So like, in my danganronpa fanfiction I’ve sort of hit a dead end, as everyone hates everyone else for being different ideologies. I want to have a scene where Pavel convinces them to put their differences aside temporarily so they don’t all get murdered after the first class trial, but I feel like that would be pushing the apolitical “muh politics bad let’s all be friends line.” However, the alternative would be him just sitting in his room all day thinking about shit until somebody dies.
Any thoughts?
Of course, an example is Mao and the KMT.
I feel like that was mostly them staying out of each other’s way. They didn’t really work together very often.
Well, I mean they got together to fight against the Japanese imperialists, maybe it wasn’t for too long, but that means quite a lot too. Also China’s policy of non interventionism means kind of the same since they “make a truce” with the local bourgeoisie of exploited countries, since it is not the same with their own Chinese national bourgeoisie whom they exploit.
They literally agreed to join forces and fight Japan
The vast majority of people are not super ideological and even those who are can sometimes be surprisingly flexible in their ideology depending on the circumstances. Sometimes people will hold seemingly conflicting views at the same time, people are messy and complicated and typecasting them into clearly defined ideological boxes usually ends in you writing flat and contrived characters. Contradictions abound in reality. Generally a good rule of thumb for predicting people’s behavior is to identify what their primary motivation is at any given time. What is the main conflict or the primary contradiction which will force people to temporarily unite despite secondary contradictions? Dire material needs and existential threats are usually enough to get people to rationalize compromise and stretch their beliefs somewhat.
Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.
Related to this, another good trick to make characters more life-like is to base them on two real people because it can make those internal contradictions know visceral. If you base a character on only one person, you only know them from the outside so you don’t see their internal struggle. But you can craft an internal conflict by mixing the ‘external’ appearanxe of two people. The resolution of that conflict can then drive your story.
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Sometimes people will hold seemingly conflicting views at the same time, people are messy and complicated and typecasting them into clearly defined ideological boxes usually ends in you writing flat and contrived characters.
Every fucking Ayn Rand character.
Iunno about anyone else, but there’s no such thing as circumstances extreme enough to make me think collaboration is a good idea.
so like what do you mean by collaborating? I always think of it like if we both show up at a protest, cooperate in little ways, but don’t actually plan anything out beforehand or give them any legitimacy, just don’t fight them if your immediate goal isn’t conflicting in the moment
Honestly, I don’t even want them around at the same protests as me, because suddenly, that’s our names lashing together. Exactly why I have such animus towards Rage Against the War Machine; you think I want to be lending the fuckin Mises Caucus legitimacy through ‘allying with them’ like some of our ‘comrades’ would see done?
I feel like the problem with rage against the war machine is they’re explicitly putting out shit saying to work with them, I more mean like with like within an org’s interneal communications to tell its members to focus on its main enemy during protest, pigs, rather than fighting with libertarians who might show up
It doesn’t make too much sense within the imperial core. Not that this stops the ‘broad church’, ‘left unity’ types. But e.g. historically, under colonialism, it could make sense for revolutionaries to side with the national bourgeoisie against the colonialists and the compradors. We see something similar in Russia, with the communist party supporting Putin’s government because they both see the US imperialists as a common enemy. Maybe that’s not a great example, as I’m unsure how revolutionary the Russian communist party is. Essentially, I think I mean that collaboration may be workable if there’s a bigger threat.
The OG Bolsheviks worked with reactionary trade unions and formerly genocidal Tsarist officers that committed anti-semitic pograms against Jewish people, in order to overthrow the monarchy.
Would the KMT and Mao uniting to prevent genocide by the Japanese qualify?
History would say it worked; but were it me in that position, my hypervigilance would be running full tilt, dawn to dusk, expecting a knifing at the first opportunity. You see why I don’t put myself in those situations if I can help it; I do not trust reactionaries like that. Not even for temporary alliance.
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If someone died or otherwise suffered (not necessarily a physical injury), it could be the motivation for the others to put aside their differences and work together.
People in trades unions will be able to tell you how difficult it can be because everyone can have drastically different politics. IRL this makes organising hard work. But the same kind of conflicts could really drive a story. You might want to have a quick read about a real struggle and base parts of your narrative on that.
Edit: this may be if interest: https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Analysis_of_the_classes_in_Chinese_society
