(no subject)

[farla]

(Murder) Suicide.

It's not as clear as I'd like, but part of the reason none of the failed suicides have been questioned is that the police are as likely to kill them as the other civilians. It's like the whole thing about Booth being killed before questioning. Maybe it's a conspiracy. Maybe it's that he was surrounded by a bunch of guys with loaded guns and no witnesses after he'd shot the president. This is exacerbated by the fact a number of the killers were going after thirteen year old girls for being sinful little whores, which goes over about as well as you'd think in a world that's just lost every kid under twelve.

Also starting to lay out the sort of people taken and the sort not. For some of them, it was a matter of not following the right faith. Others had different flaws.

Joseph is a reference to Joseph Franklin. One of the most horrifying stories I've ever heard is his killing of the two hitchhiking girls. He picks them up because he views them as fellow human beings and wants to help them out, because that's what people do. One mentions she dated a black boy, and he simply reclassifies them as nonhuman and kills them both. The moral of the story is that responding to someone talking about those damn niggers by speaking up gets you brutally murdered, and it's better to agree with bigotry and keep your head down.

Pretty appropriate for the story, especially considering the name.

Comments

[purplekitte.livejournal.com]

The classifier for kids was "under twelve"? So weird. I get the adulthood-at-thirteen thing, but one can have a well-formed religious identity and know that "other people believe in this Jesus person but I don't" many years before that, six as an upper limit, I'd say. Eh, whatever. Like arguing pseudo-science.

[farla.livejournal.com]

I think the idea is that under twelve you're not blamed for being too stupid to accept Jesus in time, because it's really your parents' fault. But after seeing the Golden Compass, I wonder if it's really more about puberty.