Surprised...

[liralen]

I was very surprised to find Judge Dee taking justice pretty much into his own hands, once he was convinced of the guilt of a guy he would never, for political reasons, be able to get in court. Wow. Not even a shred of the Western "you have to trust the system and use it even if you know it's not going to work" kind of thing one sees in all the police dramas.

He just tricks the bad guy into a room with an angry bear and says, "It's in a higher court than mine. I'll let Heaven judge you."

This is in The Haunted Monastery, and wow... I really enjoyed it. There's something very different about the stories, and a lot of it is the whole set of assumptions, from his three wives to his constables and the whole basis and crux of his authority. It's pretty intriguing.

I also got to watch two of the three Mushi Shi disks that amberley sent, and they're utterly gorgeous, lush, intriguing, and while all the bit players look nearly identical, each of the stories, themselves, are wonderful and so different and haunting in many ways. I'm looking forward to the last one quite happily.

I've also gotten to watch a few more episodes of Bleach and now understand why they want to go to Soul Society. *grin* It's going to be interesting.

Comments

[rephetibel.livejournal.com]

I remember a story where Judge Dee accepts a bribe and then goes ahead and gets the bad guy anyway. He felt that it was perfectly okay to accept the bribe as long as he didn't allow it to influence his actions.

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Wow.

That's really different.

I'm going to have to think this through a bit, as I was thinking of the girl Dee from Benjamin's story as being a type of Judge Dee and wow... it could make for some really interesting stories if she thought so differently than the conventional methods of present day law stories...