"We had planned to intro Q Sept 26th"

Asked about Q, Thomas writes to me that Beth asked to include "Rabbit" in the puzzle, that on 4chan "we also did a huge question mark," and then:

Th Stg → author, subject "Q". His account of himself; the September 26 date matches the planning line in chapter 09.

Scripting what I should say about Q

After forgiving Defango and going on his show, Thomas writes to the group: "Well I distrust q." Six days later he sends me, ready to paste, a comment for the QAnon YouTuber Wardrummer, written in my voice: "I live in Latin America, the playground of the CIA … What if I am right and Qanon is a Psyop, possibly created by CIA and Israel?" The line matches what he told me in private: Q was his idea, taken over by intelligence.

Th Stg → author, "I would post this to wardrummer," Jul 16, 2018. I did not post it.

“You passed them, Lestat, early on”

Between the Kappy-on-air moment and the October threat, Thomas sends me a short note of reassurance about my standing. It is useful for a narrow reason: in his own words, in his own inbox, he confirms I was initiated.

Th Stg (tstger13@gmail.com) → author, Sep 27, 2018. He is a documented fraud and his claims about Cicada’s legitimate chain of authority are not adopted here. This line is kept because it is him, in writing, contemporaneous, confirming my role inside the network as he was running it — a point later disputed by people who were not there.

"Leave me out of your Defango and Q dramas"

By October I was speaking publicly about Q and Cicada. Thomas: "You gave me your word you would not be speaking about Q or Defango … Cicada behavior does not include publicly speaking about Cicada." The next day, subject line "If you wish, I could put out a pgp sign message stating that you're kicked out of cicada":

Th Stg → author (Beth copied on the first), Oct 12 and 13, 2018.

“Would you like every screenshot on your phone made public?”

Fifteen days after the “you’ll be destroyed” message above, the threat was made literal. Not about Cicada this time, not about Q, not about a public account of either — about the contents of my phone.

Two things to notice. One, the stepping-up: the weapon moves from reputation (“kicked out of cicada”) to private material he claims to have (“every screenshot”). Two, the format: a yes/no question. The point is not the answer; the point is to put the question in writing, so that the next thing I do carries the cost of ignoring it. This is chapter 12’s playbook arriving in my inbox, dated.

Th Stg (tstger13@gmail.com) → author, Oct 28, 2018. Whether he actually had any screenshots is a separate question and is not resolved here. The threat itself, in writing, is the artifact.

"I would rather see Cicada destroyed than used for evil"

I wrote to the Cicada members, Levine, Z, Juno, Richard Miller, Python and others, asking them to make Thomas step down. On Q:

Author → Cicada members, "Hello please respond." Nobody backed it. Forwarded to Cullen Hoback in 2022.

What the others answered

Some members answered with the principle I was defending. Richard Miller, the day after my letter:

Members → author. Even the member who disagreed with me confirms what the war was about: Q.

"Would you like to join cicada?"

How he recruited long before me. In January 2015, writing as Thomas and as Sophia Musik from the same music address, he meets a Richard Miller and asks him to join Cicada within the first message. This thread doesn't say which of the two Richard Millers in this file it is. Minutes later he gives the pitch he would give me in 2017: "We are white hats."

"Cicada does not belong to you"

In May Thomas forwards me a lawyer's note from Insurgent Media about the Cicada film deal: "We extended until August and need to get these signatures before we send out the demand letter claiming we have rights." Seven months later I write to Michael Levine, co-holder of the trademark: "Cicada does not belong to you, the sony deal is not happening … Hand over your part of the trade mark to Z or genki."

Th Stg → author, "Fwd: FW: Cicada," May 8, 2018 (forwarded to Francesco Grassi, 2021); author → Levine, "So?," Dec 18, 2018. The contract itself is in chapter 09.

"You are no longer a cicada, you never were"

November 21, to Thomas: "just to make it official, your are no longer a cicada, you never were." December 17, to the members: "I WILL DO A LIVE STREAM IN 2 HRS … ABOUT ALL THIS." January 1, 2019, to a YouTuber: "Im gonna blow up he started Q, I got the evidence."

From that point the same emails went to the people who later wrote the story: Jim Stewartson (2020), Francesco Grassi (2021), Laura Dilley (2021–22), Cullen Hoback (2022). Chapter 21 is what happened to the credit.

Christmas Day

Inside the span above, after Thomas had called me a “fake cicada” on the thread, I wrote the group — Foxfire, Hamilton and the others — twice. The first line names what the arrangement had cost by then:

The second, minutes later, is me addressing myself in the third person because by then I was not sure who the “I” was:

The Nuclear video in chapter 15’s aside is the next day’s answer to that night. The record isn’t only the art.

Author → group thread (Foxfire2112, Hamilton and others), Dec 25, 2018, two messages minutes apart. Kept here with the dignity that line still deserves.

I named the recruitment to her face, in writing

Nine days after the YouTuber email above, I wrote to Beth Bogaerts (Foxfire2112@gmail.com, copied to the same address at ProtonMail) and told her, in one sentence, what had happened:

Her reply the next day did not deny the recruitment. It pivoted to her own hardship (“Since June, all I ever wanted was out”) and, in a follow-up the same day, to the characterization that she had tried to warn me and I had brushed her off (“we all have dark sides”). I keep that reply paraphrased, not quoted; the trueblood chapter’s rule about not reproducing her private emails stands. The point survives the omission. The natural response to a false accusation of recruiting someone into a defamation network is to say you did not recruit them. That is not what she said.

Author → Foxfire2112 addresses, Jan 10, 2019; Foxfire2112 → author, Jan 11, 2019. The recruitment thesis is not retrospective reframing: it was named in writing while the recruitment was still happening. It would be another four and a half years before anyone else wrote it down (Dilley’s July 2023 voice notes, chapter 20).

Hamilton: the other kind of silence

Not every withdrawal from this story is Beth’s. Hamilton — one of the two people I invited into Cicada in spring 2018 (the aside above) — pulled back for the reason people usually pull back. On October 13, 2018, in the middle of Thomas’s threats, he forwarded me one of Thomas’s messages with: “FYI, bro wanted you to see this. At the hospital now and will try to speak to him tomorrow.” He was warning me while his family was in acute care. Three weeks later, on October 31: “I have a newborn and a wife who continues to need medical care. Therefore, please respect my request to remain out of this thread and matter entirely.” From 2019 to 2021 his inbox ran on an auto-responder saying the same thing. The withdrawal was signed, dated and reasoned.

It did not hold forever. On April 3, 2021, hours after I had been removed from my home by the police, he wrote a short conciliatory message. I answered with a sequence of furious emails in twenty-seven minutes that didn’t deserve a reply. On November 4, 2023 — the same evening I wrote to Beth asking “why have you turned your back on me” — I wrote the same question to him, with the subject line “Bestman.” He was going to be the best man at my wedding. He didn’t answer. In September 2024 he came back: a one-word email, “hi.” We reconciled.

I keep this here because the chapter 20 rule about Beth cuts in two directions. The pattern around her is one thing. The pattern around someone who had a reason is a different thing. Confusing them would be the same move the rest of this file is about.

Hamilton (hami1ton@protonmail.com) ↔ author, Oct 13 and Oct 31, 2018; Apr 3, 2021; Nov 4, 2023 (subject “Bestman”); Sep 2024. Quotes are from his messages to me. He is named here as he is already named in the spring 2018 aside above and in the Nov 2018 list of recipients in section III.

"You were right"

In January I wrote what I had expected from the group:

Author → member, Jan 11, 2019; Jared → author, "Duudee," Apr 28, 2019.

“I have feelings too and have lived the last 2 years scared”

Five months after I named the recruitment to her face (above), on a thread called “Block me?”, I wrote her a short note:

Her reply ran the same move the Jan 10 entry already describes — upset, apology, pivot — and closed on the one line worth quoting here, because it is the whole move in nine words:

I was the one taking the public hits. I keep this single line because it is the clearest version of the structure, in her own voice; the rest of her private emails stay out, per the chapter 20 rule.

Author ↔ Foxfire2112, “Block me?,” Jun 23, 2019.

“Please don’t share these”

Through the second half of 2019, Beth filed stalking and extortion complaints against Thomas with the Napa Police Department (case Npd19-4360, with filings and follow-ups in August and October) and forwarded her own submissions to me across the same months. On December 26 she sent them again with a cover line:

I kept my part of that. Her reports are not reproduced here, only the fact that she filed and the fact that she asked. This is the whole move in one request: a private file of her own victimhood built in official channels, forwarded to the person who was taking the public hits, with the demand that it stay invisible. Chapter 20’s rule about her private material stands with a single carved-out exception, which is this entry: that she filed, that she forwarded, and that she asked.

Beth (Foxfire2112) → author, forwarded Napa PD submissions, August and October 2019, with the “please don’t share” cover note of Dec 26, 2019. The reports themselves are hers. The forwarding, the dates and the quoted line are in my inbox. The chapter 20 note is amended accordingly.

“I will not permit Beth to manipulate me”

Another member of the circle, Esteban Trujillo (ma91c1an@pm.me), writes to me independently and names the pattern I had named to Beth’s face ten months earlier (above):

In the same thread: “I published an interview with you in the Cicada Files, and I back you to this day.” Not a chorus, but a second voice: a contemporaneous third party reading the same operator pattern around Beth from his own vantage, and saying so in writing.

Esteban Trujillo → author, Nov 9, 2019. Esteban is also the person Richard Miller handed sevens.exposed to, documented separately in chapter 14; his later arc is his and is not adopted here.

One comment, one report: War Drummer

2018. I was already sick of QAnon and didn't know what to do about it. I had no platform, no audience, and YouTube was doing nothing about that content.

One day I came across the channel of War Drummer, one of the movement's big names at the time. He mixed Bible readings with political conspiracy, had 23,000 subscribers, and even sold a "Q army anthem." I left a comment mocking his overdone voice. Honestly, I just wanted to see what would happen.

He made an entire 26-minute video about me. It's called "Qanon - Vampire trolls and threats - urgent message!" Yes, urgent message. Over a comment.

He said my name and sent his people after me. I got death threats, accusations of pedophilia, and one guy told me he would find me with facial recognition. The usual with that crowd.

But in doing that, he broke YouTube's rules on camera. I reported it. His main channel came down. Ten hours later he was recording from his backup channel, literally called "The Back-up," asking his people to stop going to my profile because "it's causing problems."

One comment and one report. My first steps against Q, when nobody was paying attention to me. But I learned something that served me later: you don't need to take these guys down. You just need them to trip over themselves.

Revisiting Wardrummer. The 2018 episode, revisited · Watch on YouTube ↗

Fighting an idea with pictures

War Drummer taught me that Q's people trip over themselves. The posters were the other half of the lesson. Q was never an argument. It was an image, a map, a game, so arguing with it got me nowhere. “You can only fight an idea in the same plane of existence.” So I made images.

The hand and the puppet Documented

My poster, posted several times on Twitter as @Tafoyovsky. The early-2018 date is mine; the tweet links are pending. The background map is the circulated Q map, not my work.

The skeleton that went to VICE Documented

On January 13, 2021, I signed a Materials Release with VSC (Radical) Productions for VICE's QAnon documentary, for $300, credited as “Arturo T. Romo.” VICE licensed a set of my images, including these two, per the signed release. On January 26, 2021, VICE's line producer confirmed the payment.

DocuSigned release, Jan 13, 2021, and the line producer's email, Jan 26, 2021, both in my mailbox. That this image flashes in the documentary's trailer is my account; the timestamp is not yet pinned down.

Documented The anti-Q work reached a second national documentary: HBO's Q: Into the Storm, episode 5, uses my “deprogramming” video under its segment on Cicada 3301 and Thomas Schoenberger. In the excerpt on file it appears at 0:57, 2:39 and 3:35.

My account; clip on file; the full-episode timestamp is not yet checked. This is not the deprogramming.mp4 file in chapter 27, which is a different thing.

“Beware of false paths” Documented

A Ouija board, because that is how Q worked: everyone's hand on the planchette, everyone sure somebody else was moving it. In the middle, the rule: verify the PGP signature. Anything unsigned is a false path.

My poster. The date is mine; it appears in my 2022 CICAP Query interview, cited in chapter 09.

Cicada, broken Documented

The Q takes the place of the 0, and the cicada breaks where it goes in. At the bottom of the poster the real name, CICADA 3301, is still there, mirrored and upside down: what the public was left with once Cicada was read through Q.

My artwork, April 2023. There is also a wide version of the same piece.

If nobody inside would do it, I would do it on camera

Nobody inside would act, so I did it on camera: 40+ livestreams from May to December 2019, most of them two to four hours long. A selection:

Re-uploads as The Conspiracy Distillery on Rumble: Defango vs. BabyQ · QAnon and the Tea Party · Q Super Heroes · Catharsis of a PSYOP · WikiLeaks vs. Wikistrat · McChrystal + Flynn

Channel stream log (titles, dates, durations) held by the author. This is the public record that predates the first journalist contact in the table in chapter 21.