tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940224740718934743.post4931849915973300637..comments2024-03-10T04:29:20.044-04:00Comments on Mad Genius Club: Overthrowing the Evil TyrantSarah A. Hoythttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17478124095732219352noreply@blogger.comBlogger21125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940224740718934743.post-57870163104514562952010-03-12T20:26:25.964-05:002010-03-12T20:26:25.964-05:00RJ Cruze,
Absolutely. Outside support is somethin...RJ Cruze,<br /><br />Absolutely. Outside support is something that often helps weak tyrants to become strong ones - although sometimes all it takes is for the outside world to pretend not to see what's happening - a political scenario you rarely see in books of any flavor, possibly because no-one involved in that kind of politicking comes out looking good.Kate Paulkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02034983693134240754noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940224740718934743.post-36164578770026267242010-03-12T20:23:34.392-05:002010-03-12T20:23:34.392-05:00Stephen,
I think you're over-simplifying here...Stephen,<br /><br />I think you're over-simplifying here. Overthrowing a tyrant invariably leaves a power vacuum, and that's very tempting to the would-be tyrant who's been waiting for his chance ("Meet the new boss, same as the old boss"). <br /><br />In the case of Russia, Lenin and his cadre took power after several years of effective anarchy and civil war. He might have been the "face" of early Communist Russia, but Stalin was the enforcer from very early in the piece, and stepped forward when Lenin died - no overthrow required, and the Russian people didn't get a say. <br /><br />Putin weaseled his way in after some classical dirty dealings - some of which may be a whole lot worse than anything that's known. In essence, he did what all effective would be Evil Overlords do. He used the system as it was to make himself look good and get in by apparently legitimate means, then carefully eliminated anything in the way of transforming things to what he wanted. <br /><br />Like Dave said, it's a lot more complicated.Kate Paulkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02034983693134240754noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940224740718934743.post-13771778302135705652010-03-12T20:17:32.216-05:002010-03-12T20:17:32.216-05:00Sarah,
Stop that! I don't have TIME for more ...Sarah,<br /><br />Stop that! I don't have TIME for more stories! <br /><br />And I believe you. Thousands wouldn't, but I truly believe there is not one thing autobiographical about Thena. Not one.<br /><br />Bizarre conversations when you heard the taps come on... I wonder if this is sociologically equivalent to starting/having weird discussions in elevators to freak the normals?<br /><br />And remember, there are no Squirrels in Black.Kate Paulkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02034983693134240754noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940224740718934743.post-80930962833754357092010-03-12T20:00:48.292-05:002010-03-12T20:00:48.292-05:00Dave,
There is no MGC Secret Police. There never ...Dave,<br /><br />There is no MGC Secret Police. There never was MGC Secret Police. There are no Squirrels in Black.<br /><br />Reality is a lot more complicated than fiction can portray - and a lot crazier, too. I personally think that weaving a little of the reality in and tying it into a plot helps to strengthen the plot and - in the case of the Mugabe's of the world - make what they're doing seem less implausible than it does to most of us here. Like I said further upthread, I can imagine it and understand at an intellectual level. Part of the tyrant's toolbox is applied terror. You only have to abduct one prominent opponent and leave their mangled and barely recognizable body somewhere public to intimidate most people. The key is to have those 5000 in the right places.<br /><br />It's truly amazing the way those 20% end up with amnesia. Whether they can - or should - be blamed is a bit more complex. The human capacity for self-deception is damn near infinite, and while in fiction we can punish the bad and reward the good, life doesn't draw neat little lines.Kate Paulkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02034983693134240754noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940224740718934743.post-71456144682277408472010-03-12T00:21:48.565-05:002010-03-12T00:21:48.565-05:00One other way I think tyrannies stay in power, in ...One other way I think tyrannies stay in power, in some cases, is the influence of outsiders, especially when it comes to the smaller fry -- provided that smaller fry has something the larger fry want.<br /><br />I could just picture some official saying in a meeting, "Well yes, he does have this nasty habit of filling mass graves, but he keeps the supply of <b>Resource X</b> moving at the prices we want! And if the Rebels came to power, they might not only raise the price of <b>Resource X</b>, there's a good chance they might bring to light the... contributions by certain diplomatic and corporate officials to the current regime, which could prove detrimental to the careers of everyone sitting at this table. So, we definitely want to do everything we can to help our little 'President for Life' put down the rebellion."<br /><br />(Why yes, I <i>do</i> have a very cynical opinion of international diplomacy. Why do you ask?)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940224740718934743.post-21948366337223111392010-03-11T23:13:23.546-05:002010-03-11T23:13:23.546-05:00Take a long look at Russian history. They overthre...Take a long look at Russian history. They overthrew the Tsars and got ... pretty much the same thing, with different labels and trappings, less liberty, and more poverty.<br /><br />So they overthrew Lenin and got ... Stalin. Tens of millions murdered, less liberty, more poverty.<br /><br />Tore down the Berlin Wall and got ... Putin ...<br /><br />There develops a habit-like aspect to enslavement, after a people lives too long without liberty. Liberty and honesty become, in their minds, mythical beasts.Stephen Simmonshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07522113936557314128noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940224740718934743.post-22662164590945710152010-03-11T23:11:49.653-05:002010-03-11T23:11:49.653-05:00Kate, wrote it. The Blood Of Dreams in the Secret...Kate, wrote it. The Blood Of Dreams in the Secret History of Vampires.<br /><br />Dave, I was on a watched file. Um... they might have had more cause with me. (DST is NOT autobiographical for my younger self in personality and outlook. not at all. Go back to sleep.) Our phone was tapped for a decade. This being Portugal it was quite obvious when they clicked on. My friends and I delighted in having bizarre conversations. It's adaptive.<br /><br />Your friend... you knew James Lorimer? :-P<br /><br />You are right about it all being more complex. I started a post on this, for CV, but I haven't finished yet.<br /><br />ChrisM -- I AM the secret conspiracy that rules the world. And if you think a single person can't be a conspiracy, kindly consider all the people in my head.Sarah A. Hoythttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17478124095732219352noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940224740718934743.post-33895065582055723272010-03-11T23:11:48.709-05:002010-03-11T23:11:48.709-05:00Kate, wrote it. The Blood Of Dreams in the Secret...Kate, wrote it. The Blood Of Dreams in the Secret History of Vampires.<br /><br />Dave, I was on a watched file. Um... they might have had more cause with me. (DST is NOT autobiographical for my younger self in personality and outlook. not at all. Go back to sleep.) Our phone was tapped for a decade. This being Portugal it was quite obvious when they clicked on. My friends and I delighted in having bizarre conversations. It's adaptive.<br /><br />Your friend... you knew James Lorimer? :-P<br /><br />You are right about it all being more complex. I started a post on this, for CV, but I haven't finished yet.<br /><br />ChrisM -- I AM the secret conspiracy that rules the world. And if you think a single person can't be a conspiracy, kindly consider all the people in my head.Sarah A. Hoythttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17478124095732219352noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940224740718934743.post-39833576565361423362010-03-11T22:31:11.449-05:002010-03-11T22:31:11.449-05:00I have reported this conversation. Despite the occ...I have reported this conversation. Despite the occasional references to South Africa's Apartheid as the equivalent to Nazi Germany, the situation was never that tyranical... and yet at university I was supposedly watched as a dangerous subversive (which all goes to show that tyrannies are both stupider and far less stupid than you may realise). I was on the list of people a friend was supposed to report on... principally because I had made a fool in public of the government's prime 'agent provocatuer' (Olivia Forsythe), by displaying that neither she nor her idiot coiterie of suckers loudly espousing communism actually knew what dialectical materialism meant. I teased an apartheid spy out of an inability to suffer fools... and ended up as a suspect myself. And to make things more complex the person who was supposed to be spying on me - with an impeccable Afrikaaner Nationalist pedigree, was a sympathiser of the then banned ANC... <br />Firstly, reality is often too complex, ambivalent and unbelievable for good fiction.<br />Secondly, unless you have been there, the brutality and intolerance of tyrannies is so far beyond the grasp of most first world westerners, as to make it implausible (although it is real). That's why Robert Mugabe can oppress a country - although he probably has the real support of about 5000 people (and oppresses 5 million - a parallel you have to go back to the Saxon era in Britain to find in the west) and you have people looking puzzled and saying well if he is unpopular, why don't they kick him out? <br />Fiction has limits :-( Still:<br />When an oppressive regine falls, it usually falls quite fast and hard, and it is very difficult to find any of those 1:5Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12315551718688781746noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940224740718934743.post-57704963882309225912010-03-11T21:45:24.159-05:002010-03-11T21:45:24.159-05:00Sarah,
Please don't do this to me. I don'...Sarah,<br /><br />Please don't do this to me. I don't need visions of Karl Marx and his followers pulling stakes from their hearts and going out in search of fresh blood. I've got ENOUGH problems already.<br /><br />(p.s. Yes, you're 100% right about the whole "it was better in the old days. We might have been slaves but we knew where we stood" thing)Kate Paulkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02034983693134240754noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940224740718934743.post-46086581683027000612010-03-11T21:41:37.938-05:002010-03-11T21:41:37.938-05:00Rowena,
We haven't grown up in the regime, no...Rowena,<br /><br />We haven't grown up in the regime, no. The level of paranoia that kind of life would foster is almost unimaginable to me. I can extrapolate to it there at an intellectual level. I can't FEEL it.<br /><br />As to those documentaries, I'd be looking for motives. In any kind of tyranny, you end up with people who have become beaten down by the regime and just accept it - these are the ones who stay in their cell when the door is opened, because even though it's horrible in there, outside is is a whole realm of unknown and that is even worse. It's a special kind of learned helplessness, I think. Then there's the ones who are trying, but they're - understandably - scared by all the changes and a bit overwhelmed and might occasionally wish for the old sureties back, but they don't really mean it. <br /><br />The dangerous ones are the ones who were doing quite nicely thank you in the old regime. They don't like the new freedom. There's one playing puppet-master in Russia right now - which brings up book (or series) two - what happens AFTER you've overthrown the evil tyrant? <br /><br />There's always a power vacuum, and what gets swept in isn't always the best of choices. It's certainly never what many books imply with All Being Good after the Evil Overlord dies.Kate Paulkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02034983693134240754noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940224740718934743.post-11035731642242752332010-03-11T21:33:34.584-05:002010-03-11T21:33:34.584-05:00Chris M,
Oh yes. Inertia, the tendency to think t...Chris M,<br /><br />Oh yes. Inertia, the tendency to think that they couldn't REALLY be doing that, and the neighbors not noticing - or not appearing to notice - have a huge effect.<br /><br />And WHAT are you doing outing yourself! You know the MGC Secret Police don't exist. There are no MGC Secret Police. Any MGC Secret Police you may see are nothing more than an illusion of an overtaxed mind.Kate Paulkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02034983693134240754noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940224740718934743.post-21567278641549894932010-03-11T21:25:16.958-05:002010-03-11T21:25:16.958-05:00Matapam,
This is very true - the villains of a pi...Matapam,<br /><br />This is very true - the villains of a piece should have understandable motives, possibly even theoretically noble motives, along with a character flaw or three that leads them into the the "ruling for their own good" path and the inevitable corruption. (Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and power attracts the corruptible).<br /><br />You don't want to hear my opinion on politics in the US today (I'm not qualified to speak on US politics in the past). It's very... er... Oh, screw it. I lived in Queensland in the time when politics was done via cash in brown paper bags. From what I've seen, the US doesn't bother with even the semblance of anonymity and just legalizes the bribes. I wouldn't trust any politician further than I could spit them - and this shows up in my writing. Gee. Funny that.<br /><br />And beauty pageants are evil by definition. Always.Kate Paulkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02034983693134240754noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940224740718934743.post-83161555747784287792010-03-11T21:22:57.505-05:002010-03-11T21:22:57.505-05:00Rowena,
This is a well-documented effect, registe...Rowena,<br /><br />This is a well-documented effect, registered in the Bible itself when the Israelites pined for the fleshpots of Egypt after being freed.<br /><br />It seems as though the harsher the slavery the more this pining effect occurs.<br /><br />However, in the case of the freed slaves of communism (considering communism is the proverbial vampire that won't stay in its grave and is now again popular with a certain class of intellectual) one must ask the motivations of those reporting this longing. Last I checked, no one is dying of starvation in Germany which has a substantial welfare net.Sarah A. Hoythttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17478124095732219352noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940224740718934743.post-29082375648284186802010-03-11T21:15:16.112-05:002010-03-11T21:15:16.112-05:00Sarah,
Absolutely. The original series of V was a...Sarah,<br /><br />Absolutely. The original series of V was an excellent TV treatment of the same phenomenon. That series deliberately used parallels between the rise of Nazi Germany and their world to show how it happens, and did so very well.<br /><br />1984 shows the end result, and shows it in all its toxic, horrific evil. <br /><br />Conveying the journey from one to the other and how it affects people - and what it does to them - is a challenge.Kate Paulkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02034983693134240754noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940224740718934743.post-79336174225496419262010-03-11T21:03:42.635-05:002010-03-11T21:03:42.635-05:00Chris K,
It is a difficult balance, and hard to g...Chris K,<br /><br />It is a difficult balance, and hard to get right - although I've got to agree, the vision of someone lopping off the Veep's head with a sword is kind of attractive... If ultimately rather pointless, because then you get into the mess of what happens afterwards.<br /><br />Yes, the Ceaucescus were convinced they were in the right and they knew best. So are most tyrants. They truly could not believe that the cheers had turned to mockery, or that people hated them. <br /><br />It wouldn't be easy to use that in a story, but <i>damn</i> it would be effective if done well.Kate Paulkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02034983693134240754noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940224740718934743.post-28962684567016404082010-03-11T20:39:58.283-05:002010-03-11T20:39:58.283-05:00Interesting post, Kate. And really good point.
We...Interesting post, Kate. And really good point.<br /><br />We don't know because we haven't grown up in that regime. There's been an interesting series of documentaries over here on East Germans, looking at how their lives have changed. Many have found the 'freedom' is not what they thought it was and they were happier when they knew where next week's food was coming from. Their lives were more circumspect, but they were certain.Rowena Cory Daniellshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08995983965583233914noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940224740718934743.post-78108361962241623342010-03-11T18:40:10.565-05:002010-03-11T18:40:10.565-05:00Damn, Kate! You have discovered my terrible secret...Damn, Kate! You have discovered my terrible secret - reporting to the MGC Secret Police.<br /><br />I think with regimes there is a lot of inertia with the populace. Things can seem OK at the beginning and slowly change. Inside that sort of thing it must be hard to know when things are just 'not OK' anymore.<br /><br />The other thing is a social proof phenomenon, where you see that all your neighbours think its fine (and maybe they report as well), so you are reassured.<br /><br />Gemmell does the bad guys well. He loves getting inside their heads and into their thinking - how they are really just doing what anyone sensible would do in their position. Fascinating to see how things are justified.<br /><br />BTW - Gemmell had a pretty good female Evil Overlord in the Witch Queen (Skillgannon books). She was in love with the hero and vice versa.Chris McMahonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17883058490702361466noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940224740718934743.post-87020024653446363702010-03-11T13:55:10.689-05:002010-03-11T13:55:10.689-05:00I've liked how Lois Bujold handles villains. T...I've liked how Lois Bujold handles villains. They are, at least at the start, motivated to do what they think needs to be done. To save the kingdom or whatever. And a lot of people agree with them, and then the corruption sets in.<br /><br />It's easy to see how it happens, just watching politics today. Counter arguments bounce of the opposite view, accusations of corruption, incompetence, and criminality fly. How soon would we notice that's it's gone too far and become more than rhetoric?<br /><br />When do beauty pageants become truly evil?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940224740718934743.post-84415506856473966722010-03-11T10:24:26.670-05:002010-03-11T10:24:26.670-05:00The problem, and what I hope to explore in Darkshi...The problem, and what I hope to explore in Darkship Treason and Darkship Renegade, is that a truly corrosive regime gets on the inside. You become a traitor to yourself. This is perfect at the end of 1984. Just perfect.Sarah A. Hoythttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17478124095732219352noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940224740718934743.post-61445314593323306712010-03-11T10:18:32.313-05:002010-03-11T10:18:32.313-05:00It's a really tricky balance in writing. If y...It's a really tricky balance in writing. If you're using an Evil Tyrant as an obstacle to the Heroes Journey then that Tyrant needs to be defeatable by the hero. This, generally speaking, makes it exceedingly hard to be totally realistic. In reality it usually takes a mass uprising of the background characters, perhaps urged on by the hero, to overthrow the tyrant. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington rather than Frodo throws the trinket into the volcano. <br /><br />And now, having referenced the greatest movie ever made, EVER, I have visions of Jimmy Stewart pulling out a sword and lopping off the Vice President's head. <br /><br />The other thing is that real tyrants never see themselves as the bad guys. They tell themselves that the little people just don't understand. Watching the video on the end of the Ceausescu's that Mike Totten linked to it seemed pretty obvious that they were adamant that they were the agrieved party all the way to the end.C Kelseynoreply@blogger.com