Oh so honorable bounty hunters

[schneefink]

As a rule of thumb, when I read something in a story that annoys me I try to ignore it, if it still annoys me a day later I vent to DD, and if it still annoys me weeks later for some reason then I want to share it with everyone, so.

If you
- write a story about bounty hunters – a clan of bounty hunters, even
- repeatedly emphasize that they are bounty hunters, which makes them completely different from hired assassins
- these bounty hunters have honor and a creed etc. etc.
- and especially if you pride yourself on your worldbuilding
then maybe you should think about where those bounties come from and who can create one and why, because if your bounty hunters accept dead-or-alive bounties from anonymous sources for unknown reasons and then claim to be morally superior to hired killers I will be rolling my eyes a lot.

Comments

[dreamersdare]

My honour is financial, my creed is gold! :DDDDDDDDD

(I suppose it could work if they are unreliable narrators? But I'm guessing that's not the case?)

[schneefink]

Pretty much!
The narrator is a teenager/young man who basically grew up in that clan so it made sense that he believed that, but he kept saying it to law enforcement officers and they all treated it like a sensible and convincing argument.

[dreamersdare]

Ah, so the unreliable narrator is the author themselves. Yeah, that's not so awesome...

[james]

I guess it's moral to only take the money after you bring the person in, rather than demanding payment up front.

Because of taxes, I bet. Bounty Hunters pay their taxes, which is why they stay out of jail and assassins don't pay taxes and that's how they get caught and jailed!

;-)

[schneefink]

Actually, iirc, they claimed to be self-governing and did not even pay any taxes! Assassination being legal if you pay your fees and taxes, so, Ankh-Morpork, kinda - that would have worked much better ^^

[myrdschaem]

That sounds like a problem some Star Wars writers both fan and pro, have when writing Mandalorians. XD

[schneefink]

It just so happened to be a Star Wars fic ^^
(I think canon is vague too on how the bounty hunting system works - I mostly got the impression it is not very regulated but idk. And in most fics I am perfectly happy to ignore that, except those who make a point of it without a foundation.)

[myrdschaem]

Yeah, it's very vague in canon, so execution varies in fics. Sometimes it gets really ??? With the "nice" bounty hunters.