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This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.


Working Title: With Great Power comes great Guilt: From YKTTW

The trope is named for Astro City's Samaritan, a hero who is trying to prevent his apocalyptic future from being triggered by a natural disaster... except he doesn't know which one. Also, being the Superman equivalent of his universe means he's the best equipped to handle any disaster, and thus the most responsible.

Samaritan does know exactly which disaster caused his future to spiral into a hellhole, and fixed it already — it was stated to be the Challenger disaster. He's even gone into the future and seen the better world. He's just a nice guy with superpowers that's been trained since youth to save the world, and (it's hinted like other heroes) just can't let the job go for even an afternoon.


Found this quote from Schindlers List. It seems to illustrate the trope pretty well, don't you think? I'd like to replace the current page quote with it, but it's pretty long.

Schindler: I could have got more out. I could have got more. I don't know. If I'd just... I could have got more.
Stern: Oskar, there are eleven hundred people who are alive because of you. Look at them.
Schindler: If I'd made more money... I threw away so much money. You have no idea. If I'd just...
Stern: There will be generations because of what you did.
Schindler: I didn't do enough!
Stern: You did so much.
[Schindler looks at his car]
Schindler: This car. Goeth would have bought this car. Why did I keep the car? Ten people right there. Ten people. Ten more people.
[removing Nazi pin from lapel]
Schindler: This pin. Two people. This is gold. Two more people. He would have given me two for it, at least one. One more person. A person, Stern. For this. I could have gotten one more person... and I didn't! And I... I didn't!

Earnest: Tough call. I like them both, but the Schindlers List quote has a lot of pathos. You could shorten it by starting at "I didn't do enough", or put the quote in a right aligned floatbox. Another trope did an interesting thing by spacing three of it's quotes throughout the page between the paragraphs, so that's another option.

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Haven: This page seems to have lost focus.

Fronzel Smaritain has time-control powers? I don't think that's right. Wasn't he just counting the seconds in that one story? If he had time powers, wouldn't be be able to use them to do enough in a day to satsify himself?

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