Ah, then I misunderstood you. I thought you said that John de Lancie was the least bad of them which would make the Q continuum a really f*cked up, evil cult.Yeah, I remembered that, which is partially why I asked. I wanted to see if the writers made that distinction back in Q Who as well. (the idea that Q is just a standout troublemaker. even if guinan doesn't outright say that, if she specifically only refers to him as being trouble, then it works.)
If guinan had said Q is bad, and not THE Q are bad, that could work as a seed for that idea.
You were right to misunderstand me though. I just re-read my post and that's what I said, even though I didn't mean to. Lol. I will edit it to fix that.
To clarify, yeah, I always thought Q was definitely the troublemaker of the Q continuum.
Q2 says he cannot go back to the Q Continuum and tell the others that Q was selfless right before he died because it would be un-Q-like.
"un-Q-like" could mean both unlike John de Lancie, or unlike the species Q but like I said, when I see the episode I don't get the impression that Q2 is much more nicer than Q.
Weird. I don't recall him saying something like that. I wonder if it's a case of memory alpha misinterpreting the line. I probably just forgot it though. I'll go watch it and post my thoughts.