NaNo update – Worse than Zombies

~ crossovercreativechaos

Wordcount typed. *Thud*

I pretty much do my NaNos in a bit of a hybrid style. I write a lot of stuff longhand, generally on the back of pages I’ve printed to edit something else. Then I type the scribble up, sometimes adding stuff as I go. I may or may not add more straight at the keyboard afterward – depends on the time I’ve got and how much my bunnies need a rest.

If you’ve read Net, you know there’s something Church thinks worse than zombies. Lawyers.

…Otherwise known as, yes, there’s plenty of fallout from that one hectic day they went through in the first book, some of it coming with legalese. Meep.

Yeah. You try saving the world when someone wants to haul you into court for impersonating a dead man….

27 thoughts on “NaNo update – Worse than Zombies”

  1. Yeah, there is a reason some people’s rule is “Never, ever involve lawyers. Things are bound to turn nasty.”

    Or why nobody questioned that lawyers were by and large demons or people who dealt with demons in Buffy / Angel verse. Lawyers really are from hell? Show of hands, who is surprised?

    Plus, with lawyers sometimes comes politicians. *shudder*

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  2. You know there’s something wrong with the world when dealing with actual demons from hell is less complicated then going through the U.S legal system.
    I’m going to feel bad for Church and Aden but it should be a interesting read.

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      4. …We may have different definitions of easy. Granted, I can usually get it done in one day (though I always leave it to look over the next day, Just In Case), but it always gives me a pounding headache.

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      5. … Every time I see this post I feel guilty.

        Because it’s one – very stressful – thing to need to check five other forms to fill out one, especially when you don’t know for certain if you actually have all the info you’ll need going in… But I’ve always found the act of filling out paperwork itself to be very soothing. Boring? Sure. But it’s oddly calming and centering. There’s almost something meditative about it for me…

        Which… I have very clearly gathered is not the effect paperwork has on most people.

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      6. Well, take into account that as a writer one falls into the category of “self-employed person”. Along with artists and entertainers. This means extra paperwork. A lot of specific extra paperwork. The last time I did a 1040, I had no less than 8 other forms I had to check through, calculate, enter numbers into yet other forms….

        So yeah. I work everything out on scratch paper first, at least twice. Only if all the numbers match do I start filling out the actual paperwork!

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    2. I think part of the problem is that a lot of lawyers are very conscientious, hardworking people with very specialized knowledge. This:
      a) makes it easy for them to trick themselves into thinking they know every ramification of how their corner changes the rest of the world
      b) makes it easy for them to overlook how scarily confusing to others a mass of language they can easily work through seems
      c) means they rarely butt heads intellectually with those of their matches that have entirely alien perspectives on the wider system
      d) leads them to channel hubristic attempts to change the world through the tools they have.
      and
      e) Our society is wealthy. This means a higher carrying capacity for pointless tedious rules.
      f) Our society is high trust and lawful. This means regulation looks more effective than the force backing it makes it.

      Lawyers have a focus on systems of rules as a means of managing disputes. Many of them make the mistake of thinking that all disputes can be so managed. Many of them are blinded to the alternatives, and to the possibility that making the rules too cumbersome might make even the really sucky alternatives attractive. Relatively few of them see that keeping the rules simple, consistent, and tailored to the narrow niche of effectiveness will minimize the risk of people choosing alternatives.

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  3. Well, seeing as how I’m not a half-demon and was raised by a Southern Methodist family, nice lawyers do exist! Granted, my father did mostly title work. And his is retired (does a lot of the paper work at my mom’s medical practice). And he is amused by my vampire lawyer with ‘the original blood-sucking lawyer’ mug…

    Huh. Apparently I need to go ask Dad some really pointed questions now.

    (Joking. I hope.)

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    1. Oh I believe there are nice lawyers. They just don’t seem to be as common as their demonic cousins . . . or maybe all of them are demonic but some of them think the whole evil shtick is so 14th century . . . much better to bury your enemies in vengeful paperwork. It lasts longer.

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    2. Could be worse. Consider the Norse lawyers from sagas, or maybe some of the Greek or Roman ones.

      So far, the worst of our lawyers have not been quite so bad, relatively speaking.

      (Of course, I’m cheating. The Roman upper class was widely trained as lawyers, and guess who were often involved with responsibility in their civil wars?)

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  4. There’s a reason for the phrase Red Tape. Paperwork is of devils.There’s a story where the Satan analogue’s only invention is paperwork/bureacracy.That gained her the title alone.Too bad it’s nondiscrimatory in who it targets…

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  6. I like the irony that it’s probably better that Aiden is getting in trouble for looking like himself after being in hell for a quarter of a century as if he wasn’t getting in trouble for that then it would mean that hell changed him enough that he wasn’t the same person (mostly) he was when he left.

    Also… if Aiden’s family was Catholic and his dad made a deal with a devil… I’m getting the idea that someone was setting up some hellish entertainment for themselves a few decades down the line. Probably along the lines of a major crisis of faith….

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    1. ? I’d have to check my copy of Net again, but I thought it was his mom? Oh, wait, no, my memories are prompting me, his mom made a deal with the Lion, after the initial deal was struck. Still need to go check Net, but that’s not really a hardship.

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  7. >>Actually, his mom managed to pull one over on Aariel, no deal involved – he was proud of that.

    Which he? I know you mean Aiden, but Aariel strikes me as someone who wouldn’t mind having the mother of his son be devious enough to outthink him. Course, I could be reading him wrong.

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  8. This actually reminds me of a conversation with my roommates recently about a study where they found the highest incidence of anti-social personality disorder by career – top was CEOs, then Surgeons, and Lawyer may have been next but was definitely in the top five.

    The conclusion we drew was that there’s nothing automatically terrible about people on these career paths, but that it was a genuine advantage to not hesitate, not second guess, have an underdeveloped guilt reaction, and generally be better at viewing people as numbers or objects.

    CEOs and lawyers it might be less readily visible, but Surgeons it’s fairly obvious. It’s not that I don’t want them to care if they succeed – if their patient lives or dies – but you’ll probably get a better performance out of them if they can keep their patients at a distance, and not feel extreme guilt or regret when things out of their control mean a patient dies anyways. In some ways… I can appreciate that same quality in people whose decisions affect thousands to millions every day or deal with ‘what is the law?’

    Granted – the individuals in question should remember that the systems themselves need to be about people and compassionate to that, but having the administrators themselves be more able to emotionally remove themselves… isn’t /necessarily/ a bad thing.

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    1. Well, it is often not a good idea for surgeons to work on friends and family.

      The surgeon you want for your procedure depends on the procedure. If established, you probably want someone who has done it tens or hundreds of times. As in they’ve cut open tens or hundreds of people. If new, they are probably experimental surgeons, who’ve cut many people open, and are willing to take risks in order to learn. Whatever lets them do that and stay functional is not something you want to jostle.

      On the executive side, there’s a writer who has pointed out that sinking too much effort and resources into showing off how caring you are, winning the care offs to prove you are the caringist of carers, is in fact harmful to those one is responsible for. There’s a flavor of decisions you are in the best position to make. Doing other things, and making choices in other areas will not be your best work. Pandering to public taste or to political patrons makes me want to look more closely at the work they are supposed to be doing.

      As for lawyers, there is a lot of things they do as a collective that I do not care for much at all. (I do not think there is a compelling state interest in elite law schools. You may remember the decision that caused me to figure that out.) It is traditional for someone trained as I was where I was to have an enmity towards lawyers. At the same time, one of the men who was very influential for me was an ex lawyer. I am also very aware of Ned the Butcher, and England ‘planted thickly with laws’. I’ve sought alternatives to lawyers, and not found them in any form of government I can support.

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