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

Nah, I think you brought another aspect that I barely touched - namely, that the moral shift may actually result from presenting things in a more realistic fashion and making characters more humanized, in both faults and virtues. It's a pretty good litmus test, in my opinion - I mean, Downfall doesn't really make me root for the Nazi even as they're presented as human as possible, while The Thrawn Trilogy and the Hand of Thrawn duology got me squarely behind the Imperials for showing their own reasons for wanting order. I was actually hoping the new canon would revisit the Cold-War-esque situation of graying morality after Endor. Alas, noble rebels and space fascists it is, no matter how little sense it makes.

edited 9th May '17 5:11:11 AM by indiana404

Actually I do have that in mind. The protagonistic Empire has done both good and bad. However, the modern stereotype decreed that because it's the Acceptable Target for villain material, the bad is overblown and considered eclipsing the good. While the freedom fighter really has a belief in good freedom and people's welfare, they were blinded with concepts that sound good on paper, and the blinding made them not realize that it's a much harsher concept when executed that when executed wrong, instead made more suffering.

The overall message is to not blindly follow what the stereotype says, just because you're on the bad side of stereotype doesn't mean you're instantly incapable of doing good things and be recognized for it, and just because you're on the good side of stereotype doesn't mean you have an absolute protection from doing evil. Following the stereotype is easy, but it will lead to disaster when overused.

edited 9th May '17 7:06:58 AM by ChrisX

It's an acceptable target for a reason. Imperial projects are not modern democratic states and they do not treat their subject peoples well. Even those empires which have benefited the most from Historical Hero Upgrades, like the Romans, were absolutely barbaric by any modern standard—and yes by "modern standard" I include the standards of modern fantasy fiction.

Here's the problem for you—an empire, is, by definition a large heterogenous polity in which smaller individual nations are subsumed. As a result they almost inevitably benefit one ethnic group to the detriment of others (even supposedly egalitarian empires like the USSR and, to an extent, the USA suffered from this problem). The term "prisonhouse of nations" exists for a reason.

David Eddings managed to pull of having a sympathetic empire and an evil independence movement. In fact, he pulled it off twice, once in The Malloreon and once in The Tamuli. In both cases, however, and especially in The Malloreon the empire had a whole lot of baggage in and of itself (Mallorea having been founded by an evil, and recently deceased, god) and was in drastic need of an overhaul. In fact a good part of The Malloreon's plot, including most of Demon Lord of Karanda and Sorceress of Darshiva has the heroes trying to reform the Malloreon Emperor, 'Zakath, into something resembling an actual human being so that he will, in fact, be an improvement on his rivals for power, rivals who are, respectively, a power mad sorceress bent on fulfilling a Dark Prophecy and a literal Demon Lord. The Tamuli has a somewhat more beneficent empire, but even it had to make the rebels a collection of idiots being manipulated by an evil sorcerer, a Stupid Evil god, and an Eldritch Abomination, and it is widely regarded as the weakest of Eddings' four major fantasy works (The Belgariad, The Malloreon, The Elenium and The Tamuli itself).

Empires are, if not inherently evil, inherently oppressive institutions. They're an acceptable target not because of cruel stereotyping but because empire, as a concept, deserves to be put through the ringer.

One reason the Romans are often portrayed heroically is because, while they may be considered barbaric by modern standards (it's always nice and fair to judge one civilization against others benefiting from two millennia's worth of technological progress), they were pretty much the pinnacle of egalitarianism in their heyday. The idea of ennoblement through military service (because the basis of nobility is owning land, and the Empire provided that right), of starting out as an enslaved war prisoner and ending up free and wealthy as anyone, was pretty much the American dream of antiquity. And occasionally even a reality if historical records are any indication.

Same goes for the USSR - American impressions straight out of patriotic cartoons notwithstanding, the Union's policies were restrictive in terms of education, employment and living standards (though only in comparison to the wealthier demographics of Western nations - when Yanks get world-class higher education with no student loan, or a universal healthcare system that works, then they can brag), but it wasn't quite oppressive in any sense modern culture would understand - if anything, the increased communication within constituent states was a boon for a good deal of economies, my nation's included.

Speaking of patriotic cartoons, I've been meaning to address the other side of the stereotype coin - namely, that one reason people elect to mark others with stereotypes is over their own insecurities in the opposite direction of what the stereotype is about. For instance, Arab women used to be portrayed as seductive half-naked belly-dancers back when Americans all but glorified their own sexual repression, but now that the spiel is all about how liberal and egalitarian the Western world is, they've suddenly turned into oppressed wallflowers waiting for the big white American knight to save them... as if.

So, for a general purpose idea, a good way to deconstruct the negative stereotype of the designated villain is to focus on the wannabe heroes projecting their own anxieties, even as they're really not so different from the people they define themselves by despising.

No offense, but it doesn't sound like you know much of the Roman Empire if you think it was anything approaching 'egalitarian' even by the standards of the day.

And here's that romanticization of Rome that I was talking about. The Roman Empire's shift towards the so-called "egalitarianism" you mention was staggeringly slow, and for most of its history, Republic and Empire alike, Rome was an exclusionary state that locked most of the populace out of citizenry on the basis of ethnicity, religion, and place of birth, awarding citizenship only to those who had done something to "earn" it. And of course even after citizenship started being extended to more people, the state remained an exploitative force bent on assimilating peoples, replacing cultures, and above all else, extracting resources.

As for the attempted shot about judging the Romans by a modern standard, this isn't a comparative morality thread and it isn't a history thread. The OP wanted to know how to write a "good" empire, and the reality is that even if you use an empire as romanticized and idealized as that of Rome as the model, you'll still be writing an exploitative, expansionist, oppressive state with little genuine interest in the welfare of its subject peoples. Because at the end of the day, that's how empires work. You cannot have an imperial project without an expansionist military and repressive politics, and even the most beneficent empire is ultimately going to grind a whole lot of people under foot.

I'll pass that along to the millions who were killed in Stalin's famines and purges. I'm sure the victims of the Holodomor, the Kazakh famine, the Great Terror, the Gulag system, etc, etc will be pleased to know that that they weren't being repressed. After all, it's not like millions of them died or anything, right? Oh wait, it's exactly like millions of them died and millions more were imprisoned.

You can't separate the USSR from Stalin either, so please don't try. The Soviet Union lasted from 1917 to 1991, a total of seventy-four years. Of those years, twenty-nine of them (1924 to 1953) were spent under Stalin's rule. Stalin and Stalinism forever scarred the demographics and politics of the USSR, and all future Soviet rulers were, to one extent or another, working with what Stalin had built. The Soviet Union was not some uniquely beneficent egalitarian project—it was an empire, like any other, and more brutal than many, and its existence is intimately tied up with the politicidal and genocidal policies of its founding fathers, Lenin (whose bodycount is also substantial) and Stalin.

edited 13th May '17 10:24:47 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Tl;dr: it's impossible unless you want someone offended.

MIA

That and the fact that the more egalitarian and representative an empire becomes, the less of an empire it is. If every ethnoreligious group is sharing more or less equally in the empire then it's no longer an imperial project.

There's always someone offended. Doesn't preclude the work from being thematically successful overall.

Which, compared to the serfdom and vassalage systems of even the later feudal ages is pretty progressive. Hence the idea of a good empire that would give you better options than your own current government. Same goes for Stalin being the driving force behind a century's worth of modernization accomplished in about a decade, which is kinda useful when your next door neighbors are in the middle of their own expansion projects. For that matter, considering just about every modern nation state was built on the principle of one cultural group achieving dominance in its own domain to the eradication or marginalization of other groups, it can be said the only evil empires are those yet to become unified nations in their own right. In that regard, a good place to get inspiration would be Japan, or better yet, Great Britain - y'know, the Empire.

And we have someone who still believes in the Dark Ages. That's just funny.

And it's official, you are trying to justify Josef Stalin. I'm sure the millions he deliberately starved to death would be glad to know that their deaths were acceptable in the name of industrialization. Of course, their deaths were completely unnecessary to achieve said industrialization, but who cares about reality—namely that the Holodomor and Kazakh famines, the Great Terror, and all the purges only left the state weaker and further behind then it might have been if Stalin had had it in him to pursue a rational/non-psychotically murderous policy.

Because neither the British nor Japanese empires have any blood on their hands. Oh, wait, they both have boatloads of it. Large swathes of Africa, India and Southeast Asia are still recovering from what the British did to them, and the scars left by Japan's occupations of Korea, China, etc, have yet to fade.

As to the claim about how the only evil empires are those yet to become nation-states, way to make my point for me—empires only stop being expansionist, oppressive forces when they stop being empires. And in the two cases you cited, of Japan and Great Britain, gave up most of their overseas imperial possessions in the process.

More like the Early to High Medieval period, particularly in Northern and Eastern Europe. Speaking of which, one of the reasons the Mongol Empire grew so big and so fast was because it wasn't particularly demanding on the cultural and religious level, in stark contrast to European fashion at the time. Same goes for the Persians of 300 fame.

For that matter, the American Civil War is occasionally reinterpreted as the aggressive campaign of a centralized government to limit the freedom of its member states, to the point of preventing their secession by force of arms. Strange how that Union gets a free pass for doing whatever it takes to preserve itself.

All in all, the idea shaping up is of an empire that's more egalitarian than any of its constituents, yet is hated precisely because its egalitarianism would reduce the power of local hereditary nobles. Toss in a couple of local slavery practices that the empire would ban, and you're golden. I would also again point to Japan for inspiration regarding a culture that's way more on the "order" side of the value scale... which is what I thought the thread was about, rather than obtaining particular seals of approval.

edited 13th May '17 4:29:04 PM by indiana404

Order? Sure, Japanese Empire have a lot of those, but those particular seals of approval are important because the OP doesn't want just order, but good. And Japanese Empire is most definitely not good. Or that orderly to be honest. I mean they have a tradition that is called "Gekokujo", or in English means "the lower rules the higher." In other words, lower-ranking officers would disobey orders when they considered them wrong and harmful to the country. Heck, they can even take advantage of opportunities to expand Japanese territory or attack the enemy even in the face of orders from above not to do so. It also means it's filled with assassinations, attempted coups and "incidents" from lower-ranking officers. And that is just one tradition. Not a good example there.

Only an experienced editor who has a name possesses the ability to truly understand my work - What 90% of writers I'm in charge of said.

I was talking more about how modern, rather than imperial, Japanese culture emphasizes cohesion and unity over personal liberty. I would say, though, that it's very interesting point to contrast loyalty to one's leadership with loyalty to the state itself, as these are two faces of order often treated as inseparable. The example of officers disobeying orders for the sake of grand strategy is literally out of Sun Tzu. (Who is Chinese, but it would take a whole book to even begin describing their cultural relationship with Japan. Or a ton of Hetalia episodes.)

If anything, this example, as well as the concept of Gekokujo, ties into the idea of order as valued by a grassroots movement looking to reassert itself over established systems and perceptions. Even the current waves of populism imply a growing public desire for stricter social frameworks, which cannot be explained by merely blaming one's preferred brand of upper-class rabble-rousers.

Those occasional reinterpreters are constantly reinterpreting the war falsely. The only freedom that was ever under threat if you listen to the states that revolted was the right to oppress. Which the Lincoln government specifically said it wasn't going to challenge. The federal government was created in a way that unfairly gave the slave states more power in the legislative and executive branch and protected slave interests in those states.

The rebels attacked first. Even if one does buy into the idea that South Carolina could just say "Screw you" to the rest of the country, I don't see anywhere were it gives them the right to steal federal property. They're the ones that decided that killing was preferable to peace.

Th rebellion was an existential threat to the existence of the United States. None of the atrocities Stalin committed were necessary to save the Soviet Union unless they were reactions to some previous atrocity he'd committed.

Modern Japan isn't an empire, though. It might be repressive, but it isn't an empire. No need to explain the cultural relationship between China and Japan to me. I already know that. To be honest, I always find it strange that people consider Japan to be much more into "honor before reason" and "cohesion and unity over personal liberty" than China. They are as mad as each other on those aspects.

As for your second point, I think that is obvious. Those movements are less about order vs chaos, but replacing the old order with the new order, preferably yours. Of course, all of those movements and the government have their own moral justifications for why their order is better. And, of course, some have better moral justifications than the other while some have moral justifications that are bullshit with better wording.

To be honest, I don't think what the OP do is deconstruction. I can understand the sentiment that the classic "good kingdom, evil empire" stories are shallow and one-dimensional. However, the opposite of those stories the "good empire, evil kingdom" stories are to be honest as shallow and one-dimensional as them.

If the OP seriously want to deconstruct those classic stories, he should humanize them instead of merely reversing their position. I could give some examples if the OP or you want to read them. Those examples are kinds long, so I don't want to write them unless someone really want to read them.

The OP doesn't even have to go that far to be honest. Don't you ever find it weird that a lot of stories have "A small nation fights to protect their independence from invading big nation."? (I want to write most instead of a lot of to be honest because I can't remember any fantasy war story that feature different premise, but it's better to be safe.) Ignoring the fact that conquering empires of old are small nations or at least start off as a small nation?

Only an experienced editor who has a name possesses the ability to truly understand my work - What 90% of writers I'm in charge of said.

Well, for example, I've noticed how Conan the Barbarian stories eventually go full-circle on the wars between civilized and barbaric kingdoms, with Conan chronologically starting out as a mercenary disdainful of civilization, yet ends up as a king in perpetual struggles against the wild Picts. The mythos runs on Protagonist-Centered Morality, but it still addresses the irony of a barbarian becoming king of the mightiest state of the time, and having to deal with that sort of burden.

For less pulpy stories, I've heard that Legend of the Galactic Heroes and the Gundam franchise are about as complex as it gets, but I haven't gotten too deep into them for more detailed commentary. I reckon the aforementioned "small nation defends from big one" is simply the easiest way to garner automatic underdog sympathy and provide drama, without really going into the multifaceted intricacies of war as a whole. The contrary example would be for the smaller faction to consist of Terrorists Without a Cause, which is a staple of modern action flicks rather than fantasy.

So this adds "first strike" and "existential threat" to the rather growing list of elements that would sway moral favor against the rebels. Much obliged. And speaking of Stalin, another aspect of rebellion that would easily turn the tide against it is if it becomes a Full-Circle Revolution, where the liberators turn out to be even more vicious than the old regime. This can apply to the notion of Stalinist bloodshed dwarfing that of the Tsarist government... yet, ironically, the modern image of an empire rebuilding after a failed liberalization movement, with strong popular support at that, is applied to the old commie regime itself. So that's a third source for cultural inspiration.

edited 14th May '17 8:57:17 AM by indiana404

I've had a few ideas for good empires.

I like to keep my audience riveted.

I won't deny on Empires being acceptable targets, but at least we're getting there.

Imagine if there is a group that claim themselves to be the champion of the oppressed and poor and freedom. They garnered good support because people by default see the things they championed as always good. Using that status, they attack and topple the protagonistic Empire even if it was just a case of Not Me This Time, because of the people's beliefs that Empires are acceptable targets that people just look at it from the surface.

In a way it is to show that you don't always have the morality insurance just because you champion the group that people never consider wrong: the poor, the oppressed, or if you attack the acceptable targets group.

You can interchange the Empire with other groups often seen as acceptable targets to put as villains.

I was thinking about one annoying cliche - that villains are often much more civil and reasonable than the heroes - and the related implication that so long as one supports the "right" cause, they can be a violent and abrasive jerk to anyone else. Usually this is propped by the reveal that the villain eats babies or something. But I figure, what if it wasn't?

Suppose you have a story where the self-styled heroes begin researching a corporate executive suspected of some fashionable social injustice or other - say, pouring toxic waste down the public waterworks. The environmentally-minded heroes get wind of the guy's activities by families tragically affected by what are seemingly unrelated incidents. They break into the company building and hack the systems, finding vaguely implicating reports and corporate manifestos full of inconsistent information. Some of them even get into fights with security guards and ransack the offices; and ultimately confront the villain directly....

...only for this to be revealed as a massive sting operation that the guy wholeheartedly agreed to, the purpose being to gather enough evidence of the self-styled heroes' actual illegal activities, so as to warrant a thorough investigation of them and anyone related to them - like their eco-terrorist affiliates actually responsible for the aforementioned toxic waste leak, the result of a failed attempt to bomb a disposal plant.

Essentially, the idea is that the frothing-at-the-mouth activist resorting to violence as a primary tool is probably not morally better than the calm and cultured pragmatist preferring more civil means. It's not quite going as far as presenting the hero as a windmill knight templar, but there's definitely the notion that seeing yourself as a hero doesn't automatically give you the providence to know who's the real villain, or to act in such ways that make you barely better... because if the designated villain isn't, the actual bad guy in the story is you.

BUMP (?)

The thing is, in that story, the rebels will be either just stupid or -if you really want it work- Make a story about a goverment trying to reform itself into a better one after a series of dicatatorships and a revolution backed for selfish individuals.

Honestly, that will end on Aristocrats Are Evil because, honestly, a revolution against a goverment trying to reform itself on a more egalitarian one will get backlash of the rich classes, if anything, like the American Right obsession with freedom shows, A benevolent goverment is opossed for the ruling classes, that use a "muh freedom" narrative to get a excuse for their assholerism.

I am fine with Subverting Light Is Not Good and I think that is possibly, just making the Light morally ambiguous instead of Incorruptible Pure Pureness , it could make a good story; that is actually why Devil Survivor is one of my favorite games of the Shin Megami Tensei franchise.

In a franchise that had God Is Evil as a regular element, The Reveal of Devil Survivor is that only the angels are Well-Intentioned Extremism and even then, the angels are A Lighter Shade of Grey in the multisided mess know as the Tokyo Lockdown (Unless in one route where the angels just cross the Godzilla Threshold because The Hero become The Antichrist) and that God Is Good (or at worse, a Lawful Neutral ruler trying to keep things as they are, ruling humanity for afar and keeping demons away).

edited 23rd Dec '17 9:01:07 AM by KazuyaProta

Watch me destroying my country