I used to be really, really heavy and the satisfaction that came from successfully losing weight was amazing. It's always great to feel like you're making progress, especially in something that's so obvious.

I think it's about buy-in. There's a huge amount of art out there and people want to see the real core of a thing before they invest time in it. Also from a writing standpoint, I find that if I start "at the beginning" it's easy to get bogged down and never reach the good stuff.

I am personally a big fan of an in-media-res start with something engaging and then either flash back or just have everything explained with context clues, internal monologue, narration captions etc.

🎉

I'm sorry but I have to check, are you claiming that the Stasi are a "foreign fictional boogeyman"?