the rest is confetti

1. The FBI's Famous Cases & Criminals archive (fbi.gov/history/famous-cases) has detailed breakdowns of real fraud cases, Ponzi schemes, and confidence operations. The language they use is clinical and precise, which is perfect for getting the procedural details right.

2. The FTC Consumer Sentinel Network publishes annual reports on the most common fraud tactics in the US. Great for understanding how modern scams actually work and what makes people fall for them.

3. The Smithsonian's American Art Museum has a free digital collection of forgery case studies. If your character forges documents or art, this is gold.

4. Court Listener (courtlistener.com) is a free legal database where you can read actual court transcripts from fraud trials. Want to know how a real con artist talks under oath? This is where you find out.

5. The Internet Archive's collection of old newspaper crime sections. Search for "confidence man" or "swindle" in papers from the 1920s through 1960s and you'll find incredible real stories that would feel too dramatic for fiction.

Bonus: The Psychology of Fraud section on the Association for Psychological Science website has accessible articles about why people trust, how deception works cognitively, and what makes someone a convincing liar. Essential reading if you want your con artist characters to feel psychologically real.

????? you mean one of the most normal and tame things most teenagers do????? I was watching hardcore porn, borderline snuff films on some shady sites my friend found, when I was like 10. 13 at most. probably 10, I don’t know. but I definitely shouldn’t be watching it. I did anyway. with all of my classmates. in our classroom at our school. and I was not traumatized.

when my friends and I were 16-17 we were doing way, way more extreme shit than that. teenagers at that age typically have sex and do drugs. I’m not “encouraging them” to do it by making this response. but it’s simply a fact that a whole lot of teenagers age 16-17 are out there having sex and getting high.

This also goes for buckwild problematic “unethical” fantasies. Arguably, you’re more likely to have things like ravishment fantasies when society is telling you not to have sex.

Meanwhile, anecdotally, a large number of people with fetishes report having their first fetishy thoughts well before puberty.

Being outrageously horny is a perfectly statistically average thing for a teen to be. Being curious about that horniness is objectively good and wonderful because that’s important to learn more about.