Slight Ponderings on Fic(s) and the Death Penalty

[misscam]

Well, most gifts and cards have hit the great mail and are on their way to their recipients. Some are about to, some may get their stuff from online ordering. Stay tuned. And now I'm exhausted. Argh, Christmas shopping, evil. I suspect I shall feel more cheered up about it once I'm no longer sick of wrapping and can ogle gifts I'm getting. *pets Daleks*

Shades of Dawn got updated. Chapter five found here (CSI Forensics) or here (ff.net). Unbetaed, since my beta seems to have wandered off and haven't been heard for in over a week, but I'll replace it with the beta version as soon as I get it. Apologies for any screw-ups meanwhile. And next chapter won't take quite as long, I promise. (I just have to fight the urge to have the Doctor and Rose randomly pop up. Bad Cam.)

Am pondering what to write next. Slowly writing on my thing for dw_santa, pondering the CSI/Doctor Who crossover I have in the works, have a vague sort of idea for a 'mirror' fic where Rose gets yanked back and forth between realities with Nine and Ten, helping to come to terms with the regen and all. Humhum. Might wait till after Christmas though, so I get a better idea of Ten.

Link found via knorg (naturally): Daleks and Tentacles, Oh My! (Bit kinky, you're warned.)

Spoilers for the Christmas Invasion special of Doctor Who and hits of series two - *resists urge to squee like a fangirl* That's certainly... Interesting. Yes.

Remember the little birdie that knocked over dominoes and got shot for it? It's going into a museum. I'm not sure whether to laugh, generally boggle or just shake my head at the world.

Execution to go ahead after all. Sigh. But this is an interesting discussion on redemption and the US death penalty.

For the many Americans and people of other countries who are not Christians, or who have no religious affiliation at all, the whole argument can seem arcane and meaningless.
But there may be something for all of us to value here, the idea that a human life is always capable of change and betterment until the moment of death.
If you think that, of course, you may feel the death penalty no longer has any value in the sort of society you want to share.

YES. Word to sodding infinity. The death penalty has not been a part of Norwegian society for a while, and for this I am glad. I don't want it in my world. Perhaps I am naive and optimistic and very, very Norwegian - but I don't want it in my world. As much as there are people out there that disgust me, enrage me and even hurt me (Hello, Bastard! I know you're out there, unaware of how much you fucked with my life. Sod you), I don't want to be able to judge death upon them.

And this was today's ponderings.

ETA: WTF review I got on a LotR fic yesterday - Oh what a beautiful and sad story. I have just finished reading it and I am still crying. Please continue writing more beautiful stories. May Valar protect you, Elena, daughter of Aragorn, maiden of Gondor

Comments

[drakyndra.livejournal.com]

Oh, I like the sound of this CSI/Doctor Who crossover. As well as the mirror-DW fic (not that it's long to wait until Christmas now).

And as for the death penalty thing...well, Australia has no death penalty, and I think I share your opinion whole-heartedly here. I don't think we should be allowed to judge death on anyone, despite their crimes.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

It will be a Nine tale, though, the crossover. That's what I started writing it as. Though maybe I'll do a sequel of it with Ten, just for the fun of it. We'll see.

Yeah. For one thing, I don't trust the justice system enough for it. There's quite a lot of evidence the US has executed innocents and that's just... Very, very troubling. But even if the system was perfect, it still wouldn't feel right to me.

[drakyndra.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't mind a Nine crossover. Though the sequel could be brilliantly funny, having Ten know who everyone is and all familiar, and the CSI-types be all WTF?

And I agree about the justice system - it's a really disturbing thought. The Australian one isn't perfect, either (I personally think a lot of prison sentences are far too short), but at least if it screws up, no-one innocent loses their life.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Indeed. "Can't a guy change without being stared at these days?"

Yeah. At least then if it's later discovered there was a mistake, you can let the person out and at least attempt to compensate for it. Hardly possible when the person is six feet under.

[drakyndra.livejournal.com]

Oh, it'd be hysterical. Sadly, I'm a little out of date with my CSI as of late, but I'm just imagining all their reactions...

Exactamundo.

[visp.livejournal.com]

May Valar protect you, Elena, daughter of Aragorn, maiden of Gondor

Okaaay... It sounds like she's calling you daughter of Aragorn - which is really weird.

[sinneahtes.livejournal.com]

The death penalty only makes sense to me if a person is seriously and obviously so dangerous that s/he can't be contained from hurting others by any other means. Otherwise it just bugs me that a government should even have the power to say, "Bad you. We're going to kill you." Especially in societies where things like racism and classism have been a big enough problem for a long enough time that you have to wonder if it influenced anyone even subconsciously during the trial or sentencing. (And then I guess there's also the possibility that guilty people might go free because they're up against the death penalty and any of the jurors were squeamish about that and had said nothing before getting selected.)

Elena, daughter of Aragorn? O_o

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Yes. I'm pretty damn sure I'm not the daughter of Aragorn and Arwen. Nowhere near pretty enough.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Even in such a case, I still feel icky about judging someone to die. In cases of then and there self defence or defence of another life is another matter - instinct to survive just takes over then.

But yeah on the latter point there - just look at how many African Americans are on death row compared to caucasian.

Apparently, yep. Claims to be so in her bio and everything.

[aervir.livejournal.com]

Thanks a lot for the link to The Independent article! Squeee...!

And I'm very, very disappointed by the fact that Schwarzenegger refused to show clemency towards Stanley Williams. This is clearly a case where someone has changed for the better and is/was even doing useful things for the prevention of crime and gang warfare from within jail.

[vulgarweed.livejournal.com]

Word. I'm in IL, where the Republican governor at the time a couple of years back had the guts to declare a moratorium on executions, because the evidence was overwhelming that the system was terrifyingly corrupt, and many many innocent people had been sent to Death Row. Racism plays a part. Classism plays a part. There is a serious police brutality problem, at least in Chicago, with suspects being literally tortured to get confessions. There is a problem with prosecutors wanting to get murder cases closed at any cost for PR reasons...it goes on and on.

I truly believe it's all but impossible to really trust the courts anymore on who's guilty and who's innocent and who's in-between.

[greyladybast.livejournal.com]

For one thing, I don't trust the justice system enough for it. There's quite a lot of evidence the US has executed innocents and that's just... Very, very troubling.

Word to the nth power. Hell, the very reason RI does not have the death penalty is that the last person the state executed (I don't know dates or the name off-hand, I'd have to look 'em up and am too lazy at this hour of the morning) wound up conclusively proved innocent something like two years later.

It happens. It has happened, right in my backyard. It will happen again.

But even if the system was perfect, it still wouldn't feel right to me.

Very true. While I might joke about chlorine for the gene pool, in the end, I fall pretty firmly into the camp of "Kill people to show that killing people is wrong---how does that make sense again?"

I guess that's simplistic, but it's still the first thing that comes to mind when pondering the death penalty. I can't get over that cognotive dissonance, no matter how firmly I believe any given individual might be an utter waste of oxygen who'd be more productive to the world contributing to the nitrogen cycle.

[greyladybast.livejournal.com]

With all the bitching the far-right has been doing about how "Schwarzenegger panders too much to the Evol Libruls!!11!!OMGBBQWTF!!!" there was no way in hell he was gonna grant clemency to a black gang founder. Williams could have stepped up and proclaimed he's solely and personally responsible for every death ever committed by any Crip anywhere, completely regretful of it and convinced he would burn in hell once he died because he deserved it, and Ah-nold would STILL not have granted clemency. He had to appease his base, and that meant a head on the chopping block.

Sickening.

[ressie-noldo.livejournal.com]

Considering the amount I know about Doctor Who, I am usually tempted to go 'Doctor Who?' when reading your journal, sometimes. ;)



What a review.


Although it can't beat

'this.'

[chem-nerd.livejournal.com]

Well, you're pretty enough. But there are some problems with time periods, and as OFUM!Galadriel would say, a few "differences in existance..."

[aervir.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I did know about the political pressure from the right, and it was probably very naive of me to hope that Schwarzenegger, as a governor most likely interested in getting reelected, might make an exception in this particular case.

And it's sickening in general that, in this kind of political system, people's lives (even though these people have committed capital crimes) are reduced to pawns in political power games, under the pretense that "justice" is being done.

Bleargh.

Even if this is a completely random and frivolous remark in this context -- but: what a great icon!

[greyladybast.livejournal.com]

Thanks! neth_dugan made it for me. She couldn't fit all the Doctors, so she used my three favorites. I think it's pretty spiffy.

[visp.livejournal.com]

Well, Elena isn't a very elven name, so maybe she's calling you a royal bastard.