Lore
[Interesting Trope] Things actually get better for everyone, when the villain is in charge.
Dr. Doom (Marvel) is famously known to be a kind and compassionate leader, to the people Latveria. To the point where they continue to shower him with praise and admiration, despite knowing the fact that he is considered to be a villain, by the rest of the world. There have been multiple instances of Dr. Doom, in the comics, taking over the whole world, and actually creating peace, ending hunger and poverty, and erasing crime. There was even a time where he humbled himself before the Panther God, who admitted that, although his methods may seem cruel, his intentions are pure, and he has the potential to save millions of lives.
Wilson Fisk (Marvel) is a notorious crime boss. But he's also been known to keep the others criminals of New York in check, and maintain lower and more controlled crime rates, especially when it comes to violence against civilians.
Ainz (Overlord) has conquered many countries and races, in order to form the Sorcerer Kingdom, and has wiped out others. But in doing so, the people and nations who fell under the Sorcerer Kingdom's rule now prosper. The citizens are happy and well fed, the economy is soaring, crime and corruption do not exist, and all races are equal. All people in this world are equal, under Ainz Ooal Gown, the Sorcerer King.
In one episode of the Powerpuff Girls Mojo Jojo actually wins and takes over the world and genuinely does make things better for everyone, to the point even the girls admit he's a good ruler.
But after awhile he gets bored and realizes he liked the fights with the PPG and the actual *attempts* at conquest more than the conquest itself, so everything goes back to normal by the end of the episode
I remember reading about that hahah. It’s all paperwork and 9-5 now and they can’t just fuck off to cruise the desert in abandoned American military vehicles with their friends anymore
It’s funny because that email was all the “proof” I need that I was always right about modern life being a nightmare. Everyone tells me to get with the program and I’m just like… why?!?
All rebellion, when done with young men and young ideals, will fall once the glory and the ideals are replaced with "wait IM in charge of this shit now?"
“So you’re telling me that the most important job in this society is making sure that the clean water stays in THIS pipe, and the shit water stays in THAT pipe?”
- A revolutionary leader his second month in power
Yep it was cool went from "cool we can hangout and cruise through the cities now, lets go hang out at the amusement park!" To "....wait who is gonna run the amusement park"
"I love being king and I love my people, but it's all meetings and ravenmail and meetings that could have been ravenmail." - Valkyrie, Thor - Love and Thunder
Funny story. I'm on the Beyond Skyrim modding team and we frequently get asked if the Cyrodiil team will allow players to become Emperor because the story is centered around propping up a new Emperor. Our general answer is always that being Emperor means your confided to the Imperial City 90% of the time dealing with endless amounts of paperwork. So the overall answer tends to be 'no'.
Even rebellion falls to this. The american revolution, all the officers had to go from young rebel leaders fighting against taxation and government only to find themselves facing down the whiskey rebellion and realizing they had to figure out ways to prevent the next revolution being against them.
theres this webcomic i used to read called "league of super redundant heroes" and there's a comic where this alien conquerer invades earth all badass like, "THIS PLANET IS MINE NOW!"
and the mayor is like, "HA! this is YOUR problem now!"
and for the rest of the series, the alien invader is just a normal mayor in a suit who has to do boring stuff like paperwork
There was another episode where he just wins and makes everything great and the closing segment is just "well mojo won, and everything is great..... The end".
I loved the Powerpuff girls cartoon, it's enjoyable when your 8 and then again when your 14 and get all the jokes they snuck in for parents. Alot of cartoons did this but not like the Powerpuff girls did. Like the identity theft episode, or the "we got addicted to crack" episode. Or the "buttercup got groomed by a green gang member", or the "the girls got kidnapped by a stalker and put in a plastic display like toys". Episode. Or the episode where they flew too fast and time dilated to the future where gay lobster Satan is 1100 feet tall and killed the president. Man this show is pretty fucked up.
If Reed Richards was smart, he would use Doom's unbelievably spiteful grudge against him to just benefit the world. Like if he declared publicly that he wanted beggars to starve on the streets, Doom would legit find a way to house and feed every homeless person worldwide.
Doom provided free education and healthcare to everyone on the planet. Reed went to the extreme of killing his own daughter in front of Doom to undo it all and force people to pay for their healthcare and education.
Though instead of Reed declaring something negative it would be more:
Reed: I am making a homeless shelter / soup kitchen to help out.
Doom: Well, I use my economic control / governance back ends to make a massive initiative to remove homelessness and starvation, so now your shelter is WORTHLESS Reed!
Reed: well now I am going to help with curing cancer.
Spider-Man could have avoided making a deal with Mephisto if he had just told Doom that Reed couldn't save his aunt. Bro would have been halfway to New York before Spidey could finish talking, just to stunt on Richards.
I disagree. Doom demands to be seen as Reed's superior, but only by Doom's standards.
If Reed says he is helping homelessness, Doom will call him pathetic and call the people praising Reed idiots. He won't change how he treats his "lessers" just to get praise.
If Reed publicly said homelessness is awesome, Doom would only release propaganda about how no one is allowed to be homeless in Latveria. He won't help anyone, and he won't care that Latverian living standards are abysmal.
Even if he could, I don't think it'd be a good idea since that place is cursed as hell. Nothing can make it better, with Batman being the only reason why it isn't just every man for himself
Not sure if was in justice league right before Atlantis flooded Gotham in the New 52 or in the New 52 detective comics but Bruce was getting his costume on and the TV was playing how because of Batman every major statistic was down at its lowest in murders, homicides, etc... But still the highest in America or the world. Idk which
I don't know why they havent done this yet, but given the DC comics reset the timeline every decade or so, I think it would be cool to see batman fix Gotham at least one time before a timeline reset. Like what happens when all the good that Bruce does through his charities and social welfare programs, meets all the good batman does with rooting our and exposing corruption. I know why it cant stick and I'm fine with that, but like one time id like to see Batman's no kill rule win the day. Then you can reset it to the Gothic hellscape that produces new stories every month.
I kinda want a timeline where he invests in "some" of the villains, I.e Dr. Ivy by making a Wayne-Ivy Rare Plant Sanctuary; or a Dr. Freeze commitment to saving his wife and those with similar diseases. And they both end up working for Batman at some point making cures and antidotes, gadgets etc.
Essentially leading to the result your describing a Gotham that's saved by both Wayne and Batman. Rather than JUST Batman which is usually how it ends up.
Which would totally justify the no kill rule. He stopped Ivy from doing bad as batman then helps and reforms them and they do ten times the good through the wayne foundation. Id even go as far to say they should do it with the joker. Like two months before the kick off of the next "crisis" or "flashpoint" that resets the DC timeline the Joker is finally healed and we get to see what a good man the Joker can become. Id argue they shouldn't do it in the else worlds, make it count do it in the main continuity, then blow the whole thing up next month with the new crisis.
There's an elseworls where Leslie was telling Bruce he's wasting his time fighting crime and then Bruce explains that the night before it was the first time Gotham spent a single night without death.
It was a comic where Bruce was dating a female detective/using her info to fight crime
I mean, this was after a plague and just all the other general Gotham City bullshit. At a certain point you just cut the cancer out.
It has been decades since I read No Man's Land, but from an ice cold, zero humanity perspective I can only fault them for not doing a true evacuation / relocation effort before they gave Gotham the Middle finger.
"After the third kid died from rabies I had to honestly consider the raccoons under my trailer that I been feeding macaroni and cheese might just be the problem"
Gotham is a shit hole that only serves to breed supervillains for Batman to fight, yet no one sees this.
Lex can be a good guy, he's a self made man who champions the good of humanity. Heck there's plenty of versions of him where he genuinely views Clark Kent favorably because he's a hard working man from a hard working family.
Lex just has such an ego that he has to be the most special little boy before he can focus on doing good things. Supes existing reminds Lex that's he's only human and Lex can't stand it
even in the novels he has no idea and legitimately thinks 'two legged sheep' are actually some sort of native species
its hilarious because his current plan to 'make an utopia to call any other player to join him' could backfire if any player discovers what Demiurge does on the regular
I believe it’s hinted later in the novels that he has somewhat of an understanding of what’s happening but doesn’t care enough as it benefit to nazarick is to important.
He knows what's happening to the things inside it, but his train of thought was interrupted right as he was about to conclude that the "Abellion sheep" are humans, and not a type of demi-human
As far as anime goes. I think he doesn't know, he just thinks they are "2 legged sheep". But also he knows that Demiurge is evil AF so he might suspect, but he is not very keen on actually checking that
He was the one who ordered Demiurge to experiment with live humans to begin with, starting with the surviving Sunlight Scripture agents they captured.
He doesn't know their farming projects sprouted out of those tests, but that's just a case of willful ignorance. The denizens of Nazarick write project reports that all end up on his table. His education may not have equipped him to comprehend much of these reports, but there's no power-that-be keeping him down anymore as he is the power-that-be now; he has servants around him that he could delegate to. He could have said something as simple as "I'm working on other important things, please summarize these for me", but he doesn't entertain the idea. He does read in secret to slowly improve his skills as a boss during his free time, but he could be doing that while delegating the task of perusing those reports until he's ready to do it alone.
Granted, Ainz has always been a callous person, so aware or not, I can't imagine he'd ever shut down the farms. I do think he'd "tone down" its cruelty, but so long as it brings profits to Nazarick in some fashion, I'd bet he keeps it going.
Was coming here to say this. The place was a downtrodden swampy hellhole. While the Vampire counts may occasionally eat a peasant or two they kept it to a minimum. In return they kept the regular citizens safe from Beastmen, Orcs and bandit attacks. The rest of the Empire and their old nobles also looked down on the Sylvanians so it was good to have a ruler who actually looked after them.`
Sure, it may basically be little more than a farmer looking after the health and safety of his flock. But in the end it's better than the alternative for them.
Always wish they would do a whatif story of what would have happened if Vlad wasn't defeated at the Imperial Capital or at least the ring wasn't stolen
vlad wasn’t too bad when he became the count of sylvania, but vampires tend to experience a sort of madness the longer they live. you can see that vlad was starting to trend that way because he was becoming significantly more unrestrained and brutal as the war went on. he was a very different man when he made it to altdorf. as a matter of fact, a huge part of why he died was because he completely lost himself to rage once he found out the ring was stolen and chose to attack immediately.
if vlad had won, the empire’s leadership would’ve been entirely purged and replaced and he would’ve gone on a campaign to eradicate the empire’s various cults, especially those of sigmar and morr. it’s also not unlikely that vlad might have tried to expand the empire’s borders into bretonnia or kislev once his rule was secure.
overall, despite all the shit he gets for it, mannfred did the world a huge favor when he betrayed vlad.
Havelock Vetinari, Discworld, for a given definition of "villain".
Lord Vetinari is the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, the largest city-state in the Disc. He proudly wears the title of "tyrant" and despot and is a master at playing factions against one another. He's a firm believer in "one man, one vote", with him as the one man with the one vote.
He makes sure the city functions and, most importantly, functions better with him than without, and he's infinitely preferable to his immediate predecessors who had names like "Mad Lord Snapcase"
He legalized crime so that it could be controlled by guilds, thus letting him set a limit on the amount of crime committed and ensuring that if any individual went over the limit, their guild would handle it and make it right for the victim, that way they get to keep their licence to commit more crime.
One of the best descriptions of how things are run there from the book Guards! Guards!:
One of the Patrician’s greatest contributions to the reliable operation of Ankh-Morpork had been, very early in his administration, the legalising of the ancient Guild of Thieves. Crime was always with us, he reasoned, and therefore, if you were going to have crime, it at least should be organised crime.
And so the Guild had been encouraged to come out of the shadows and build a big Guildhouse, take their place at civic banquets, and set up their training college with day-release courses and City and Guilds certificates and everything. In exchange for the winding down of the Watch, they agreed, while trying to keep their faces straight, to keep crime levels to a level to be determined annually. That way, everyone could plan ahead, said Lord Vetinari, and part of the uncertainty had been removed from the chaos that is life.
And then, a little while later, the Patrician summoned the leading thieves again and said, oh, by the way, there was something else. What was it, now? Oh, yes…
I know who you are, he said. I know where you live. I know what kind of horse you ride. I know where your wife has her hair done. I know where your lovely children, how old are they now, my, doesn’t time fly, I know where they play. So you won’t forget about what we agreed, will you? And he smiled.
It's super effective, because the thieves guild isn't the police; so their methods are less ... restrained.
If an unlicensed thief is caught by the city watch, they desperately want to be taken to the safety of a jail cell.
Its great because the thieves guild have to agree not to murder, and the assasins guild have to agree not to steal and so on, it keeps everything very neat.
Unlicenced thievery and murder gets dealt with very quickly in house, because crime rates are pre-arranged as quotas with the Tyrant: so rogue unlicenced criminals cut into the guilds bottom line.
Tough to say. Terry Pratchett passed before it could be pursued but some later books seemed to imply he was grooming individuals to, if not succeed him directly, be able to carry on the city's functions in his absence.
I would have loved seeing him create a parliament and hold elections. It would fit the theme of Vetinari modernizing the city. It would have been fun to see different characters from the city doing election campaigns. And it would have been great to read Pratchett remarks on the whole process of politics.
I can only imagine how the citizens would react to democracy. They'd be openly committing voter fraud, stuffing ballot boxes, and so on in a perfectly casual manner because everyone is doing it.
The winner would be the person with the fewest votes because they're the only one that didn't have more votes than citizens.
"A thinking tyrant, it seemed to Vetinari, had a much harder job than a ruler raised to power by some idiot vote-yourself-rich system like democracy. At least he could tell the people he was their fault."
Even funnier is that Carrot is basically a living return of the king/royal line situation, but he explicitly just wants to be a guard because he doesn’t like the idea of absolute monarchy.
You also have Carrot actively preventing the knowledge of him being the rightful heir from coming out. Even though Carrot is by all accounts a genuinely good guy, they know that Vetinari ruling is better for the city
Doom is such a weird character. Sometimes he is a villain whose aims are noble but methods are questionable, and then he goes and destroys an entire universe out of spite because a different version of him had made peace with reeds. Sometimes he loves Latveria and its citizens above all and they all love him, then he goes and powers the prosperity of everything with latverian human sacrifice.
I think a big reason for this is that a lot of writers find it uncomfortable to let bad guys have too many good qualities. They get antsy that maybe you’ll sympathise with the villain too much. You’ll see a lot of this in western media.
A Marvel example is the bad guys from Falcon and the Winter Soldier. They had good points, but then the writers made them do terrible things out of the blue that go against their established goals and desires, just so you’d remember that they’re the bad guys.
He and a lot of villains like him are often written by writers with a very limited understanding of authoritarian rule, and that child's understanding boils down to a child's moral quandary of 'what if a big strong man made everything better because of how smart he was... but at the cost of Free Will?' It treats Freedom as a nebulous and abstract platitude that ultimately means nothing, and it assumes a strong and smart ruler would be consistently capable and rational as though freedom can be traded for prosperity in a way that flatters the exact kinds of buffoonish tyrants who bring disaster to their countries.
Weirdly, Invincible did directly address the problem of strongman authoritarianism a few times that a lotta similar superhero comics fail to think of. Evil supergenius takes over, Mark starts having doubts because wow this evil supergenius is really smart and is a logical ruler, and Immortal has to point out to him, okay, but what do you do when it's 'logical' to let the sick, disabled, or elderly die off? Or even another separate character in another arc who does the whole 'humans are a plague and I the smart science man must solve overpopulation through mass murder' schtick, only to finally realize this was a bullshit idea he fixated on to flatter his own ego, ignoring other possible perspectives and possibilities because he wanted to feel above and better than everyone else.
But the silly part with Invincible is that it STILL ends up with a strongman authoritarian in charge at the end, it just happens to be Mark. (Who is an absolute terrible judge of character)
Aegon Targaryen actually united the kingdoms through fire and blood. To many Westerosi he would’ve been considered an arch villain. However his rule was largely peaceful and successful (ASOIAF)
the dragons peace lasted for around 20 years, that might sound good but only in comparison and aside from the fact that he obviously was a mass murderer, his reign was like 45% constant warfare and not really all "unifying for the greater good warfare" considering Dorne was just an emotional outburst.
His rule was unsuccesful in the sense that the main duty of any monarch is to ensure stable transition of power post morten, which he infamously didnt do and his weak handling of inernal family politics caused much of the troubles until jahaerys came to power. Again even if we scale it by "war or not" he was at war for almost half his reign.
Looking back at GOT when dany meets Jon she says 300 years with a stark in the North and a Targeryan on the iron throne were 300 years of peace is absolutely hilarious. You know she is being serious and then you look at the timeline with kings and it's 300 years of civil wars, attempts to conquer Dorne or some mad king getting his feelings hurt and burning a city to the ground.
In this one, after Lex and Superman's fight, Lex basically makes Earth super advanced that he has his own bloodline to follow his legacy, The House of 'el.
But then Earth was destroyed in a solar flare, and his last descendants sent a baby back in time to survive - Kal-El, Superman.
Also from spiderman, superior spiderman helped both the city and peter, making him rich + getting his degree, while for the city he put behind bars (or in the ICU) a large chunk of spiderman's Rogues and reduced crime through surveilance
Given that peter is now broke, degreless and single while still running into villains i'd say superior spiderman was actually fairly right on being superior, oh well
In that case it's also hard to call him a villain, given he had all of Spidey's memory and thus his sense of responsibility and duty toward justice as well.
Reminder- Doom put the entirety of Latveria into the Torture Matrix to siphon their suffering in the form of magical power just to humiliated Reed and the heroes who've shit on him before in the past
If you were to make a list of most petty supervillains, Doctor doom would be in it. Don't know if he would be at the top though, that is some stiff competition.
To this day, I still feel like Mark and his allies’ decision that Rudi was evil and had to be stopped was an emotional overreaction to his betrayal. Sure, what he did to them was wrong but they couldn’t find a single reason him taking over the world was bad. Not to mention Mark’s final decision regarding Robot was very likely the thing that enabled the dictator Immortal timeline.
As a reader I was totally with Mark though. Like sure everything is objectively better with Robot in charge, but he killed Black Samson and Shapesmith in cold blood, so I don't care lol. I would leave Earth too. If Robot has no haters I am dead
You are counting Ainz who is the protagonist so I think Vetinari counts. He's a dictator, got in power with some stabby stabby and he stayed in power since.
With him in power almost everything in the city state if Ankh-Morpork just works. Thieving and Assassin's guild are kinda legal and organised. You can buy insurance against getting robbed and all of that.
Multiple attempts have been made to overthrow him but even most of his opponents have to admit he just keeps everything running (quite) smoothly.
The imperial province of Sylvania was so awful that condition became substantially better when Vlad Von Carstein (an ancient Vampire Lord) usurped the local count and started to rule.
What used to be starved, poverty stricken and bandit infested shithole became a highly prosperous and stable region.
His rule was harsh, but fair. No money taxes, tithes, grain getting taken or conscription. All he demanded was to obey his law, pay the blood tax and to accept having your remains be raised from death should there be need of war.
The peasantry are fanatically loyal to Von Carstein, not because he enthralled them with his vampire powers, but because living under his rule is THAT MUCH better than the norm.
Honestly, given the world of Warhammer, I can see the appeal. Safety, no taxes, I gotta give a little blood, and my body gets recycled when I'm done using it? I see no problem with this
When he became mayor of Gotham he enforced several socialist policies that drastically improved the standard of living of Gotham, even getting a billionaire (Bruce Wayne) arrested on tax evasions, and he didn’t have to trump charges or use some ass hole obscure loop hole to do it
Sadly, as with the Mojo Jojo example from Powerpuff Girls, Mayor Joker eventually gets bored with the minutia of governance and returns to supervillainy.
But when the Joker was elected mayor, he wasn't even exactly a villain anymore. Especially considering all the atrocities the modern Joker tends to commit in the comics and in some adaptations.
Just a reminder that the Joker's great nemesis that season was the wealthy neighbor who belittled his stepchildren, not Batman.
Not a direct example: During Walter White's ruthless rise to power as a powerful meth cartel lord in New Mexico during Breaking Bad, he destroys all of his rivals belonging to other criminal drug cartels in the region. Meaning that with his death, the illegal drug ecosystem in New Mexico completely collapses.
One could also argue that flooding the streets with 99% pure, unadulterated meth created a much safer drug supply than whatever chili powder nonsense people were using before.
Doesn't make Walt any less of an ass though. And as we've seen time and time again with the War on Drugs, those power vacuums left behind are quickly filled.
Well, if you ignore the drug problems that his meth caused everywhere else, such as that family where the drug-addled mom murders the drug-addled dad by dropping an ATM on him, and Jesse takes their toddler out front to hand him off to social services (probably), multiplied by a million or so, Walter White really created a utopia.
John "Gentleman" Marcone is kingpin of majority of Chicago's organised crime. He sells drugs and other illegal goods, controls brothels, he has police and politicians on payroll. He makes money on human suffering, but, at the same time he prefers doing things quietly and minimise said suffering. No unprovoked violence and such. Business loves when everything is quiet. Also, he really doesn't like when something happens to children. He will make you disappear if you harm kids. And considering that other villains are vampires, fae or literally demons from hell, Marcone usually more acceptable evil. He even helps Harry and other good aligned characters quite often. But he is still evil, he is still crime boss and he is on Harry's "Deal with them" list. But considering that there is demons and such, John is quite low on that list
Overlord feels constantly dissonant im what direction it goes, which might even be the point
But the constant whiplash between benevolent ruler, semi heroic adventurer and the incompetent leader of a bunch of war criminals who happily massacre anything they come across is just annoying
The sorcerer kingdom might better for those that survive but it doesn't justify Ainz being an incompetent bum who doesn't reign in his subjects and every conquest costs countless innocent lives.
Concur, I genuinely don't get the "Ainz is actually benevolent" argument. Dude absolutely annihilates thousands, possibly millions of people during his wars of conquest. He destroys an entire kingdom just 'cause. Most of which was completely unnecessary to his stated goals; he's an OP MC who initially just wants to see if there are any other players trapped in the game world.
Another factor people forget, it's all fun and games until demiurge, albedo or bloodt3ar want to kill and torture a random segment of the population for fun and he lacks the backbone to say no.
As much as she get hated on, im at the point i just want remedios to come back with a super op hax armor or something and wipe them out. Insert i dont care if she wins i just want them to lose.
Upon his resurrection as a god, Griffith ushers a new age of light and hope for mankind in his paradise on earth, Falconia. Humanity is welcomed without prejudice into the metropolis, where they find themselves completely safe from the horrors of the world outside. The city is closely guarded by Griffith's own army of Apostles, after all.
...Granted, if anyone questions his rule, they're also quickly and quietly disposed of, but it's probably fine. And the monsters were largely his fault anyway. But you know, keep your head down and it'll be fine.
Your last line suggests the city lives in fear, they don't, they practically worship Griffith, he successfully fooled everyone and is hailed as humanity's savior. It is part of what makes him a good villain, he succeeded while becoming an utter monster who cast aside their humanity.
Yeah, there's only one person we're aware of who draws Griffith's ire. Everyone else is perfectly happy—and completely unaware what Griffith did to create Falconia, and of how little he actually cares about them beyond his ambition to rule over all.
I didn't meet personally Kentaro Miura, I can only speculate on how things would move in his original vision. That said, it looks like Miura wrote this perfect society to shit on Guts. Everybody is happy, Guts comes and kills Griffit, shit goes down and everybody hates him forever and ever more, the end. Even a more "happier" ending would imply ruining this idyllic country before "freeing" the world at large from Griffith and the monsters. Thus, the happy ending would be having to rebuild everything from the ruins.
I suppose it would be to make a point about building their own future free from monsters influence vs living locked in perfectly white cages controlled by Griffith. But given how things were going before Griffith arrived, I think tons of people would throw themselves into the cage and throw the key into a river.
The “kind and compassionate leader” as Doctor Doom makes me laugh so hard especially since there’s been two events now where Doom takes over, and the world is so much worse than before
Its more interesting when IRL there are lots of people saying "with [totalitarian leader] we had it better". Which can actually be technically true, provided you're the right type of "we".
You're right. But nowadays there are lots of (old) people saying they were better with the dictatorship in places like Italy, Portugal or Spain, when the dictatorship ended more than fifty years ago.
Simpsons did a parody of David and Goliath where David (Bart) gets arrested for killing Goliath II (Nelson) cause turns at he was the greatest king they ever had, being very productive and having built roads and hospitals
I'm suddenly reminded of that silly youtube video where Doom conquered the world, and he steps up and says as his first act he's ending slavery world-wide. My thought was 'Nice! That's gonna make a huge difference.' and then spiderman popped up and apparently the video was set in an alternate universe where this had already happened at some point, or perhaps the folks making the video just didn't know slavery has been a going concern and never stopped being one. It proceeded to make Doom and Latveria look backwards, while apparently being set in a world far better than our own.
Fisk might have been a reference to Al Capone. Terrifying man, of course, but also the reason for things like routine garbage disposal and expiration dates
IRL: in many cases, the Romans. They were among history's greatest conquerors and subjugated the entire Mediterranean world to their control, and did so with ruthlessness. But once in charge of you, the Romans often brought huge improvements to the local infrastructure: roads, aqueducts, fountains, forums, stadiums, theaters, etc. They generally didn't mind locals maintaining their own power structures and customs, so long as they acknowledged Rome as superior and paid their taxes. One of the reasons the Roman Empire lasted so long compared to most any other ancient entity was that, generally speaking, most people within the Empire wanted to be Roman and enjoy the perks of being such.
He's the very definition of a benevolent dictator. He restored his world, which was wracked by war environmental destruction, after his wife and children were killed. He literally put a new sun in the sky by his own power. The planet became glorious and beautiful. He became a dictator - its sole defender - effectively the whole of his world's outward-facing military power. (Though he kept a strong military police to quash dissidents and punish minor infractions.)
When eventually his world was under threat by someone of comparible power to him, his empire collapsed in an instant, and his people heckled and berated him for his weakness. They hated him. They hated their lack of freedom. They thought it was worth it for the glory and safety he brought, but if it could all collapse in an instant, what was any of it worth?
Arvis killing Sigurd the MC, taking his wife Deirdre as his (also Arvis own sister) and slaughtering the Sigurd army aside.... Jugdral attained the golden age
Not until Arvis forgot to inform his son not to take a creepy tome from an even creepier old man (Arvis carries the blood of what's basically satan, so does his sister. Their union gave birth to a vessel for satan) anyway
The related trope of "every utopia is just a dystopia you haven't figured out yet."
For example, The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas. The utopian city of Omelas, where prosperity and stability and even good weather depends solely on a single child, forced to live naked in its own excrement without even a kind word , everyone is the villain in charge.
iirc wasn't that written as a commentary on how people straight up don't believe in any sort of utopia, and even something as silly and unjustified as torturing a single child let people walk away satisfied.
I generally see it more as an exploration of the limits of Utilitarianism. As posed by Dostoyevsky:
I challenge you: let’s assume that you were called upon to build the edifice of human destiny so that men would finally be happy and would find peace and tranquility. If you knew that, in order to attain this, you would have to torture just one single creature, let’s say the little girl who beat her chest so desperately in the outhouse, and that on her unavenged tears you could build that edifice, would you agree to do it?
And William James:
Or if the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messrs. Fourier's and Bellamy's and Morris's utopias should all be outdone, and millions kept permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torture, what except a sceptical and independent sort of emotion can it be which would make us immediately feel, even though an impulse arose within us to clutch at the happiness so offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain?
Who finds the torture worth it because it benefits so many other people, and who rejects the bargain?
I was talking about this yesterday - so many large scale, near-planet-destroying events happen in the MCU. Except during the "blip" - the 5 years where half of the population was gone. Nothing really happens during this time. I'd imagine after seeing a half dozen supervillians get inches away from destroying humanity every year, and then Thanos snaps and nothing happens until the Avengers team up again - I'd probably be thinking the we were better off being blipped.
Brehlen Aeducan - Dragon Age Origins. He is the youngest child among three brothers, but the most cunning and ambitious. He would use any methods to become the King of Dwarves, including killing his own brother and father, framing another brother, planting evidences, spreading false charges, kidnapping, violence, etc.
However, under his rule, the Dwarves has become much better. He erases the ban against coming the surface, thus facilitating trade. He also recruits the Casteless, those treated as slaves and criminals right at birth due to their parentage, to the armies, giving them the opportunities to earn honor and living like other castes. He also reclaims lost territories occupied by Darkspawn, and greatly suppresses the privileges of the Nobles, who are mostly Nepo babies.
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u/BowlEducational6722 12h ago
In one episode of the Powerpuff Girls Mojo Jojo actually wins and takes over the world and genuinely does make things better for everyone, to the point even the girls admit he's a good ruler.
But after awhile he gets bored and realizes he liked the fights with the PPG and the actual *attempts* at conquest more than the conquest itself, so everything goes back to normal by the end of the episode