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
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