a lot of cringe “The Empire is super evil but it’s the only thing stopping humanity from being wiped out” bs
Which would still work fine if done with a satirical bent, if the overall theme of these stories was a kind of fatalistic "we could have stopped this" angle, rather than the cynical, psychotic banality of the worst evils mankind can inflict on the universe being the best we could have ever hoped to do.
Which would still work fine if done with a satirical bent, if the overall theme of these stories was a kind of fatalistic "we could have stopped this" angle, rather than the cynical, psychotic banality of the worst evils mankind can inflict on the universe being the best we could have ever hoped to do.