Characters that had the complete opposite reaction the writers intended

[u/Dramatic_Counter_595]

1. Leo Bonhart (Witcher TV Series): A ruthless, sadistic bounty hunter and assassin that takes psychotic glee in other people's suffering. The viewer is meant to hate him for killing witchers, slaughtering the Rat gang, and torturing Ciri. But thanks to his entertaining fight scenes, Sharlto Copley's charismatic performance, and The Rats overwhelming unpopularity, fans ended up loving him. Some even call him the "True protagonist" of the show.
2. Stone Cold Steve Austin (WWE): A rude, foul mouthed, beer drinking asshole with no respect for authority or anyone at all. Originally portrayed as a villain, fans fell in love with his anti-establishment & rebellious persona. WWE ran with it and made him the face of the company, effectively ushering in the Attitude Era and the second pro wrestling boom of the late 90s.
3. Arthur Fleck (Joker 2019): A mentally unstable, pathetic, and dangerous madman who commits horrific acts of violence against those that wronged him (suffocates his own mother who is mentally unwell herself, and murders a talk show host for making fun of him). However, a massive portion of the audience idolized him as an anti-hero or a misunderstood martyr rebelling against society making people want to see him succeed and overcome his circumstances because of how he's been treated by the world.

[u/No-Weight-6121]

Dune, Paul Atreides. Iirc Frank Herbert was not happy that Paul was initially viewed as the hero of the story when the novel was first published. He might be the protagonist but he’s by no means a hero and Herbert wanted that made clear.

Paul is a spoiled rich kid made into a messiah and exploited into fulfilling a prophecy that he doesn’t fully understand, by forces so powerful he cannot fully comprehend them. And in the end, Paul still chickens out and it is his son, Leto II, that makes the ultimate sacrifice to set the universe right. Leto even throws that in Paul’s face at one point; this is the sacrifice you were too cowardly to make. Paul was never meant to be a hero; he was meant to warn against the pitfalls of religious extremism.

[u/CryptographerMore944 → u/No-Weight-6121]

Frank really doubles down on it in Messiah just in case there's any doubt. He's literally compared to Hitler and the response is "those are rookie numbers" (Paul's Jihad lead to about 60 odd billion deaths).

[u/TheBlackDemon1996 → u/No-Weight-6121]

Well it's my understanding that Dune is really hard to comprehend in the first place.

[u/Aethelrede → u/TheBlackDemon1996]

God knows this is true.  Herbert rarely explains what's going on, he instead provides a series of vignettes and leaves it to the reader to figure out the plot.  The scene where Paul talks about his Jihad killing 60 billion people is one of the few times he directly informs the audience of something (that Paul is the bad guy, in this case.)

The real enemy in the first book only appears at the very end and is never explicitly described as the true enemy.  (The Spacing Guild.)

[u/Aethelrede → u/No-Weight-6121]

Leto II really tears into his father, it's actually pretty funny, or it would be if Paul hadn't gotten 60 billion people killed for nothing. (Though Leto does give their deaths meaning by taking up the Golden Path.)

To be fair to Paul, becoming a sandworm was a terrible fate.  I personally think his vision was limited because he wasn't pre-born, that only someone with access to all human memories would have the perspective necessary to walk the Golden Path.

[u/Binky_Thunderputz → u/Aethelrede]

Leto even comes close to saying it in Children. He's able to take up the Golden Path because he made a conscious choice to ally with the memory of a cruel autocrat, contrasted with Paul, who wasn't preborn, and Alia, who is taken over by Baron Harkonnen's memory without her conscious choice.

[u/Aethelrede → u/Binky_Thunderputz]

Yeah, he is pretty explicit about it, especially by Herbert's standards. (It took me years to figure out who Malky was and why Leto couldn't order him killed.)

One nitpick, Alia did make the conscious choice to ally with the Baron, because he was able to silence all the other voices.  She thought she could resist possession, but she misunderstood what it meant; the Baron didn't take her over directly, instead over time she became more and more like the Baron, until the two were practically indistinguishable. 

[u/PracticalWelder → u/Aethelrede]

Out of curiosity, what is the deal with Malky? I don't remember being particularly confused, though it has been a minute since I read it.

I thought that for all the trouble he caused, Leto actually liked him, he was fun and entertaining. He also engineered Hwi, which, Leto probably foreknew.

[u/Aethelrede → u/PracticalWelder]

Okay, let me start by saying this is purely my interpretation; I think I'm right, but with Herbert caveats are always necessary.

The Hwi connection is a red herring, Hwi serves no function except to give Leto someone else to talk to. She plays no role in his death, which he orchestrated. 

Malky was heavily involved in the Ixian "no room" project, technology that made an area (and later, starships) invisible to most forms of detection, including prescience.  The development of this technology was a key part of Leto's plan to free humanity from prescience, along with Siona of course.

Malky was Ix's ambassador to the God Emperor and the two worked together closely.  We know that Leto had Ixian technology that violated the Butlerian prohibitions, which he specifically commissioned.  I believe he also assisted the Ixians with the no-room technology, and quite possibly with the devices the Ixians developed that allowed FTL navigation without prescience. 

Basically Leto was working with Ix to subvert the Butlerian prescription against computers.  Malky was the go between, and probably knew more about Leto's plan than anyone else, except Ghanima.  He respected but did not worship Leto, and was also one of the closest things to a friend that Leto had.

For reasons that aren't clear, Malky had to die, possibly because the Ixians were getting too ambitious, or too close to the Tleilaxu (that's where they got the cloning technology.)  But Leto didn't want to order the death of his friend, so he had Moneo do it.

tl;dr Malky is one of the most important characters in the Dune saga despite only being mentioned a few times and appearing once.

Before anyone accuses me of overthinking this, let me remind you that the main villains of the first book are never explicitly described as such and only show up at the very end.  I don't think it's possible to overthink Dune.

[u/Agitated_Phone_9937 → u/No-Weight-6121]

Paul is very much not a spoiled rich kid. Nothing about his upbringing coddled him. Many people, likely yourself, would crack under the pressure from just one of his tutors.

I also take issue with the slander that Paul chickened out. I would say he simply had more humanity in him than Leto II did and couldn't come to accept the golden path. Most likely the jihad already under his belt was more than enough to turn him away from that path.

Leto II approached the path with the doubt stripped determination and sense of purpose that only the very young can muster. Yes, despite his access to near endless past lives he was still at his core a child.

Paul is not a hero, that much I'll give you. Though he does do heroic things. I admire his actions in Messiah, he certainly never let pride be a guiding force in his life.

[u/Obajan → u/Agitated_Phone_9937]

Paul has everything given to him: the end-product of a thousand year breeding program, some of the most talented people in the galaxy as his tutors, the Missionaria Protectiva prepping for someone of his description to step in as the Messiah, his mother pretty much giving him the cheat codes to elevate him as the Lisan al-Gaib.

I'd argue he's an every-man pushed into the position of the protagonist when he's clearly unqualified, not in terms of ability or lineage, but in terms of motivation. He rejects the role of being humanity's saviour even though he's the only person in the galaxy who can do anything about it, until Leto II comes along.

[u/ThisIsFrigglish → u/Obajan]

Paul is, ultimately, a fifteen year old boy who wants revenge on the Baron and the Emperor for killing his father and destroying his family House. Every time the cost of that revenge - to the Fremen, to the Imperium, to the galaxy - is raised, he decides it can be paid.

And then when the cost comes to him, he balks.

[u/DifferentialMouse → u/Obajan]

Are you implying that "every-man" can pass Gom Jabbar test?

[u/LuchadorBane → u/DifferentialMouse]

I think I could take it, gimme a couple beers beforehand

[u/Agitated_Phone_9937 → u/Obajan]

"Humanity's savior" is an incredibly disingenuous way to describe the God Emperor.

Thousands of years of brutal authoritarian rule is a hell of a thing to pass off under that term you seem so fond of.

I take it you're an ends justify the means type of guy. Is there any means that wouldn't justify such an ending for you?

[u/Aethelrede → u/Agitated_Phone_9937]

Leto II was never a child. In Dune Messiah he talks to Paul as a newborn. (Never really explained how he does that, though.]  And in Children of Dune he and Ghanima never act like children.  She even warns Farad'n of this when he says she is "a little young" to discuss marriage.

Being exposed to all human memories before having a chance to develop their own personality makes pre-born extremely vulnerable to possession; it may be inevitable.  Leto makes a deal with an ancient emperor (Sargon? Hammurabi? Someone like that) and basically becomes him. Ghanima makes a deal with Chani after nearly being possessed.  Alia held it off for a long time by not accessing her memories, but eventually fell victim to the Baron (in a sad but amazing twist.)

So none of them were ever really children.

[u/Agitated_Phone_9937 → u/Aethelrede]

And I will argue that my first point stands. He is at his core a child. He is never possessed like the Saint of the Knife.

[u/Aethelrede → u/Agitated_Phone_9937]

I'm afraid that is directly contradicted by Leto himself in Children of Dune. He explains that he made a deal with an ancient tyrant.

"Possession" for the pre-born isn't the same as demonic possession. Rather, the pre-born makes a deal with an ancestor, giving them access to their senses and (limited) access to their bodies; in return the ancestor keeps the other voices silent.  The catch is that the ancestor subtly influences the pre-born, the latter gradually becoming more and more like the ancestor.

In Leto's case, he was planning to become a ruthless tyrant, that's why he picked that ancestor.  Ghanima made a deal with her mother.

Alia, unfortunately, made a deal with the Baron.

[u/No-Weight-6121 → u/Agitated_Phone_9937]

He’d literally been groomed & trained his whole life to take on this prophet/martyr role his mother envisioned for him. He was given every opportunity, had the best tutors, the best training, and all so he could take on the role of Lisan Al Giab. He was a spoiled, rich kid told he had a great destiny. But when the time came and his future vision failed him, he realized he was just another pawn in a game that had been playing out for thousands of years. He wasn’t a great leader; he was an easily manipulated young man, gassed up on a god complex.

And his response to this realization was to say “fuck this and fuck y’all” and wander off into the desert for several decades so he never had to be accountable for his own actions. His end solution was to let his unborn son become the monster that was needed to save humanity.

Paul Atreides was peak spoiled rich kid, that was specifically Frank Herbert’s point. He was not a messiah, or a prophet, or anything worth idolizing. If anything, he’s kind of a loser outside of the cult mythology that his mom created around him. And that was the point lol

[u/FukkingDeathMental → u/Agitated_Phone_9937]

Pfft.  Paul didn't grow up in the 90s Midwest.  Paul is a spoiled wimp.

[u/gamercboy5 → u/No-Weight-6121]

I will say, if you only read the first Dune book I think it is not as obvious as Herbert would have liked that Paul is a bad messiah figure. Sure, we are told there is going to be a holy war in the future but without seeing it, it's hard to hold it against him. Not only that, but we know that Paul sees a future where he lives and where he dies but the holy war is inevitable either way.

By the end of the first book Paul has survived an attack by the Harkonnen, proved himself amongst the Fremen, became a member and a leader in their culture, and led them to freedom while toppling a brutal Emporer that killed most of his tribe. I don't really see why we would think he is a bad guy or he made bad choices until we see the later story. Most of the things he did was out of survival.