entry of some more customers. Little did you know, your friend noticed the current situation you were in and she told other workers to take your place and not mind anything at the end table.

Jongho glared at Mingi but still he also knew that the news got them all shattered because it was their first accusation after the debut and they knew very well the cause of any controversy regarding a group. They all feared for their dreams to be crashing down.

But they were also worried for you. They all asked you about it but you're not the outspoken type and you remained silent and refused to talk to anyone. You distanced yourself from them when they hinted their anger towards you and it really scared you.

and that girl Minnie really played her wicked games with them at their weakest moment. "I'm sorry. Please forgive us for not being there for you. We-"

"Jongho, there's nothing to forgive or forget. I had some great memories with you all and I loved every moment but for me I don't want someone's dreams to end."

You weakly smiled at them.

"But what about you? How are you?" Seonghwa asked you while he approached you and held your hands in his, he caressed the soft skin and stared down.

"Honestly, I don't even know about myself. I'm totally living a different life. People don't recognize me after dying my hair and not wearing makeup and I don't come out often to serve the customers but unfortunately today I did and...."

"And what about the......drugs?"

"Joong-"

"It's okay Hwa. He is just obeying his rules being a leader." You bit your lip when retreating the hand from the hold, "those boxes in my bag were not drugs. Those were my anxiety pills. I used label-less boxes so that people won't know about my problems but that only led to some bigger problems."

Yunho stepped forward, "you had anxiety?" You nodded.

"What caused you this? I swear y/n tell me what happened to have this happen?" He was furious and you watched his impatient hand brushed his hair back.

"Yunho.....it's you guys. You all did this to me." After voicing out the words, you stared at them blankly.

"Us?" Yeosang asked you but also to himself.

"The ignorance. The blames and accusations adding up to the online comments on my posts were stressing me out and I had a consultation with my family psychiatrist." You sighed at the end of the sentence.

San suddenly asked you, "what about your dreams, y/n? You shared so many things with me with us. You planned a whole future with us. What about that?"

"I really wanted to spend my whole life with you all. To create so many memories together but I think those will just remain as dreams because of the rumors. Even if I want to get back. I won't because it would hamper your future and dream."

"But who spread the rumors on drugs?" Hongjoong sat down and held his head.

"It's-... it's..." you bit your lips and proceeded, "it's nothing. You don't have to worry about it now. I'm out of this whole thing and you are all free from all controversial posts."

You tried to smile but the tears falling from your eyes betrayed you.

"You are not coming back to us?" Yunho held your hand, he held it so dearly as if you were a delicate person. He didn't want to let it go but still somewhere in your eyes he saw the distance between you both.

There was no sign of love from you.

"No."

Jongho came in front of your view, "but please we need you. It's no more the same feelings without you. There's really a missing piece in our life." He gulped the lump of sadness and continued, "and, It's you, y/n."

"No you are a perfect team even without me. Eight makes a perfect team like you." You looked over all of them.

"And nine makes the perfect family." Seonghwa said in a hushed voice.

You shook your head, "then work on your teamwork and make it a family. I hope you will find a better girl for yourselves."

Wooyoung pushed aside Seonghwa and cupped your cheek and Hongjoong just stood behind him, watching you keenly.

"Please, y/n don't do this to me. I got to see you after two years and...and just for you to say leave me again?"

"Woo, people might be watching."

"I don't care."

"But I care. I have to work unlike you who will go back to your country after the tour ends. I have to stay back here and face these customers again and if somehow this scene got to the media then it'll be a new situation to handle. Please, I beg you. I don't want to be in a similar situation again."

You inhaled and continued, "and this time it won't be because of me but because of you. So stop before anything happens again."

" but you can stay with us. We can move out from the dorm and stay somewhere else. Also, you don't have to be with us for the sake of being a group member but as our girlfriend." Hongjoong said the words very precisely but you just laughed at him.

"You have lost the right to call me that way before. Don't say that word again. I hate it. I don't want to stay with any of you."

"But-"

"The food is getting cold. They worked hard in preparing this."

San held your hand when you stepped back, "At Least eat with us. Last time, you didn't even eat properly with us."

"Y/n, I miss you a lot." Yeosang looked at you with a longing feeling but you just ignored it.

I miss you all too...

And I know I shouldn't...

You took deep breaths, "I'm telling this to all of you. And it's my final wish to you so please kindly keep it. Just forget about me. You all have a long way to go to achieve success. Don't get stuck in the past. Pretend I never met you all. I was never a part of your life."

San gripped your wrist tighter.

Hongjoong said in a low voice, "this is impossible for us to do. How can we forget you? How can we forget all the memories of us?"

You stared at the grip and glanced at his face. He had changed a lot in these two years and the maturity in his voice and demeanor was visible.

He stared at you helplessly and waited for your response. You removed the grip and turned around.

"Enjoy the meal!"

How can they just eat now? They all have lost their appetite after this and the way you didn't even turn back to them for the last time left them staring at your direction until you disappeared behind the door beside the desk.

You entered the door and tears slid down your cheek and whispered to yourself, "pretend I was just a missing piece of your dream."

[I just realized that I don't know how to write 9th member aus like what did I write here. It could have been better but still I tried so appreciate me🥹]

Taglist: @mymoodwriting @justhere4kpop @anyamaris @yeoobin @icchyi @jwnghyuns @piratequeen-queenofgames @dinonuguaegi @oreharuuu @hwanring @sanwifesstuff @kiwiisnthereoops @kiwiraccoon @hyuukah @kazscara @aceofspadesbiofalltrades @nvdhrzn @meowmeeps @vtyb23 @haechansbbg

[open!]

[lisafication]

For those who might happen across this, I'm an administrator for the forum 'Sufficient Velocity', a large old-school forum oriented around Creative Writing. I originally posted this on there (and any reference to 'here' will mean the forum), but I felt I might as well throw it up here, as well, even if I don't actually have any followers.

This week, I've been reading fanfiction on Archive of Our Own (AO3), a site run by the Organisation for Transformative Works (OTW), a non-profit. This isn't particularly exceptional, in and of itself — like many others on the site, I read a lot of fanfiction, both on Sufficient Velocity (SV) and elsewhere — however what was bizarre to me was encountering a new prefix on certain works, that of 'End OTW Racism'. While I'm sure a number of people were already familiar with this, I was not, so I looked into it.

What I found... wasn't great. And I don't think anyone involved realises that.

To summarise the details, the #EndOTWRacism campaign, of which you may find their manifesto here, is a campaign oriented towards seeing hateful or discriminatory works removed from AO3 — and believe me, there is a lot of it. To whit, they want the OTW to moderate them. A laudable goal, on the face of it — certainly, we do something similar on Sufficient Velocity with Rule 2 and, to be clear, nothing I say here is a critique of Rule 2 (or, indeed, Rule 6) on SV.

But it's not that simple, not when you're the size of Archive of Our Own. So, let's talk about the vagaries and little-known pitfalls of content moderation, particularly as it applies to digital fiction and at scale. Let's dig into some of the details — as far as credentials go, I have, unfortunately, been in moderation and/or administration on SV for about six years and this is something we have to grapple with regularly, so I would like to say I can speak with some degree of expertise on the subject.

So, what are the problems with moderating bad works from a site? Let's start with discovery— that is to say, how you find rule-breaching works in the first place. There are more-or-less two different ways to approach manual content moderation of open submissions on a digital platform: review-based and report-based (you could also call them curation-based and flag-based), with various combinations of the two. Automated content moderation isn't something I'm going to cover here — I feel I can safely assume I'm preaching to the choir when I say it's a bad idea, and if I'm not, I'll just note that the least absurd outcome we had when simulating AI moderation (mostly for the sake of an academic exercise) on SV was banning all the staff.

In a review-based system, you check someone's work and approve it to the site upon verifying that it doesn't breach your content rules. Generally pretty simple, we used to do something like it on request. Unfortunately, if you do that, it can void your safe harbour protections in the US per Myeress vs. Buzzfeed Inc. This case, if you weren't aware, is why we stopped offering content review on SV. Suffice to say, it's not really a realistic option for anyone large enough for the courts to notice, and extremely clunky and unpleasant for the users, to boot.

Report-based systems, on the other hand, are something we use today — users find works they think are in breach and alert the moderation team to their presence with a report. On SV, this works pretty well — a user or users flag a work as potentially troublesome, moderation investigate it and either action it or reject the report. Unfortunately, AO3 is not SV. I'll get into the details of that dreadful beast known as scaling later, but thankfully we do have a much better comparison point — fanfiction.net (FFN).

FFN has had two great purges over the years, with a... mixed amount of content moderation applied in between: one in 2002 when the NC-17 rating was removed, and one in 2012. Both, ostensibly, were targeted at adult content. In practice, many fics that wouldn't raise an eye on Spacebattles today or Sufficient Velocity prior to 2018 were also removed; a number of reports suggest that something as simple as having a swearword in your title or summary was enough to get you hit, even if you were a 'T' rated work. Most disturbingly of all, there are a number of — impossible to substantiate — accounts of groups such as the infamous Critics United 'mass reporting' works to trigger a strike to get them removed. I would suggest reading further on places like Fanlore if you are unfamiliar and want to know more.

Despite its flaws however, report-based moderation is more-or-less the only option, and this segues neatly into the next piece of the puzzle that is content moderation, that is to say, the rubric. How do you decide what is, and what isn't against the rules of your site?

Anyone who's complained to the staff about how vague the rules are on SV may have had this explained to them, but as that is likely not many of you, I'll summarise: the more precise and clear-cut your chosen rubric is, the more it will inevitably need to resemble a legal document — and the less readable it is to the layman. We'll return to SV for an example here: many newer users will not be aware of this, but SV used to have a much more 'line by line, clearly delineated' set of rules and... people kind of hated it! An infraction would reference 'Community Compact III.15.5' rather than Rule 3, because it was more or less written in the same manner as the Terms of Service (sans the legal terms of art). While it was a more legible rubric from a certain perspective, from the perspective of communicating expectations to the users it was inferior to our current set of rules  — even less of them read it,  and we don't have great uptake right now.

And it still wasn't really an improvement over our current set-up when it comes to 'moderation consistency'. Even without getting into the nuts and bolts of "how do you define a racist work in a way that does not, at any point, say words to the effect of 'I know it when I see it'" — which is itself very, very difficult don't get me wrong I'm not dismissing this — you are stuck with finding an appropriate footing between a spectrum of 'the US penal code' and 'don't be a dick' as your rubric. Going for the penal code side doesn't help nearly as much as you might expect with moderation consistency, either — no matter what, you will never have a 100% correct call rate. You have the impossible task of writing a rubric that is easy for users to comprehend, extremely clear for moderation and capable of cleanly defining what is and what isn't racist without relying on moderator judgement, something which you cannot trust when operating at scale.

Speaking of scale, it's time to move on to the third prong — and the last covered in this ramble, which is more of a brief overview than anything truly in-depth — which is resources. Moderation is not a magic wand, you can't conjure it out of nowhere: you need to spend an enormous amount of time, effort and money on building, training and equipping a moderation staff, even a volunteer one, and it is far, far from an instant process. Our most recent tranche of moderators spent several months in training and it will likely be some months more before they're fully comfortable in the role — and that's with a relatively robust bureaucracy and a number of highly experienced mentors supporting them, something that is not going to be available to a new moderation branch with little to no experience. Beyond that, there's the matter of sheer numbers.

Combining both moderation and arbitration — because for volunteer staff, pure moderation is in actuality less efficient in my eyes, for a variety of reasons beyond the scope of this post, but we'll treat it as if they're both just 'moderators' — SV presently has 34 dedicated moderation volunteers. SV hosts ~785 million words of creative writing.

AO3 hosts ~32 billion.

These are some very rough and simplified figures, but if you completely ignore all the usual problems of scaling manpower in a business (or pseudo-business), such as (but not limited to) geometrically increasing bureaucratic complexity and administrative burden, along with all the particular issues of volunteer moderation... AO3 would still need well over one thousand volunteer moderators to be able to match SV's moderator-to-creative-wordcount ratio.

Paid moderation, of course, you can get away with less — my estimate is that you could fully moderate SV with, at best, ~8 full-time moderators, still ignoring administrative burden above the level of team leader. This leaves AO3 only needing a much more modest ~350 moderators. At the US minimum wage of ~$15k p.a. — which is, in my eyes, deeply unethical to pay moderators as full-time moderation is an intensely gruelling role with extremely high rates of PTSD and other stress-related conditions — that is approximately ~$5.25m p.a. costs on moderator wages. Their average annual budget is a bit over $500k.

So, that's obviously not on the table, and we return to volunteer staffing. Which... let's examine that scenario and the questions it leaves us with, as our conclusion.

Let's say, through some miracle, AO3 succeeds in finding those hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of volunteer moderators. We'll even say none of them are malicious actors or sufficiently incompetent as to be indistinguishable, and that they manage to replicate something on the level of or superior to our moderation tooling near-instantly at no cost. We still have several questions to be answered:

How are you maintaining consistency? Have you managed to define racism to the point that moderator judgment no longer enters the equation? And to be clear, you cannot allow moderator judgment to be a significant decision maker at this scale, or you will end with absurd results.

How are you handling staff mental health? Some reading on the matter, to save me a lengthy and unrelated explanation of some of the steps involved in ensuring mental health for commercial-scale content moderators.

How are you handling your failures? No moderation in the world has ever succeeded in a 100% accuracy rate, what are you doing about that?

Using report-based discovery, how are you preventing 'report brigading', such as the theories surrounding Critics United mentioned above? It is a natural human response to take into account the amount and severity of feedback. While SV moderators are well trained on the matter, the rare times something is receiving enough reports to potentially be classified as a 'brigade' on that scale will nearly always be escalated to administration, something completely infeasible at (you're learning to hate this word, I'm sure) scale.

How are you communicating expectations to your user base? If you're relying on a flag-based system, your users' understanding of the rules is a critical facet of your moderation system — how have you managed to make them legible to a layman while still managing to somehow 'truly' define racism?

How are you managing over one thousand moderators? Like even beyond all the concerns with consistency, how are you keeping track of that many moving parts as a volunteer organisation without dozens or even hundreds of professional managers? I've ignored the scaling administrative burden up until now, but it has to be addressed in reality.

What are you doing to sweep through your archives? SV is more-or-less on-top of 'old' works as far as rule-breaking goes, with the occasional forgotten tidbit popping up every 18 months or so — and that's what we're extrapolating from. These thousand-plus moderators are mostly going to be addressing current or near-current content, are you going to spin up that many again to comb through the 32 billion words already posted?

I could go on for a fair bit here, but this has already stretched out to over two thousand words.

I think the people behind this movement have their hearts in the right place and the sentiment is laudable, but in practice it is simply 'won't someone think of the children' in a funny hat. It cannot be done.

Even if you could somehow meet the bare minimum thresholds, you are simply not going to manage a ruleset of sufficient clarity so as to prevent a much-worse repeat of the 2012 FF.net massacre, you are not going to be able to manage a moderation staff of that size and you are not going to be able to ensure a coherent understanding among all your users (we haven't managed that after nearly ten years and a much smaller and more engaged userbase). There's a serious number of other issues I haven't covered here as well, as this really is just an attempt at giving some insight into the sheer number of moving parts behind content moderation:  the movement wants off-site content to be policed which isn't so much its own barrel of fish as it is its own barrel of Cthulhu; AO3 is far from English-only and would in actuality need moderators for almost every language it supports — and most damning of all,  if Section 230 is wiped out by the Supreme Court  it is not unlikely that engaging in content moderation at all could simply see AO3 shut down.

As sucky as it seems, the current status quo really is the best situation possible. Sorry about that.

[sir-kettle-of-countertop]

So, I saw a post circulating here about the “extinction of birds in 2023“, with this picture attached

My, what a bold claim! All these poor birdies, “went extinct” in just one year alone? Why would such an outrageous, depressing and catchy claim be spread around? Let’s fact check it.

All the species listed, Bachman’s wabler (Vermivora bachmanii, 1988 or 1980s), Kāmaʻo or large Kauaʻi thrush (Myadestes myadestinus, 1989 or 1987), Bridled white-eye (Zosterops conspicillatus, 1983 and 1983), Kauai ʻakialoa (Akialoa stejnegeri, 1969 or 1960s), Kauaʻi ʻōʻō (Moho braccatus, 1987 and 1987), Kauaʻi nukupuʻu (Hemignathus hanapepe, 1899 and 1899), Maui ʻakepa (Loxops ochraceus, 1988 and 1988), Kākāwahie or Molokaʻi creeper (Paroreomyza flammea, 1963 and 1963), Maui nukupuʻu (Hemignathus affinis, 1896* and 1996 ) and Poʻouli (Melamprosops phaeosoma, 2004 and 2004) are all, indeed, either extinct or possibly extinct, according to IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

What are the dates after the scientific names? Well, those all are *last sightings* per IUCN Red List and USFWS accordingly. So, these birds were not seen for DECADES and in one case FOR MORE THAN A GODDAMN CENTURY. And sure as hell there is NO information about them very suddenly being gone all last year.

What’s the deal then? Where did this claim even come from? Well, likely from this article "21 Species Delisted from the Endangered Species Act due to Extinction" from U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. It includes all the birds in the picture (with the last date of sight, listed above).

From the article: “The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is delisting 21 species from the Endangered Species Act due to extinction. Based on rigorous reviews of the best available science for each of these species, the Service determined these species are extinct and should be removed from the list of species protected under the ESA. Most of these species were listed under the ESA in the 1970s and 80s and were in very low numbers or likely already extinct at the time of listing.”

They didn’t ALL fucking suddenly drop dead all in the same year – if they did, as some other people have already pointed out, there would be an uproar EVERYWHERE. Ornithologists alone would not let it live down. They were officially delisted from endangered status by U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service that year, there was a proposition to do so back in 2021, too. Some were already declared extinct before by IUCN.

Despite not being seen for so long, they remained on the list of critically endangered for a long while, cause you cannot just immediately declare a species extinct. There’s no RTS unit amount number that goes to 0 once there’s nothing left; people keep checking for them over and over and over again. Sometimes it turns out that a species previously thought to be extinct is actually still out there. Attenborough's long-beaked echidna for example was last sighted SIXTY YEARS ago before being sighted again in 2023. It was thought to be extinct for a while, before 2007, when signs of its activity was spotted again. More often than not though, a species turns out to be actually very extinct, unfortunately – like in this case. I cannot possibly know if the creators of this picture, or people that spread it on social media ever had good intentions behind it for awareness, however even if they did, it turned out to be nothing but very blatant misinformation, with a fearmongering effect. The only thing this achieves is not awareness of habitat destruction or pernicious tourist influence or climate change or what have you – the only thing this achieves is despair and panic. People already so casually fall into complete doomerism, they’re very used to hear bad news. And guess what doomerists do? Typically nothing. It renders people helpless. It’s not gonna make people get up and be ready for action, it, at best, would just make people feel sad and/or angry, or at worst, feed into the current alarming rise of ecofascism. NOTHING good comes out of this. At the very goddamn least, no one needs to lie to promote a goal.

The aim of the USFWS article, on the other hand, IS to make people aware about those animals that are already gone from the face of the planet, no matter how long ago, and that now we have to protect those animals that are critically endangered and still out there – to not have to repeat those tragedies.

Be very critical of what you see on the internet, especially if it’s sited with no sources. Especially-especially if it causes a strong emotional reaction. Lies and misinfo could only hurt the cause, no matter how noble. And please, be aware of your local wildlife status. Check in with it accoding to trusted sources.

[*sic, possibly a typo and it was meant to be 1996, other confirmed date listed there is 1989] Addendum: I could not for sure find the uncredided (who woulda thunken that ppl that don't cite their sources would also not credit the artists) author(s) of the bird illustrations. If someone finds them, please, let me know! Edit: Huge thanks to moosefinch for finding the sources for the artwork! I'll add their contribution below:

"Image sources!

The Kauai ʻakialoa, Kauaʻi ʻōʻō, Maui ʻakepa and Kauaʻi nukupuʻu are from Birds of the World.

The "Maui nukupuʻu" and "Molokaʻi creeper" illustrations are also Birds of the World, but are actually a female Kauaʻi nukupuʻu (the other being the male) and Laysan honeycreeper/Laysan ʻapapane respectively.

The bridled white-eye is by Lauren Helton according to this source.

Bachman's warbler is by Lynn Hawkinson Smith/smithhouse2 according to this Etsy listing.

The Poʻouli is by Christina Czajkowski."

[ivesambrose]

OCTOBER 2024 MINI MESSAGES 🧡

1. 2. 3.

How is spooky season treating everyone so far? ✨

To book a personal reading with me DM or email me at ivesambrose@gmail.com

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Picture 1

its likely you might feel as though you're pushed to the forefront and are in the limelight or have finally decided to be brave about it. You'll be focused on your public image, long term career goals as well as the friends you keep associating with. Do they really empower you? Stand by you? Encourage you? Or keep filling your head with their own projections that deter you from your growth. You can look forward to a better community for yourself it may not come through fully this month for some of you, but sometimes having the awareness that this is the vision and reality you see for yourself does more than half of the work for you. You'll feel inspired to travel, pursue certain goals or see the earlier roadblocks slowly clear out for you. Keep in mind not to overwork yourself or be manipulated by someone to stretch yourself thin for their sake with little to no benefit of your own. There are some people namely at a higher place of authority than you are who are scared of your success and your ability to be authentic, cultivate friendships or be a good leader by yourself and they'll try to bring you down to 'show you your place' it's far from the truth. This month might end on a note of a new and better opportunity being presented to you, a gift, a sudden increase in finances or an idea that if nurtured will lead to something a lot bigger and fruitful. Know that you're in charge of your reality not the people who are bystanders in it.

Picture 2

so much to learn and so many ideas and thoughts to communicate this month. Write them all down and share them either with a trusted person or maybe even the world. Write and speak so you can heal and undo the knots in your heart. Cry if you must it's okay to let go of the burden of keeping a brave demeanor. You'll be having potential breakthroughs this month, almost overnight ones. You're about to do something unconventional in the long run but that too will require a certain discipline from your side so it becomes a daily ritual for you and then your lifestyle. You'll be really focused on your health and health goals as well. Some of you might get into a commitment with someone or will be soon or someone wants to be romantically involved with you for the long term. They compliment your energy will, someone whose willing to water you to see you bloom. Be wary of overwhelming yourself with too much content or information. You really don't need all that. Allow your subconscious to only absorb what it is that you want in your reality. The habits you cultivate this month will set the tone for the coming months too. You'll end the month on a note of getting better at something or achieving a goal that you have spent the most of the year on and celebrating it finally.

Picture 3

Your imagination does indeed create your reality and you'll be shown proper evidence of that this month. A lot of heightened awareness, intuition, prophetic or symbolic dreams that in turn fuel your creativity. You'll be self soothing a lot this month there's also a focus on your gut health and habits as well that you'll be changing. You'll also be receiving an opportunity through your creativity to travel or learn about different cultures, people and places. I also see you feeling closer to your mother or a female/maternal figure or a friend in your life. I feel like some of you have been hyper independent for so long and have burned so many bridges that when tenderness or loving connections knock on your door you refuse to see it. Please bring your awareness and intention to finally receiving what you've long asked for. You'll be receiving the love, friendships and opportunities you have asked for, I really suggest you remove the part of you that is hell bent on being an 'avoidant' because that will lead you nowhere but to the same state that made you so low to begin with. This month ends on things gaining momentum for you, like whatever you started is progressing to the next phase, launching something or even foreign travel. Things are set in motion. You will, inevitably cut through your obstacles. Rest assured.

[sgiandubh]

I don’t see the post about Sam and Cait attending the Venetian Carnival on the page’s IG or website. It must not be true! 😢

Dear Not True Anon,

Something seems fishy about that one, indeed. The Instagram post is gone, the Insta story is (obviously) gone and not archived. Even the link shared by the FB fan page Outlander Italy is gone, which means Nicolao Atelier replaced it:

The Instagram account follows S and C, but is not followed by them. This could mean nothing, but then it could mean something, after all.

The dead link is still indexed and appears as such on Google, when searching with basic keywords, however clicking on it will take you to the atelier's IG account, which has been sanitized. So this could mean the website's update happened fairly recently:

There seems to be no rule of thumb as to the removal timeframe. It can take anywhere from a couple of days to four weeks or more (if the content's owner did not file a removal request):

[Source: https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-for-something-to-be-removed-from-search-engines-such-as-Google-after-being-removed-from-a-website - answers differ, but this one stroke me as factually concise]

So I don't know if that is still happening. What I do know, that being said, is that Stefano Nicolao is, indeed, a successful theatre costume designer. That his workshop is situated in the sestiere (neighborhood) Cannaregio in Venice, smack dab into the glamorous thick of things and that the reviews are great:

What I do not understand is why he is nowhere to be found on OL's Imdb credits' page, that meticulously lists even the trainees and the seamstresses: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3006802/fullcredits/?ref_=tt_ov_ql_1

He is everywhere else, in the mainstream press (not clickbait): Le Figaro, for example (https://www.lefigaro.fr/culture/plus-de-15-000-costumes-concus-stefano-nicolao-le-prince-des-tailleurs-venitiens-20241110). And even Forbes Romania, with a two-part exclusive interview, extensively featuring OL (https://www.forbes.ro/stefano-nicolao-maestrul-croitor-din-venetia-i-261127).

The guy sounds legit, but there is something that nags me about this whole thing. I can only honestly bring this to the table as another piece of the OL X-Files and suppose we will end up by connecting the dots, if there are any dots left to connect, in due time.

My bet is either on a change of heart, change of plans or a stupid, stupid marketing mistake. Not a good look, if you ask me.

[reputematters]

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[mostlysignssomeportents]

Kickstarting the Red Team Blues audiobook, which Amazon won't sell (read by Wil Wheaton!)

Red Team Blues is my next novel, a post-cyberpunk anti-finance finance thriller; it’s a major title for my publishers Tor Books and Head of Zeus, and it’s swept the trade press with starred reviews all ‘round. Despite all that, Audible will not sell the audiobook. In fact, Audible won’t sell any of my audiobooks. Instead, I have to independently produce them and sell them through Kickstarter:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-another-audiobook-that-amazon-wont-sell

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/21/anti-finance-finance-thriller/#marty-hench

Audible is Amazon’s monopoly audiobook platform. It has a death-grip on the audiobook market, commanding more than 90% of genre audiobook sales, and every single one of those audiobooks is sold with Amazon’s DRM on it. That means that you can’t break up with Amazon without throwing away those audiobooks. Under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, I can’t give you a tool to convert my own copyrighted audiobooks to a non-Amazon format. Doing so is a felony carrying a five year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine for an act that in no way infringes anyone’s copyright! Indeed, merely infringing copyright is much less illegal than removing Amazon’s mandatory DRM from my own books!

I’ve got amazing publishers who support my crusade against DRM, but they’re not charities. If they can’t sell my audiobooks on the platform that represents 90% of the market, they’re not going to make audio editions at all. Instead, I make my own audiobooks, using brilliant voice actors like Amber Benson and @neil-gaiman​, and I sell them everywhere except Audible.

Doing this isn’t cheap: I’m paying for an incredible studio (Skyboat Media), a world-class director (Gabrielle de Cuir), top-notch sound editing and mastering, and, of course, killer narrators. And while indie audiobook platforms like Libro.fm and downpour.com are amazing, the brutal fees extracted by Apple and Google on app sales means that users have to jump through a thousand hoops to shop with indie stores. Most audiobook listeners don’t even know that these stores exist: if a title isn’t available on Audible, they assume no audiobook exists.

That’s where Kickstarter comes in: twice now, I’ve crowdfunded presales of my audiobooks through KS, and these campaigns were astoundingly successful, smashing records and selling thousands of audiobooks. These campaigns didn’t just pay my bills (especially during lockdown, when our household income plunged), but they also showed other authors that it was possible to evade Amazon’s monopoly chokepoint and sell books that aren’t sticky-traps for Audible’s walled garden/prison:

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/columns-and-blogs/cory-doctorow/article/90282-we-wrote-a-book-about-why-audible-won-t-sell-our-book-and-snuck-it-onto-audible.html

And today, I’m launching the Kickstarter for Red Team Blues, and even by the standards of my previous efforts, I think this one’s gonna be incredible.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-another-audiobook-that-amazon-wont-sell

For starters, there’s the narrator: @wilwheaton​, whose work on my previous books is outstanding, hands-down my favorite (don’t tell my other narrators! They’re great too!):

https://wilwheaton.net/

Beyond Wil’s narration, there’s the subject matter. The hero of Red Team Blues is a hard-charging forensic accountant who’s untangled every Silicon Valley finance scam since he fell in love with spreadsheets as as a MIT freshman, dropped out, got his CPA ticket, and moved west. Now, at the age of 67, Marty Hench is ready to retire, but a dear old friend — a legendary cryptographer — drags him back for one last job — locating the stolen keys to the backdoor he foolishly hid in a cryptocurrency that’s worth more than a billion dollars.

That’s the starting gun for a “grabby next-Tuesday thriller” that sees Marty in between three-letter agencies and international crime syndicates, all of whom view digital technology as a carrier medium for scams, violence and predation. Marty’s final adventure involves dodgy banks, crooked crypto, and complicit officials in a fallen paradise where computers’ libertory promise has been sucked dry by billionaire vampires.

It’s a pretty contemporary story, in other words.

I wrote this one before SVB, before Sam Bankman0Fried and FTX — just like I wrote Little Brother before Snowden’s revelations. It’s not that I’m prescient — fortune-telling is a fatalist’s delusion — it’s that these phenomena are just the most spectacular, most recent examples in a long string of ghastly and increasingly dire scandals.

Red Team Blues blasted out of my fingertips in six weeks flat, during lockdown, when technology was simultaneously a lifeline, connecting us to one another during our enforced isolation; and a tool of predatory control, as bossware turned our “work from home” into “live at work.”

The last time I wrote a book that quickly, it was Little Brother, and, as with Little Brother, Red Team Blues is a way of working out my own anxieties and hopes for technology on the page, in story.

These books tap into a nerve. I knew I had something special in my hands when, the night after I finished the first draft, I rolled over at 2AM to find my wife sitting up in bed, reading.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I had to find out how it ended,” she answered.

The next day, my editor sent me a four-line email:

That. Was. A! Fucking! Ride! Whoa!

Within a week, he’d bought Red Team Blues…and two sequels. I finished writing the second of these on Monday, and all three are coming out in the next 22 months. It’s gonna be a wild ride.

Kickstarter backers can get the usual goodies: DRM-free audiobooks and ebooks, hardcovers (including signed and personalized copies), and three very special, very limited-run goodies.

First, there’s naming rights for characters in the sequels — I’m selling three of these; they’re a form of cheap (or at least, reasonably priced) literary immortality for you or a loved one. The sequels are a lot of fun — they go in reverse chronology, and the next one is The Bezzle, out in Feb 2024, a book about prison-tech scams, crooked LA County Sheriff’s Deputy gangs, and real-estate scumbags turned techbros.

The third book is Picks and Shovels (Jan 2025), and it’s Marty’s first adventure after he comes west to San Francisco and ends up working for the bad guys, an affinity scam PC company called “Three Wise Men” that’s run by a Mormon bishop, a Catholic priest and an orthodox rabbi who fleece their faithful with proprietary, underpowered computers and peripherals, and front for some very bad, very violent money-men.

Next, there’s three Marty Hench short story commissions: the Hench stories are machines for turning opaque finance scams into technothrillers. While finance bros use MEGO (“my eyes glaze over”) as a weapon to bore their marks into submission, I use the same performative complexity as the engines of taut detective stories. Commissioning a Hench story lets you turn your favorite MEGO scam into a science fiction story, which I’ll then shop to fiction websites (every story I’ve written for the past 20 years has sold, though in the event that one of these doesn’t, I’ll put it up under a CC license).

Finally, there’s a super-ultra-limited deluxe hardcover edition — and I do mean limited, just four copies! These leather-bound editions have Will Staehle’s fantastic graphic motif embossed in their covers, and the type design legend John D Berry is laying out the pages so that there’s space for a hidden cavity. Nestled in that cavity is a hand-bound early draft edition of The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues. The binding is being done by the fantastic book-artist John DeMerritt. Each copy’s endpapers will feature a custom cryptographic puzzle created especially for it by the cryptographer Bruce Schneier.

I often hear from readers who want to thank me for the work I do, from the free podcast I’ve put out since 2006 to the free, CC BY columns I’ve written for Pluralistic for the past three years. There is no better way to thank me than to back this Kickstarter and encourage your friends to do the same:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-another-audiobook-that-amazon-wont-sell

Preselling a ton of audiobooks, ebooks, and print books is a huge boost to the book on its launch — incomparable, really. Invaluable.

What’s more, helping me find a viable way to produce popular, widely heard audiobooks without submitting to Amazon’s DRM lock-in sets an example for other creators and publishers: we have a hell of a collective action problem to solve, but if we could coordinate a response to Audible demanding the right to decide whether our work should have their DRM, it would force Audible to treat all of us — creators, publishers and listeners — more fairly.

I’ll be heading out on tour to the US, Canada, the UK and Germany once the book is out. I’m really looking forward to as many backers in person as I can! Thank you for your support over these many long years — and for your support on this Kickstarter.

Today (Mar 22), I’m doing a remote talk for the Institute for the Future’s “Changing the Register” series.

[Image ID: A graphic showing a phone playing the Red Team Blues audiobok, along with a quote from Booklist, 'Jam-packed with cutting-edge ideas about cybersecurity and crypto. Another winner from an sf wizard.']

[jassdigitalmedia]

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[curlybraceyourself]

The Case for Curly Brace

In July of 2024, a tumblr account by the name of "Curly-b-blog", themed after Curly Brace from Cave Story, began posting harassment towards prominent members of the "Lily Orchard Critical" community. These members include IloveKimPossibleALot, Courtney Peet (Lily Orchard's sister, who has accused her of sexual assault while both of them were minors) and Sai Scribbles, an artist from the aforementioned community.

Curly-B has gone as far as to involve people outside of the community in this harassment, sending unwarranted "critique" to unaffiliated artists, purely due to those artists having sent gift art to Sai Scribbles. Curly-B has used her anonymity as a shield to get away with this behavior and has expressed no remorse for her actions.

It should be made clear at this point that Curly-B is not an alias of Lily Orchard, nor is she Lily's wife Mikaila Orchard. Furthermore, the collator of this evidence requests that you do not harass the person behind the Curly-B alias; this information is collated for purposes of evidence only.

(Collator's note: tumblr has a policy of appending "-blog" to tumblr blogs that go inactive for extended periods of time. Due to this, some archived versions of curly-b-blog will simply be labelled as curly-b. Please keep this in mind if you wish to peer review the evidence presented)

Prior to her reappearance in July of 2024, Curly-B was already an established tumblr blog wth some history; as of this writing, a handful of posts dated to late 2011 and early 2012 still exist in Curly-B's archives. Moreover, there are a handful of posts dated to December 2023, that allude to some undetermined drama:

An Internet Archive snapshot from November of 2023 reveals the root of this drama: on November 15th, the Curly-B tumblr was used to post an anonymous screed detailing turmoil within the ranks of the Moderneopets art team. For the uninitiated, Moderneopets is a fan-run clone of the popular webgame Neopets.

(the full post by Curly-B can be viewed here: https://web.archive.org/web/20231123030516/https://curly-b-blog.tumblr.com/)

It seems Curly-B's post led to some friction within the Moderneopets community, as evidenced by its current absence from the blog. For more information, we have to go to the source; the Moderneopets Discord, which just happens to have public access:

From the above posts, we can ascertain that

Curly-B was an established member of the Moderneopets art team

Curly-B was removed from said art team on or around November 23rd, 2023.

Unfortunately, we run into a bit of a dead end here; see, the only archived instance of the Moderneopets artist roster dates to November 27th, 2023, four days after the discord posts mentioned above. In this snapshot, Curly-B has likely already been stricken from the record.

record of the Moderneopets art team as of November 27th, 2023 If we had an earlier snapshot then we could compare and contrast, but alas, we do not. Shy of combing the Moderneopets discord for all mentions of prior artists, this angle seems bust.

And then Curly-B did something incredibly stupid.

An anon ask sent to Curly by a mysterious figure known only as "K" According to the above anon-response, Curly's still on the Moderneopets art team. If we take this ask at face value, then either Hazer, the admin of Moderneopets, was lying about Curly's removal, or Curly was indeed removed… and then reinstated shortly thereafter.

And wouldn't you know, we have access to a list of Moderneopets artists, taken mere days after Curly's removal.

So let's compare:

Archived list of artists vs. list of artists, current as of August 20th, 2024.

One name appears on the current list that is not present on the November 2023 snapshot: Taffer. A quick search on the Moderneopets discord confirms that Taffer (aka Sneaky-Taffer) is not a new artist, but in fact an established artist with contributions to the Moderneopets project dating back to at least 2022.

It is not unreasonable to assume that Taffer got caught up in the drama of the time, and was briefly removed, before being reinstated at a later date. Just as what Curly is implying happened to her. So who is this Taffer? Well, she has a tumblr of her own:

As a reminder, Please do not send Harassment towards Sneaky-Taffer. This is merely a collection of evidence, not a call to arms.

The above evidence alone would not be enough to implicate Sneaky-Taffer as the individual behind Curly-B, however, a substantial quantity of evidence can be gathered from both Sneaky Taffer's and Curly-B's blogs that pushes this connection beyond the circumstantial:

Artistic similarities:

Curly-B draws herself in the above style in the margins of her redlining posts- this style is highly similar to one used by Taffer in several comic pages:

Artwork by Sneaky-Taffer, 2018 Note the similarities in how hair is shaded. Other comics by Taffer (viewable under "My Art" on her tumblr) use a similar means of shading hair, as well as the crosshatch shading and blush methods used by Curly-B for her avatar. Similarities in handwriting:

The above depictions of Curly-B feature handwriting in a consistent style. This handwriting is highly similar to that used by Taffer in her comics:

Note the shape of the Ws and the Ms in particular Edit: Taffer's Twitter account also features this piece of redlining that matches Curly-B's style and handwriting quite closely:

(Image links to the relevant Twitter post) The design of Taffer's OC:

On the 18th of August, Curly-B briefly posted an image of art that she claims is hers, before deleting it shortly thereafter. The image was, however saved by tumblr user Nivatar:

While no matches for this image have been found by typical searching, one of the characters depicted bears a striking similarity to one of Taffer's OCs, Sarnai :

more art of Sarnai can be found here

This suggests that the above artwork is either unpublished artwork by Taffer, or art commissioned by Taffer of her OC(s).

Prior involvement in the Lily Orchard circles

Would it surprise you to find out that Sneaky-Taffer had involvement in Lily Orchard discourse on Tumblr, prior to the appearance of Curly B? It turns out she's crossed paths with noted Lily Critic britts-galaxy-brain before:

(click on the image for link to the relevant post)

And Taffer has even responded to Lily Orchard's posts directly:

(click on the image for link to the relevant post) EDIT: Evidence has also been found of Taffer feuding with both KP and Courtney, on Twitter in June of 2024, shortly before Curly's revival. Both KP and Courtney were early targets of Curly-B's ire:

(Image links to relevant discussion and Taffer's twitter) and finally, as silly as it is:

Taffer had a Curly Brace phase in 2011:

EDIT: Taffer's former Deviantart account has been uncovered. Artworks in this Deviantart appear in an artist retrospective posted by Taffer in 2019:

This Deviantart account hosts a number of Cave Story-themed artworks dated to late 2011 and early 2012, the same period during which Curly-B was first active:

(Images link to their respective artwork pages on Deviantart) As an additional note; an archived version of Sneaky-Taffer's tumblr from 2013 links to a forum called Anime Maniacs United, which appears to be a message board for Anime Roleplay accounts. While no public archives of the AMU boards' content are available, it appears that AMU has a tumblr blog that persists to this day, featuring a list of affiliated character blogs:

... and wouldn't you know it, Curly-B is on the list. To quickly recap the things that we can be absolutely certain of:

Taffer is an artist on the Moderneopets art team, which Curly-B is also a member of

Taffer was not a member of the Moderneopets art team at the time that Curly-B was ostensibly removed

Taffer has interacted directly and negatively with ILoveKimPossibleALot and Courtney Peet, the first two targets of Curly-B's ire, prior to Curly-B's resurfacing.

Taffer was a member of an Anime RP Forum that is directly affiliated with Curly-B's tumblr. At this point, coincidence doesn't cut it. Sorry Taff, the jig is up. Noticed anything that I missed? Please let me know, and remember: No harassment. Thank you for your time.

-K