Background Information from Old Stories

Or stuff you could have read, but now don't need to

Ever wanted to know more about what's going on with the weird town of Arkwood Pond? Do some things just look like stuff you should know while reading this site, but you don't know those things? Then this just might be the article for you. This is a sort of outsiders guide to Arkwood Pond background scoop information that you probably haven't heard or read, or just might not be otherwise available anymore. We'll take you through a little trip down some of the previously revealed bits of Arkwood Pond history, and try to fill in some gaps without making you read or hear articles/stories that aren't deemed the most interesting, while letting you catch the interesting bits from them. This article will sometimes be in character, and sometimes a bit meta, so get prepared! Here we go!

Bit 1: The FrillerIdiot story

FrillerWorks used to be known as FrillerIdiot.com for reasons best mentioned in the previously linked article, but that information isn't really important. What is important is that at the time, it was more of an attempt to be a joke news site. Several years later, the focus changed and I decided to build more of a lore around the site and make it more story-based than fake news-based. Arkwood Pond was decided to be the basis of the site lore, and generally this site pretends to based in Arkwood Pond as a publishing company which tried to form their own newspaper, but sort of gave up on it. One of the pre-newspaper articles that gets referenced a lot, and has become a strong part of the lore, is the NAVAL IMPLANT article.

Check it out

We don't provide retina surgery. You're on your own for that. Make sure to run the Russian through a translator for bonus enjoyment.

Bit 2: The Pond Informant

You remember the focus change from Bit 1? Good. There's a quiz later.

One of the consequences of the focus change to story-telling was the formation of The Pond Informant . I hadn't quite given up on the fake news bit yet (and still haven't quite), but I wanted it to have a new home. I decided that the best way to do this was to make a separate fake newspaper site for this purpose. It flopped. Vibrations from the resulting earthquake can still be felt today.

The two key articles you need can be found below:

There's a couple other good ones there, but you've gotta weed through the junk. Sadly, and it hurts me to say this, most of the Bison&Jr.; ones are junk. I really wanted that to be a thing.

Bit 3: The Detective

The detective stories were a total accident, but easily the best part of the site. Basically there's this police detective with ADHD who's forced to write down his activities for display in the Arkwood Pond public information office as according to Arkwood Pond resolution 2.8 concerning adequate documentation of operations of city and county officials performing official business. The first story wasn't the greatest in my opinion, and I get a bit embarrassed going back and reading certain portions of it, but it was oddly popular and so it kept growing. At one point, the detective started off as sort of an alter ego for me, but by the end of the first story he was already his own character, which has really helped the quality of the stories.

Timelines can get a little confusing with these, so here's the best explanation I can come up with. These stories started out as real time, but as time passed they've started getting released on a slower basis. This is the excuse I use for just taking forever and a half to write them, but still have them make sense. They've been submitted to the Arkwood Pond public information office forever ago, but FrillerWorks is taking a while to publish them as articles. That's my excuse.

A good starting point link is this one .

Bit 4: Jacob Hickleflour

I've already linked this article in the Pond Informant section and you should totally read it. It's an ongoing story though. Cynthia Walerston, another police detective, gets assigned to the case of the missing boy Jacob Hickleflour. He's just gone though. There's been no trace of him, but since he's not confirmed dead the case can't get closed. His mother is very upset, as should she be, and occasionally badgers the police department accusing them of being lazy and not caring about her boy. This ties Cynthia up so she can't take any other cases, but there's just no leads so she generally works with the detective that recruited her on his cases. They've become friends anyway.

Also, this is all old news as Jacob Hickleflour has found his mother on Arkwood Pond Social, and occasionally posts pieces of his story there as he gets time to get on the internet. This is apparently seldom.

Bit 5: Arkwood Pond Social

I got inspired. There's a really cool webcomic called Questionable Content . The author of this comic decided to make Twitter accounts for all his characters and post updates from them from time to time. I saw that and wanted to do something similiar.

I had no clue what I was in for.

I set up a GNU Social server, and set it to federate, for the purpose of creating a social network to be used by my characters from Arkwood Pond and Water County. Goodness sake, what was I thinking? I'm bad enough at updating my own personal social account, and now I'm trying to post for twenty or more fake people too? Yeah right.

It still gets used though.

Bit 6: The formation of Arkwood Pond

There used to be another place whose name I can't remember where most of the residents of Water County are from. There was a really big bad thing there though, and it was big and bad, and sometimes called the greater evil. Because of this, the residents of the other place had to escape. Most of them managed to do so, and they pretty much escaped together. They found an unsettled place near a pond, which they named Arkwood, and so they planted spinach. Their spinach was bitter and awful, but with their caring love and kindness, their spinach crop improved. Today, Arkwood Pond has the finest spinach, and celebrates it with annual spinach competitions. I've gone off track with this spinach thing, haven't I?

Long story shortening: The escapees with the good spinach knew that if they thought too much of the greater evil, it'd find them, so they found some sort of way to convince themselves to not think of it, or of leaving. I'd ask them more about this, but you can figure out why that wouldn't work.

It's not because I haven't come up with an answer. I have, but it'd be too far out of character to write what it is here, now, wouldn't it be?

Bit 7: Other goodies

Coming at some point

Hey, try reading these too:

I Cause A Tear

At FrillerWorks, we're We'd like to do the same to your heart.

QOTWBeyond

At FrillerWorks, we're To the QOTW, and beyond!

Lorem Ipsum Test

At FrillerWorks, we're Lorem ipsum dollar gimmie some ah-now

List of Ridiculous Expectations for President Elect Donald Trump

At FrillerWorks, we're We don't really know what we're doing