Discussion YMMV / HonorHarrington

The end of the first book has a Hilarious in Hindsight as one expert has to explain to honor the concept of "The Big Lie". Given current politics it sure sounds right.

Right. This example is wrong, but I'm told to take it to discussion so I am. Does anyone have any factual arguments for keeping it?

• Mary Suetopia: In something of a crossover between this trope and Creator's Pet, The Star Kingdom of Manticore was showered with structural advantages by Weber, to the point where it can break reader immersion to read the lines stating that Manticorans have one of the highest standards of living in the human-settled galaxy, especially when even their enemies admire their society, as Albrecht Detweiler (one of the Big Bad's leadership) did as he looks down at Mesan Alignment's secret colony world in the Darius system and went on an internal monologue on Just How Good Manticore is (Mission Of Honor, ch 38):

  And the truth was that, despite the accomplishments of the Alignment's R&D, and despite any tactical advantages which might accrue from the streak drive and the spider, very few star nations could have matched the industrial efficiency of the Star Empire of Manticore. Indeed, Benjamin suspected that even Manticore had failed to grasp just how great an advantage it possessed in that regard.

  Over the last five or six T-years, he and Daniel had been trying to introduce Manticoran practices here at Darius, only to discover that the task wasn't as simple and forthright as it ought to have been. If they'd really wanted to duplicate Manticore's efficiency, they would've had to duplicate Manticore's entire industrial base—and its society—and they simply couldn't do that. Their labor force was extraordinarily good at following orders, extremely well trained, and highly motivated, but the kind of independence of thought which characterized Manticoran workers wasn't exactly something which had been encouraged among the slave workers of Darius. Even if it had been, their basic techniques and technologies were simply different from Manticore's. Better than the majority of League star systems could have produced, if those other star systems had only realized it, yet still at least a full generation behind the Manties.

• Three human-habitable planets needing minimal, if any, tweaks, whereas most other star nations have one, perhaps two planets, often needing extensive biosphere tweaks (Grayson, Nuncio system, Potsdam).
• Uniquely far-sighted founders who set up a trust fund to have infrastructure sent ahead—a trust fund which managed to survive for six hundred years, including through Earth's "Final War," and delivered teachers and starships to the colonists when they arrived, an advantage that no other colony world in the text has been shown to have; most, in fact, descended into neo-barbarism due to lack of infrastructure, which is a recurring plot point for Manticore's interactions with other human worlds (ex: Nuncio, Potsdam, Silvestria).
• The only telepathic/empathic alien species in the known galaxy is in residence on one of Manticore's planets, and their members are protective of humans and bond with them.
• The Manticoran Wormhole Junction and its economic (and social) benefits, especially the link to Beowulf, only one week's travel from Old Earth; a large fraction of the galaxy's commercial trade is stated to transit through the Junction, giving Manticore a massive economic leg up. This one justifies the initial plot to a degree—coveting the Junction is part of the motivation of the early antagonists in the series—but there is still no question that it is a significant advantage that no one else in the settled galaxy has (the next most dense junction, the Felix junction, has only half as many wormholes as Manticore, and is a close-held secret of the Mesan Alignment).

Threw out entire Strawman Has a Point section, as someone had apparently very little understanding of this trope.

• Admiral Sonja Hemphill is the leading advocate of the jeune école school, which advocated using small ships with revolutionary new and powerful weapons in semi-sacrificial raids against much larger ships. At first, Honor is horrified by the callousness of the idea when applied to light cruisers. Later, when the same concept is revitalized by LAC carriers, it's painted in an entirely positive light. (To be fair, the ratio of losses was much better there, and the new LACs are designed to be able to close with enemies, whereas a light cruiser has about a snowball's chance of getting into "knife range" of its intended targets.)
  • In general, the jeune école believed that new weapons could produce wholly new tactics and revolutionize war. However, her faction had a tendency to shoot itself in the foot by embracing anything just because it was new (and because its leader had all the social skills of a particularly excited terrier). Once reined in a little, they proved absolutely right and turned centuries of military doctrine completely on its head.

The message here was never "new is bad" and Sonja wasn't supposed to be wrong about wanting new things, she was wrong for happily adopting everything that's new, just because it's new, which almost killed Honor, when she fought that Havenian q-ship. later White Haven was presented as wrong for being similarry extreme in opposite direction, shoting down potentially revolutionary project just because it requires massive changes. Messages here are allong the lines of "Don't Shoot the Message" and "take a look at both sides before you judge". These lines of thoughtwere never wrong.

• Captain Oversteegen assigns Abigail Hearns to talk with a group of Space Amish, ostensibly because she could relate with them best, being born something of a Space Amish herself. She takes offense at this, until the ship's XO asks her if she knows of anyone else who might be better qualified to meet with them. She doesn't.

So Captain makes a point, Abigail feels ofended, but when asked for a counterpoint she didn't have any, and captain was shown as right. Where's the strawman here?

• Mesa, who, as Weber went on record to point out, is actually right about the right and useful nature of transhumanism ideas (not genetic slavery, though). They're just being dicks about it — and that's where slavery comes in.

This one i've actually moved to it's proper place(Villain Has a Point) as they're not strawmen if author agrees with them. This trope is about guys making valid arguments against authour's intentions.

Pulled the Flanderization entry, as it's not that the SL was exaggerated into being nothing but puppy-punting villains, but (like Kathi's edit notes) that we didn't actually see much of the League before Eric Flint's "From the Highlands" came along in the anthologies. Developing something from a few barebones and brief mentions isn't retconning.

The original entry:

* {{Flanderization}}: As Haven became more sympathetic, the Solarian League's portrayal got worse ([[TheVillainMakesThePlot to make sure there'd be an opponent to fight]]). But where Haven actually ''became'' a better place thanks to the characters, the Solarian League's villain status is more of a gradual {{Retcon}}. In the prologue of the first book, becoming a member of the Solarian League is portrayed as something independent nations strive for. By the current books, it's treated as an open secret that the League is a dictatorship that brutally loots its new members to pay for the trains running on time in the original members, and has been that way for centuries. The alternative interpretation is that it's not that the League status was gradually retconned, but rather that the reader has seen the new sides of its society not known before. Being a League ''member'' (even not as a Core World, but a full, incorporated member sending representatives to the League Assembly), for example, is still a pretty posh deal. But may God help you if you become a League ''protectorate''...

Pulled:

• Mary Suetopia: Haven, for most of the series.

While I'm aware that YMMV tropes are subjective, that doesn't excuse outright incorrect usage.

Haven, pre- or post-Peep, doesn't count at all. There was plenty wrong with the PRH, even after the Committee for Public Safety overthrew the Legislaturalists. They had slums, crumbling infrastructure, a generally poorly educated populace, and prior to the CPS economic reforms going through shortly before Theisman overthrew the Saint-Just their economy was a broken joke on the decline from their former greatness (which compared favorably to that of the Solarian League, even with the monstrous disparity in relative populations).

Post-Theisman, they still have scheming power-grabbers (including a SecState that sparked a renewal of the war with Haven with his machinations of diplomatic exchanges), the infrastructure was still mostly the crumbling mess left over from the PRH, and while improving in both economic and educational capability those aspects of the RH were still far from perfect.