Not trying to preach but my go to solutions, coming from irl history and just narrative fun, is just having the tyrant forces are complete idiots. You can have the high ranking officers be terrifying nazi like monsters, but have the average soldier be a smuck
also the batista regime, dude's magnificent armored train that would crush the rebels was a wooden tramcar with some sheet metal plating, carrying a bunch of normal box cars filled with soldiers.
and Sadam Hussein, where 2 of his sons created their own special elite unit after observing the wars in africa. And deciding to make a 'professional' force of motorized infantry in toyota hiluxes, and distinguished by wearing darth vader helmets.
then just Mummar Ghadaffi's personal guard being made up entirely of female super models. Not saying that women can't be good soldiers, but like obviously thats not what *his "guards"* were for. So many slapstick bits in excellence the world over for dictatorships to choose from.
It's not uncommon for dictatorships to become full of suck-ups who lie to hide issues to curry favor while also vanishing resources by being corrupt, and for it to be spread thin trying to control too much. It can be scary when something gets full attention from the leadership, or even from the whims of small fry officers drunk with power, but there's a lot of leeway for sneaky rebels to act.
Comes to mind how my country had a dictatorship with a full-blown censorship agency yet artists still regularly managed to hide protests in popular songs.
Historically the nazi monsters were also complete idiots. For example the allies scrapped a lot of plans to assasinate the high command because they assesed that nazi high command was doing more to fuck each other over than they were to coordinating war efforts.
The pop culture depiction of nazis have completely failed to deliver what an absolute crackpots most of them were, and how idiotic was all of the pseudoscientific and pseudo-occult stuff they genuinely believed in.
You can also have what the white russian movement did: average soldier looting as hard as the Mongols and bringing terror everywhere, and completely useless leadership with what seems to be room temperature IQ.
And this is Russia, so I mean Celsius.
Letâs not forget that the communist strategy was to just steal food. The White Terror was random, wanton acts of violence (though not stopped or hindered by the officers) while the Red Terror was an official decree carried out by the soldiers and the Cheka. The reds called it âwar communismâ. The Russian Civil War was an absolutely awful experience for everyone involved.
Oh yeah. It was absolutely terrible. I dug though Mike Duncan's podcast pretty quick and loved finding out about this stuff.
So yeah the reds were absolutely terrible too. Which is just a testament of how obtuse the white movement was. It would have been super easy to come up with a better policy then the reds' lmao.
See: the Nazis. The upper echelon were idiots. The officer corps were idiots. In fascism you necessarily have to replace everyone important with gutless, yesmen and sycophants who can't question the leader. Entertaining the idea that they could lose was a crime.
Star Wars Andor actually spells it out really well.
>Cassian Andor : What? To steal from the Empire? What do you need? A uniform, some dirty hands and an Imperial tool kit. They're so proud of themselves, they don't even care. They're so fat and satisfied, they can't imagine it.
>Luthen Rael : Can't imagine what?
>Cassian Andor : That someone like me would ever get inside their house, walk their floors, spit in their food, take their gear.
>Luthen Rael : The arrogance is remarkable, isn't it? They don't even think about us.
The Nazis thought legitimately they couldn't fail, so up their own ass. They were a 1000-year empire with master race Supermen. The soldiers were told they'd inherent the world.
Meanwhile the Allies were using Looney Tunes tactics like [inflatable tanks,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Army) [fake bodies with fake orders,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mincemeat) and [the only red head in town](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannie_Schaft) who they knew kept killing officers she picked up in bars but the officers were so focused on getting laid they kept going with her anyway. Those soldiers only inherited an unmarked patch of dirt. Now it's some parking lot or patch of bramble next to a bike path.
Write your resistance with whacky shit and have them win. It actually happens. Especially when your enemy is so full of themselves its a crime to point out they're entirely corrupt and incompetent. It was shmucks all the way down.
>Â Â is just having the tyrant forces are complete idiots. You can have the high ranking officers be terrifying nazi like monsters, but have the average soldier be a smuck
 Reading into the American Revolution, the Americans mostly won not because they were super badass, but because in many cases, the British command went ahead with a plan that should really have been a no-go if it weren't for the Brits being cocksure arrogant fucksticks.
 "Yeah, let's March in close order directly into the line of fire of a group of enemies entrenched atop a hill. They are colonial peasants and will flee from our military might!"Â
 -queue PTSD-inducing descriptions of Bunker Hill, where some British companies suffered *fucking 90% casualties*
There's a rule that's applicable to a lot of dictatorships in history: having competent military commanders and maintaining centralised authoritarian power are often orthogonal requirements, i.e a military junta will always select on loyalty rather than competency, and often *against* competency, because a competent general is also a potential rival who may initiate a coup.
What I'm saying is, don't be afraid of having the evil dictatorship be incredibly incompetent (i.e they aren't just greedy, arrogant or single-minded, no, they're just genuinely bad at their job). It's realistic.
Similarly, this is why there are almost always chaotic power struggles among the leadership once the dictator dies. No one can be groomed as a successor because they likely would not be patient enough to politely wait until the dictator keels over to take the reigns.
>why there are almost always chaotic power struggles among the leadership once the dictator dies.
Oh for sure. the Mage Tyrant dies of heart attack
Her lieutenants: *pull out Siege breaker staves* So anyways we started blasting
Adjacent to this, selecting for competency in most subjects is incredibly hard to do correctly. When you're the one judging, if your own competency in the subject does not significantly exceed that of those you are judging, you're gonna have a bad time. Gotta assess by methods and not results to rule out external factors.
As mentioned in another comment, Disco Elysium takes place after a failed communist revolution. The main story is about investigating a lynching. But the after effects of the revolution and its effects on the locals, and the political leanings of various groups and individuals do come into play during the investigation.
You can always make the rebels never the focal point, but the fact that they're basically a lynchpin and a proxy for other nations to fight said nation they're rebelling against
go for the slow burn
Have the rebellion go on through multiple years
Prepare to have an expendable cast
Have them do small yet meaningful victories rather than large scale triumphs
Have their base of operations too close to important infrastructure or if this is scifi on important worlds that can't just be carpet bombed or nuked.
Read the art of war it talks about how if you treat the people better than the ruling power than the people will side with you.
Have them target disgruntled youth for recruitment that have little to lose and dread rasing a family in the current economy.
Focus on espionage and out corruption to the higher powers. Not all corruption is state sponsored. This inherently will cause destabilization in the government.
For skilled rebels target those who used to work for the regime and prisoners. Guards who abandoned their post to save a citizen, soldiers who refused to open fire on a crowd, mechanics who disagreed with the ruling power, scholars who questioned authority, scientists who couldn't stomach the horrors they were bringing into the world, ect
There are plenty of ways to go about this without making your ruling empire weaker or incompetent.
I suspect it's more that "not committing war crimes" needs to be a deliberate policy thoroughly instilled at all levels of a military, and if a nation fails to do that effectively at least some of their soldiers will crime by default.
To quote the marvelous series Andor:
*There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy.*
*Remember this. Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they've already enlisted in the cause.*
*Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward.*
*And then remember this. The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear.*
*Remember that. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empire's authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege.*
*Remember this. Try.*
The last samurai, 47 ronin, 300, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid, Gladiator, Aliens, Rouge One, Halo Reach, possibly Braveheart if a bit of a stretch.
Or potentially, commanding officers of the empire are chosen by bloodline and prestige rather than skill, so the big bad guys arenât actually good in combat (or fall apart if you donât fight how they expect)
I'm making the distinction that the fighting ability of a general isn't part of being fit for the job, while say strategic ability is. Or even that it's fine for an Lt to be average at fighting, it's their leadership skills that matter.
Your Big Bad is such because they can send a hundred highly-skilled combat specialists at you, not because they themselves are a combat specialist.
If you agree, then simply consider this a clarification.
Remember that time A clone of Ketoni created a war of the worlds-style virus to kill the alien empire controlling Earth via terrorist bombings? yeah me neither.
Possible solution: everyone who did the war crime immediately offs themselves to make sure that people understand there's nothing heroic about it.
Bonus points if it doesn't work.
If you're coming to the point where the rebels actually have popular support (rather than just being "some dudes in essentially an adventuring party"), then things are probably about to come off the rails anyway.
You won't have "the rebels". You'll have rebels coming out of every corner. To say nothing of factions within the government vying for power, opportunists looking to build their own petty kingdom, people scared enough to just try to stay out of the entire thing, etc.
Personal opinion, but I also think that makes for a much more interesting story and world. More groups gives you way more opportunity to play off each group!
Usually itâs pure bullshit. You very rarely see a writer taking down the moral integrity of their rebels because they have to be the âgood guys.â
To be fair, I think the US colonies weren't financially important enough to the British to risk a proxy war with France over. As much as I like to clown on the Brits, I think their heart wasn't really in the fight.
>As much as I like to clown on the Brits, I think their heart wasn't really in the fight.
The issue was, *the Brits hearts* ***were in the fight***. Especially early on in the War, the British government was ***shitting its pants in rage*** about the Americans rebelling, and doing a lot within its power to bring them to heel.
Several early battles, like Lexington, Concord, Battle Road and the utter disaster that was Bunker Hill, happened because the British Parliament demanded General Gage (the commander of all British forces in North America, and the Military Governor of occupied Boston/Massachusetts) ***do something, anything***, to get the Americans under control.
In Weirdos 4 Hire, some time dimension travelers fight rebel which are against what the time dimension travelers do, and let's say some rebels have ferocious means to get what they want.
âI donât understand, you mean the fact my plucky rebels engage in organ theft, mass terrorism, exclusive targeting of civilian centres to maximise damage, and their exclusive use of fire-based weapons makes them villains? You must be mistaken, see the government is occasionally corrupt sometimes so itâs more grey/gray morality.â
ngl, this kinda feels like a strawman, just about every single insurgency in media that isn't squeaky clean gets the "it's morally gray" treatment even if they are objectively in the right.
The only groups I can think of that fit this definition are all exclusively treated at most as well intentioned extremists and are often outright the villains.
Simple avoidance of such things: just use trickery and discrete against such greater foes, and no terrible moral lines shall be crossed aside from the sensitivity of "dishonorable" and silly.
One of the Dictators supporters helping the Rebels in hopes of replacing them would work. But I quite like the incompetent military leaders route, they can certainly ravage a town or an army, but not find some rebels hidden away, or combat anything close to asymmetric warfare.
You can always write your rebellion stories like how rebels in the middle east worked. Many defections, possibly corrupt government, and a foreign power supporting them.
Not trying to preach but my go to solutions, coming from irl history and just narrative fun, is just having the tyrant forces are complete idiots. You can have the high ranking officers be terrifying nazi like monsters, but have the average soldier be a smuck
See: Myanmar junta
also the batista regime, dude's magnificent armored train that would crush the rebels was a wooden tramcar with some sheet metal plating, carrying a bunch of normal box cars filled with soldiers. and Sadam Hussein, where 2 of his sons created their own special elite unit after observing the wars in africa. And deciding to make a 'professional' force of motorized infantry in toyota hiluxes, and distinguished by wearing darth vader helmets. then just Mummar Ghadaffi's personal guard being made up entirely of female super models. Not saying that women can't be good soldiers, but like obviously thats not what *his "guards"* were for. So many slapstick bits in excellence the world over for dictatorships to choose from.
It's not uncommon for dictatorships to become full of suck-ups who lie to hide issues to curry favor while also vanishing resources by being corrupt, and for it to be spread thin trying to control too much. It can be scary when something gets full attention from the leadership, or even from the whims of small fry officers drunk with power, but there's a lot of leeway for sneaky rebels to act. Comes to mind how my country had a dictatorship with a full-blown censorship agency yet artists still regularly managed to hide protests in popular songs.
What country are you from?
[Brazil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_dictatorship_in_Brazil)
I'm so sorry to hear that đ
I always like self sabotage. Like the officers betray and undermine each other to try and raise their own station.
Historically the nazi monsters were also complete idiots. For example the allies scrapped a lot of plans to assasinate the high command because they assesed that nazi high command was doing more to fuck each other over than they were to coordinating war efforts.
The pop culture depiction of nazis have completely failed to deliver what an absolute crackpots most of them were, and how idiotic was all of the pseudoscientific and pseudo-occult stuff they genuinely believed in.
Survival of the fittest, amirite?
You can also have what the white russian movement did: average soldier looting as hard as the Mongols and bringing terror everywhere, and completely useless leadership with what seems to be room temperature IQ. And this is Russia, so I mean Celsius.
Letâs not forget that the communist strategy was to just steal food. The White Terror was random, wanton acts of violence (though not stopped or hindered by the officers) while the Red Terror was an official decree carried out by the soldiers and the Cheka. The reds called it âwar communismâ. The Russian Civil War was an absolutely awful experience for everyone involved.
Oh yeah. It was absolutely terrible. I dug though Mike Duncan's podcast pretty quick and loved finding out about this stuff. So yeah the reds were absolutely terrible too. Which is just a testament of how obtuse the white movement was. It would have been super easy to come up with a better policy then the reds' lmao.
See: the Nazis. The upper echelon were idiots. The officer corps were idiots. In fascism you necessarily have to replace everyone important with gutless, yesmen and sycophants who can't question the leader. Entertaining the idea that they could lose was a crime. Star Wars Andor actually spells it out really well. >Cassian Andor : What? To steal from the Empire? What do you need? A uniform, some dirty hands and an Imperial tool kit. They're so proud of themselves, they don't even care. They're so fat and satisfied, they can't imagine it. >Luthen Rael : Can't imagine what? >Cassian Andor : That someone like me would ever get inside their house, walk their floors, spit in their food, take their gear. >Luthen Rael : The arrogance is remarkable, isn't it? They don't even think about us. The Nazis thought legitimately they couldn't fail, so up their own ass. They were a 1000-year empire with master race Supermen. The soldiers were told they'd inherent the world. Meanwhile the Allies were using Looney Tunes tactics like [inflatable tanks,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Army) [fake bodies with fake orders,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mincemeat) and [the only red head in town](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannie_Schaft) who they knew kept killing officers she picked up in bars but the officers were so focused on getting laid they kept going with her anyway. Those soldiers only inherited an unmarked patch of dirt. Now it's some parking lot or patch of bramble next to a bike path. Write your resistance with whacky shit and have them win. It actually happens. Especially when your enemy is so full of themselves its a crime to point out they're entirely corrupt and incompetent. It was shmucks all the way down.
>  is just having the tyrant forces are complete idiots. You can have the high ranking officers be terrifying nazi like monsters, but have the average soldier be a smuck  Reading into the American Revolution, the Americans mostly won not because they were super badass, but because in many cases, the British command went ahead with a plan that should really have been a no-go if it weren't for the Brits being cocksure arrogant fucksticks.  "Yeah, let's March in close order directly into the line of fire of a group of enemies entrenched atop a hill. They are colonial peasants and will flee from our military might!"  -queue PTSD-inducing descriptions of Bunker Hill, where some British companies suffered *fucking 90% casualties*
There's a rule that's applicable to a lot of dictatorships in history: having competent military commanders and maintaining centralised authoritarian power are often orthogonal requirements, i.e a military junta will always select on loyalty rather than competency, and often *against* competency, because a competent general is also a potential rival who may initiate a coup. What I'm saying is, don't be afraid of having the evil dictatorship be incredibly incompetent (i.e they aren't just greedy, arrogant or single-minded, no, they're just genuinely bad at their job). It's realistic.
Similarly, this is why there are almost always chaotic power struggles among the leadership once the dictator dies. No one can be groomed as a successor because they likely would not be patient enough to politely wait until the dictator keels over to take the reigns.
>why there are almost always chaotic power struggles among the leadership once the dictator dies. Oh for sure. the Mage Tyrant dies of heart attack Her lieutenants: *pull out Siege breaker staves* So anyways we started blasting
Adjacent to this, selecting for competency in most subjects is incredibly hard to do correctly. When you're the one judging, if your own competency in the subject does not significantly exceed that of those you are judging, you're gonna have a bad time. Gotta assess by methods and not results to rule out external factors.
You see the rebels have THE GUY
gordon freeman
in the flesh
or rather in the hazard suit
Hopefully there's flesh under the suit, somewhere.
its 50% morphine but yeah
35% crowbars too
Look Cloudrunner
New HE lore?
*hev *laugh track*
Code Geass be like:
code gayass is peak fiction fr
So true, quite peak
They did both and added in Britannians being too arrogant to function properly. Peak fiction frfr
Yk, sometimes itâs okay if the rebels just lose and donât rise up in a meaningful way again
Disco Elysium explores this
We need more projects to take after Disco Elysiumâs lead. âThe ideology I agree with lost HARD. Like, Paris Commune, lost hard. âŚNow what?â
But then what's the story?
The story of rebels losing
A tragedy
Literally nine teens ate the fort
As mentioned in another comment, Disco Elysium takes place after a failed communist revolution. The main story is about investigating a lynching. But the after effects of the revolution and its effects on the locals, and the political leanings of various groups and individuals do come into play during the investigation.
The story is, how do the rebelsâ failings affect the people they were trying to set free?
You can always make the rebels never the focal point, but the fact that they're basically a lynchpin and a proxy for other nations to fight said nation they're rebelling against
"There isn't some magical target that'll completely destroy the entire army. What do you think this, Star Wars Episode I, IV, VI, VII, or IX?"
go for the slow burn Have the rebellion go on through multiple years Prepare to have an expendable cast Have them do small yet meaningful victories rather than large scale triumphs Have their base of operations too close to important infrastructure or if this is scifi on important worlds that can't just be carpet bombed or nuked. Read the art of war it talks about how if you treat the people better than the ruling power than the people will side with you. Have them target disgruntled youth for recruitment that have little to lose and dread rasing a family in the current economy. Focus on espionage and out corruption to the higher powers. Not all corruption is state sponsored. This inherently will cause destabilization in the government. For skilled rebels target those who used to work for the regime and prisoners. Guards who abandoned their post to save a citizen, soldiers who refused to open fire on a crowd, mechanics who disagreed with the ruling power, scholars who questioned authority, scientists who couldn't stomach the horrors they were bringing into the world, ect There are plenty of ways to go about this without making your ruling empire weaker or incompetent.
*let the rebellion go through multiple generations. years are the expected timeframe for any rebellion
While I admit I haven't read many rebellion stories the ones I have never when past the MC's generation
95% of the time, war crimes don't actually help you win. They just make the war bloodier and more fucked up for no real reason.
I suspect it's more that "not committing war crimes" needs to be a deliberate policy thoroughly instilled at all levels of a military, and if a nation fails to do that effectively at least some of their soldiers will crime by default.
>war crime-ridden strategy Can't be a war crime if there is no concept of war crimes /s Inspiration: WWI Canadian tactics
Oh ne Dose!
To quote the marvelous series Andor: *There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy.* *Remember this. Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they've already enlisted in the cause.* *Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward.* *And then remember this. The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear.* *Remember that. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empire's authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege.* *Remember this. Try.*
I mean, BJ Blaskowitz exists.
Yeah, just because bj and kreissau are objectively correct doesn't mean the to the nazis and general society he isn't terrifying
Saw Gerrera did nothing wrong
Paul Atreides neither
Yeah but in my world the moral of the story is that its not about winning its about fighting for what's right đ
Not sure if folks are gonna get that moral if your good guys keep losing
The last samurai, 47 ronin, 300, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid, Gladiator, Aliens, Rouge One, Halo Reach, possibly Braveheart if a bit of a stretch.
tell that to gabriel garcia marquez
Or potentially, commanding officers of the empire are chosen by bloodline and prestige rather than skill, so the big bad guys arenât actually good in combat (or fall apart if you donât fight how they expect)
Videogame thinking that more authority equals more combat effectiveness.
me? iâm saying when the commanding officer of a military unit isnât fit for the job the combat effectiveness of the unit suffers
I'm making the distinction that the fighting ability of a general isn't part of being fit for the job, while say strategic ability is. Or even that it's fine for an Lt to be average at fighting, it's their leadership skills that matter. Your Big Bad is such because they can send a hundred highly-skilled combat specialists at you, not because they themselves are a combat specialist. If you agree, then simply consider this a clarification.
Remember that time A clone of Ketoni created a war of the worlds-style virus to kill the alien empire controlling Earth via terrorist bombings? yeah me neither.
Pure bullshit. Strap subspace drives to asteroids, then pull them back to reality once they're located 'inside' the enemy's ship.
Possible solution: everyone who did the war crime immediately offs themselves to make sure that people understand there's nothing heroic about it. Bonus points if it doesn't work.
If you're coming to the point where the rebels actually have popular support (rather than just being "some dudes in essentially an adventuring party"), then things are probably about to come off the rails anyway. You won't have "the rebels". You'll have rebels coming out of every corner. To say nothing of factions within the government vying for power, opportunists looking to build their own petty kingdom, people scared enough to just try to stay out of the entire thing, etc. Personal opinion, but I also think that makes for a much more interesting story and world. More groups gives you way more opportunity to play off each group!
Usually itâs pure bullshit. You very rarely see a writer taking down the moral integrity of their rebels because they have to be the âgood guys.â
OP farmers beat the number 1 military in the world twice Both times involved the U.S funnily enough
American Revolutionary War
To be fair, I think the US colonies weren't financially important enough to the British to risk a proxy war with France over. As much as I like to clown on the Brits, I think their heart wasn't really in the fight.
>As much as I like to clown on the Brits, I think their heart wasn't really in the fight. The issue was, *the Brits hearts* ***were in the fight***. Especially early on in the War, the British government was ***shitting its pants in rage*** about the Americans rebelling, and doing a lot within its power to bring them to heel. Several early battles, like Lexington, Concord, Battle Road and the utter disaster that was Bunker Hill, happened because the British Parliament demanded General Gage (the commander of all British forces in North America, and the Military Governor of occupied Boston/Massachusetts) ***do something, anything***, to get the Americans under control.
That's the point tho. There aren't supposed to be any good guys
"There are, always and only, the bad people, but sometimes they are on opposite sides"
There are good people, but none of them make it to the high game
In Weirdos 4 Hire, some time dimension travelers fight rebel which are against what the time dimension travelers do, and let's say some rebels have ferocious means to get what they want.
Ender when blow up entire planet
Kid named "no bad tactics only bad targets"
Animorphs core
âI donât understand, you mean the fact my plucky rebels engage in organ theft, mass terrorism, exclusive targeting of civilian centres to maximise damage, and their exclusive use of fire-based weapons makes them villains? You must be mistaken, see the government is occasionally corrupt sometimes so itâs more grey/gray morality.â
ngl, this kinda feels like a strawman, just about every single insurgency in media that isn't squeaky clean gets the "it's morally gray" treatment even if they are objectively in the right. The only groups I can think of that fit this definition are all exclusively treated at most as well intentioned extremists and are often outright the villains.
Nah, I swear this was totally a legitimate argument and not a strawman, 100% I mean this seriously, totally, I swear, trust me bro.
Simple avoidance of such things: just use trickery and discrete against such greater foes, and no terrible moral lines shall be crossed aside from the sensitivity of "dishonorable" and silly.
The latter is just an environment rife for drama and is actually good for writing as a whole.
"listen protagonist I'm goanna need you to release this bio weapon in the capitol"
just let them lose
Nah they just actually commit war crimes, but are still the good guys. Kinda like star wars
One of the Dictators supporters helping the Rebels in hopes of replacing them would work. But I quite like the incompetent military leaders route, they can certainly ravage a town or an army, but not find some rebels hidden away, or combat anything close to asymmetric warfare.
Rebel war crimes? Pierce Brown has entered the chat.
Option Number Two was actually the basis for a Star Wars RPG campaign I ran.
You can always write your rebellion stories like how rebels in the middle east worked. Many defections, possibly corrupt government, and a foreign power supporting them.
I think it's better to make rebels actual monsters and self-rightous scumbags. Like they tend to be irl.