Did anyone ever get the feeling that the royalty of humanity were really right proper monsters? Ones that justified it as 'well it'd be worse if we didn't rule all of humanity'? I mean they use indoctrination techniques intended to have their military be willing to do anything including acts of genocide on a planetary scale to ensure NO ONE lives free of their rule.
Hide / Show Replies
The writers discussed this once. Part of the back story of the novel that got cut before publishing was a discussion about just how bad it had got before the monarchy installed order. So yes, it really was worse when they didn't rule all of humanity.
Sounds like an effort to handwave away the evils of the Empire as 'Utopia justifies the means', as it's hard to imagine how you can do worse than burn an entire planet's population to ash because you thought there MIGHT be rebellion.
In general, cleaned up Natter, fixed Example Indentation, and other tweaks in addition to the following changes:
- The ships aren't really presented as Cool Ships, they're just there.
- Nightmare Fuel shouldn't be used outside YMMV
- If the creators explicitly deny a connection, it's not a Shout-Out.
- Take a Third Option: The trope is about taking an option not already presented. It doesn't necessarily have to be a third one, so the "gripping hand" saying doesn't count.
- Misuse of Too Dumb to Live. When the evacuation of the MacArthur started it was presented as a drill, not a for-real GTFO.
All your safe space are belong to Trump