This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Working Title: Dangerously Genre-Savvy: From YKTTW
- Watchmen was on here twice. Fixed.
- Cliché The Bolshevik flame war on the main page is getting out of hand, so I moved the worst part here:
- Which is why, instead of either a successful democracy or a failed state, the Russian Revolution created a very successful and nasty dictatorship. The world might've been a much better place if they'd planned more poorly...
- Technically, it did result in a failed state, just one that took the better part of a century to properly fall apart. However, I'm not sure things would be better if the Bolsheviks had been less savvy. Like it or not, Soviet Russia supplied the majority of Allied muscle in WW 2, and without Stalin, or someone like him, they probably wouldn't have been able to muster the industrial capacity to fight back after Barbarossa, even with Lend-Lease and a fanatically patriotic population.
- Let's not let this stray into vehemently trying to support another country.
- Which is why, instead of either a successful democracy or a failed state, the Russian Revolution created a very successful and nasty dictatorship. The world might've been a much better place if they'd planned more poorly...
On another note, I love how saying that Soviet Russia might have been somewhat good is Misplaced Nationalism because it just happens to be an Acceptable Target. We give undue praise to Western nations all the time, and if anyone criticizes their way of doing things, especially the USA, they are viewed as traitors. This is the political version of Fan Dumb.
Chad M: I'm loathe to just up and purge a section without discussion first, so here it is: How on earth does a Real Life section belong here when it seems to be a contradiction by definition? There's a difference between Genre Savvy and competence.
and later...no response. Here's the section I removed:
- Arguably, the Bolshevik leaders in 1917 and the subsequent years were a pretty good real life example; it has often been suggested that part of the reason for their success was their knowledge of the history of the French Revolution, the Paris Commune and other similar events, which enabled them to both avoid some mistakes that doomed other historical revolutionaries and to exploit the typical mistakes of their (apparently Genre Blind to a depressing level) opponents. They certainly pointed out as much themselves. Stalin's army purges are a good later example - he basically wanted to weed out the Napoleons before they could even hope to seize power.
- And even his purges had genre-savviness: France had devastated its navy in purges, causing them much trouble facing a sea-going superpower. Stalin had many of his purged officers stuffed in gulags, not killed. When the Nazis attacked, many of them were quickly released and restored to their positions.
- Another real-life example is Cornelius Sulla in the ancient Roman Republic. Following a civil war with his rival Marius, he killed anyone he thought might ever endanger the Republic again. Of course, he missed a few, proving himself not entirely immune to genre blindness: his own followers Catiline and Pompey, and (at Pompey's insistence) the young Julius Caesar. Sulla even reportedly said he "saw many Mariuses in Caesar".
This isn't genre savvy, there's no genre to be savvy about.
- The Reality TV segment needs to be edited badly. It starts out talking about reality shows in general, then switches to naming specific people from shows without even explaining what show they're from. Unless the names refer to character archetypes, in which it needs to be better explained.
