While doing some SEO review today I discovered Vercel has created https://bookchant.vercel.app/ which is a very poorly imitated version of my website https://bookchant.com/ which it is claiming to be a "premium frontend demo for BookChant" which it 100% is not because Vercel was not used to build my website.

I'd like very much to know how to have Vercel remove this page falsely claiming to be related to my website.

As something of a follow up to my last post suggesting the original "Shaman" culture consisted of two different orders of male and females specializing in light and darkness, life and death, and other dualities, I want to highlight something frequently overlooked about Miquella and the Divine Gate.

First, there is clear evidence of two different rituals having been performed, and one that is recent.

The first layer of bodies are Horned people,

https://preview.redd.it/mj4txarquwhh1.png?width=947&format=png&auto=webp&s=890c8d6d6cd1de971ef9ec0ecd37c7c220b3e451

Attacking these specific bodies causes a blood effect in-game, similar to attacking the corpses entangled in tree roots in the boss room of a catacomb.

But the majority of the bodies in the area are not horned people, and unlike the horned people their bodies are fused together more completely,

https://preview.redd.it/oaq87gx3vwhh1.png?width=1176&format=png&auto=webp&s=cb196cc39b2055355159de870f67837a345e926d

When you remove these body textures from the area (as per a BonfireVN video) you are left with what the gate obviously is -- the burned remains of a once huge tree

https://preview.redd.it/57nioiwcvwhh1.png?width=1107&format=png&auto=webp&s=02e82f1404cddc5722d40dea75ffb9b1fe200588

The ropes tied around the tree look a great deal like the kind of large ropes made from straw used in Korean shaman practices of tree worship,

https://koccult.com/folk-practices/geumjul-chigi-taboo-rope

Japan of course has a similar practice in its religious history as well, still used today https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimenawa

Basically the ropes mark the tree as a guardian spirit, and I think it goes without saying that is what the developers were seeking to communicate.

To add to this, interestingly enough, at real world Shinto temples it's not unusual for there to be a red-skinned kami (Raijin) guardian at the shrine protecting the area before the gateway, which I think was inspiration for Radahn as the boss fight in front of the Divine Gate. Raijin is a thunder deity, and while Radahn doesn't use thunder necessarily, his gravity attacks certainly look like purple electricity and he flies around and crashes into the ground in a way that is reminiscent of lighting. Raijin statues are usually paired with one of Fujin, a wind deity.

What I find further interesting is that Fujin and Raijin are relatives of Susanoo, one of the most important gods of Shintoism and whose legend is fairly well known so I won't go into exhaustive detail about it, but part of his legend involves luring his sister Amaterasu the sun goddess out of a cave to restore light to the world, as well as defeating a dragon Yamata no Orochi, from which he obtains a magic sword. The creation legend also involves other details, such as a boat made from wood and stone which a deformed deity Hiruko (Leech Child) was cast into the sea on, sending the child from the heaven to the earth.

You can read some of that legend here https://www.britannica.com/topic/Izanagi#ref48116

Anyway, it should be obvious to anyone in this community that these elements appear in Elden Ring, which probably better explains some of the inspiration for things that otherwise come out of nowhere (like the stone coffin ships and people turning into leech monsters in the Finger ruins) than looking for info from old alchemy textbooks as has been popular practice in the theorycrafting community.

Anyway the point of this post is to highlight that the divine gate shows us a few important story details we don't see directly.

1 ) The Divine Tower of Enir Ilim was originally built to support a giant tree, which at some point was burned resulting in all of the ash we see pouring from the top as we climb the tower, and which we also find pooled up in the top two floors. This is similar to the state we find Leyndell in when we first encounter it which has ash pooled up in large areas of the city, and then after we burn the Erdtree it fully covers much of the city.

2 ) The first burning of the "Divine Gate tree" killed the "Shaman" people whose bodies easily fuse together. This was probably the first ritual.

3 ) The "Shaman people" fused together appear to be at the least naked, but based on context from the "Jar shamans", probably skinned in a manner similar to what Godskins and the "Windmill dancing ladies" at Dominula do to their victims. We can also find breakable golden skulls in Marika's village as well that sometimes drop Blessed Bone Shards, showing evidence of these same rituals having been performed in her village (which I think further lends credence to that the rituals done on the "Jar shamans" were actually done within their own religious practices)

4 ) The Horned people bodies are a more "wet" appearance, and their bodies are not fused together the same way as the non Horned people are. This implies they died at a completely different, more recent time than the original sacrifices did.

Now then, something that seems to be completely overlooked is that the "Hornsent" NPC (actually called the Horned Child and Horned Avenger in the original Japanese) directly tells us that Miquella was leading Horned people to do another ritual at Enir Elim.

When we first meet him, he tells us he is a follower of Miquella who has made promises to his people. This is better explained in the original Japanese dialogue text (which you can lookup on the Elden Ring Fandom page for the NPC)

There is important context of what he says that is lost in the English localization.

First of all, he doesn't say the people of the Erdtree are his enemy. He says the Golden Tree (Erdtree) is the enemy, referring to it specifically. This matches a lot of other text related to the Shadow Tree (Scadutree) which is frequently referenced as its own entity, too (twisted Great Tree of Shadow).

This is re-iterated later when he says Miquella sacrificing parts of himself to create the cross sites is meant to purify the Golden Tree's sins. Again, he's not talking about the people, he's referring to the Golden Tree itself as having committed sins / great crimes, and Miquella engaging in some kind of purification ritual to create these cross sites can atone for it.

This isn't a 1 to 1 to real life Shinto practices but it is part of the religion that before one can make an offer to a deity, one must purify themselves with some act, usually water and salt, to cleanse of impure spirits that may be attaching to oneself. So the implication here is that the Golden Tree itself is an impure thing despite its appearance, and that because of his connection to his mother, Miquella is infected by it.

Secondly, he tells us Miquella has promised his people salvation, not "delivery". it may sound the same, but it's a lot more specific in that Miquella is promising the Horned people a religious concept (salvation) that normally requires some type of offering within those religious frameworks that have this concept of divine salvation. For example in Christianity salvation requires accepting Jesus as your god and making prayers and offerings (such as songs) to the deity, but in other religions such as Hinduism its escaping from the cycle of reincarnation by adhering to certain religious rules.

So it's not that Miquella is just going to save the Horned people because he's a nice guy. Miquella is actually requesting something of the Horned people in order to grant them this salvation is the implication.

Thirdly, after the charm effect is broken when Miquella shatters his rune, he says this,

"…Oh? You still speak to me?

Now that Miquella’s charm has been broken, do you still think that I am on your side?

…Well, so be it.

If Miquella does not break that vow, and becomes a god who will save even his own people,

if he drags Marika and the Golden Tree down from the seat of godhood,

…then that is enough.”

So again he references the Golden Tree as its own entity that is part of Marika's godhood, but also its own thing.

Later he does this again, when he fights us in front of Romina's church saying, "if you are the king of Marika of the Golden Tree then you are fit for my revenge" as he attacks us.

And when he dies he says, "Miquella save my clan."

Now here is the really fascinating thing when it comes to the Golden Tree / Erdtree and the Shadow Tree.

These are the amulets that we can get from Leda, which are items she received from Miquella as part of his religion,

Lacerating Crossed Tree

Retaliatory Crossed-Tree

The English descriptions of both items fail to accurately translate what these items represent -- the Golden Intersecting Tree (黄金の交差樹), not "golden crossed-tree".

And the point here is both items refer to the same tree, not different trees.

So if we combine the two together....

https://preview.redd.it/xuwknn9nbxhh1.png?width=1000&format=png&auto=webp&s=1356e6dbbad9fa432653b81dc6bdaafec2578459

And we've seen something like this before,

Impenetrable Thorns

https://preview.redd.it/7ezane0kcxhh1.jpg?width=1000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7493a7ffb17ba52720d5f0ddb45f56ccf85b6822

“A remembrance of the incarnation of the Shadow Tree,
engraved upon the Shadow Tree.

Through finger-reading, the power of its master can be obtained.
Also, through its use, an enormous amount of runes can be obtained.

The Shadow Tree was the shadow of the Golden Tree.

Born from dark thoughts that could not be called Order / Law,
for that reason, it was fragile and twisted.”

The Shadow Tree Avatar / Incarnation of the Shadow Tree is the only enemy in the game that uses the Impenetrable Thorns spell, and it has the broken rune of Miquella.

And as we all know, Miquella gave birth to another twisted, fragile tree as well, the Haligtree / Sacred Tree.

So who is responsible for the current state of the Shadow Tree? We know from other iconography in the game it didn't originally look like it does when our Tarnished encounters it, because the symbols of it are on Messmer's soldiers,

https://preview.redd.it/ziw9hai0fxhh1.png?width=610&format=png&auto=webp&s=9e02f42d628755132c7a369b0b686ffec42fbb1f

It's been assumed Marika or Radagon created the thorns strangling the Shadow Tree. But the evidence suggests Miquella is actually doing it as part of his new religion to win over the Horned people into becoming worshipers of him as their new god. After all, he's the one passing out amulets of thorns strangling the Shadow Tree as part of his new religion, after bathing his cocoon in the blood of another evil god as part of whatever ritual he did to enter the Shadow realm in the first place.

You can even see the remnants of the taint on what remains of his Great Rune,

https://preview.redd.it/9xllg66jhxhh1.png?width=900&format=png&auto=webp&s=9fd89838474b418732605532e4f2a0c94ab20b34

Not unlike Mogh's blood soaked rune,

https://preview.redd.it/e85jcakrqxhh1.png?width=890&format=png&auto=webp&s=b98667e824edc4a07f574f13db5ac97559ab517e

Going back to my argument about the ritual, there is evidence of a second ritual involving the sacrifice of Horned people, and we know that is how the ritual to become a god works. And we know Miquella has started a new religion to get Horned people to worship him as their god to obtain salvation.

And we're stopped by some of the other Tarnished NPCs like Leda to delay us from reaching the top, while whatever is happening at the Divine Gate goes on.

We also have to fight our way past a bunch of Horned people too, who obviously couldnt have been in the tower when it was sealed.

So the implication is Miquella and a large group of Horned ones made their way up the Tower and performed the ritual we see in the opening cinematic, which is why Miquella emerges from the other side of the portal as a god during Radahn's second phase. They already sacrificed a bunch of people to do the ritual, before we got there.

This also further suggests Horned people were not originally part of Marika's ritual to become a god, it was her own people that got sacrificed. Entirely possible she orchestrated the whole thing herself.

The unanswered questions I have still are, how long has Miquella been in the Shadow realm plotting these things and what role did he have in the crusade to begin with?

Messmer believes he did the crusade for Marika but all evidence indicates it happened during the Shattering, which means Marika / Radagon are trapped inside the Golden Tree. So the question becomes did Miquella charm Messmer and convince him to do the crusade, making him believe he was Marika ordering him to do so?

Consider the presence of Abductor Virgins, combat Perfumers and Omenkillers. These are forces we expressly are told in the base game are Shattering War era things. There is no way Messmer can have Shattering War era military forces in his army unless his invasion happened during the Shattering War, so the invasion must have happened after Marika / Radagon are already trapped inside the Golden Tree. But this doesn't necessarily mean the Shadow Realm wasn't already sealed off from the Lands Between prior to these events.

The conflict in the chronology is item descriptions in Messmer's armor suggests he believed he was doing the crusade at Marika's command, and his remembrance claims he was hidden away "in shadow" (not Shadow realm as in the English localization) along with the secret of her original sins, so it at the very least suggests he was made the lord of the Shadow Keep during Marika's reign. But I think there is a high chance that Miquella orchestrated the crusade as a means of ascending to godhood, just as he is implied to be responsible for the thorns strangling the Shadow Tree.

The other factor to consider is the huge number of Banished Knight armor and weapons scattered outside the Shadow keep, especially in Gaius battle area. As he's specifically said to be a friend of Radahn that chronologically places him as a Shattering War era person, and the battlefield armor items suggest the shadow Keep was attacked by Banished Knight forces at some point

My conclusion to make sense of these conflicting details is the Shadow Keep may not have been originally in the Shadow realm, but instead was teleported there like much of the other things in the realm clearly have been, and that would have occurred during the Shattering War, not prior to it.

The other thing to consider is the Shadow Keep may not have been transported to the Shadow realm in a strict chronological time order. It could have been transported into the past, similar to how the Dragon mountain areas of the Shadow Realm seem to be existing within some kind of pocket time dimension, as is the entire area of Farum Azula seemingly stuck in some kind of time stasis, too.

Edit: There's one more thing I forgot to mention that suggests Messmer's Crusade is a Shattering War era event.

The Heirloom talismans all have identical look and make, suggesting they were created at the same time. The design of the talismans suggest they were originally part of a bracelet.

Each item references an important event or story, and one of them directly references Radahn's "Star Conquering" / "Star Breaking" event (localized as "Starscourge"), something which all evidence in the game suggests is something that happened during the Shattering War since his sealing of the stars could only have happened after Ranni performed her ritual to free herself from her body, and we see the evidence of Falling beasts and other meteor remnants on the overworld map between including just outside Leyndell showing meteors crashed during the Shattering War

So the talisman bracelet itself is something that is Shattering War period, probably created originally as a way to communicate the story of the Lands Between.

Then in the DLC we find the "Outer god Heirloom" / "legend of the outer gods" which is of identical make, which further places the events as Shattering War period

Edit 2: Additional evidence pointing to Shattering War era for Messmer's Crusade

1 ) The presence of Rune Arcs in the Shadow Realm from Marika's shattering of the Elden Ring, something that happens just before the Shattering War

2 ) The presence of Fallingstar beasts at crashed meteor sites, showing that the Shadow realm must have been sealed AFTER Radahn conquered the stars, which again, MUST have taken place AFTER Ranni and Godwyn's ritual which is the cause of the Shattering War.

3 ) The presence of Godwyn's own Death Knights in the Shadow realm, who have clearly been in the Shadow realm for longer than Miquella has and who are actually still "alive" in a similar state as Banished Knights are, having even modified catacombs to incorporate Godwyn eyed basilisks in the design of the catacomb traps of their lairs. Again, this shows the Shadow realm wasn't sealed off until during the Shattering War.

4 ) Forager Brood Cookbook 7 teaches how to make an advanced version of the Charming branch, which is expressly part of Miquella's Haligtree religion. At first people assume the presence of Scarlet rot pests in the Shadow Realm must be due to the Church of the Bud, but that one of their cookbooks teaches something specific from Miquella's religion suggests they actually got trapped in the Shadow realm during the Shattering, and that also helps explain why the Rotten Butterflies item description, in both original Japanese and English, refers to them as from Malenia's wings and that they were left "masterless". This matches the Pest threaded spears incantation, that expressly says the Pests have been abandoned and found a new mother in Romina. Both incantations use Servant of Rot seals, which is a faction that worships Malenia as the Goddess of Rot. This means Malenia already had to have sprouted once and taken the Goddess of Rot form resulting in the creation of Pests BEFORE the Shadow realm was sealed.

(BTW original Japanese doesn't say Romina weaved a "divine element", it says she found a grotesque deity.)

These are all things which cannot be easily explained away and directly point to Shattering War era for Messmer's Crusade

Everyone focuses on the secret rite scroll and its flavor text mentioning it is made of white tree bark, and that similar scrolls are found in Marika's bedroom in the base game. This is a well discussed part of the lore.

https://preview.redd.it/4n90yc2mjqhh1.jpg?width=200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1f7cf0dcf5ae7dc90646730edcd5bf8b0f0eeb53

https://preview.redd.it/hjw1k8gnjqhh1.jpg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d7cb4aa023e22938031db92d3dd7a2eaf7bc98a4

However, almost no one notices that the Spiral Tower incantations are also written on scrolls made of white tree bark.

https://preview.redd.it/oe52hwjojqhh1.png?width=457&format=png&auto=webp&s=2558c612b5a7fe68e289e26e5d9fdcfb7151fccb

And white trees grown from the bodies of what we can assume to be "shamans" appear throughout the tower, too.

https://preview.redd.it/rjpvxmzzjqhh1.jpg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5cdaa55850dccb27e19d5f80dd6e07e599228966

This tells us that, contrary to popular belief in the fan community, these are not "Hornsent" spells. This actually the magic of the shaman who created the tower in the first place.

Next take a closer look at the design of the magic casting enemies who use these incantations, and they bear the tell-tell signs of the shaman faith, twin corded braids,

https://preview.redd.it/mhn82fjvkqhh1.png?width=608&format=png&auto=webp&s=97e9caee3bb632f7d774128c32f19ed4935e0c7b

And they use the magic in the same exact pose of the "shaman grandmother" from the "shaman village".

https://preview.redd.it/cpbf3j43lqhh1.png?width=581&format=png&auto=webp&s=bfaa272873ce456195e9de1cbd7d4903cedb5bbe

I don't think those "horns" are actually growing from their head. I think they're actually a ceremonial headdress, similar to the Ancestral Worshipers and they don't look like normal horns, they look more like tree growths.

And the reason I have "shaman" in parenthesis is because it's a mistranslation from the original Japanese 巫子 which translates more accurately to "shrine priestess" but also means sorcerer and fortune teller.

You may at first glance think it's nitpicking, but it's not because shaman is a very broad term whereas 巫子 is far more specific because it describes a specific gender as well as a specific kind of role within a religion.

The other factor often overlooked is that the original Japanese doesn't use 巫子 for every instance that was translated as "shaman" in the English.

In the base game, 祭司 is used for Ancestral Follower female "shamans", but it actually means "Priest".

And in the Greatjar helm description 祈祷師 was translated as "shaman" but more accurately means "medicine man" or "faith healer" or "exorcist".

Again this matters, because.......

1 ) they didn't use the same terms in the original Japanese which was a sign to the player that these are not meant to be seen as the same groups of people,

and

2. Two of the terms actually imply the gender of the person they are referring to.

Now keep in mind if there's one gender term like 巫子 expressly said to be female, and then another term like 祈祷師 which implies males, the question becomes where are the males?

This becomes more clear by once more carefully looking at enemy design,

https://preview.redd.it/6uuxzatvnqhh1.png?width=443&format=png&auto=webp&s=6bf632110d4b7ad53203843d151c5ad0d387a208

https://preview.redd.it/hznb7l7xnqhh1.png?width=376&format=png&auto=webp&s=1fc01a585b7ee7db446d4dc78bc01fcb1a750501

And so now we can clearly see this enemy is one of the 祈祷師 jar worshipping "medicine men" referred to in the Greatjar helm description -- a bearded man magic user who casts spells using a jar themed magic wand.

And what spells do they cast? The extremely annoying ricocheting fire balls infused with death magic, which is a more advanced version of the bouncing fireballs used by the magic wielding enemies in the Ruins of Rauh.

This connection tells us something important, because if we the look at the Ruins of Rauh more closely we find this symbol on the walls,

https://preview.redd.it/t96v41ftpqhh1.png?width=752&format=png&auto=webp&s=4c4077401bc0e5e2d921ba6600fdc92192853063

Along with the female "shamans",

https://preview.redd.it/vz8dd9xivqhh1.png?width=1045&format=png&auto=webp&s=2f5d7db573fae0172a69e8dc48c12560df0e499e

The symbol on the top of the pillars, which looks kind of like hanging vines, can also be found on stone pillar ruins throughout the base game, often near the "Elden John" statues which match the architecture style of the "period" of the game's backstory the Rauh ruins is set in,

And it just happens to be that the DLC Catacomb "medicine man" jar worshiping sorcerers have a lot of aesthetics in common with "Elden John",

https://preview.redd.it/3ax3ju50wqhh1.png?width=865&format=png&auto=webp&s=eb7221943d762d9e9eba62bf22423e2781944011

My takeaway is that rather than these statues intended to be specific individuals, they are actually representations of the two factions of priests of the old religion, one faction of females and one of males. Like two different orders part of the same religion.

Obviously the catacomb sorcerers dudes at some point became corrupted by death, but the point is they didn't start out as corpses. They were originally the male counterpart to the female "shamans", who conducted the jar rituals. I think this is also why we don't see anything really specifically about jars related to the Hornsent culture as well. I think the "Jar shaman" stuff happened before the Hornsent culture existed. I think it's actually probable that in the game's backstory timeline that the Hornsent culture came about the Jar Shaman events. This would also explain why from the "Hornsent" NPC and the Grandam's point of view Marika betrayed them, and they don't understand why the crusade happened. They probably didn't have anything to do with the Jar Shamans as many people have assumed. Again there isn't anything actually about jars to do with the Hornsent enemies themselves.

I think this also plays into the Sword of Light and Sword of Darkness aspects, and the whole "light and dark are the same" motif the base game re-iterates to us, to the degree that regardless of its form the Sword does holy damage.

https://preview.redd.it/1n6zhoa6xqhh1.png?width=591&format=png&auto=webp&s=8816a30b016ceb7edc3c4f2259be2b8878ba00dd

The old religion of Rauh was doubled sided, with light and darkness, life and death, male and female. Two orders of priests, with different roles and aspects to them. I think that is what the developers are trying to communicate to us about the state of the game's world before Marika became a god.

As a side note, Godskin Apostles also bear the twin corded braid hair decor as the female Tower "Shaman" do,

https://preview.redd.it/tsxbd4z4tqhh1.png?width=952&format=png&auto=webp&s=2fa2ffd64775bdc6619ef8244787103cad622b32

Although they cast magic in an interesting way, which if you examine closely shows both light and darkness at the moment of conjuration,

https://preview.redd.it/6x5b6bzktqhh1.png?width=737&format=png&auto=webp&s=88ffecf61cde29d77bacd4d042ea2a92728548dd

They are also male, or maybe more accurately given the snake motiffs, asexual. Some snakes can reproduce asexually and I think that has a lot to do with the Godskins. So the latter part of this religion might symbolize what the jar stuff was meant to achieve, which is the unification of the male and female aspects of the pre-Marika Erdtree religion.

The Godskins also bear golden eyes, showing they have been granted grace by Marika,

https://preview.redd.it/4cj6mz4stqhh1.png?width=556&format=png&auto=webp&s=b12621412e277d70742b3b57cf84148bee400ce6

Couple this with that the Godskins are directly connected to the dancers at the "Windmill villages" and it's clear that they are part of a direct continuation of the "Shaman" faith outside of the Shadow Realm.

For the past 2 weeks every time I make an ad, FB's bots changes the ad goals to something completely different.

It seems whatever the AI suggested as the default for a promoted post, it just retains those settings even if I try to change them. And it's impossible to fix it later since it won't let you edit the goals at all.

I only figured this out after people started PMing me instead of going to my website, because FB stripped the URL from the post and changed the goal to be engagement.

I then realized another ad was featuring a product carousel from a completely different FB Page I haven't used in years, and which I definitely did not add to the post.

One of the ads was even advertising the home page of YouTube, instead of my website, which seems incredibly random

Worse FB customer support page has been replaced by a bot that claims it cannot escalate anything to a live person, can't embed the video I made clearly showing the settings I saved for an ad were change after it got auto-approved (I assume by Meta's bots).

It's unbelievable how incredibly stupid FB ads are now when it used to be the best platform.

There are two crimes here the police committed related to the interference with the serving of the court server notice.

The first part of the video where the police officer took the papers claiming he would serve them, the officer became legally required to serve the papers and be a witness of the notice delivered. Instead he claimed the owner refused to be served, which is not how these notices work. Ben unfortunately seemed to have no legal guidance on this and did not realize that the police officer was committing a crime by saying he would serve the papers and then refuse to do so because the guy "refused to be served" after being shown the papers.

The second part is that just as in every state, interfering with the serving of a legal notice is a crime.

https://le.utah.gov/xcode/Title76/Chapter8/76-8-S301.html

>(2) An actor commits interference with a public servant if the actor:

>(a) uses force, violence, intimidation, or engages in any other unlawful act with a purpose to interfere with a public servant performing or purporting to perform an official function; or

>(b) obstructs, hinders, conceals, or prevents the lawful service of any civil or criminal legal process by a sheriff, constable, deputy sheriff, deputy constable, peace officer, private investigator, or any other person authorized to serve legal process.

>(3) A violation of Subsection (2) is a class B misdemeanor.

This means multiple officers shown in Ben's video have violated this law, especially when they knew the papers were legitimate after calling the Oregon court clerk.

Ben should report the American Fork Police Dept to the Utah Department of Public Safety as well as the District Attorney of Utah County's office for these clear violations of state law.

So, I have noticed something on RR and I am wondering if others have also noticed it as well.

I'm currently running a test with a brand new account on RR to assess what growing a following on the site is like, purely from the site's algorithms and paid ads (no shoutouts, no review swaps, no leveraging existing readership or even telling anyone I know IRL about the story, etc).

Something I noticed is within 3 days of posting the story, it got a negative review based on its first chapter. The review was hyper-critical about it for reasons that (without going into more detail) I found nonsensical.

But, over the past few days I started getting curious, so I looked at the user's account, where I learned the account is fairly new and has only ever left negative reviews on stories, and not even given positive reviews to the numerous stories the account has favorited.

I then started looking at the reviews of the stories they also downvoted, and found other accounts which have left negative reviews on these stories have also left either exclusively negative reviews or all negative except for like one somewhat positive review. And likewise, if the account is favoriting stories, often no reviews at all have been left for those stories.

Some of the accounts are new, and some of the accounts seem to have been made a year or so ago, but have no activity except the reviewing behavior.

As someone who has been on the internet since the early 1990s and seen all the kinds of ways people engage in black hat SEO to improve their rankings, I have found this to be very suspicious, especially with how the Rising Stars algorithm operates based on review scores, not other engagement such as views or comments.

This also brought to mind that back in 2024 I was invited to a certain Discord server which was pitched to me as a place for RR authors to network and discuss the platform, but which I quickly realized existed for the primary purpose of coordinating shout-out and review swapping of the group members stories on their day of release for the express purpose of climbing onto the Rising Stars feed. The group was small and I wasn't interested in participating in that, but when I recently logged into that Discord account (I'm not super active on Discord) to check on it, it was either deleted or I was kicked from it for not participating.

Anyway, I realize that RR allows authors to do the coordinated review-swapping but now I am wondering if some of these groups are engaging in black hat SEO tactics to coordinate downvoting in attempts to help their stories rank higher than other stories. There is obviously a huge financial incentive to engaging in this behavior given the success authors on Rising Stars have with Patreon.

Has anyone else noticed this, or something like it?