r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Next_Coat2418 • 10h ago

Groups Tropes like this

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u/MadeToYell 8h ago

If good and evil exist on a spectrum they are as good as it gets in that universe.

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u/quaxoid 7h ago

are they though? not everyone is in power, regular folks can be decent. 

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u/OG_Williker 7h ago

With regard to people in power, then.

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u/MadeToYell 4h ago

Cool those regular folks can't save humanity, it's literally a basic trolly problem

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u/northernporter4 4h ago edited 4h ago

I really hope you are a tourist, because if you actually took this away from those books that's fucking pathetic.

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u/MadeToYell 4h ago

Oh great point instead humanity should have died out instead

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u/KrumpirovZlatan 6h ago

Yeah, if you discount that they wrought insane levels of destruction upon galaxy.

Paul Atreides's Jihad and Leto II's Golden Path are two biggest crimes against humanity commited in entire history of humanity, without any comparison.

Jihad kills 61 billion people, and Leto II during his 3500 years of reign and subsequent collapse kills infinitely more.

Atreides in Dune are intentionally used to subvert expectations and show that - in the brutal society of Dune, they are still awful, and by Prophecy, are clearly the worst dynasty to ever exist.

Of course, Golden Path of Leto II saves humanity, but that matters little hundreds of billions of people he kills

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u/Party_Estimate_6397 6h ago

It saves humanity, it is literally the most good possible act.

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u/KrumpirovZlatan 3h ago

You can argue Stalin saved humanity from nazism, but people rarely look at it as the most good possible act

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u/MadeToYell 4h ago

Yeah killing a portion is better than killing them all. You literally have zero game theory to say he did wrong. He is still the best because he saved humanity

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u/KrumpirovZlatan 3h ago

Yeah, but it is precipated on prescience.

But prescience isn't infallible, and depends on person using it. You cannot be 100% certain that it was truly the only way, hence it isn't actually as neccessary as it seems.

Herbert never even tries to present prescience as an infallible superpower. One can argue that greatest threat to humanity, existence of prescience could be prevented by simply spreading the gene that stops it.