Arthur Morgan Did Nothing Wrong

sweet fantasy

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.

“Cowbook! Like cowboy! No…Readcher? Like Rancher? No, fuck this is hard…”

Arthur: ……sigh*, sure…

GEN 3 SYNTHS ARE NOT MACHINES. THEY ARE SYNTHETIC HUMANS. THEY ARE ORGANIC except for one electronic component in their brain. It's literally exactly like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep/Blade Runner.

The Institute literally builds them as full grown adult organic flesh and muscle and bone human beings, you can see one being constructed in the Institute "robotics" section. (Why is it called Robotics? Who tf knows! There's zero robotics work going on in there!) Father himself calls them "synthetic organics" when explaining to the Sole Survivor why his uncorrupted DNA was needed. And if they were machines, why would DNA be involved whatsoever?

PALADIN DANSE IS NOT A MACHINE. He is a human, albeit an artificially constructed one, but not constructed out of artificial components. He is bone and blood and flesh. Glory is not a machine. Sturges is not a machine.

Additional proof:

A scientist named Dean Volkert can be found speaking to a gen 3 synth in the Institute, you glean from the conversation that the synth is a test subject for a drug/medication that Dr Volkert is testing called K-14. You can't test drugs on robots. Gen 3 synths are organic human beings.