Robots are to the Establishment, as ??? are to the Rebels.

I'm not sure how far back this trend goes, but I'm pretty sure The Matrix helped to popularize it.

Basically, the antagonists have some corporate or government flavor to them. The way they speak and treat the protagonists come off as emotionless and calculating.

What else can be described as emotionless and calculating? Robots.

Thus, the antagonists either utilize an army of robots, or are themselves robots or AI.

Now let's flip it around and have the rebels be the antagonists.

But when I try to associate a non-human character archtype to the antagonist rebels, I find myself drawing a blank.

I think one reason for this is that there different types of "rebels". Some are modeled after PETA and Greenpeace, some are modeled after the more obnoxious feminist groups, and some are just delinquents.

But even if I just go with some generic "Fight the power!" rebel (which I hope doesn't exist in real life), I still can't pin down the exaggeration. What is non-human character can be described as "having passion and drive for tearing down systems and institutions"?

Addendum: I would like to see the corporate-government robots fight the whatever rebels.

edited 25th Sep '15 10:26:57 PM by Worlder

Question? Are both sides of the conflict the antagonists? Since your refer to both of them as antagonists.

In a story I'm writing, I have a robot/technology lovers (conformist) vs. necromancers (rebel) war going on.

For this thread, I'm not asking for help in any particular story. I just wanted to brainstorm.

Now I just remembered about imps and gremlins, and why they don't quite fit as an exaggeration.

Imps wreck shit and cause havoc, but they do it for the lulz. Rebels wreck shit and cause havoc in the name of fighting oppression and injustice.

edited 25th Sep '15 11:55:45 PM by Worlder

Wolves and other predators which are (considered) a threat to humans?

They're organised, but still animalistic and only focused on one objective (getting food/advancing their cause) without considering the bigger picture.

edited 26th Sep '15 8:59:03 AM by Bisected8

Hmm. That's not bad.

Robots vs Werewolves?

But I would like to hear more proposals.

edited 26th Sep '15 11:09:57 AM by Worlder

I'd watch ''Robots Vs. Werewolves". That sounds kickass.

Maybe this is just my playing too much FTL, but Robots vs. Human Supremacists.

Another thing to consider is Tomato in the Mirror. The robots are on the wrong side, but are programmed to think the rebels are Bomb-Throwing Anarchists with no true greivances against the MegaCorp.

edited 27th Sep '15 10:31:48 AM by dvorak

Not just any robots, these robots wear business suits or police uniform.

Is there a beast or supernatural entity that is an exaggeration of a Bomb Throwing Anarchist (but not necessarily a literal anarchist nor literally bomb throwing)?

edited 30th Sep '15 6:54:41 PM by Worlder

Fast Zombies? Chaotic, aggressive, utterly self-serving, just as brainless as what they claim the establishment to be; and if the source is a recreational drug rather than an official medical concoction, you can draw some nice real world parallels. Though if you really want to go for the gold, have the drug be invented and distributed by evil subversive aliens secretly preparing for invasion.

edited 30th Sep '15 9:36:14 PM by indiana404

A videogame saga (I believe it's the Shin Megami Tensei one) uses demons, who strongly believe in a "darwinist" world where it's every man for himself and the strong get to use their strength however they like. It's not complete chaos, as these demons do cooperate to reach their goal to overthrow God and His "limiting" regime of law. It's implied that, should they win, it would be each demon for himself from that point on.

Still, if you already have robots on the Lawful Stupid side, having demons on the Chaotic Stupid side could feel out of place... Why not corrupted robots? The rebels steal robots and hack them to overwrite their loyalty to the Estabilishment, or something. Maybe they simply overwrite "loyalty" with "hate" and leave everything else as is. It would make for a nice Not So Different parallel. :P

edited 2nd Oct '15 6:30:40 AM by Cozzer

Wait. You're approaching this from a serious storytelling standpoint?

I was approaching this from a silly Cliché Storm standpoint.

edited 2nd Oct '15 9:59:10 AM by Worlder

Ok I figured out the one word that unifies all the different depictions and variations of "The Establishment": oppression.

And now in no particular order I will list several things (with some redundancies) that fiction has depicted as "oppressive" and thus a part of "The Establishment".

• Government
• Corporations
• Cubicles
• Neckties
• Teachers
• Principals
• School
• Office work
• Homework
• Business suits
• Managers
• Supervisors
• Police
• Business executives
• IRS
• Drab uniforms
• Curfews
• Parents

The result is quite silly when one decides to mix those things with robots. It results in society that contains sadistic robot teachers, corrupt corporate robot executives, brutal robot police officers, and a government that literally rules with an iron fist.

I was sort of approaching it from both angles. :P I think it would be quite fun to have "good rebel robots" and then discovering they're exactly the same as the "bad estabilishment robots" with, like, one byte of difference in their programmin.

I'm not really fond of the idea of "good rebel robots".

In my mind, these factions represent abstract concepts and can be considered extremists.

The robot establishment is suppose the embody the ultimate oppressors.

The rebels are the opposite and embody the ultimate insurrectionists.

Both are bad for humanity in different ways.

edited 7th Oct '15 2:38:45 PM by Worlder

Okay,I have to admit- this idea is somewhat similar to the concept of one of my next books, so I'm going to try to play with the idea while steering clear of the ways it's similar (i.e. I'm going to talk about this without using "my" idea).

So if you want to have human rebels who are the ultimate insurrectionists and robot oppressors. You don't want "good robot rebels." How about robot innocents?

What if there are TWO kinds of robot- like robots that are just confined to one shell like Wall-E or star wars droids, and then there's viral AI that can move through a network and control other forces.

So these other robots, they aren't rebels- they're not plugged in to the internet either. They just kind of do what they were programmed to do (which is basic menial work etc), they're not antagonistic but these human rebels don't take chances. So with each "victory" they are actually making their lives worse because now they have to sweep the floors and clean the toilets etc

The metaphor you're going for is basically the robots as "Excess Order" and the rebels as "Excess Chaos," these other robots are then a non-factor and your hero character(s) represent the "just right-ness" of balance.

But I don't want human rebels. That is why I made this thread to ask what non-human entity exhibits an exaggeration of the rebel mentality.

So far the thread has offered the following

• Werewolves
• Zombies
• Demons

edited 13th Oct '15 10:03:16 AM by Worlder

The rebels are constantly angry, shortsighted in thought, and inherently destructive.

Perhaps the rebels could be a gang of orcs?

edited 23rd Oct '15 10:09:24 PM by Worlder