"Un-Clanlike" Clans or Clans with Character?

[rebs]

Gotcha.  I guess I tend to think of Oligarchy as something different.  Hence they die out eventually.

I like to think the Clans will never die  ^-^

[massey]

Thurston seemed to take a lot from Aldous Huxley's Brave New World when writing the Falcons.  That doesn't seem to be a sympathetic portrayal to me.  You have a bunch of child soldiers, all brothers and sisters, who are encouraged to have sex with one another for fun.  All while way under what we would consider the age of consent.  But be sure not to develop any feelings for one another, they're your competition, after all.  Several of Aidan's sibkin commit suicide (one stands up in the middle of a live fire exercise, one jumps in front of a tank) and his reaction is to shrug.  Aidan is seen as unClanlike by his prison guard trainers (who also have sex with the kids, on demand) because he reads books and because he has feelings for his favorite sister-girlfriend.

It's a horrendous society.  You might feel sympathy for Aidan, but that culture is an Orwellian nightmare.  It just has big robots and so that's cool.  They are clearly intended to be the villains.

[worktroll]

And yet some people find elements of the Clan presented, compelling/interesting.

Hence in my opinion the revisionism, to try and make some clans less horrendous.

I prefer the Clans as something to frighten Spheroid children with. Yes, there's a part of me that's Jaguar/Falcon, that longs to be able to challenge the head of Infrastructure to a trial of negation, or to take my Compliance team-mates out in a Star for a live fire exercise against the Director who fails to do his attestations. But ...

[Deadborder]

It's a horrendous society.  You might feel sympathy for Aidan, but that culture is an Orwellian nightmare.  It just has big robots and so that's cool.  They are clearly intended to be the villains.

This cannot be emphasised enough. Even the nicest, friendliest and most well-adjusted Trueborn warrior has been raised in a brutal, competitive society where might makes right and resorting to violence is not only the best option but the one that earns you the most respect.

[SteveRestless]

Battletech has gone on for so long, under the control of so many authors, with so many conflicting personal takes on things and ideas of how the universe should be, with relatively little factual information about things beyond the warfare side of the universe that different players can look at the same factions and see them two completely different ways without either one being wrong.

We're given information that can make the clans seem worse than the combine or confederation could possibly be to their citizens, and we're also given information that directly contradicts that, like the troubles the combine had with liberated citizens who had grown accustomed to life under the Jaguar and had to be reigned back in by the combine.

It's fine that people that want to see the clans as boogeymen, see them as boogeymen. It's also fine to do the opposite. If we take the least charitable approach to faction interpretations, then there's probably nowhere I'd actually want to live in the whole game.

[Orwell84]

Battletech has gone on for so long, under the control of so many authors, with so many conflicting personal takes on things and ideas of how the universe should be, with relatively little factual information about things beyond the warfare side of the universe that different players can look at the same factions and see them two completely different ways without either one being wrong.

Indeed, and "different players" also applies in-universe to different characters and worlds. If the Clans collectively were only an evil Orwellian nightmare state, it's at least questionable that anybody born and raised outside would join one and wholeheartedly serve their Clan. Some Spheroids certainly view the Clanners as bogeymen; Combine denizens in particular seem indoctrinated to hate people who also live in a caste society ruled by a warrior class.

On the other hand seven whole worlds voted to merge with a Clan-ruled state rather than remain an independent Spheroid nation when they could easily have done otherwise, and individuals such as Phelan Kell and Ragnar Magnusson evidently felt that Clan civilization wasn't so evil that they'd sooner die than work within it. At least one ex-Lyran world took to Clan civilization enough that the populace resisted House Steiner when that planet was seized by the LCAF.

We're given information that can make the clans seem worse than the combine or confederation could possibly be to their citizens, and we're also given information that directly contradicts that, like the troubles the combine had with liberated citizens who had grown accustomed to life under the Jaguar and had to be reigned back in by the combine.

Interesting, I'd not heard of this. Do you recall the source? Most novels / sourcebooks make out like living under Jaguar rule is hell on earth for non-warriors.

It's fine that people that want to see the clans as boogeymen, see them as boogeymen. It's also fine to do the opposite. If we take the least charitable approach to faction interpretations, then there's probably nowhere I'd actually want to live in the whole game.

Agreed, or hold a view somewhere between the two extremes. My own AUS$0.02 - Clan culture has some abhorrent traits, some admirable aspects, and others I'm 'meh' about. The same could just as easily be said (with varying degrees of each catergory) about House Davion, House Kurita, the ROTS, or even the RWR and the Blakists.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Indeed, and "different players" also applies in-universe to different characters and worlds. If the Clans collectively were only an evil Orwellian nightmare state, it's at least questionable that anybody born and raised outside would join one and wholeheartedly serve their Clan. Some Spheroids certainly view the Clanners as bogeymen; Combine denizens in particular seem indoctrinated to hate people who also live in a caste society ruled by a warrior class.

On the other hand seven whole worlds voted to merge with a Clan-ruled state rather than remain an independent Spheroid nation when they could easily have done otherwise, and individuals such as Phelan Kell and Ragnar Magnusson evidently felt that Clan civilization wasn't so evil that they'd sooner die than work within it.

The FRR is a special circumstance.  First of all, the Bears were noted as being especially harsh with the way they treated worlds they'd conquered for the first year of the invasion, on a similar level as the Jaguars.  It wasn't until their leadership changed and they decided to adopt their Inner Sphere population into their family that the populations started to come around.  By the time the remainder of the FRR voted to join the Dominion, it was no longer a purely Clan entity in terms of governance.

Similarly, Ulric took Phelan and Ragnar as special projects and actively recruited them.

[SteveRestless]

Interesting, I'd not heard of this. Do you recall the source? Most novels / sourcebooks make out like living under Jaguar rule is hell on earth for non-warriors.

I will have to go looking for it, but my recollection from past discussions was that it was a combination of (A) the freedom of being in rebellion against the jaguars, and then having to settle down and obey the law once more, and (B) that the Jaguars didn't particularly care about or spend much time thinking about things that did not have to do with War Industry. So if you were some lower caste without aptitudes relevant to them, they didn't pay much attention to your existence.

Not to say it was a picnic, we are talking about rulers who would use atrocity as punishment, but if you lived on some backwater doing something irrelevant to the jaguar, they probably paid a lot less attention to you than the combine did.


And actually, harkening back to my own post...

so many authors, with so many conflicting personal takes

It occurs to me from what I've heard that sometimes the SAME author is portraying two entirely different things. Take Pardoe's writings from a Jaguar perspective 21 years ago, versus their portrayal in Forever Faithful, which I have yet to touch, but I hear is rather out of character for how the jaguars were originally portrayed. 

[massey]

The Combine is an extremely rigid and hierarchical society.  The government is involved with every aspect of your personal life.  I suppose that's okay if you like your role in society.  If you never wanted to be anything more than a factory worker, and that's where the Combine assigned you, then you're okay.  Your overall standard of living is pretty good (compared to what it could be), and you can take reassurance from all the propaganda posters everywhere telling you that you are an honorable and valued member of Combine society.  All in all you're just another brick in the wall, but for a lot of people that's okay.  However if you ever wanted to be anything more than that, there aren't a lot of opportunities to do anything else.

The Jaguars, on the other hand, are an invading army who hate the people they've conquered.  They don't give one rat's ass about whatever your former social rules were.  You're all just a bunch of dirty Inner Sphere Freebirth garbage people.  Are they gonna treat you like dirt?  Of course they are.  But they also don't care about your previous role in society.  They don't care if you're a street sweeper or an executive.  They'll mistreat you all equally. 

[Hellraiser]

I will have to go looking for it, but my recollection from past discussions was that it was a combination of (A) the freedom of being in rebellion against the jaguars, and then having to settle down and obey the law once more, and (B) that the Jaguars didn't particularly care about or spend much time thinking about things that did not have to do with War Industry. So if you were some lower caste without aptitudes relevant to them, they didn't pay much attention to your existence.

I could be wrong but what you might actually be remembering is when the Combine created the Irece? prefecture for the Nova Cats after Op:Bulldog.
I seem to recall the shift of some worlds To / From Nova Cat rule was disorientating for the population.

[SteveRestless]

No, I'm thinking specifically about difficulties mentioned in reintegrating Jaguar OZ worlds post-bulldog.

[Deadborder]

No, I'm thinking specifically about difficulties mentioned in reintegrating Jaguar OZ worlds post-bulldog.

The issues there were with resistance fighters and geurilla groups. After spending years living outside of society and the law, many of them had issues with reintegrating into the harsh and orderly nature of Combine society.

It was covered on in some books that life in the SJOZ sucked even by Combine standards. The Jags treated their conquered populace terribly, and engaaged in acts of overkill retaliation, such as burning down entire neighbourhoos, for even the slightest infractions.

They disrupted civillian economies and lives without care for the concequences. There was one world (the name escapes me for the moment) where the local population were subject to seasonal outbreaks of a native disease. To fight it, they baked a special type of bread from local ingredients that boosted their resistance to it. The Jags ended production of this bread because it was seen as not being useful to their millitary in any way. This then lead to civillian casualties from the seasonal outbreak

[KayEmm]

The world in question is Nykvarn (https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Nykvarn)

The Jaguars shut down bread production and transferred those involved with it to a munitions factory. During the outbreak, the Jaguar commander refused to allow them to make the bread. The result was massive civillian and Smoke Jaguar casualties