My thing is that a lot of fiction operates under the assumption that you as the audience are already in agreement that crime is bad by default and I simply disagree. And then they make their villains Correct they're just Doing Crime about it & idgaf about The Law so I'm just like waow...
I Don't already agree with Law for its own sake I have like, my own sense of morality that isn't state-enforced, so . You're gonna have to like. Make your heroes Good? In like a material way and not just cops with swords or whatever. You can start by having them actually help people idk
I think if your sense of right and wrong is still based in legality in the year 2025 you're beyond all hope. Your politics are completely cooked. Start over
In a world where Crime includes things like "accessing medical care" and "being mexican" you're gonna have to get so fr about how Law works & who this is really serving. And then once you start questioning that you realize very little of this shit matters. Why can soldiers take human lives without it being murder, but not civilians defending themselves? And so on and so forth. Anyway this makes me fun to watch movies with
As a scifi fan (one of the main draws of good scifi is getting into the heads of people with wildly different perspectives than yours) I also like older fiction for this reason. I recently read Tarzan of the Apes and the whole framing of the introductory few chapters is this couple's internal conflict where they're on a boat with an incredibly abusive captain who keeps beating and occasionally killing sailors, and they're a Good English Lord And Lady who of course must respect the chain of command and could never countenance mutiny, so it's framed as a huge moral dilemma when the crew mutinies out of sheer self-preservation and the couple have to decide which side they're on. And the lord hears about the mutiny in advance and is like "I know the right and just thing to do is to warn the captain so he can execute the would-be mutineers, but it would put you, my darling pregnant wife, in danger!" and she's all "I'm no coward; what kind of woman would I be if I told you not to do the right thing? Warn him, and we'll bravely face the risks together!", being his stalwart moral compass like a good-hearted wife should be.
And meanwhile a modern reader is just like "fuck the chain of command, go get his arse."
Anyway it'd be great to see how badly the stories being written now that assume the audience is in agreement about modern legal mores will age.
#that's wild#like is that supposed to be satire or is it sincere?#like the captain's a murderer#he's a criminal!#if the captain is killing the crew what happens if there's too few people to man the ship?#at that point the right thing to do would be to tie him up so he isn't a danger to anyone#and then get him to a doctor or the police once they reach land
I cannot emphasise enough that Tarzan of the Apes is absolutely not satire and that this dilemma was written as straight and serious as a car crash
#oh god 😂#well#that tends to happen when you read older fiction tbh#i can't think of an example off the top of my head but i feel like i remember something like this in a sub-plot in a jane austen novel?#there's definitely stuff like that in the anne of green gables series i think#anyways i'm glad the fiction i've been reading recently (new stuff i mean) doesn't do that#you get that a lot with like... pulp fiction-esque romances#as in: cheap paperbacks‚ not tarrantino
Does it not do that, or does it not do that in ways that we notice, because (being very recently published) it's still in line with our mores? I have no doubt that in a century people will be looking at modern fiction and saying "what the fuck were they on?"
