Post-NaNo update: Die, Politics, Die!

~ crossovercreativechaos

…Ahem. *Sheepish G*

AKA I finally got through the section making me bang my head and only get about 200-word chunks at a time. It’s rough, and there are definitely places I’ll need to go back and add stuff, clarify, edit, etc., but it is there. At last.

Now I get to finish off some of the characters’ reactions to that nasty bit. And then go into someone doing stress relief by setting some stuff on fire….

And then it’ll be a lot of battles, trying to outwit bad guys, and one – er, heck of a final fight.

…After which everyone who survived will probably be up on charges. Because bureaucrats.

Though I suspect the judge who gets the charges is going to give the prosecutor a look of, “Come on, really? Get outta here….”

(And yes, the charges would technically be legit. Kind of. Sort of. If, say, the judge weren’t fully aware of what had just gone down, and that what was claimed to be a member of species X was actually Y. Mwah-ha-hah….)

16 thoughts on “Post-NaNo update: Die, Politics, Die!”

  1. Incendiary stress relief, my favorite! I hope we get to see that judge’s reaction, it’s the kind of scene you write so well. I love how all your characters seem to be individuals, not just cardboard plot cutouts.

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  2. …After which everyone who survived will probably be up on charges. Because bureaucrats.

    Of course.

    Because there is always at least one official or other person who is going to be an ungrateful wench.

    Yes, there are settings where the heroes probably should be making more of an attempt to reduce collateral damage in the form of destroyed buildings and dead innocent bystanders. But many of them do try and try their best. But sometimes your best isn’t good enough or fast enough.

    Through deciding to actually criminally charge someone in court (police can arrest you for a crime but it’s not up to them about whether you are tried in court for that charge or any other) is at the prosecutor’s office discretion. AND they usually have to convince a grand jury that such charges have enough evidence they aren’t wasting the court’s time.

    Granted, prosecutors usually don’t have too much trouble with that since they don’t have prove their case just that they have enough to have a case in the first place and sometimes that amount can be rather minimum (it depends on the grand jury – some of them want more, others want less). Plus the Grand Jury is fully the prosecutors’ show.

    And still a judge could determine that you have insufficient evidence. Or the evidence is inadmissible for one reason or another usually because SOMEONE in the evidence chain did not follow the laws of criminal procedure. They are not technicalities. They are the law and rights every citizen in this country is entitled to under the Constitution. The evidence is bad because it was illegally obtained. Now, does this mean that bad evidence is never used at a trial or that the police and DA’s Office never stretch those rules to their breaking point? No but no justice system is perfect. All of them have flaws, parts that suck, and of course, there is the corruption that inevitably pops up whenever you have any type of bureaucracy. Plus the ever present headache that all of this involves people and people make mistakes or are biased, etc, etc. But when it’s working properly, at least it tries to prevent that kind of nonsense from happening. And sometimes all you can do is try.

    Sorry for the rant but crime dramas often seem to think those rules are a suggestion. And they really aren’t.

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    1. In this case it will be the feds. *Wry G* Who are more than a bit pouty that so much went down without them getting the chance to interfere that they point a specific bureaucracy at the whole town.

      …The judge will laugh at them. And probably instruct any jury on jury nullification, if things get that far…..

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      1. Federal Courts have Grand Juries too. Through they can probably cite “public danger” exception to get around the requirement for a federal grand jury.

        By the way, if anyone here ever has trouble sleeping, I recommend reading legal opinions and textbooks about law. Most of them can make anything sound extremely dull.

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      3. I only dipped my toe into it, but I didn’t find organic chemistry all that bad. I dipped my toe into physical chemistry at the same time, and it was rougher because I wrongly convinced myself I mostly understood the thermodynamics and didn’t need to study as much.

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      5. Dull is probably kinda the point where legal writing is concerned.

        We don’t use the Greek and Roman method, where a lawyer was a showman hoping to connect with the juror on an emotional level.

        See Cicero’s orations against Cataline, even if that was primarily political theater. (I’m a lousy lay example of a classicist, so I have no better illustrations. Okay, maybe the two trials involving Socrates in Plato’s Republic.)

        1) emotions make people stupid 2) not everyone is cold blooded and analytical enough to just wade into blood and tears and immediately start sifting for the finest of details. Dull legal writing can help influence those of us who are not naturally capable and have not become accustomed to it by habit.

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      7. Yes, it is supposed to be rather dull. And rather pendatric because that is also the point. Because laws and legal decisions will be looked at and interpreted later, sometimes much later, it is important to be precise about what exactly you mean.

        Through lawyers and judges are no strangers to using rhetoric to obstruct their lack of content. And sometimes it seems like they are paid by the word rather than the hour.

        Also I think it’s rather telling that most lawyers have their paralegals and other such non-lawyers do the job of slogging through pages and pages of legal jargon.

        There are likely people who enjoy it but for me, it took a lot of willpower to keep my brain on task and not wandering off to more interesting places. Or at least places with sentences that didn’t take up the space of a paragraph and often contained Latin.

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