Pluie Pitch — Wolves-Only Roadway vs. Political Reality
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
A conservation group introduces Pluie the wolf to C.J. with an overhead projector, presenting her as a symbol of wildlife resilience.
The group reveals their $900M wolves-only roadway proposal, triggering C.J.'s sharp political skepticism.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Amusedly skeptical on the surface, quickly hardening into practiced professional detachment and moral arithmetic when grief and cost collide.
Sits at the table, alternates between sardonic jokes and sharp tactical questions, deflating idealism, asking the decisive fiscal question and rejecting the proposal in favor of a tangible alternative.
- • Test and puncture the rhetorical excess of the conservation pitch
- • Translate moral appeals into political feasibility (cost, electoral impact)
- • Protect the administration from impractical proposals
- • Policy must be measured against cost and voter consequences
- • Moral appeals are insufficient without political plausibility
- • Messaging requires concrete, electorally resonant alternatives
Measured and slightly reproachful; uses blunt facts to steer the conversation back toward policy realities.
Operates as the factual, clarifying voice: interjects specifics (including the revelation Pluie was shot) and asks the administration to consider budget numbers, acting as a sober counterpoint to theatricality.
- • Ensure factual clarity about Pluie's status and project costs
- • Prompt practical conversation about budgetary implications
- • Clear facts force political reckoning
- • Advocacy must confront fiscal realities
Quietly proud of the science, defensive when mocked, and chastened by the reveal of Pluie's death and C.J.'s dismissal.
Represents the collective scientific/advocacy team: supplies statistics about Pluie's migrations, outlines the technical scope of an 1,800‑mile corridor, and fields C.J.'s skeptical probes about logistics and politics.
- • Persuade decision-makers to consider corridor proposals
- • Frame scientific tracking as the basis for policy investment
- • Data-driven conservation can justify large expenditures
- • Visibility in the Roosevelt Room advances advocacy goals
Lightly sardonic and politically alert; joining C.J.'s pragmatic frame.
Interjects briefly with supportive, pragmatic comments ('Perhaps, if we should...'), positioning himself as a political side voice and underscoring feasibility concerns.
- • Signal political costs and feasibility limits
- • Support messaging that protects the administration
- • Political calculations trump pure advocacy
- • Leadership needs defensible, vote-minded choices
Operates as an image that intensifies the room's emotional register — from sentimental to darker, more complex stakes.
Projected as the next dramatic image (grizzly) after the conversation pivots; used symbolically by presenters to broaden stakes beyond Pluie and to reframe the pitch.
- • Serve as visual amplification of conservation stakes
- • Shift audience attention and moral tone
- • Imagery can reframe debate
- • Visual drama is persuasive in political rooms
Earnest conviction mingled with discomfort when political reality and grief intrude; subdued after revealing Pluie's death.
Acts as the public face of the pitch: narrates Pluie's migrations, presents the wolves-only roadway concept, and responds when C.J. challenges feasibility and cost, then bows as Pluie's death is revealed.
- • Secure White House sympathy and support for the roadway idea
- • Humanize Pluie to make the corridor emotionally persuasive
- • Large-scale ecological solutions deserve bold public investment
- • Emotional storytelling can shift political calculations
- • Scientific evidence underwrites moral urgency
Non‑speaking; as a projected subject, evokes tragic loss and moral urgency in others.
Appears only as projected imagery and story subject; functions as the emotive hinge when presenters reveal she was shot, converting abstract argument into human (animal) loss.
- • (As a symbol) Elicit empathy and moral pressure for policy action
- • Anchor the conservation argument in a singular story
- • N/A (nonhuman symbol) — represented belief: individual stories can drive policy
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
The white projection screen serves as the visual stage for Pluie's life and the wolves-only roadway renderings; it concentrates the presenters' theatricality and focuses C.J.'s reactions, turning images into political leverage.
The overhead projector physically delivers the wolf and grizzly images and the $900 million slide; its hum and looped visuals create the performative structure of the pitch and enable the presenters' rhetorical timing.
The highway overpasses image visually dramatizes the scale and infrastructure ambition of the wolves-only roadway, making the proposal tangible and inviting C.J.'s practical objections about signage and animal behavior.
The photo I.D. exists here as a rhetorical prop, invoked in a joke about border controls when the US-Canadian border is mentioned, puncturing the pitch's solemnity with a moment of levity.
An oversized slide with a bold "$900 million" headline is invoked/projectioned as the financial pivot; the figure provides the leverage for C.J.'s political rebuke and reframing of priorities toward schools.
C.J. invokes this alternative budget sheet — 'nine best schools' — as a counterimage to the $900 million price tag, reframing the conversation from ecological grandiosity to tangible domestic investment.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
The Roosevelt Room functions as an institutional stage where public advocacy meets executive practicality; its long table and projection setup create a forum where theatrical storytelling is processed through the lens of political cost and voter reaction.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
"Pluie’s death and C.J.’s emotional connection to it later influence her defense of wildlife."
"Pluie’s death and C.J.’s emotional connection to it later influence her defense of wildlife."
Key Dialogue
"MAN: The wolves-only roadway."
"WOMAN: Pluie was shot and killed by a rancher in British Columbia last month."
"C.J.: Just out of curiosity, how much would it cost?"