posted October 11, 2012 08:04 PM
Back when I was a teen I read one that stayed with me...it was kind of the opposite, and I think my having been a runaway helped me to relate to it a lot. I don't recall the name of the short story but it was part of a fantasy series called Thieve's World, a surprisingly realistic and gritty medieval city (ironic given that gods, demons, and magic were everyday occurrences) and in a somewhat soap opera way it detailed the various characters on both sides of the law (and those who routinely cross from one side to the other). As best I recall (from about 13 years ago) one of the most vicious upcoming crime lords took to increasing his rep and intimidation by punishing those who defied him and his syndicate. When it worked too well he wasn't satisfied (as some were just too good to be caught even by him) and so took to killing urchins (children living on the streets) and killing them out of hand as an example to others. It worked for cowing others but the children knew the truth and also knew they had nothing to lose. So one canny kid arranged things and adapted their pick pocket technique to get the crime lord on his own and then he showed up as a guide. He was impressed with his canny survival skills and observation (like the kid pointing out a wizard the crime lord feared wasn't so powerful if he still needed to carry a sword) and was even thinking of adopting the boy as his own son when, too late, he realized the boy led him into a trap where the other street kids conducted an all out assault. The kids, frequently ignored as unimportant, had spied his fighting technique and prepared for it and he realized he was going down, and worse he was going to be known as the one who was killed by children.
But then the new cop (who would become his archfoe later on) assigned to bring order to the city intervened with his full armor and legendary fighting ability and thus saved what he thought was an innocent being attacked by vicious urchins. It was tragic when many of the kids (including the guide the crime lord had been thinking of adopting) was dead at their feet and the rest fleeing but that was only the start.
The crime lord was grateful to his savior and realizing he was a cop tried putting him on his payroll as he normally did, but this guy was a true believer in law & order and couldn't be bought. And they then got into an argument over the bodies of the children they'd both slain side by side and it became clear both came from tragic childhoods themselves and both were monsters, one a soldier who never questioned orders as he murdered for his lord (including children) and the other a mobster who did the same but for himself.
Sad and tragic, yes, but also brilliant. And I never forgot it (at least not the gist), though none of the other TW stories captivated me like that one did so that I gave up on the series.
And I remember it a lot. Like when children in Thailand being used to have sex with "child sex tourists" discovered date rape drugs and instead of having sex with them they'd give them drugged drinks and take their money and other valuables (as long as they paid then they didn't get starved & beaten). And if that wasn't bad enough for the johns the doses were sometimes enough to kill them, make them miss their ship so they were stuck in Thailand, or go back groggy and thus easy prey to other criminals. Enough kids started doing it that it affected the child sex industry and so the Thai cops (showing the lie of their government hating child prostitution) went in and busted heads to make sure the children (and their masters) knew their place and didn't hurt the trade anymore as it brought it too much tourist money (and even the illegal transactions spurred the economy).
Of course things like that happen all over the world. Even the US show COPS once showed Houston cops going after people who were robbing businessmen by busting male prostitutes (just how many people missed the obvious connection that it wasn't businessmen being robbed but johns?), which was a less brutal way of doing what Thailand did and for the same reason (after all the city makes a lot of money from fining prostitutes, both legally and illegally).
And I recall a true crime book in which the author admitted a girl had gone to help against her father sexually abusing her and was refused help so she hired an Eagle Scout friend to take out her dad. I'm one of those who support her decision (and glad she and the hitman both got probation, IIRC) but the prosecutor gave a speech (that the author sympathized with) in which he admitted several women & girls were cast aside by the system meant to protect them and therefore if all she and the hitman gets was probation then it was opening the floodgates to the huge numbers of others betrayed by the system to take the law into their own hands. (Of course actually protecting the victims so that such drastic measures weren't necessary wasn't something he was willing to consider.) That girl who had her father killed has my full sympathy and I think the Eagle Scout who killed him for her is a hero.
Amazing how so many claim they want to protect the children by screwing them. And funny how Russia allows the most abusive orphanages to exist and the kids fleeing them to live in abandoned buildings, preyed on by perverts and forcibly recruited by adult criminals (sometimes the kid growing into a mobster), and making it so that they sometimes have to survive winter by sleeping on heated water piped in the SEWERS just to not freeze to death, yet Russia did a lot of posturing and made it a lot harder for Americans (including Russian Americans trying to adopt relatives) to adopt Russian children because one Russian baby was killed by American child abusers and I think also because a Russian boy (with severe behavior problems, IIRC) was sent back to Russia (but most kids adopted in America do well, at least better then they'd have done in Russia).
If you're gonna be a monster, then be a monster. Don't smile at kids while swearing to protect them and then stick a dagger in their back. Even the cops in the Thieves World series didn't sink that low.
Lindaland
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posted October 10, 2012 10:34 PM
posted October 11, 2012 08:03 PM
posted October 12, 2012 09:42 AM
