A few weeks ago, I quoted two starts to a MG novel I was inspired to write. It centers around a youngster who rescues an orphaned alien creature, bonds with it and then has to deal with protecting his pet, his friend, in a human settlement where the local government utterly forbids any pets, let alone alien species. There really is no good reason for it, but it’s one of those petty rules that petty bureaucrats revel in the heavy-handed maintenance of. The creature would die anyway, there is no danger to humans from it. Millions of humans have tried to do this for millenia – and we’re still around and so are the birds, mice, voles, deer etc. that people tried their best (with limited success) to rear injured and orphaned examples of. I did it a number of times. I grew up with a couple of my parent’s successful rescues, and wept and had funeral for the failures. I’d like to believe it makes one a slightly better human.
And here we have reality imitating art. I suspect everyone will conclude this book was inspired by Peanut. The truth be told I was inspired by a similar Australian story about a rescue magpie – where public pressure made the bureaucrats reverse course. It simply struck as a great way of epitomizing the petty abuse of power by bureaucrats. There is sometimes a case to be made — but mostly, it’s just some dimwitted petty asshole enjoying their position to revel in a bit of bullying. It’s something too many of us have experienced – easy for the readers to identify with, and yes, easy villains to depict. I’m trying to write MG. I don’t want to lose my reader in moral ambiguity.
Here is the thing: it’s become fashionable to portray historical villains as the good guys, and heroes often as not as less than heroic. There is probably no human hero that had no flaws, but if the story is the flaw writ large – what sort of role model is that? I remember myself at that reading age: I wanted clarity. I wanted heroes I could imagine myself as. I think the tide is turning, and fiction will go back to being a joy, a stimulant. I hope this in many ways. I hope this time I am predictive too.
Mad Genius Club 
21 responses to “Sometime, the tide must turn…”
I hope it does. I’m tired of reading novels and going “wait, the Villain Has A Point”….especially when the good guy doesn’t.
This hits especially hard when I have more knowledge of a situation than the villain does- looking back, having three kids doing MST3K style mocking of Captain Planet was probably a sign that the folks writing it needed more exposure to nature.
And that’s before the Designated Hero where the only reason I can see that they good guy is good is that we’re told they’re the good guys. By behavior, you’ve got one horrible thing on the other side, and then…they’re…better than the good guys.
For what little it’s worth, it looks like the issue with the squirrel is that the guy was keeping him, in the house, with a recently caught raccoon kit (last few months), and he had the raccoon going outside every day.
Which is in general a good idea if it was combined with minimal handling so you can eventually release them, but not great when it’s in your house and of a species known to have a rabies issue in that area.
Pretty sure that it’ll turn out that the one source of information we’ve got, the guy who just lost his livelihood, is going to turn out to have been very conservative about the truth in some of his statements– best case I hope it gets some basically unrelated overreach fixed up.
The Villain Has A Point really requires that The Hero Has A Point — and the issue is one of a prudential judgment.
Witch Hat Atelier is an excellent example. The witches in charge have prohibited magic with too broad a brush: no healing magic is allowed, because of a blanket prohibition on working magic on human bodies. Yet the outlaw Brimmed Hats cast truly horrible spells.
If you’re going to do a good job of it, absolutely– and it’s a great starting point for making a sane “fix” in the world.
But… it requires recognizing that your “enemy” is correct, and that’s not *simple*.
Also Witch Hat Atelier built it in. It was not a retrofit.
When Tanith Lee made Snow White the villainess of Red As Blood, it was clearly a take on the fairy tale, not an attempt to reveal the truth about the Grimms’ version.
I don’t suppose the mocking of Captain Planet is available on YouTube or somewhere? Or were you talking about an unofficial off the cuff thing?
Totally unofficial, and the first run for the cartoon.
Just three ranch kids, we didn’t even have a video camera back then.
The problem with cynicism is that it can feed on attempts to shed it.
“the guy who just lost his livelihood, is going to turn out to have been very conservative about the truth in some of his statements– best case I hope it gets some basically unrelated overreach fixed up.”
This is one of those things where there is no excuse. The NYDEC engaged in a horrific abuse of power to enforce a health regulation. Paperwork, essentially.
It recalls to me another agency who did something similar for similar paperwork regulations, that being Ruby Ridge. Different outcome this time because the animal’s owners prostrated themselves with sufficient speed that no humans died. This time.
The loss of a pet being a deep wound at the best of times, my sympathies are with the squirrel’s owners. If they shade the truth or outright lie at this point, I’m good with it. Do whatever you have to do to keep the machine from killing your life and maybe, heaven forbid, get a little vengeance. Lie, cheat, steal, 100% all good.
Were it my decision, everyone in that chain of command would be pounding the pavement today, including the judge. And barred from government service for life, just for giggles.
Because SWAT-style armed warrant service for a freakin’ squirrel? One which, let it be noted, there is daily video evidence that it is clearly not rabid, the symptoms of rabies not being subtle or hard to spot from the animal’s behavior. No, for this you have a clerk make a phone call. You do not send a rifle-armed SWAT team.
The really insidious part is that they do this all the time. Some minor infraction of environmental rules will get this sort of overkill response. Like a plugged culvert, for example, or maybe manure storage. Guys get their farms raided over technicalities all the time. For examples, google “raw milk.” I’m not a raw milk fan, but the antics of regulation enforcers are -many- and noteworthy.
If they can do that, at whim, then it’s not a free country. If they can do an armed home invasion because of some obscure regulation that no one ever heard of, or that they made up because they didn’t like the guy’s attitude (ATF does this all the time) then Americans have no protection.
Canada of course is much worse. In Canada the province would have done all that, AND slapped that guy with a gag order to keep it secret. Because they can.
By the way. Since when do fish cops and cow cops get guns? Should that even be a thing? I’m thinking no.
The fish police ( US Dept of Commerce fisheries enforcement) get guns because of non-US, non-Canadian boats that raid fishing stocks, and the crews do not care to go quietly. (The Coast Guard used to do some of that, but shifts in their role led to legal complications, so it went to a different branch of the Commerce Department.)
Phantom, I’m only familiar with fish cops here in TX, but they also enforce hunting regulations, and both hunters and fishermen are likely to be armed.
There’s also the non-trivial factor that between smugglers and illegal grows, there’s a number of two legged dangers up Copperhead Road.
This reminds me of some conversations I’ve had with friends who either worked as park rangers or have friends who are about how common it is for people to get robbed and murdered out in the US wilderness. I was confused as to why until they explained about how it’s mostly hikers who are traveling a long way with little to no contact with their families, who need to be carrying a lot of money to pay for whatever they may need along the way, and are probably not armed. And of course aren’t allowed to be armed, either.
Heck local to me a few years ago they had some robberies and sexual assaults happening along the local rail trail, and men and women, especially the women, were demanding to be allowed to carry something for protection while on it. Guns, knives, pepper spray, whatever. The police refused on the grounds that “We have guns, you don’t need any.” Then some irate lady demanded to know that “So if I’m attacked on the trail, you’ll appear in a flash of light and stop my rapist?” Their response was to sniff and say, “We don’t answer specious questions.” Very reassuring.
Also dog-fighting rings.
People who may have to raid dangerous criminals need some minimal level of judgment. Like, able to tell the difference between a criminal dog-fighting ring and an undocumented pet.
….No, basic rabies precautions is not “paperwork, basically.”
The raccoons in the area are known to have rabies active in the population, and the guy let the raccoon go outside, and was keeping it in his house.
The guy knew what he was supposed to be doing. He’d been in contact with them about the squirrel before, and it was not a problem. If he’d keep the raccoon isolated, and not in his home with the squirrel, P’nut would be alive today.
Even if he was fairly sure the raccoon could never be released, he could have followed basic safety procedures, or at least pretended like he was trying to rehabilitate it and was aware that disease vectors are a thing.
He chose otherwise.
There was no “SWAT style raid,” there was a fully day time serving of a warrant for the two specific animals, with which he appears to have not complied. That does, indeed, make things unpleasant.
I will be very interested if the warrant is ever posted, since from looking at his interviews yesterday it seemed he did have a copy, but had declined to share it.
I very much hope that they had cameras for the serving of the warrant, as well. It is common to have local police there to serve a warrant, and then the investigating departments go in to do their actual job– this makes it so you don’t have to have armed agents, and makes it so you can have people that don’t want to pack guns do work that usually does not involve firearms– so it’s possible.
We’ll have to see, hopefully either there will be a source of information besides the guy who just lost his money making “educational” animal.
Well, so far, there are no citations that I have been able to find that confirm your assertions. And I looked.
So… links? You are making the assertion that this was legitimate. The burden of proof is yours.
Reading the multiple interviews Longo gave with multiple newspapers, cross-referencing them, and comparing the different versions.
The New York Post is a good place to start.
Don’t worry, I won’t hold my breath; I’m familiar with your response to information that you do not wish to hear.
By the way– I still haven’t been killed by the cops, counter to your routine declaration the last however many times I went and got you the information you claimed to want, and it showed you had been lied to, and believed it.
Again.
Various game agents have had firearms since at least the 80s.
Has to do with the lovely habit of gangs going the Russian stealth option when one walks into one of their camps, especially if there’s a drug deal going down at the time, as well as some poachers deciding that nobody will miss the warden, anyways.
Oh gads…I’m familiar with the stories various places like to push.
And with what comes up when you either know the place involved, or go looking some place besides the folks who want you to be angry.
Raw milk is fairly easy to sell; the regulations are simple enough to find that I’ve repeatedly done so for people who want to buy it, and there are multiple websites to connect sellers who aren’t trying to treat it like pasteurized milk to match up with people who want to buy.
Frequently, the “needless harassment” is because they broke health regulations, and got someone killed. Generally kids, but sometimes older folks.
Because food handling safety is work.
Reason magazine is especially bad for pushing the claims of long-term abusers who get people killed and are upset they got caught. And not doing follow-ups when the rest of the evidence comes out.
I think the tide will turn. Already Indie is becoming more popular, and indie stories, or older stories about true heroes, not just Designated Hero characters. There’s a hunger for stories that are not just about “good because I say he is” but truly good protagonists. Not perfect, because, well, the series about Emp-r-ss T. A character who begins basically perfect and doesn’t have a lot of room to grow gets very boring. Kids don’t put up with boring.
I’m reading stories because the world is already full of ambiguity about who the Bad Guys and the Good Guys are. I like some certainties.
Of course, the ambiguity is going away far too much in this world as well…
TXRed as Mod: Please focus on the day’s topic of fiction themes and characters. The current events sub-thread is closed.
Thank you for your consideration, and we return you to the previously scheduled wandering thread. 😉
Well, History is weird, ya know?
Stephen I seems to have been a remarkably good and honorable man. Also, one of the worst kings England ever had. And it was largely his virtues that made his reign one of blood and ash.
John I was NOT a remarkably good and honorable man. And his reign was rather unpleasant. But he set England up to succeed on its own merits, and (somewhat inadvertently) made the Rights of Englishmen a thing.
Henry III? OK, you’ve got me there. He’s only interesting as a contrast to De Montfort and Llewelyn ap Gyffid.
Richard III? The Tudors needed him to be a villain, but there’s very little evidence that he actually was one.