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What is a story were the main villain actually turned out to be the good guy? (midwest.social)

submitted 8 months ago by Lanky_Pomegranate530@midwest.social to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 12 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I should re-read it, but the impression I got was that Oz was the epitome of this thread's topic. A real "ends justify the means" villain, where his end goal is to save the world from itself by giving it a common enemy to vanquish. And he does it. In terms of the classical trolley problem, he pulled the lever to kill 1 instead of doing nothing and allowing 5 to die. Am I misremembering?

[–] zaphod@lemmy.ca 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

That's roughly right, but that doesn't make him in any meaningful way "good". Of course I also don't think anyone who decided to drop the bombs on Japan was a "good guy". But maybe that's why I'm not a pure utilitarian.

[–] emptyother@programming.dev 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Veidt asked the precognitive being if his plans for utopia would come to be, and if it was all worth it in the end. Osterman cryptically responded by saying "Nothing ever ends", and teleported away leaving Veidt once again in doubt as to whether or not his plan was successful.

From what I understood, he spent the whole story acting super-sure about what would happen if he did nothing, and how he alone could fix it. But in the end of the comic, this showed he had doubts. Veidt didnt have precognition, just very good prediction. But also an over-inflated ego. He killed a lot of people for a "maybe".

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 2 points 8 months ago

Man, such great writing. Yeah, definitely going to have to reread it.