Toni_Bee

WHY HAVE I SEEN NO ONE TALK ABOUT HOW THE GRACE SCULPTURE LOOKS LIKE THE LITTLE DUDE FROM THIS MEME

He postpones the next session, making excuses that are believable, but won't be if he takes more than two weeks to come up with a solution. And he's getting so close to the deadline and still can't come up with something good. So he tells Steve about it when they're hanging out, who asks him to recap the story. And then Steve promptly offers an exit that is actually really practical and perfect and oh my god how did I not think of that this whole time, it was right on the nose - Steve Harrington YOU'RE A GENIUS! Eddie is so excited he kisses Steve on the cheek and runs off to find the closest piece of paper and pen to write it down.

Leaving Steve to his bisexual crisis. Which gets way worse when he later realizes that Eddie probably wouldn't do that normally (he's so wrong about that) so it didn't even mean half of what it meant to him (wrong again, this is the only thing that Eddie will think about every single day for the rest of his life).

eddie spends weeks thinking he made steve cry that one time he snapped at him and feels sick about it. then one day he watches steve turn the shiny eyes + single tear on some random authority figure to get out of trouble and realizes it’s a BIT. meanwhile steve’s over there like 🙂 and eddie is reevaluating his entire life and relationship choices.

eddie: “dude, I’m not mad, I just said you were being annoying.”

steve, eyes going glassy immediately: “no, it’s fine, I get it.”

eddie: “wait, hey, I didn’t— are you seriously crying?”

steve, one single tear: “just… give me a second.”

Eddie, guilt ridden, thinks about this for weeks.

Months later…

cop: “you were going fifteen over, son.”

steve, same exact shiny eyes + lone tear: “I’m so sorry, officer, it’s just been a really hard week—”

eddie watching from the passenger seat, connecting the dots in real time: “…”

cop: “I’ll let you off with a warning.”

eddie, as they drive away: you manipulative little theater kid, I cannot believe I FELL FOR THAT.

Later that night

eddie: “no. uh-uh. do it again.”

steve: “do what again?”

eddie: “the thing. the eyes. I watched you with your little Bambi routine, Harrington. You’re not slick.”

steve: “it’s not a routine, I’m just sensitive🥺”

eddie: “you turned them on like a faucet.”

steve, already dialing up the shine: “eddie, that really hurts my feelings—”

I also like to imagine that she grew up eating gross bland institutional food in the lab, and not very much of it, and as a result she now loves to eat and will try almost anything. She especially loves sweets, and is a firm believer in midnight snacks (a peanut butter and jelly sandwich made with Eggos instead of bread is a particular favorite).

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.

"The 'God Made Trans People' billboard is stupid! God didn't make me! I'm an atheist!" Okay. The billboard sits along a major highway in Kansas. We can deduce that the target audience is not you—it's the centrist evangelical Christians driving along that road who could probably be persuaded to become allies as long as we choose our words carefully and don't make them feel attacked for not already knowing everything about trans rights issues. Another one I see a lot is, "We shouldn't be talking about how right-wing legislation catches [privileged in-group] in the crossfire when [marginalized out-group] suffers far more!" I know. I agree with you. Which is why you and I are not the intended audience of this argument!

The entire point of rhetoric is to win over someone who doesn't already fully agree with you. In this case, let's say that someone is Jennifer, the moderate center-right mom in your neighborhood who doesn't really know or care about transgender issues but would be absolutely horrified by the idea of her teenage daughter having to submit to an invasive inspection of her body just to be allowed to play soccer. Tell her, "Banning trans students from sports will inevitably subject all student athletes to invasive gender-policing," or "Legal restrictions on gender-affirming care will make it harder for you to access the hormone replacement therapy you take to treat menopause symptoms," and she is more likely to question her existing beliefs and listen to the rest of what you have to say than if you lead with leftist talking points that she already has a calcified opinion about or which she thinks do not personally affect her.

I'm lucky: My son is a very easygoing kid. But I remember the first tantrum he threw for me. He was standing by our front door and asked to go outside. So I opened the door and grabbed his shoes. But as soon as he stepped onto the porch, he pointed back into the house.

"Inside," he said.

"Okay," I said. I picked him up and brought him inside.

But as soon as I shut the front door, he pointed outside.

"Outside!" he said.

You know where this is going. We went back and forth, inside and outside, again and again. He got more frustrated. And I got more frustrated. Eventually he wound up straddling the threshold of our house, sobbing. When I tried to comfort him, he screamed at me. "You go wherever you want!" I said. He just got madder. I felt trapped, convinced he’d concocted the whole episode as a pretext to unleash his rage at me. It was ridiculous. I consoled myself with the thought that he was just being a toddler.

But later I kept thinking about him wailing at our front door, one foot inside, one foot outside. His misery wasn't unreasonable, or trivial, or silly. My son was experiencing the agony of wanting two things that were impossible to have at the same time. What a fundamentally human sorrow! My son wasn't being a toddler; he was being a person. Adults may not walk around howling, but that same pain rages within us. In that moment, as a father, I was powerless to solve my son's problem. I told him he could go wherever he wanted, but of course I was wrong. To be where he wanted was impossible.