Tuxedo Unmasked

[BlizzardeyeWonder]

From: Norah Battasali
To: Ash Ng
Subject: Re: Re: Re: The Late Miss Meena Kumar's PC
2023-06-14

As you asked: here's a breakdown of the files in the folders "collab drafts" and "writing chat share". Let me know what other folders you think could be worth checking. Personally, I think we should both have a look at "blog drafts", which may be where the unaccounted-for manuscripts come from. Can we discuss tomorrow at noon?

collab drafts\eropsyche collabs.docx: A Word document containing various short fiction stories with characters from the late Meena Kumar's blog. Contains frequent sections of whitespace divided from the rest of the document. Rihannon Jewell alleges that these are meant to be where her own writing would be inserted in the text. This formatting mirrors that of the documents provided to us by Jewell. Some segments of this document match posts made by Miss Meena Kumar on the horror fiction blog "eropsyche", with Jewell's writing inserted, and credit given to Jewell (via screen-name). The entire document's contents appear to have been published in "The Complete Short Story Works Of Meena Kumar", with Jewell's writing inserted (without credit), alongside many of Miss Kumar's solo works.

collab drafts\slow apocalypse collab.docx: A Word document containing a piece of long-form post-apocalyptic fiction. Like the previous document, it contains frequent blank sections, presumably for Jewell's own writing. Jewell was able to provide a document containing the work she wrote for this collaboration. The document's contents, with Jewell's uncredited contributions, appears in "The Slow Apocalypse".

collab drafts\slow apocalypse worldbuilding for ani.txt: A .txt file containing various notes on the post-apocalyptic setting used in the above document. "Ani" is a nickname that Miss Kumar and other members of her online writing community used for Miss Jewell.

collab drafts\werewolf collab.docx: A Word document containing a piece of long-form werewolf fiction, with the same formatting as the other Word documents in this folder. Jewell was able to provide the writing she produced for this collaboration. Unlike the last two manuscripts, the manuscript "Werewolf" published by Shubon Kumar contains M. Kumar's writing, but not Jewell's. The blanks appear to have been filled in by another writer (likely why Shubon Kumar credits himself as a co-writer on Werewolf).

An interesting note: This manuscript was published before the court case was filed, but after Miss Jewell made her intentions to take the case to court clear to Mr. Kumar. Additionally, the new writing appears to have constant continuity errors from each other, and from the segments written by Miss Kumar, most prominently frequently changing character names. Mr. Kumar (or, "whoever" else wrote the new segments) clearly did not read the existing writing very closely.

writing chat share\ani look.jpg: Artwork of a man. No relevance to this case.

writing chat share\chat sc 1.jpg: A screenshot of a Discord conversation where Miss Kumar (black rose avatar, screen name "Psyche" in pink) complains about her parents' behaviour. She describes them "badgering" her to apply to Ivy League universities, apply to summer jobs, and publish her writing on Amazon.

writing chat share\chat sc 2.jpg: A screenshot of a Discord conversation, seemingly following the last screenshot. Various users express sympathy for Kumar. Jewell (avatar seems to be the same character from ani look.jpg, screen name "Ani" in blue) in particular calls Kumar's parents "entitled", though another user disagrees with Jewell's wording before the screenshot cuts off. Jewell was able to corroborate and expand on this conversation, saying that Kumar often complained about her parents in their shared Discord server, and described their behaviour as "consistently pushy and exploitative".

writing chat share\esper look.jpg: A picture of a young barn owl. "Esper" was in a long distance relationship with Miss Kumar according to Jewell, but Kumar had cut off contact with "Esper" months before her abduction and death, and he continues to have no contact with any of the other writers in her circle. Unless any of "Esper"'s writing is found in Mr. Kumar's publishing, no relevance to this case.

writing chat share\esper look (#).jpg: There are 5 other files titled variations of "esper look" with numbers 1-5 in the brackets. They are all pictures of various types of owls. No relevance to the case.

writing chat share\esper reaction.jpg: A screenshot of a Discord conversation. "Esper" (white user name, greek statue avatar) expresses shock towards something. Jewell does not know the context of this screenshot. Likely no relevance to the case.

writing chat share\for ani.jpg: A screenshot of a Discord message sent by Miss Kumar (same avatar and screen name as prior screenshots), seemingly concerning some ideas for "the slow apocalypse" that she had just come up with. Jewell corroborated that she had been sent this screenshot, along with a request to incorporate it into her own segments of the text, and was able to provide screenshots of that conversation.

writing chat share\from ren.jpg: A screenshot of a Discord message (avatar and username have been blacked out) explaining the original myth of Hades and Persephone. "Ren" presumably refers to one of Kumar's school friends, who was also abducted. One of Jewell's characters, who appears in some of her collaborative works with Kumar, is based on Hades, but the connection is tangential. Likely not related to the case.

writing chat share\picrew akshya.jpg: A cartoon image of a man. The file name indicates it was made using Picrew, an image maker website. Jewell does not know anything else about this image. It (and "Akshya", if he exists) likely has no relevance to the case.