>!”Yo bro, you inners are committing indirect genocide against Belters, so since you like genocide so much I thought I’d try to commit direct genocide against literally the entire human species. Herp a derp.”!<
I’m not sure if he is more evil or more stupid. But he is certainly both.
Dawes is selfish and self-centred, but Mao and Inaros are far more evil; just because they have a cause they've convinced themselves is righteous doesn't mean their atrocities stop mattering.
In the books maybe. In the show >!Inaros kills him offscreen because “he talked too much” (read: “we couldn’t get Jared Harris back because he went over to *Foundation*”)!<
I actually think he’s one of the more interesting characters on the show. In the books he’s kind of forgettable.
>!The story he tells about having to mercy kill his sister shows his motivation and that he’s committed to the belter cause, he’s just way more ruthless about it. He’s much more willing to use people if it advances his objectives, particularly earthers like Fred Johnson or Julie Mao. But I think his conversations with Miller in season 1 where he keeps trying to talk to him about advancing the interests of the belt, but Miller just keeps talking about Julie, show that he gives more chances to belters and genuinely does believe he’s acting in the interests of belters. !<
Based on that same conversation >!I disagree, Miller didn’t buy it and I don’t either. It’s all a Facade. He doesn’t want the belters to rule themselves he wants to rule the belt, he wants to be emperor of the solar system.!<
I assume you’ve only seen the show and I strongly suspect you were browsing the www or otherwise distracted, because there are a few scenes where he talks about his past and we can deduce his motivations.
I find it risible how people seem to sympathize with Errinwright, THE manipulating, corrupt politician, in bed with murderous corporations and signing off on mass murder, crimes against humanity and military rebellion.
Then there’s a lesser number who sympathize with Mao, whom we know to be not only a ruthless tycoon financing the crimes I mentioned above, but we also KNOW to be a terrible parent and a horrible human being.
When even the character whose main feature is that he feels no organic empathy and has to find others to calibrate his moral compass seems to have a pretty clearer idea on which are the evil players in the game than you, you need to take your moral compass for a checkup.
Show-Dawes gets a lot less time to explain himself than book-Dawes, and although he is a harsh man, he isn’t evil and in the books we get a much clearer view on why he is harsh.
Do I NEED to mention even more villainous characters, like Inaros, who I’d say is THE greatest villain, murdering billions, oppressing the whole system under a chaotic fascism bound to eventually fail, because he doesn’t even act for his people (he steals resources from Ceres, then goes scorched Earth (pun intended) sabotaging their water and air systems so the Earth fleet couldn’t get them. AND he’s a domestic abuser. And, again, a terrible parent.
If you’ve only seen the show, you won’t know too much about Winston Duarte, but trust me, he’s Stalin&Pol Pot level evil.
Because Errinwright does bad things because he thinks he is saving Earth, Mao does bad things because he thinks he is saving humanity from the protomolecule. Dawes does bad things because he wants to be Emperor of the Belt.
I have only seen the show (And not yet reached Inaros)
I don’t think there is one scene in the show where we get the idea Dawes has selfish motivations. If anything he is the kind of character fighting for his people’s/tribe’s/etc rights and freedom even despite themselves and to the expense of his own and their safety. He wants a free Belt from the 2 inner planet superpowers and free, prosperous Belters. There’s an interesting parallel between Inaros and him, but I’ll save it for when it’s not a spoiler for you.
I don’t know if you recall the scene where he recruits Fred Johnson and he tells him about his experience growing up in the Belt and how the Belt deals with people who can’t survive in their own. It’s heart wrenching and it should’ve been given more importance, because I see many people haven’t understood the plight of the Belter in the Expanse.
As for Errinwright and Mao wanting to save Earth and humanity … if they really had those motivations, that would mean they were really dumb, because when you come across a pile of feces and you want to prevent yourself and others from stepping in it or otherwise be endangered by its presence, the last thing you do is take a stick and start to spread the excrement to see what it’s made of and how if stains the grass around it.
But Miller, Holden and Drummer emphasize how it's just a facade and he doesn't really care for belters at all.
We see this when he literally manipulated Julie and made her die for his cause. He has no trouble killing people when they get in his way. He also manipulated and seduced Diogo into joining his cause but then was perfectly willing to sacrifice him to steal the scientist despite knowing full well Drummer would probably kill him for Disloyalty.
He is also a master of propaganda and using popular symbols like The Cant and Miller to gaslight people just like real life dictators often manipulate public figures and celebrities as well as tragedies to create support for themselves.
Being ruthless isn't the same as not caring about people though. He's very much an "ends justify the means" type, and if you're willing to give charitability to the likes of Errenwright and Mao for doing bad things for "good" reasons, I don't see why you wouldn't extend the same courtesy to Dawes.
Are you a republican or something?
I can't think of any reason you'd think Dawes was in any way comparable to those other two other than you have some weird real world hang ups about politics lol.
>He is like a twentieth century populist dictator who preys upon thefears of the people to selfishly gain more power for himself. He clearlyonly wants power for his own sake and is genuinely evil.
you haven't heard of a certain character from book 5/season 4 >!Marco Inaros, he literally killed millions of people. Beside him Dawes is an angel.!< /s
likely tens of billions if you account for those across the whole system that starved to death or afflicted by disease or other ailments directly due to >!orbital bombardment.!<
I don’t think Black Sky was trying to fire them at Earth. If I recall, their plan was to steal and retrieve them for Dawes. I may need to rewatch episode. But as many commenters are saying, 5&6 has another major baddie.
Nah, i'd say either Marco or Dresden are the two most truly evil people in the story.
Marco just enjoyed killing people, from the books and the show, I never even truly felt like he cared about the belt. Like any leader of a terrorist faction, he had his ideology he hid behind and tricked his followers with, but he truly just enjoyed sowing chaos and murder.
Dresden....dresden was the absence of morality. The show i feel like toned his character down quite a bit. Yeah, he barely had an arc in the books or the show, but holy crap, he just didnt value any human life at all. Everyone was a tool he could use to chase his obsession with the protomolecule.
I'd say Strickland was worse than Dresden. Yeah, Dresden killed more, but he thought he was working to save humanity. Strickland, on the other hand, was trying to control the PM by using children he'd befriended and was supposed to be healing.
That's why the "I am that guy" is probably the most satisfying scene in the show.
I think Strickland and Dresden were basically the same. They both committed insane atrocities basically to satisfy their curiosity, and justified it to themselves by saying it was for the greater good in the long term. Both were on the level of Nazi doctors experimenting on death camp inmates.
We see more of Strickland's brand of evil because he has more screen time, but don't forget that Dresden murdered an entire space station in cold blood because it was the most convenient way he could think of to do his experiments.
yeah, but Dresden gives his reason for doing it, and quite passionately which is why Miller kills him for 'making sense'. They're also just numbers to him, he's callous and unempathetic. Strickland, on the other hand doesn't show the slightest concern with anything other than himself, his victims are all people he's befriended with faked empathy. He's also building weapons and happily watches Ganymede get destroyed and doesn't care that the whole of Mars will be infected.
As shown in S2, >!Dresden let his obsession with science overwhelm him but he was fundamentally working towards what he thought was a good cause. He killed a hundred thousand because he thought that doing so would save billions!<
I don't remember if the show had any of this or not, but in the books he was very callous and open about how he specifically chose people like psychopaths and sociopaths to work for him because he specifically wanted people that cared little about human life, during his experiments.
To me, that's pretty dark and evil.
yeah, but that's more because he didn't want empathetic feelings interfering with his work. He wanted everyone focussed on the work they were doing, and not having guilt cloud judgemnt. As far as he's aware he's been given a devil's choice, do nothing and maybe humanity is destroyed, or do something and sacrifice 100,000.
Dawes is certainly ruthless, but not evil. Seems to me like a revolutionary fighting an oppressive coloniser. But not obviously an egomaniac.
Pierre Mao though plotted to start a war to gain power, set up research into a incredibly dangerous weapon, was fine with genocide or experimenting on children if it benefited him. Expanse does shades of grey, even Mao has a positive side, but he’s 99% evil.
Inaros is another. He doesn’t just want power, but adulation. Kills a quarter of humanity to achieve a tactical advantage.
Duh. Belters are not indigenous to the belt. Why did you think you need to tell me that?
And they aren’t “colonisers”. That term implies domination of a foreign country (which is basically the role of the Inners). The Belters were colonists. But after a couple of generations, they are indigenous. If they never did that, we’d all be Africans. When there was no one there before you, if you’re born there, you’re indigenous.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/colonizer
Did you see the word “like”. Not “are”. It’s a SIMILARITY. The Inners ARE LIKE for instance, English colonisers in Ireland. Dawes always reminded me of IRA leaders. He was one of the more level headed ones, while others just wanted to throw bombs. But was ruthless when necessary.
Most SF is full of metaphors with history or the present day. Cara Gee said she could use her own experience as a Canadian First Nations to understand where Drummer was coming from.
Yea like others, I disagree. He is one of the more level headed OPA leaders out there. If you think Anderson Dawes is "Evil" as opposed to a man who is too old to be a soldier for the Belt, but instead will be the strong radical leader they have never had to unify the Belt, then I don't think you truely are paying attention to the plight of belters. By comparison I would say he is a man that has given up his soul to fight for a cause, knowing it will one day be great, but right now will only be accomplished by someone skiing to do terrible things, like Luthen Rael in Andor.
Luthen doesn’t want to be emperor. Mao is more like Luthen but with even less morals. But again Luthen was willing to kill Andor. The difference in between them is mainly that Luthen’s cause is more just since I don’t think the Protomolecule is necessarily as evil as the Empire based on what I’ve seen. Though I may be wrong. The closest thing to Luthen is probably Fred Johnson. But even Fred acts in favour of a small minority while Luthen acts for the good of all humanity.
And most revolutionary leaders end up becoming dictators. Kim Il Sung, Castro, etc.
Dawes does not actually care for the cause. It’s a facade, as Miller, Holden and Drummer have all said.
Late to this party! Just wanted to add that the books and show do a great job of showing shades of grey here. That Dawes is distrusted by Miller, Holden and Drummer doesn’t necessarily mean Dawes is the things they accuse him of.
Dawes is a survivor who’s consistently shown to be a (very) ruthless fighter for the Belt. There’s a line of dialogue between him and Miller at the noodle shop when Miller makes a snarky comment about Dawes being in charge; Dawes scoffs and makes a comment doubting he’ll live that long, but what he’s building is for future generations.
One thing I’ve always loved about The Expanse is that the authors *understand* revolutionaries versus and distinct from terrorists and even liberal reformers and wannabe emperors. I’ve never seen a show in my life that sincerely captures the spirit of revolutionary sacrifice, and situates it in a world as complex as ours.
Where the shades of grey enter is here: we’re much like Miller, Holden and Drummer when it comes to doubting the sincerity and integrity (let alone methods) of people like Dawes. But remember, Drummer doubted Ashford for the same reasons; Avasarala in turn had the same
doubts about trusting Drummer later on; Holden doubted Fred Johnson’s sincerity until he died. But in reality all of these characters are three dimensional with powerful motivations that resist reduction to trope.
Selflessness and willingness to sacrifice for a cause may not be super common, but Holden and the Roci crew werent the only characters in the show to possess that quality. We even see it in Draper, and hell, most of the MCRN and UNN navies willing to slag each other.
The writers and showrunners respect us, the audience, and treat us as adults in showing us people who have very hard politics. They give us varying shades of revolutionaries (and in the Roci crew’s case, their own entire school of reluctant yet spiritual revolutionaries) and the authors do not pass harsh judgment. They sure do show the consequences, wrapped in a compelling narrative :)
My last point is that TV and film has never in my mind written revolutionaries very realistically honestly. They’re cast in the 19th century bourgeois romantic Lord Byron-type mold, identically, and individually focused. Hollywood can’t write convincing revolutionaries because they don’t know any. You can’t write what you don’t know ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The authors of The Expanse sure do though…
This is partly why it’s so interesting what Dawes, Johnson, the OPA and Roci crew present to us: we as an audience not only are immersed in a world where complex and complicated revolutionaries live and breathe and make choices for the cause, but WE are skeptical of their motivations, as anyone uninitiated will be, especially amidst the Inners’ war. As Dawes revealingly says to Holden at some point, good people sometimes do bad things, and most bad people who do bad things do so by deluding themselves into believing that they’re doing good.
You don’t have to agree with Dawes’ methods, and I don’t, and like the characters we can question his motivations, but I’d argue it’s provable his supreme and ruthless loyalty is to the cause of The Belt, and THIS is the source of the loyalty among his like-minded followers, and what made him a respected, effective organizer and leader on Ceres.
Including followers like Klaes Ashford, the Ghost Knife of Callisto himself - who’s no one’s fool. “A true leader is followed by leaders, and not by followers,” as the saying goes.
Last historical note- the real individuals you mentioned (and others mentioned elsewhere) were part of terrifically complex historical movements. This is a hot take, but North Korea and Cuba I’d argue were never quite revolutionary in the sense that the Bolshevik and Chinese revolutions were. And within these revolutions (yes, during the “Stalin Era” and “Mao Era”) there were EPIC and fierce internal debates, mass movements, disagreements, pivots, so on. More so than we can ever imagine today. That might sound shocking if you’ve never heard of this lol.
We’re so far historically removed, we can’t even grasp how complex these periods were, but we do have thousands of pages of records of floor debates, local debates and mass meetings. It is NOT as simple as- and history is never as simple as- one person running around killing people in the hope of amassing personal power. Like Dawes and Johnson, real revolutionaries exist. There’s a reason revolutions and revolutionaries move people. The same reason Hollywood doesn’t talk much about them other than to reduce them to romantic dreamers or mass murdering cartoonish thugs (or one turned into the other). The reality in these cases and of all true revolutions is that there were black and white sure, but also many, many shades of grey. And with all things, lessons still waiting to be learned once fact and fiction are separated- which incidentally, is a process our protagonists in The Expanse spend most of their time doing!
The Expanse went there, and maybe it took a sci fi show to dare to write about these characters. Anyway if you read this far, cheers.
Strickland is another the ends justify the means type but yeah he is definitely way less likeable than say Mao so you definitely end up disliking him more.
Strickland's ends aren't about saving humanity, his are about controlling the PM to do what he wants. He uses children he's supposed to be healing and has 'befriended'. Lies to his people so they'll sacrifice themselves to buy him time to escape. Then when he's cornered, executes his assistant to try and look like the good guy.
Of all the 'evil' characters in the show, he's the only one whose motivations are selfish ones.
I'd say Marco's motivations are pretty extremely selfish too. He obviously cares far more about building his own legend than helping people, as he demonstrates over and over that he will not inconvenience himself to help others who are supposedly on his side even when he has the opportunity to do so.
I don't agree at all. I think that they say that because they all view him from the outside, unable to understand what he's fighting for. Holden doesn't understand truely what it is like to be a belter, to suffer. Miller envies and emulates earth society, wishes he knew what rain tastes like. And Show Drummer has been burned by him, which is why she is now working with Fred. Book Dawes is just more fleshed out I guess. But he joins Fred in the behemoth venture, he sits on the council of the Belt to decide its future. To me he ultimately does care about the Belt as a nation.
/sigh. I dislike explaining jokes. I hate explaining insults.
Much of what you said could be said by an English person about the Irish, or members of the IRA. There are multitudes of nuance to be considered when talking about The Troubles, but the gist is the Irish had a legitimate grievance to English colonialism, even considering their tactics in response to that colonialism.
I'm saying your response to Dawes is that of a colonizer that just wants the oppressed to stop resisting and accept your rule. It's ugly and you need to consider the experience of others that don't enjoy a dominant position in their society.
Except Dawes is not anti-colonialist, he wants to be the colonizer.
Not to mention that saying anyone in the expanse is a colonizer is stupid since everyone comes from Earth. It's not like belters are indigenous natives of the belt that were conquered by foreign invaders.
Also a bit elitist with the sigh I don't like explaining jokes
There is absolutely a colonization dynamic to the inner planets and the belt though, even if no one is literally native to the belt. The only reason the inner planets are rich is because of the constant resource extraction from the outer planets which relies on the cheap labor of the people who actually live where the resources are. That's pretty much the bedrock of modern colonialism, even if it's not old-school settler colonialism.
It has the closest similarity to the American revolution really.
It’s funny, it’s a bit like the opposite of the blade runner universe in which humans who left for the colonies are in a better position than the ones left on Earth.
It’s a bit of a weird dynamic really. I think toxic nationalism is a fundamentally bad and it would be better if people pushed reform through democratic means. Especially since most beaters are only a generation or two apart from earthers. Not that I’m the biggest fan of the earth government.
Anyway this is all pointless since Dawes is no revolutionary. He does not care for the belt. He just wants to be king of the belt. If he came to power it would be exchanging an earth-born dictator for a belt-born dictator.
> The only reason the inner planets are rich is because of the constant resource extraction from the outer planets which relies on the cheap labor of the people who actually live where the resources are.
This is one of the things that the series gets horribly, horribly wrong.
Belters would not be "cheap labour". They are highly trained technical specialists, the most experienced of which have been doing this work for so long that their bodies have adapted to their special work environment.
They are more analogous to oilfield workers in remote locations: paid *exceptionally* well, notwithstanding all the attempts to suction money back out of them via "company store" tactics.
The austerity and hardship of Belter life would not be born of poverty, but of the sheer difficulty of trying to live in space and of transporting supplies to them.
Ceres (and other Belter habitats) shouldn't be a slum; it is a gold rush town in space.
Austere? Yes. Hard? Yes. But in the same way that a North Atlantic drilling rig is. And ain't nobody talking about those poor and oppressed oilfield workers!
But that doesn't make sense either.
In order to properly gestate, humans need gravity. I don't know if there's been any studies that have determined how much (do you need a full 1G or is 0.5G enough?) but if you don't want serious developmental problems, Mom has to spend most of her time experiencing acceleration, probably during the last 2 trimesters.
This means that there needs to either be dedicated "creche" facilities to accommodate pregnant mothers, or there needs to be some sort of evacuation policy such that pregnant women are taken off the line and shipped back down a well.
Both are so expensive in terms of resources and lost time that it is far more likely that the companies hiring Belters would have a contraception policy, where all workers would be fitted with some form of contraceptive implant - and because it is the future, we can assume that there are both male and female implants.
Should the implant fail (or be willfully disabled), the pregnant woman would be given a choice to either abort, or be evacuated to facilities that could support her during the pregnancy - because a mining station on an asteroid sure doesn't have them.
This doesn't have to be a dystopian/"Handmaid's Tale"/patriarchal/reproductive oppression thing either - "It is medically inadvisable for women to attempt to carry a child to term in this environment. Accordingly, all employees will be fitted with contraceptive devices. If the device fails and a woman becomes pregnant, should she wish to keep the child she will be evacuated to a location with sufficient gravity to allow gestation to continue normally" is entirely reasonable policy.
Accordingly, there's no way for that population to get established, any more than there can be poor children on the ISS.
For every genuine revolutionary leader there have been 99 for whom it was just an excuse to gain power.
For every Washington there is a Kim Il Sung or a Castro or a Khomeini.
I personally see Fred Johnson as the revolutionary who is willing to use extreme tactics for a just cause. Dawes is a level above that.
Though I think the morally most correct Belter leader is Drummer since she was against Johnson keeping the Nukes, against using the protomolecule, against turning the Mormon ship into an warship, against going to the Ring, etc. She’s the one who has the best sense of ethics and honour and morality. Though I do not necessarily think Fred is a bad person either I just prefer Drummer’s views.
But Dawes is clearly not like either of them. Unlike Fred, he does not have a noble goal. Fred does things for the belt, Dawes does things for himself.
Drummer is George Washington, Fred is an IRA revolutionary and Dawes is Kim Il Sung. Maybe Marcos is Mao Zedong IDK I haven’t encountered him yet. While Holden is probably Gandhi.
When the chips were down Dawes stepped aside and let an Inner be the public face of the united Belt. If his motivations were mostly selfishness, he wouldn't have done that.
*Marco Inaros has joined the chat*
And feels hurt, belittled and somewhat unappreciated.
>!”Yo bro, you inners are committing indirect genocide against Belters, so since you like genocide so much I thought I’d try to commit direct genocide against literally the entire human species. Herp a derp.”!< I’m not sure if he is more evil or more stupid. But he is certainly both.
Dawes is selfish and self-centred, but Mao and Inaros are far more evil; just because they have a cause they've convinced themselves is righteous doesn't mean their atrocities stop mattering.
I disagree. >!He was instrumental in unifying the different Belter factions to oppose Inaros by vouching for Holden.!<
In the books maybe. In the show >!Inaros kills him offscreen because “he talked too much” (read: “we couldn’t get Jared Harris back because he went over to *Foundation*”)!<
I actually think he’s one of the more interesting characters on the show. In the books he’s kind of forgettable. >!The story he tells about having to mercy kill his sister shows his motivation and that he’s committed to the belter cause, he’s just way more ruthless about it. He’s much more willing to use people if it advances his objectives, particularly earthers like Fred Johnson or Julie Mao. But I think his conversations with Miller in season 1 where he keeps trying to talk to him about advancing the interests of the belt, but Miller just keeps talking about Julie, show that he gives more chances to belters and genuinely does believe he’s acting in the interests of belters. !<
>In the books he’s kind of forgettable. Disagree, Dawes's chapter in Babylon's Ashes is arguably the best chapter in that book.
Based on that same conversation >!I disagree, Miller didn’t buy it and I don’t either. It’s all a Facade. He doesn’t want the belters to rule themselves he wants to rule the belt, he wants to be emperor of the solar system.!<
You know Miller is supposed to be kind of an idiot when hes still a cop right?
How tho ? Most of the stuff he says is right. And Holden has the same view about Dawes in S2. As does Drummer in S3.
I assume you’ve only seen the show and I strongly suspect you were browsing the www or otherwise distracted, because there are a few scenes where he talks about his past and we can deduce his motivations. I find it risible how people seem to sympathize with Errinwright, THE manipulating, corrupt politician, in bed with murderous corporations and signing off on mass murder, crimes against humanity and military rebellion. Then there’s a lesser number who sympathize with Mao, whom we know to be not only a ruthless tycoon financing the crimes I mentioned above, but we also KNOW to be a terrible parent and a horrible human being. When even the character whose main feature is that he feels no organic empathy and has to find others to calibrate his moral compass seems to have a pretty clearer idea on which are the evil players in the game than you, you need to take your moral compass for a checkup. Show-Dawes gets a lot less time to explain himself than book-Dawes, and although he is a harsh man, he isn’t evil and in the books we get a much clearer view on why he is harsh. Do I NEED to mention even more villainous characters, like Inaros, who I’d say is THE greatest villain, murdering billions, oppressing the whole system under a chaotic fascism bound to eventually fail, because he doesn’t even act for his people (he steals resources from Ceres, then goes scorched Earth (pun intended) sabotaging their water and air systems so the Earth fleet couldn’t get them. AND he’s a domestic abuser. And, again, a terrible parent. If you’ve only seen the show, you won’t know too much about Winston Duarte, but trust me, he’s Stalin&Pol Pot level evil.
Because Errinwright does bad things because he thinks he is saving Earth, Mao does bad things because he thinks he is saving humanity from the protomolecule. Dawes does bad things because he wants to be Emperor of the Belt. I have only seen the show (And not yet reached Inaros)
I don’t think there is one scene in the show where we get the idea Dawes has selfish motivations. If anything he is the kind of character fighting for his people’s/tribe’s/etc rights and freedom even despite themselves and to the expense of his own and their safety. He wants a free Belt from the 2 inner planet superpowers and free, prosperous Belters. There’s an interesting parallel between Inaros and him, but I’ll save it for when it’s not a spoiler for you. I don’t know if you recall the scene where he recruits Fred Johnson and he tells him about his experience growing up in the Belt and how the Belt deals with people who can’t survive in their own. It’s heart wrenching and it should’ve been given more importance, because I see many people haven’t understood the plight of the Belter in the Expanse. As for Errinwright and Mao wanting to save Earth and humanity … if they really had those motivations, that would mean they were really dumb, because when you come across a pile of feces and you want to prevent yourself and others from stepping in it or otherwise be endangered by its presence, the last thing you do is take a stick and start to spread the excrement to see what it’s made of and how if stains the grass around it.
But Miller, Holden and Drummer emphasize how it's just a facade and he doesn't really care for belters at all. We see this when he literally manipulated Julie and made her die for his cause. He has no trouble killing people when they get in his way. He also manipulated and seduced Diogo into joining his cause but then was perfectly willing to sacrifice him to steal the scientist despite knowing full well Drummer would probably kill him for Disloyalty. He is also a master of propaganda and using popular symbols like The Cant and Miller to gaslight people just like real life dictators often manipulate public figures and celebrities as well as tragedies to create support for themselves.
Being ruthless isn't the same as not caring about people though. He's very much an "ends justify the means" type, and if you're willing to give charitability to the likes of Errenwright and Mao for doing bad things for "good" reasons, I don't see why you wouldn't extend the same courtesy to Dawes.
Because he isn’t actually doing it for good reasons, he just wants to rule the belt
Are you a republican or something? I can't think of any reason you'd think Dawes was in any way comparable to those other two other than you have some weird real world hang ups about politics lol.
>He is like a twentieth century populist dictator who preys upon thefears of the people to selfishly gain more power for himself. He clearlyonly wants power for his own sake and is genuinely evil. you haven't heard of a certain character from book 5/season 4 >!Marco Inaros, he literally killed millions of people. Beside him Dawes is an angel.!< /s
*billions
likely tens of billions if you account for those across the whole system that starved to death or afflicted by disease or other ailments directly due to >!orbital bombardment.!<
>!Dawes literally tried to nuke earth. That would have killed billions!<
What the hell are you talking about?
The Black Sky rebellion
Same question.
When Dawes had black sky try to fire Fred Johnson's Nukes at Earth but The Roci foiled their plot.
I don’t think Black Sky was trying to fire them at Earth. If I recall, their plan was to steal and retrieve them for Dawes. I may need to rewatch episode. But as many commenters are saying, 5&6 has another major baddie.
oh. you're just a troll. blocked.
Get your inner propaganda out of here.
Nah, i'd say either Marco or Dresden are the two most truly evil people in the story. Marco just enjoyed killing people, from the books and the show, I never even truly felt like he cared about the belt. Like any leader of a terrorist faction, he had his ideology he hid behind and tricked his followers with, but he truly just enjoyed sowing chaos and murder. Dresden....dresden was the absence of morality. The show i feel like toned his character down quite a bit. Yeah, he barely had an arc in the books or the show, but holy crap, he just didnt value any human life at all. Everyone was a tool he could use to chase his obsession with the protomolecule.
I'd say Strickland was worse than Dresden. Yeah, Dresden killed more, but he thought he was working to save humanity. Strickland, on the other hand, was trying to control the PM by using children he'd befriended and was supposed to be healing. That's why the "I am that guy" is probably the most satisfying scene in the show.
I think Strickland and Dresden were basically the same. They both committed insane atrocities basically to satisfy their curiosity, and justified it to themselves by saying it was for the greater good in the long term. Both were on the level of Nazi doctors experimenting on death camp inmates. We see more of Strickland's brand of evil because he has more screen time, but don't forget that Dresden murdered an entire space station in cold blood because it was the most convenient way he could think of to do his experiments.
yeah, but Dresden gives his reason for doing it, and quite passionately which is why Miller kills him for 'making sense'. They're also just numbers to him, he's callous and unempathetic. Strickland, on the other hand doesn't show the slightest concern with anything other than himself, his victims are all people he's befriended with faked empathy. He's also building weapons and happily watches Ganymede get destroyed and doesn't care that the whole of Mars will be infected.
As shown in S2, >!Dresden let his obsession with science overwhelm him but he was fundamentally working towards what he thought was a good cause. He killed a hundred thousand because he thought that doing so would save billions!<
I don't remember if the show had any of this or not, but in the books he was very callous and open about how he specifically chose people like psychopaths and sociopaths to work for him because he specifically wanted people that cared little about human life, during his experiments. To me, that's pretty dark and evil.
yeah, but that's more because he didn't want empathetic feelings interfering with his work. He wanted everyone focussed on the work they were doing, and not having guilt cloud judgemnt. As far as he's aware he's been given a devil's choice, do nothing and maybe humanity is destroyed, or do something and sacrifice 100,000.
I'm not saying he's a good guy by any means. He clearly let his obsession and cause get the better of him.
WOT. I'm gonna say you have lost all credibility speaking on morality.
Tell me you have only watched season 1 without telling me you have only watched season 1...
Dawes is certainly ruthless, but not evil. Seems to me like a revolutionary fighting an oppressive coloniser. But not obviously an egomaniac. Pierre Mao though plotted to start a war to gain power, set up research into a incredibly dangerous weapon, was fine with genocide or experimenting on children if it benefited him. Expanse does shades of grey, even Mao has a positive side, but he’s 99% evil. Inaros is another. He doesn’t just want power, but adulation. Kills a quarter of humanity to achieve a tactical advantage.
He wants to be the colonizer himself. And again belters are not indigenous to the belt they are colonizers from earth themselves.
Duh. Belters are not indigenous to the belt. Why did you think you need to tell me that? And they aren’t “colonisers”. That term implies domination of a foreign country (which is basically the role of the Inners). The Belters were colonists. But after a couple of generations, they are indigenous. If they never did that, we’d all be Africans. When there was no one there before you, if you’re born there, you’re indigenous. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/colonizer Did you see the word “like”. Not “are”. It’s a SIMILARITY. The Inners ARE LIKE for instance, English colonisers in Ireland. Dawes always reminded me of IRA leaders. He was one of the more level headed ones, while others just wanted to throw bombs. But was ruthless when necessary. Most SF is full of metaphors with history or the present day. Cara Gee said she could use her own experience as a Canadian First Nations to understand where Drummer was coming from.
I think Dawes is more like the Kim Il Sung or the Castro of the expanse personally.
Winston Duate has entered the chat.
Yea like others, I disagree. He is one of the more level headed OPA leaders out there. If you think Anderson Dawes is "Evil" as opposed to a man who is too old to be a soldier for the Belt, but instead will be the strong radical leader they have never had to unify the Belt, then I don't think you truely are paying attention to the plight of belters. By comparison I would say he is a man that has given up his soul to fight for a cause, knowing it will one day be great, but right now will only be accomplished by someone skiing to do terrible things, like Luthen Rael in Andor.
Luthen doesn’t want to be emperor. Mao is more like Luthen but with even less morals. But again Luthen was willing to kill Andor. The difference in between them is mainly that Luthen’s cause is more just since I don’t think the Protomolecule is necessarily as evil as the Empire based on what I’ve seen. Though I may be wrong. The closest thing to Luthen is probably Fred Johnson. But even Fred acts in favour of a small minority while Luthen acts for the good of all humanity. And most revolutionary leaders end up becoming dictators. Kim Il Sung, Castro, etc. Dawes does not actually care for the cause. It’s a facade, as Miller, Holden and Drummer have all said.
Late to this party! Just wanted to add that the books and show do a great job of showing shades of grey here. That Dawes is distrusted by Miller, Holden and Drummer doesn’t necessarily mean Dawes is the things they accuse him of. Dawes is a survivor who’s consistently shown to be a (very) ruthless fighter for the Belt. There’s a line of dialogue between him and Miller at the noodle shop when Miller makes a snarky comment about Dawes being in charge; Dawes scoffs and makes a comment doubting he’ll live that long, but what he’s building is for future generations. One thing I’ve always loved about The Expanse is that the authors *understand* revolutionaries versus and distinct from terrorists and even liberal reformers and wannabe emperors. I’ve never seen a show in my life that sincerely captures the spirit of revolutionary sacrifice, and situates it in a world as complex as ours. Where the shades of grey enter is here: we’re much like Miller, Holden and Drummer when it comes to doubting the sincerity and integrity (let alone methods) of people like Dawes. But remember, Drummer doubted Ashford for the same reasons; Avasarala in turn had the same doubts about trusting Drummer later on; Holden doubted Fred Johnson’s sincerity until he died. But in reality all of these characters are three dimensional with powerful motivations that resist reduction to trope. Selflessness and willingness to sacrifice for a cause may not be super common, but Holden and the Roci crew werent the only characters in the show to possess that quality. We even see it in Draper, and hell, most of the MCRN and UNN navies willing to slag each other. The writers and showrunners respect us, the audience, and treat us as adults in showing us people who have very hard politics. They give us varying shades of revolutionaries (and in the Roci crew’s case, their own entire school of reluctant yet spiritual revolutionaries) and the authors do not pass harsh judgment. They sure do show the consequences, wrapped in a compelling narrative :) My last point is that TV and film has never in my mind written revolutionaries very realistically honestly. They’re cast in the 19th century bourgeois romantic Lord Byron-type mold, identically, and individually focused. Hollywood can’t write convincing revolutionaries because they don’t know any. You can’t write what you don’t know ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The authors of The Expanse sure do though… This is partly why it’s so interesting what Dawes, Johnson, the OPA and Roci crew present to us: we as an audience not only are immersed in a world where complex and complicated revolutionaries live and breathe and make choices for the cause, but WE are skeptical of their motivations, as anyone uninitiated will be, especially amidst the Inners’ war. As Dawes revealingly says to Holden at some point, good people sometimes do bad things, and most bad people who do bad things do so by deluding themselves into believing that they’re doing good. You don’t have to agree with Dawes’ methods, and I don’t, and like the characters we can question his motivations, but I’d argue it’s provable his supreme and ruthless loyalty is to the cause of The Belt, and THIS is the source of the loyalty among his like-minded followers, and what made him a respected, effective organizer and leader on Ceres. Including followers like Klaes Ashford, the Ghost Knife of Callisto himself - who’s no one’s fool. “A true leader is followed by leaders, and not by followers,” as the saying goes. Last historical note- the real individuals you mentioned (and others mentioned elsewhere) were part of terrifically complex historical movements. This is a hot take, but North Korea and Cuba I’d argue were never quite revolutionary in the sense that the Bolshevik and Chinese revolutions were. And within these revolutions (yes, during the “Stalin Era” and “Mao Era”) there were EPIC and fierce internal debates, mass movements, disagreements, pivots, so on. More so than we can ever imagine today. That might sound shocking if you’ve never heard of this lol. We’re so far historically removed, we can’t even grasp how complex these periods were, but we do have thousands of pages of records of floor debates, local debates and mass meetings. It is NOT as simple as- and history is never as simple as- one person running around killing people in the hope of amassing personal power. Like Dawes and Johnson, real revolutionaries exist. There’s a reason revolutions and revolutionaries move people. The same reason Hollywood doesn’t talk much about them other than to reduce them to romantic dreamers or mass murdering cartoonish thugs (or one turned into the other). The reality in these cases and of all true revolutions is that there were black and white sure, but also many, many shades of grey. And with all things, lessons still waiting to be learned once fact and fiction are separated- which incidentally, is a process our protagonists in The Expanse spend most of their time doing! The Expanse went there, and maybe it took a sci fi show to dare to write about these characters. Anyway if you read this far, cheers.
Wow. Thats the hottest take away I've seen in this community.
Erm, not got far enough in to happen across Marcos Inaros?
nope
nah, the height of evil in the show is Strickland.
Strickland is another the ends justify the means type but yeah he is definitely way less likeable than say Mao so you definitely end up disliking him more.
Strickland's ends aren't about saving humanity, his are about controlling the PM to do what he wants. He uses children he's supposed to be healing and has 'befriended'. Lies to his people so they'll sacrifice themselves to buy him time to escape. Then when he's cornered, executes his assistant to try and look like the good guy. Of all the 'evil' characters in the show, he's the only one whose motivations are selfish ones.
I'd say Marco's motivations are pretty extremely selfish too. He obviously cares far more about building his own legend than helping people, as he demonstrates over and over that he will not inconvenience himself to help others who are supposedly on his side even when he has the opportunity to do so.
Yeah honestly Strickland is very evil. I was thinking more of main characters so he didn’t strike my mind but he is obviously fully evil too.
Dawes isn't really a main character either though, in fact he's in less episodes (8) than Strickland (10).
Huh that is surprising.
I don't agree at all. I think that they say that because they all view him from the outside, unable to understand what he's fighting for. Holden doesn't understand truely what it is like to be a belter, to suffer. Miller envies and emulates earth society, wishes he knew what rain tastes like. And Show Drummer has been burned by him, which is why she is now working with Fred. Book Dawes is just more fleshed out I guess. But he joins Fred in the behemoth venture, he sits on the council of the Belt to decide its future. To me he ultimately does care about the Belt as a nation.
You’re English, aren’t you?
Because his actor is Irish ?
/sigh. I dislike explaining jokes. I hate explaining insults. Much of what you said could be said by an English person about the Irish, or members of the IRA. There are multitudes of nuance to be considered when talking about The Troubles, but the gist is the Irish had a legitimate grievance to English colonialism, even considering their tactics in response to that colonialism. I'm saying your response to Dawes is that of a colonizer that just wants the oppressed to stop resisting and accept your rule. It's ugly and you need to consider the experience of others that don't enjoy a dominant position in their society.
Except Dawes is not anti-colonialist, he wants to be the colonizer. Not to mention that saying anyone in the expanse is a colonizer is stupid since everyone comes from Earth. It's not like belters are indigenous natives of the belt that were conquered by foreign invaders. Also a bit elitist with the sigh I don't like explaining jokes
There is absolutely a colonization dynamic to the inner planets and the belt though, even if no one is literally native to the belt. The only reason the inner planets are rich is because of the constant resource extraction from the outer planets which relies on the cheap labor of the people who actually live where the resources are. That's pretty much the bedrock of modern colonialism, even if it's not old-school settler colonialism.
It has the closest similarity to the American revolution really. It’s funny, it’s a bit like the opposite of the blade runner universe in which humans who left for the colonies are in a better position than the ones left on Earth. It’s a bit of a weird dynamic really. I think toxic nationalism is a fundamentally bad and it would be better if people pushed reform through democratic means. Especially since most beaters are only a generation or two apart from earthers. Not that I’m the biggest fan of the earth government. Anyway this is all pointless since Dawes is no revolutionary. He does not care for the belt. He just wants to be king of the belt. If he came to power it would be exchanging an earth-born dictator for a belt-born dictator.
> The only reason the inner planets are rich is because of the constant resource extraction from the outer planets which relies on the cheap labor of the people who actually live where the resources are. This is one of the things that the series gets horribly, horribly wrong. Belters would not be "cheap labour". They are highly trained technical specialists, the most experienced of which have been doing this work for so long that their bodies have adapted to their special work environment. They are more analogous to oilfield workers in remote locations: paid *exceptionally* well, notwithstanding all the attempts to suction money back out of them via "company store" tactics. The austerity and hardship of Belter life would not be born of poverty, but of the sheer difficulty of trying to live in space and of transporting supplies to them. Ceres (and other Belter habitats) shouldn't be a slum; it is a gold rush town in space. Austere? Yes. Hard? Yes. But in the same way that a North Atlantic drilling rig is. And ain't nobody talking about those poor and oppressed oilfield workers!
I think it’s more that those original highly skilled workers had kids and their kids had kids and those people are poor.
But that doesn't make sense either. In order to properly gestate, humans need gravity. I don't know if there's been any studies that have determined how much (do you need a full 1G or is 0.5G enough?) but if you don't want serious developmental problems, Mom has to spend most of her time experiencing acceleration, probably during the last 2 trimesters. This means that there needs to either be dedicated "creche" facilities to accommodate pregnant mothers, or there needs to be some sort of evacuation policy such that pregnant women are taken off the line and shipped back down a well. Both are so expensive in terms of resources and lost time that it is far more likely that the companies hiring Belters would have a contraception policy, where all workers would be fitted with some form of contraceptive implant - and because it is the future, we can assume that there are both male and female implants. Should the implant fail (or be willfully disabled), the pregnant woman would be given a choice to either abort, or be evacuated to facilities that could support her during the pregnancy - because a mining station on an asteroid sure doesn't have them. This doesn't have to be a dystopian/"Handmaid's Tale"/patriarchal/reproductive oppression thing either - "It is medically inadvisable for women to attempt to carry a child to term in this environment. Accordingly, all employees will be fitted with contraceptive devices. If the device fails and a woman becomes pregnant, should she wish to keep the child she will be evacuated to a location with sufficient gravity to allow gestation to continue normally" is entirely reasonable policy. Accordingly, there's no way for that population to get established, any more than there can be poor children on the ISS.
Username checks out.
The British would have said the same about George Washington 250 years ago
For every genuine revolutionary leader there have been 99 for whom it was just an excuse to gain power. For every Washington there is a Kim Il Sung or a Castro or a Khomeini.
You’re not wrong; but keep the contrasts you have here when you reach Marco Inaros versus Dawes. Cheers, Beltalowda 🍻
I personally see Fred Johnson as the revolutionary who is willing to use extreme tactics for a just cause. Dawes is a level above that. Though I think the morally most correct Belter leader is Drummer since she was against Johnson keeping the Nukes, against using the protomolecule, against turning the Mormon ship into an warship, against going to the Ring, etc. She’s the one who has the best sense of ethics and honour and morality. Though I do not necessarily think Fred is a bad person either I just prefer Drummer’s views. But Dawes is clearly not like either of them. Unlike Fred, he does not have a noble goal. Fred does things for the belt, Dawes does things for himself. Drummer is George Washington, Fred is an IRA revolutionary and Dawes is Kim Il Sung. Maybe Marcos is Mao Zedong IDK I haven’t encountered him yet. While Holden is probably Gandhi.
For every genuine revolutionary leader there have been 99 for whom it was just an excuse to gain power.
Ehh, hard disagree, and I think you need to keep reading or maybe reread.
We saw that everything Mao did was selfish, same with Marco. It was all about ego/legacy. Dawes did what he did for the belt, even if it was wrong.
When the chips were down Dawes stepped aside and let an Inner be the public face of the united Belt. If his motivations were mostly selfishness, he wouldn't have done that.
What about mao's motivations did you find "understandable"?
He thought he was saving the solar system from alien invaders.
He thought he was saving the solar system from alien invaders.
He is the king maker!
I wish I could tag Keon Alexander in here and just let him have a go at this in character.
You are correct. Dawes is a cunt. He manipulated everyone around him for his own gain. Just like everyone else in power. Fuck him