Miscellany

2026:

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.

i frequently miss previous food service jobs, not because i don't enjoy what i do now, but because i did genuinely enjoy those jobs too. the reason i left is because the expectation was that i either sell 40+ hours of my week to the job, regularly be physically injured with no support, either no or abysmal workers comp, inconsistent scheduling so it meant i had little to no life outside of work... and still, the actual labor of the job, i enjoyed. i enjoyed the people. i liked working with my hands and making people happy.

and you know, people often bring up customers as the reason to leave food service - this was part of my reason as well, but how much of that - like the unsustainability of working food service itself, bodily and monetarily - is manufactured? many of the people who were terrible to me working food service were often people working office jobs only marginally 'above' mine in pay and support, miserable with their own work, looking to exert some level of power they could over someone else.

Here is an entire youtube playlist by Mannof1000Thoughts with a ton of indie animation videos AND a livestream he did where he watched some with the creators!!!

For games, there are TONS of lists out there like these: