Is this possible: A story that reverses stereotypes (for instance: Good Empire)?

I have a story idea that reverses the typical stereotypes generated by the mass in general. I am just wondering if it's actually possible. Here's the rundown:

It basically reverses the stereotype, whereas the innocent, oppressed group turn out to be the antagonistic evil force, only using how they are supposed to be the 'innocents' that they are supposed to be good. They apparently took a certain bibilical stereotyping into the extreme. The Bible usually favors the poor and powerless to be those receiving the favor of God, and thus the enemy group, believing that they are poor and 'powerless', thinks that God and justice are on their side, thus banding together and went on a campaign against the world in the name of 'freedom'. If asked why, their response is usually because they think they are The Chosen One, those favored by God for their suffering in the past. It's time for them to bite back against the obvious devils... the actual protagonists in the game: They consist of most evil tropes you can find. The hero is from The Empire, chock full of 'evil' corporates, rich bastards, etc...

Except that for all the trope implies, the heroes were actually decent honest guys. The expansionist Empire? Becomes like that to prevent other neighboring kingdoms to abuse their power, and then subject them with Defeat Means Friendship, redeeming them, improving the structure of the territory. But they're made to look like evil empires because the belief that 'Empire = Evil and Order Is Not Good'. The Corrupt Corporate Executive? Actually a Honest Corporate Executive, but the widespread belief that corporates are all money-sucking bastards to the poor that only cares for their own profit made him look like a corrupt one. The Rich Bitch? Actually a Spoiled Sweet and a philanthropist, but made to look like that due to belief that rich people are only out there to trample the poor. They may look like the side not favored by God, but they are actually decent people who truly cared for others.

Whereas the enemy, the 'innocents', are led by something that would look like a Shonen hero or a typical superhero... but instead was deluded with the stereotypes, thinking with Black-and-White Insanity, believing that they are the heroes fighting for freedom because they are the 'commonfolk that suffer'. They probably has a Quirky Miniboss Squad that may make them look like a Five-Man Band, but in practice looks like a Five Bad Band.

So the protagonist is basically a leader of a good Empire that fell from power due to a 'coup d'etat based on freedom' by the common folk, and had to get back in power, defying all the given stereotypes that Empires, Orders, Corporates, Wealth are all typical evil people whereas Commonfolk, Freedom, Poverty tends to get the good stereotypes.

Can this work? If this can, can anyone think of 'Typically Evil' tropes that can be made into good, with the 'Typically Good' tropes that can be made into bad?

The purpose of this is to show that "Even the 'designated good' force can be corrupted, and the 'designated bad' force may actually turn out to be decent... if you don't just follow the stereotypes blindly"

Thanks.

edited 16th Apr '17 6:49:14 PM by ChrisX

The differences you envision aren't even necessary. Here's the thing: the Good Empire isn't a different beast from the Evil Empire, it's the same empire, seen under a different light. The empire is a dynamic place, confident in its future. It enables exchanges between distant cultures. It uses its military might to fight brigandage and piracy, which contributes to trade and economic development. These generate state revenue that the ruler will spend in part by patronising the arts. Large food surpluses can support an urban population. Even the emperor's absolutism can be justified on the grounds that it was necessary to end the anarchy that came before.

TL;DR: Stop Being Stereotypical on the ongoing theme or common interpretations like "Empire is evil, Order is tyranny, Corporates are Corrupt, Freedom is good, PROTECT THE INNOCENTS, etc'.

Long version:

The main theme of this story is to go against the stereotypes. While what you say about 'Empire on a different light' is true, the theme is that the 'Evil Empire' stereotype has been permeated into the mind of the people that they tend to generalize. Things like:

• If it's an Empire, it has to be evil.
• If the philosophy is based on Order, then it has got to be a tyrannical order of suffering with Knight Templar style, because Order Is Not Good and 'Freedom' is where it's at.
• If it's a corporate (and it's executive), it has to be an Evil, Inc. led by a Corrupt Corporate Executive
• If a person is rich or aristocratic, they have to be either a rich bastard, an Upper-Class Twit or examples of Aristocrats Are Evil
• If a woman is a buxom, older Ms. Fanservice, then they've got to be an example of Evil Is Sexy.

The fourth point is quite prominent in things like The Bible, where rich people are often slammed by God as 'bad examples of the faithful' or 'most of these guys aren't going to enter Heaven'. The idea here is to reverse the trend: Empires can be good, rich people have souls as well, not all corporates are money-grubbing corrupt bastards. Those are the examples that cross my mind at the moment.

And on the other hand, the antagonists/villains are in fact the usual type of heroes. The ones who are more like freedom fighters, or young teenagers gifted with unusual powers (or those who would've been on a Shonen manga as heroes). They follow the 'stereotypes' too much that they think they're the heroes and freeing the world from the evil order of the Empire, that they fight for the freedom of the people, the innocents' welfare, etc as well as being convinced that they have suffered in the past therefore they will be those who will be blessed and favored by Heaven/God. The message here is that there is no such thing as "Completely Innocent" side that can do no wrong, even the most innocent group wouldn't be 100% good.

To better visualize the 2nd point, let's just use Zeus from Classical Mythology as an example. How many times do people find it cool to portray Zeus as the Jerkass God or even God Is Evil while sweeping away his positive qualities under the rug (Everybody Loves Zeus needs not to apply here, because it's about exaggerating his good parts, this one is not)? So in the eyes of the 'villains', when they see the Zeus-like person, their mindset ends up being: "You no-good Jerkass God! Time to do a Rage Against the Heavens for the common people!" While anytime this Zeus-like person does something good... it's forgotten.

So the premise is to take the usual stereotypes and flip it around, the 'commonly villainous' is portrayed as the force of good, and the 'commonly innocent/good' is portrayed as the villainous force. That... work?

edited 18th Apr '17 2:01:10 AM by ChrisX

How much it works will, like any other story of this sort, depend on the competency of the person writing it.

The reason the Empire is usually evil in fiction is not just because of stereotyping. Its because it makes for a strong antagonist. The Empire is a massive state, with vast amounts of resources behind it, a sizeable and presumably experienced military, and an internal bureaucracy capable of maintaining control across its breadth. These factors make for an intimidating villain for the story—in order to overcome the Empire, the protagonists will have to find ways to neutralize all of its advantages.

Said protagonists, of course, are usually a ragtag band of rebels with little in the way of funding or support. They are designed to be underdogs, valiantly holding out against the far greater power that the Empire can throw at them. This in turn makes them rather nonthreatening as villains, because they are not designed to be intimidating.

So, to make a story of the Good Empire vs the Evil Rebels work, you're going to have to find a way to raise the narrative stakes, despite all the power seemingly being on the side of the Empire. There's a few ways to do this:

1. You can make the Empire creaky and falling apart, and the Rebels well-funded, well-armed, and well-trained. That said, doing this might go against the perspective flip you seem to be going for, as it stops the Rebels from being the underdog faction.

2. You could model the conflict off those you commonly see in terrorist thrillers, where the protagonists, working for the greater state, must stop a dissident group before it, not destroys the state or ends the world, but commits some horrible act of terrorism. By lowering the scale of the story, you allow the narrative stakes to become gripping.

3. Depending on the magic level of the setting, you can do a variation on 2 in which the Rebels, despite being small and underfunded, have the potential to enact not merely a terrorist plot that will kill lots of people, but to fire off some sort of spell that will destroy the nation/world/universe/whatever will raise the stakes enough.

Just a few ideas to work with there.

edited 19th Apr '17 10:12:02 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

pretty gosh darn interesting

The other reason empires tend to be evil in fiction is because history has set a pretty good precedent for the imperial system doing terrible things to the people it subjugates. You could have an empire that doesn't treat all of its conquered subjects terribly, but then it really doesn't feel like an empire to most readers.

I'd say that, depending on the type of story, an empire doesn't necessarily make for a strong - or better put a challenging antagonist. One only need browse the techno-thriller section in the bookstore in order to come up with dozens upon dozens of examples where the strongest military force in the world is the protagonist faction, while the rag-tag bunch of rebels are the villains. Sure, a wing of Warthogs tearing apart a desert encampment doesn't make for a very dramatic story... entertaining maybe, but not dramatic. Which is why such stories simply don't rely on that kind of showdown, instead building tension upon intrigue and low-level action - find the mole, get the briefcase, stop the terrorist leader in a one-on-one fight etc. Similarly, stories where order is not good tend to be rare among the Military Science Fiction crowd, particularly when written by actual former servicemen.

Moreover, most fictional representations of evil empires usually build up their villainy not by any consistent oppressive regulation - like religious suppression or excessive taxation of subjugated states - but by acts of random malice that are so blatantly tacked-on, a number of fans often ignore them and start Rooting for the Empire anyway. Petty thuggery does not an evil empire make, nor do similar embellishments turn disgruntled belligerents into heroes... and I should know; it's like a national sport out here. We set fire to our Parliament before V for Vendetta made it cool.

All in all, heroism and villainy aren't stereotypes, so much as reactions and attitudes thereof. One man's savage Indian is another man's proud warrior race guy, rather than a magical Native American - the stereotype doesn't change, but its treatment does. And never mind the myriad cases of simple values dissonance - compare Tom & Jerry with Leopold the Cat for how just about the same premise manifests in completely different ways depending on the society it arose in.

edited 20th Apr '17 10:54:14 AM by indiana404

The stereotypes tackled here isn't just about Good Empires, but other things that are often stereotyped as bad.

For instance, there can also be a story about a tremendously rich person, but very down to earth and good hearted, sharing his riches to others, strives for more profits so he can share to the people more... and he's the hero, fighting against the stereotype given from terms like "Money is the root of all evil" (I know it's a misquote), like in The Bible where rich people gets lambasted while the poor gets comforted. That's just part of the concept of the story, though. The 'poor' in the story is instead the villain, being convinced that because he is poor, he must have gotten God's protection and 'hero insurance'.

The message here is that "Even rich people have souls, they're not instantly avaricious bastards. And just because you're on the 'innocent' side doesn't mean you'll never fall into evil."

You can also switch around the formula like this:

• A big corporate which happens to be honest, but instead gets viewed as an evil company full of Corrupt Corporate Executive due to belief that 'all corporate are usually evil'. The villains are people who always complain how the corporate always suck out money out of them.
• A force of order that puts restrictions and law, but then gets accused as a group of good-for-nothing oppressors and tyrants that doesn't understand that the most important thing is freedom. The villains ends up being those who advocates freedom and being more anti-authoritarian.

It's kind of like a Light Is Good faction that gets ridiculed and overthrown because public belief say Light Is Not Good, and they have to prove that "No, we're Good!", while the enemy is someone who believe they are the good guys because their philosophies align with the usual stereotype within audience. (For instance, a 'Chaotic Good' freedom fighter who thinks that crushing any form of laws are good because what's important to others are freedom, law and order are considered Always Lawful Evil)

The challenge isn't just to portray a force usually portrayed as a villain to be decently good and having a good soul, but to also portray a force usually portrayed as the good underdogs or 'must be protected' to be not-so-innocent and can be bad as well (so people do not use 'innocent' or 'justice' as sweet words to cover themselves and let them do things selfishly).

edited 21st Apr '17 4:26:21 AM by ChrisX

When it comes to wealth, I notice the usual spiel is that people raised in privilege and affluence are often lionized, while self made men are among the most used fictional villains, echoing the old Shakespearean cliches of noblesse oblige put against the evils of ambition - perish the thought for the petty commoners to dare rise above their rank. Considering the revolutionary accomplishments and extensive charity activities of real life entrepreneurs, from Bill Gates to Elon Musk, it would be a nice subversion to have the ambitious upstart be a highly moral visionary, a modern day Doc Savage, while the pseudo-nobles styling themselves as heirs to power are really just decaying into obsolescence in a changing world.

In a similar vein, the resident straw Vulcans could be presented as highly moral because they are adamant in supporting the logical course for the greatest benefit to the greatest number of people, while the obligatory strawman emotional descends into fallacies and contradictions when the changing situation starts hitting nerves they don't like.

And as a counter-point to an empire, an evil federation might really just be a bureaucratic nightmare where every action, particularly of the Prime Directive variety has to run through so much red tape, most people just elect not to do anything and call it morality. Meanwhile, the empire freely negotiates with civilizations big and small, offering full citizenship rights for military and social service... which is a hallmark of most actually functional empires, from the Romans to the Soviets.

Good rich people vs bad rich people seems common enough, though (I think Its A Wonderful Life is an example of this, though the conflict isn't the main focus). What I would be looking for in this kind of idea would be 'Good rich people vs bad poor people'. The poor is always lionized as the 'innocent party' AKA the party who is blessed by God because they suffered in life. I want to show that just because you're given good graces it doesn't absolve you from all sins and you can still be a villain despite that (and likewise, the group that got bashed by God, the rich, can still have souls and be good people that even God would prefer over the other one).

Yes, money doesn't buy you the path to Heaven. But just because you say "But I'm poor and suffering!" doesn't mean you go to Heaven. (Doesn't have to be religious. Heaven can be replaced with 'Be considered a force of Good and Morality'.)

Mentioning Bill Gates doing charity is a good example on this. I still remember how people think that Bill Gates and Microsoft are greedy corporates that create incomplete products and bad patches so they can still drain money out of the consumer's pockets, thus marking him 'evil, greedy'. I think people (and these kind of antagonists) will never even believe that Bill Gates is capable of doing charity, and think he must have ulterior motives based on filling himself with more coins. The stereotype of 'all rich people must be greedy selfish bastards'.

edited 21st Apr '17 4:36:13 PM by ChrisX

I've considered such an idea at some point. I don't know though: even if I see your point that all rich people being portrayed as evil (well not all, but it's pretty common) is kinda done to death, I feel like you'd be hitting some nasty Unfortunate Implications if you did.

People just naturally gravitate to the underdogs, and there's no greater underdog than someone who's been forced to live on the streets and struggle for everything.

To me, the rich ones are the underdog, chiefly because they're often put in a position of less moral and more likely to be disliked.

The implication here is that 'heroic position' isn't everything, even the commonly designated as bad can turn out to be good people, and the inverse is true.

That is true.

We often tend to be more suspicious of the rich and powerful simply because they are rich and powerful. The assumption being that they can just buy whatever they want or something like that. There's also the Slobs vs. Snobs trope.

That's not to say that we don't see plenty of good nobility and the like.

The rich are not underdogs. That's a complete misuse of the term. The notion that society is biased against the rich is also pretty questionable, given that hero worship of the wealthy is extremely common in society, and that for every corrupt millionaire there's also a Batman, Tony Stark, or Scrooge McDuck.

If you want to write a story that flips around some tropes that's fine, but the reality is you are going to have to sell it and sell it well, and insisting that the rich and powerful simply are underdogs is not the way to go about selling it.

Then what do you call the tendency of certain famous literatures making the rich look like someone undesired? Like I said, The Bible. The poor is always given the favor of God, whereas the rich is usually looked with scorn, more likely given insinuations that "You are rich, you are SO going to Hell."

So let's flip that around. Have there been cases where the poor is the bad guy? For instance, the common folk that kept complaining that the corporates have got to be corrupt because they kept leeching off their money instead of giving them things for free. Can you make a case that the common folk here are being the bad guys?

Also, rich-poor comparison isn't the main selling point. The main selling point is a reversal of the modern stereotype. Which means this can range into, but not limited to:

• A good Empire vs a bad resistance
• A honest corporate vs a bunch of bad, lazy people who accuse them as being corrupt
• Good rich people vs bad poor people
• A force of light and order being considered Light Is Not Good and Order Is Not Good being the protagonists vs a force of darkness and chaos being hailed as Dark Is Not Evil and fighting for freedom but actually just wants to push their beliefs of chaos and Social Darwinism onto others.

edited 21st Apr '17 9:08:26 PM by ChrisX

We have a trope for that: The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized

That felt like a resistance that overthrew a bad government, only to turn out as bad.

This idea is more about a resistance that overthrew a good government, and then proving themselves to be bad while claiming that the people that supported them wanted their ideals (such as freedom, anti-tyranny)... and it's up to the good government to reclaim things and show that they're not bad, the bad guys were just using modern sweet words like 'freedom and justice' or the stereotype that goes with them (eg: They're the resistance for freedom, Empires are usually bad guys) to get what they want.

edited 21st Apr '17 9:13:52 PM by ChrisX

Good rich people versus bad poor people can be done as an extension of the Slobs Versus Snobs conflict - averting the idea that hard work hardly works, the premise is that most people do indeed get what they strive for, meaning that those focusing on education and skill-building eventually get a massive edge over the willfully and proudly illiterate plebs. They can even still play underdogs in the event of massive mobs with Torches and Pitchforks trying to claim their earnings by force... and then wondering why there's no big bags of cash in the banks anymore.

For that matter, contrast the prominence of villainous yet brilliant scientists - which pretty much happens only in fiction, as real-life sadists in labcoats aren't really Nobel-prize material to begin with - with the now common occurrence of previously ridiculed or demonized concepts becoming well-established scientific disciplines... and reaping massive profits in the electronics and genetic engineering sectors. In that regard, the ultimate subversion of the evil mad scientist stereotype is reality itself.

Ah yeah, science is another possible field that I haven't mentioned yet. So basically, a honest scientist who finds himself accused as some sort of immoral Mad Scientist because that seems to be the 'norm' or 'stereotype', people refusing to believe that a very morally sound but brilliant scientist can exist or not doomed with an accident that would destroy their morality.

And I'm definitely taking the Anti-Intellectualism things into consideration, since I see it as propagating several harmful stereotypes; aside of the science thing, the thing about wealth is often scrutinized. I believe that you won't get rich or successful if you're not even smart or have some sort of intelligence to manage your social circle.

That's not really what's being said there. The issue isn't that they're rich: the issue is they're rich and greedy and horde wealth at the expense of all others when a minimal sacrifice on their end could make the lives of those with less means far more comfortable.

Some of that famous literature takes place in times when this is exceptionally, shall we say...topical?

Not that it was done well, but have you ever read Ayn Rand? or that she's a competent writer...but she coined the term "the thieving poor" and all.

How to put this...are you somehow unaware of the fact that more most of recorded history those in power—the rich, the politically powerful, the socially acceptable—have made a habit of screwing over those who start on the rungs below them?

And of course from a storytelling perspective, there's not much point in having the protagonist be a member of the upper crust flattening those who stand no chance against them. "And today Bob screwed over another member of the lower class who couldn't fight back" does not a compelling story make.

As stated previously, yes you can do it, but it will take some effort because making your evil resistance feel like a threat to the empire will take some doing. You either need an empire that's in decline and falling apart, and where localized resistance movements have a very real chance of tearing it to shreds, or you need a small scale story in which the stakes are not the whole of the empire, but a few hundred, or even a few dozen lives.

For inspiration for the latter, look no farther than The Troubles, where the IRA and its various subgroups and spinoffs utilized violence against civilians to battle an imperial state that while far from flawless, was hardly worthy of that level of ire (and even if it had been a pure evil state, blowing up civvies probably wasn't going to fix it). That said, even that situation is a lot more complicated than "good empire vs evil rebels" because the British government got up to some pretty shady human rights abuses itself, and loyalist militias like the UDA and UVF committed utterly heinous atrocities in the name of preserving the empire.

If you're writing an objectivist screed maybe. Again, you're not going to make many people beyond some libertarians feel sorry for the poor, put upon CEO. Fact is corporations are money making enterprises first and foremost and it's accordingly very easy for them to ratchet up a pile of skeletons in their closet.

That's without getting into the fact that "bad, lazy people" is just a terrible descriptor for anything, let alone the villains of your story—not least because the "they're just jealous" motivation that the rich like to assign to those who criticize them, is pretty much garbage.

You want to have corporate guys as your heroes? Then set it in the 70s or 80s and have the bad guys be members of one of the Red Brigades. Because about the only way you can make a multibillion dollar conglomerate feel like the underdog is to put them up against an armed, radical group, with its own funding and a willingness to go way, way outside the bounds of civil society to get what it wants.

And how pray tell, are the dirt poor going to pose a legitimate threat to the wealthy and powerful? About the only time that ever happens is in a revolutionary situation—but that's going to pose a problem for you, because revolutions do not spring out of nowhere. Peasant revolts, the French, Russian, and Cuban Revolutions, they all emerged from very real problems with aristocrats and/or wealthy landowners who were screwing the poor for every dime they had.

I mean, you can do a story about the innocent kids of French or Russian aristocrats or Cuban landowners being hunted by the revolutionaries in the aftermath of the social order collapsing. You could tell a very good story like that, with a group of children of privilege who are suddenly thrown into a horrible new world they do not understand. But that would still require acknowledging that their parents (or at least people like their parents) broke the system in the first place.

I don't even know what you're trying to drive at here. Light Is Not Good and Dark Is Not Evil are already subversions of the usual thinking. Subverting them again is just going to lead back to where things started, with Light Is Good and Dark Is Evil.

This is horseshit, because inherited wealth is a thing. Inheriting a company from your father, or getting a job with one owned by one of his friends, or getting hired on by a guy you went to prep school with are only a few of the many, many ways in which not especially competent, not particularly innovative guys can wind up in positions they are absolutely unsuited for.

If you want to write a story about a guy who got rich by being smart, that's fine. But don't pretend away all the people who did nothing to earn their wealth.

@Ambar: Wow. So many texts to reply and my time is kind of short. I'll just tackle the first thing about "Bob the Rich" and "Light Is Good and Dark Is Not Evil".

I think the thing about "And today Bob screwed over another member of the lower class who couldn't fight back" isn't the thing I'm looking for. I think I could phrase it better as this:

"Bob is a honest working high class member. However, the lower class people look at him like shit because they believe he just likes to screw those of lower class. It all came to head when those of the lower class eventually banded together, and overthrew Bob because they never believed that Bob can be a rich but good person, history has always shown that the rich bully the weak, and it was shaped into an unchanging stereotype believed by many."

Now on the light/order vs dark/chaos, I think that I'm more aiming for a double-subversion for that. Even I think this is kind of touched in the Book of Revelations. Here we go:

"HVHY was once known as a Good God of Light that is generous and helpful. However, afterwards, stories about him being actually a wrathful, tyrannical God start appearing in the name of 'making things more interesting'. Then, the God of Evil Darkness, Natas, started taking prominence. He's bad news, but then people like to romanticize him as a dashing rebel concerned about the freedom of men, making him an example of Dark Is Not Evil in-universe. HVHY knew that Natas was just using the opinion of mankind that shits on him, and he wants to prove that he really is a benevolent God. So he had several chosen ones compromised of orderly and good law-abiding people to fight against the general public that shuns law and order while mistaking it as 'fighting for freedom and curbing tyranny'."

Things like that. As in, going against the Shin Megami Tensei depiction of YHVH who is depicted as a genocidal asshole, charging through the stereotype and making the old 'straightly-played' viewed in a different light. I think it was... Reconstruction or Double Subversion?

I'll talk more later. Though I can definitely say what I aim is a type of 'Never Judge A Book By Its Cover', and the cover is the usual themes given in other modern stories.

edited 22nd Apr '17 8:34:53 PM by ChrisX

So yeah, dwelling on it more, I don't really think you can do evil poor people vs good rich people.

It just...doesn't work. Except for maybe in A Tale of Two Cities, and even that was more along the lines of The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized and all that. They were good and bad on all sides of that one really.

This is likely a narrative dead end.

Good rich people versus bad poor people can work if the society is demonstrably equal opportunity in terms of education and economics, but for various cultural or even religious reasons, a number of people opt not to pursue them. It's kinda like how medieval Christians were rather miffed at Jews for their banking successes, since then-Christianity was interpreted to forbid usury of any kind. Can't feel sorry for someone not succeeding in an endeavor they never attempted in the first place.

In modern times, the same principle is exemplified by the adage that one best not bully nerds, as they are likely to become one's employers later on. It's like being sympathetic to the people in Idiocracy or the winners of Darwin awards - "hold my beer and watch this" isn't too high on the list of words preceding great losses to the gene pool. It also nicely subverts yet another popular misconception, namely that being dumb is good.

And in a world where a growing share of high-paying jobs are in the IT department, and the most effective education therein comes in the form of reading online tutorials and messing about with readily available programming tools, the idea of "poor" people being simply the ones too lazy to use their desktops productively is gonna get more and more convincing as time goes by.

For a more drastic conflict - and one perhaps more appealing to modern leftist sensibilities - a society where one faction anticipates and prepares for climate change, in both economic and technological terms, will eventually result in said faction dominating the ones who didn't. Would those poor souls be the good guys then? And never mind last year's election results being blamed on the rural lower-class too stupid for their own (and everyone else's) good. Those poor, poor... deplorables.

edited 22nd Apr '17 11:02:57 PM by indiana404

@Chris X

Nope. I hate to break it to you but revolutions do not come about because of the evil, evil poor resenting the wealthy. They come about because those in charge are genuinely not helping them with their problems. Look at the French Revolution. Look at the Russian, Chinese, and Cuban Revolutions. Look at pick-your-peasant-revolt. None of these emerged in a vacuum. Sure they sometimes had the wrong targets, and plenty of nonmalicious members of the ruling class got shot alongside those who were actually the source of the problem, but that does not change the reality that there were members of the ruling class who were the source of the problem. Louis XVI and his advisors, Nicholas II and his advisors, Batista and the mob cronies who surrounded him, none of these are innocent victims.

So once again, can you have a story about a revolutionary situation in which certain members of the wealthy class are being unjustly targeted? Sure. But only certain members. There are still going to have to be actual abuses by actual members of the wealthy class or there'd be no revolution.

This is an attempt at subverting God Is Evil/Light Is Not Good and Satan Is Good/Dark Is Not Evil. Which is meaningless, because a subversion of that is simply a return to the status quo. This isn't anything original because the very tropes you're targeting there emerged in response to God/Light Is Good and Satan/Dark Is Evil being gigantic cliches.

You've been talking in this thread about wanting to turn "the usual" tropes on their heads. Well Light Is Not Good and Dark Is Not Evil are not the usual tropes. They're responses to the still far more common tropes of Light Is Good and Dark Is Evil.

If you wanna right this story, you're free to do it, but don't think you're subverting anybody's expectations or turning any tropes around. You're not. You're simply returning the tropes to the status quo that's been in effect for a good several hundred years.

@Indiana

Nope. Doesn't work. The poor Christian peasants may have resented the economic success of the Jews, but the reason they focused on the Jews, and the reason why those rules about usury were even enforced in the first place, is because the royal, aristocratic, and religious elites within Christian Europe wanted them to be.

A story using that as a model would not be about the cruel poor vs the beneficent rich, because in back of the conflict between the Jews and the Christian peasantry is the far wealthier, far more powerful Christian leadership. A leadership which could and regularly did strip the Jews of their wealth and (precarious) social status at a whim. Case in point—in Ivanhoe it ain't the peasantry that's pushing Jewish moneylender Isaac and his daughter Rebecca around. It's the Norman Christian elite, represented by both the aristocracy and the goddamn Knights Templar.

So not a very good example that.

And the fact that that's an adage is evidence that fiction is already on the side of the geeks. And has been for a long time. "Hold my beer and watch this" may not be high on the list of things said before a loss to the gene pool but it's also not especially high on the list of things said by sympathetic characters in fiction. Pretty much every teen movie made since the eighties has sympathized with the outcasts and geeks, and portrayed the dumb jocks as, well, dumb jocks. Which is without getting into the fact of course that said dumb jocks are frequently the children of immense privilege and that this is why, within the context of the film universe, they get away with their harassment of others. So again, not an example of the good rich vs the bad poor; more a clash between "those who will be successful in the future" and "those who are successful right now."

Frankly a story sympathetic to the jocks would be the actual subversive act at this point.

First off, this is utter horseshit—successful jobs in programming do not magically fall out of the sky onto those who took enough DIY courses, and poverty is rarely, if ever, the result of laziness. More importantly for the topic of this thread, unless the poor launch a revolution against the rich, you still can't get a "good rich people vs evil poor people" narrative out of it.

Your interpretation of those events is questionable to say the least. It also verges on, or opens the door to, Trump apologism, a topic which has a history of getting threads modded. I don't want to be modded Do you want to be modded? Assuming the answer is "no" let's perhaps reserve discussion on that topic for the American Politics Thread.

Besides, it's got nothing to do with the topic of the thread, because the actual villain of that story is Trump, a multibillionaire (or alleged multibillioinaire anyway) who surrounds himself with other billionaires. The Trump cabinet is the single wealthiest one in history, and even non-cabinet advisors like his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Neo-Nazi Steve Bannon are worth plenty of money. None of the policies he's pushing are actively harming the rich, and he and his friends are poised to make millions of dollars off the government. This isn't a story about the poor harming the rich, it's a story about a rich man exploiting the anxieties of the poor to get what he wants. Which while interesting enough, isn't the sort of thing the OP is reaching for.