• idiomaddict@feddit.de
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    9 months ago

    In the third season of the legend of korra, a group of people try to get rid of a monarchy (which is long established as especially unequal and oppressive) in favor of self government. They also try to get rid of the avatar, because she is an infallible being with incredibly outsized power. I love the avatar universe and get how they needed to fight them, but the group wasn’t wrong

    • ltxrtquq@lemmy.ml
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      9 months ago

      Even the first season had Amon, the guy that wanted equality between benders and non-benders. At one point we’re even shown that power was cut to a predominantly non-bender neighborhood, and when people went outside to protest to get their power turned back on, they were all rounded up and arrested. Afterwards, when Korra goes and tries to get the people that were arrested set free, she’s told

      All equalist suspects are being detained indefinitely. They’ll be freed if and when the task force deems them no longer a threat.

      Just in case it wasn’t clear enough by that point that non-benders were treated as second class citizens.

      • Revan343@lemmy.ca
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        9 months ago

        All of the LoK villains were basically correct, and had to be caricatures of their stated beliefs in order to be villains. Amon was one of the better ones IMO though. Zaheer is too unrealistic

    • Empricorn@feddit.nl
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      9 months ago

      They also try to get rid of the avatar, because she is an infallible being with incredibly outsized power.

      Did autocorrect change “fallible”? Because otherwise it makes the opposite point.

      • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
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        9 months ago

        More like, the older the character gets, the more they update his backstory to be something the audience can sympathize with. Because a villain for villain’s sake gets old fast.

      • atlasraven31@lemm.ee
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        9 months ago

        When the Sentinels start rounding up mutants, it is the biggest “I told you so” to Charles.

  • Kornblumenratte@feddit.de
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    9 months ago

    Not exactly a story. I just watched Babylon 5, and it’s fascinating how the good guys are the bad guys are the good guys are the bad guys…

    • Terrasque@infosec.pub
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      9 months ago

      Who are you?

      What do you want?

      Also, I think good and bad is a bit fluid there. It’s just people with different agendas. Well, except emperor Cartagia. And perhaps Bester.

      • Kornblumenratte@feddit.de
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        9 months ago

        It’s Me, Myself and I.

        Achieving a state of complacementness in an unperfect world full of suffering and joy.

        Yep – that’s what I like about it. Good and bad are fluid, like in reality. Even Bester is shown to be a caring character striving for the good of his people.

      • Kornblumenratte@feddit.de
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        8 months ago

        No bad guys are good guys. And most good guys are not good guys, either.

        The Shadows, the Centauri and the PSI Corps are introduced as “bad guys” but gain a lot of positive aspects during the show without becoming “good guys”. The Nightwatch and the Earth Governement under president Clark are “bad guys” – but quite a few of there supporters/members become important “good” characters, like Zach Allan, Elizabeth Lochley or Susanna Luchenko.

        That’s my point about the Babylon 5 series – they deconstruct the good guy/bad guy meme. Mostly.

        • MxM111@kbin.social
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          8 months ago

          Centauri got positive aspects? Londo personally, maybe, but not the Centauri. Psi cops as well did not become better, but more like “even bad people have feelings” type of thing.

      • xkforce@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Jerry antagonized Tom into attacking him more often than not. He viewed it as a game rather than a life or death struggle. Tom OTOH would be kicked out on the street if he didn’t try to keep Jerry under control.

      • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
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        9 months ago

        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?

        • emptyother@programming.dev
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          9 months ago

          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”.

      • mobius_slip@beehaw.org
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        9 months ago

        Veidt would never consider himself the good guy for what he did, but I think that’s what makes the writing so excellent.

    • The_wild_card@lemmy.ml
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      9 months ago

      Nah ozymandies was kind of an ass regardless . Did he solve a big problem ? Yes . Was he a good guy ? Far from it.

    • solarvector@lemmy.ml
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      9 months ago

      Proponent of knowledge and education. Isn’t big on forced worship. Doesn’t murder you for not paying enough attention. Guess it’s all just a trick to capture your eternal soul.

  • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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    9 months ago

    Game of Thrones, everyone is basically a villain but some of them are actually alright (like the Hound and Jamie).

    • The_wild_card@lemmy.ml
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      9 months ago

      Not everyone i thought jon, robert, ned, arya,hoddor and tyrrion was good and thats from the top of my head.

    • Zorque@kbin.social
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      9 months ago

      Did they make Jamie less of a tool in the show or something? Cause in the books he basically just goes back to doing what he was doing before, minus one hand and plus lots of moping.

      • Skua@kbin.social
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        9 months ago

        They did for a long time, having him gradually come around and begin to redeem himself, and then made an incredibly confusing decision to have him suddenly revert to his old ways right at the very end with no warning whatsoever

    • BolexForSoup@kbin.social
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      9 months ago

      Jamie pushed a kid to his death (edit: who miraculously survives to tee up a tone deaf depiction of a character with disabilities but that’s not important right now) and raped his sister over the corpse of their dead child.

  • The French version of La Femme Nikita, although it’s more of a redemption arc than “villain turning out to be a good guy.” She starts out as a junkie petty crook who murders a cop in cold blood, spends most of the film assassinating people for the government, and in the end seems to have gotten her life together.

    But she starts out as a very not-nice person.

  • b8sell@slrpnk.net
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    9 months ago

    Interview With the Vampire’s Lestat was a bloodthirsty murderer. The Vampire Lestat’s Lestat was a bloodthirsty murderer … with a conscience.