professional grumpypants

Do you start with characters, dynamics, personalities? Do you start with the plot itself? With the world and its logic? Do you hop from here to there and add little pieces to all corners at once? Or is it a "Oh I've got a story" moment where it all pours out at once without thinking?

Extra question: How do you decide which hints and clues for plot, world building, and secrets to release when?

Very curious :D (If this has been answered before, sorry!)

Hello!! non-anon asks feel so rare, it's a pleasant surprise to get one every time. And no worries, if it's been asked before I don't mind (I also can't remember if it has been. Maybe it has, but who knows. the depths of my ask tag probably knows, but that's not the point lol)

It's kind of a mix of things! it also depends on what I'm working on, exactly. Back when doing short stories and board pitches, since the characters were often already "provided", it was a task of thinking of what interesting situations would be best fit to compliment, or contrast, that character and their intended journey.

with something like Soli (and past, much older original characters and stories that are long now retired), it's born from building the characters out first, and as they're discovered, playing the game of what their story needs to say and how to say it.

Soli's story is built around the central protagonists this way in which all of them have a connecting theme and how they play together through interpersonal developments. With Maia largely at the helm right now, it requires navigating a character who is an anxious mess, socially awkward (if not inept--not out of malice, but out of deeper machinations that lead her down an uneasy road).

Knowing that basic setup with her lets me know how she approaches the path before her, how she behaves when alone, how she behaves when masking, and how she behaves when trying to do what she thinks others want of her.... and, ultimately, it lets me know how this creates obstacles that will lead to her character growth. What those obstacles are coexist in line with the world she lives in, the characters she compliments and contrasts, her own weaknesses and wants. a tl;dr boils down to everything a character Is and Isn't informs their story and their world. This same thing applies to Elias, who sits as an equally important protagonist alongside Maia, but is a lot trickier to delve into due to... well, reasons. lol reasons that will unfold as chapter 3 comes to an end, but yes.

Some characters will defy you, though, and act all of their own accord. Soli has one character in particular who absolutely refused their role and, as such, the story did evolve and change around them. Sometimes things just click into place like that. The mantra of storytelling is often "And, because of that" instead of "And then", which means that every action and every reaction leads into another, building and coiling back. That's how characters that defy you and build their own path, but it's still entertaining when they do.

As for how I pepper in hints and clues... I'm a huge fan of subtle hints (some that are so subtle you can blink and miss them) and peppering in mystery, dangling a much more obvious plot thread or a distracting moment with characters who are too engrossed in their own moments to notice something stewing in the background. With developing moments like that, it feels like it's something more of a game. Sly little hints that might seem uneasy or out of place can be a lot of fun to play with. Peppering those in carefully can lead to a really fun payoff later when something that might have even felt like a plot hole comes blaring back into the forefront. So, I guess the easier answer to that is that you kind of feel like a giddy little child that has a secret but knows better than to say it outright. You beat around the bush a little, drop little hints to amuse yourself, but it's ultimately in the service of setting up that moment when you can blurt it all out--building to the payoff is fun both for you, as a storyteller, but as well for anyone who's paying attention enough to pick up on the background clues.

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.

A simple thing with big impact you can do is continuing to mask in public spaces.

Help reduce the spread of airborne pathogens and keep each other safe!

Covid was AND STILL IS a mass disabling event.

Causing cardiac and cognitive function decline. And it IS STILL circulating. People are still dying. The vax reduces severity of infection but cannot prevent Long Covid!!

There are still disabled and vulnerable people who are essentially forced to stay in their homes since masking was dropped. Who cannot safely shop for food, or access doctors appts bc of the lack of masking, and deserve to be a part of society.

gift for @bleaksqueak! here's a photographed version since the scan doesn't do it justice:

and some close-ups:

I was driving through Vermont with a friend, and we pulled over at a tiny shop offering Maple Items. We were on the state highway, not the interstate, so "pulling over" meant "squeezing my tiny car into a parking bay the size of a broad highway shoulder."

As we got out of the car, an older woman emerged from behind the building where she had been pruning her roses. She introduced herself as Tammy.

Her shop offered the promised variety of Maple, but also a number of small antiques and a plethora of dog figurines, plaques, and clearly-hand-stitched garden flags.

A huge purple ribbon hung on the wall behind the register, along with many pictures of small dogs. This was no county fair ribbon. It was the size of my torso. The material had the soft sheen of actual silk.

As I placed my purchases on the counter, I asked, "Do you... Breed dogs?"

Yes. She does. She has bred Yorkies for the last 40 years. Her mother bred Yorkies before her. The purple ribbon was from her national championship winning Yorkie.

You may be expecting that the infodump was going to be about Yorkies.

It was not.

It was about 40 years of drama in the Yorkie breeding community. Where – you must understand – the judging at shows is often about who you're in with, not about the dogs. This is especially true when Tammy's opponents win anything.

And Tammy's mother! Well. Phyllis has been on the Yorkie scene since Yorkies were invented. Because of this, many women of equally venerable age hold deep grudges against Phyllis. The sort of grudges that result in episodes of Midsommar Murders.

This led to deep injustices against Phyllis on the part of judges and prevented her dogs from winning so often she retired from the scene. Judging is all about who you're friends with, after all.

After 20 years in hiding, Phyllis – the One True Queen of Yorkie Breeding – hatched a plot. She may have been out of the show circuit, but she was still breeding dogs. She entered an absolutely perfect bitch in the national competition, but sent her with a handler rather than go in person.

None of the usurpers knew who this dog belonged to, and in dog-breeding circles this Does Not Happen. This could have resulted in further injustices, but Phyllis was crafty. She knew this tournament was being judged by a man from the UK, who knew naught of the drama in the US Yorkie Empire.

With these advantages – and being the best dog there – Phyllis's bitch won the highest honor at the show.

Incensed by this insult to their ill-gotten supremacy, the other owners descended on the handler after the show, demanding to know for whom he was working.

"Phyllis," said he.

The name of the overthrown queen evoked horror in the usurpers.

"PHYLLIS!? She's still ALIVE!???"

Yes, Phyllis yet lived, and this bitch – the dog, not the woman – went on to mother Tammy's current dogs. One of whom, Lucy-Fur, is the reincarnation of Tammy's sister (also Lucy). This is certain for two reasons.

Firstly, Sister Lucy absolutely went straight to Hell upon her death, and Lucy-Fur the dog is positively as evil as Sister Lucy was.

BIRTHDAY GIRL'S BETRAYAL, also readable on my website.

Do you like it when healers use rez macros, or not?

Please read all the options, and share in tags or replies why you picked your answer if you like.

Simple raise macros are best if they have to be used at all - if I look over and see "Raising <t>" I know what's happening at a glance. Even though I'm a fast reader, the more text there is, the more distracted I'm going to be, and if people are dying we really don't need that.

I don't like funny/clever raise macros. Funny ones that are actually funny are much less funny on every repeat - please stop hitting the macro if people are dying a lot! - and people are rarely as funny as they think they are, especially if they're trying to be edgy/witty about it. As John Scalzi put it, the failure mode of clever is asshole, and asshole raise macros just drag down morale for everyone else.

(I've also never had a healer with a mean raise macro who had the skill to back up the attitude. It's particularly upsetting when the team is dying because of that healer's mistakes, and yet the healer still thinks a snide macro is appropriate.)

I'm also not a fan of RP raise macros because they're solely for the caster, not for usefully conveying information. I'm not going to get on anybody's ass for using them, but I'd wish people would honestly ask themselves who that macro text is really for, and put the flavor text in /echo.

Keeping yourself as cool as possible isn't being weak or wimpy. It's protecting your capacity to think and move well if you need to.