Writting a deep and interesting Complete Monster?

Based into this discussion [1] make me think.

-How write a realistic and deep Complete Monster, they lack any good thing, how they can work?.

In my personal opinion, i try to create a Complete Monster with certain complexity to their character, normally the way who work is make them a sort of Fallen Hero who show us how a person can destroy all his good traits, but i wonder: Are more ways?

Opinions, please?

If you add any complexity to a Complete Monster, then the complexity must not be a monstrosity, and therefore it displaces the completeness of the monster, and therefore...it's not a complete monster.

I guess you can go the A Clockwork Orange route and basically put a complete monster in the same room with more powerful people who can be extraordinarily monstrous to this specific person, I mean pit one complete monster against another complete monster, to make a two-headed Compete Monster.

But I think it really depends on the audience's personal hot button issues, or the author's intention, or the reaction of all the other characters in-story (and how the plot goes.) The fact that a person can be overpowered and feel bad about it is a very basic non-monstrous human trait, that can actually still happen to people for whom a lot of other people would decide that the character deserves it so boo-frakkin-hoo.

In my opinion, a character is only deep, interesting, or loathesome if the viewer has depth, specific interest, or loathing (for oneself or others).

Counterpoint: The Boston Reaper from Criminal Minds. Probably others that have appeared on that show as well.

Complexity need not be moral, at least in the sense of "morally right". It can be both morally wrong and morally neutral. The dreams of the deranged give them complexity, but that does not mean that they will not be nightmares to the sane.

As another example, take Heath Ledger's Joker. Despite the trite summation given of "some men just want to watch the world burn", he develops in a very complex way throughout the movie and he clearly has a philosophy he's trying to prove. But every new reveal about him, what he does, or how he thinks just makes him more horrific.

edited 25th Oct '15 10:46:03 PM by Night

From Criminal Minds I would have gone for Frank Breitkopf only because that thing with Jane Hanratty I didn't buy as woobificaton, and Rebecca Bryant's life had sucked enough before dismemberment. I haven't kept up since Gideon left the show.

But I'll concede to Nolan's Joker being complex without woobification. So, Cloud Cuckoo Lander aspects don't then displace the completeness of the monster because it's not necessarily endearing.

Mod Warning: There is to be no quibbling over the definition of a Complete Monster.

Yes, is more about how create a good and deep Complete Monster.

Let's depart from Tropespeak for a moment: What you are really asking is, how does one make a character that is irredeemably evil within the context of a story, devoid of empathy and without sufficient justification for their brutality or sadism, genuinely interesting and sophisticated?

When put like that, the answer is sort of self-evident, but also not really one answer at all. To round out a character so that they feel real while keeping that hollow black centre underneath it all in tact is a tricky balance, and every character requires a different approach.

But it might be wise to keep in mind that setting out to write a character as "just plain evil, no excuses" from the outset is probably not going to give you the best point of departure for interesting character work, seeing as you've already written them off as simply being awful without reason or justification. Everyone justifies themselves, capacity for basic empathy or no. Start, instead, with qualities, behaviours, motivations. Say this person hurts people for fun and does not care about the implications of this. Why is this the case? What is their inner world like? Answer the questions. Know the answers, even if you never spell them out in your work. Write from character.

My attemp is show how a person of this class can exist. How someone can destroy every bit of goodness in his sould, how he/she justify himself and actually don´t make sense.

How someone become the worst of the worst even if they don´t start in that way.

Is just my idea.

PD: Also show how his actions affect others, how he is a Moral Black Hole and his presence screw the life of others.

Not starting them off as The Bad Seed then. Well, I think there's a way to explain horrendous acts without excusing them, or explaining them away. But the audience could take it as you meant it, or they might not.

My guess is that the goodness in CM's soul becomes so dormant that it may as well be a neutral quality, whereas their actions affect others negatively. I can't care if they felt that their significant other strung them along, and I won't care that they're supposedly willing to make an effort to sustain that relationship, not when the method by which they do that is (for one example) locking up their significant other in a basement with a bucket of fish heads to eat once a week. I won't even care that they'll feel lonely if the basement-spouse leaves them.

I guess it would be a question of: At what point does sorry become just a word? Then have your villain character never say it.

Can a God of Evil make for an interesting Complete Monster?

Yes, of course.

How so?

Same than

Because it can serve as an interesting analysis of the concept, as a being operating on entirely different scale and unable to sympathise with humans or possibly even acknowledge them as beings worthy of any attention, a being that might very well actually be amoral and only classified as evil because it is us humans who are classifying it as anything at all, might be a Complete Monster without any underlying malice in its actions.

A mass murderer and destroyer of worlds due to necessity that humans cannot comprehend nor accept.

A being irredeemable due to unwillingness to change what for it is and always was perfectly acceptable.

Inability to connect with humans not due to choice but due to its entire existence being just that different.

Point is, someone considered almighty and seen as a Complete Monster might instead be a slave to their powers or their alignment if such actually matters in the setting and is binding in some way, and that makes for something.

The thing to remember about a CM is that while they might not have redeeming qualities, that doesn't mean they don't have goals beyond being as sadistic a prick as possible.

Frank from Once Upon a Time in the West (which I know I've referenced in another thread) is a good example of this. He's looking to get out of the bandit business, and move into actual business, like his mentor and employer Mr. Morton. Along the course of the film, he slowly discovers that his own nature will prevent him from ever successfully doing so, and that in the end, he'll always be what he is now.

You know, I used to think a Laughably Evil Complete Monster was somewhat less scarier than a fully serious one since the latter has no comedic traits. But thinking it over, I don't know. Are Laughably Evil Monsters JUST as bad as serious ones if not worse?

edited 31st Dec '15 7:50:25 PM by superboy313

They are the same, objectively speaking.

What can make them better or worse is how you perceive them, and that of course depends on how you take the monster with all the traits attached to it.

So for some a serious monster would be worse, and for some a comedic monster is. There's no rule for it.

Bump.

Am I only one who prefers Complete Monsters as non-human characters? (Like an alien, demon lord, God of Evil, or Eldritch Abomination of some sort?) After all, no human in real life in completely devoid of redeeming qualities.

Since the Complete Monster has a very inhuman quality to it. It makes sense for me that they're literally not human.

Speaking of questions, why is it that there can only be one Complete Monster per story? That is, you can't have a group of them.

For me, it doesn't really matter as long as the Monster in question has... well, let's call it humanlike behaviour, in that he's intelligent in a way similar to ours. IMO, it'd undermine a Complete Monster if he didn't understand that he hurts people by his actions.

You could, theoretically, but that'd be sort of meta application of Conservation of Ninjutsu. One Complete Monster is genuinely scary, but five? The terror and uniqueness of their threat kind of... diminishes.

In a meta sense, a character that is "pure evil," or at least close as the story gets to that point, is in and of themselves the moral nadir of the story. Others may do worse, but nobody else is worse. They are the yardstick by which the moral bankruptcy of others is measured and to which the fear and disgust that they inspire is compared and contrasted. Another character may do something equally destructive or horrific, but this is always relative. There is only one because, in story terms, you can't go any lower. You have reached absolute zero.

To qualify for the CM trope the villain has to be the worst character in the story, no ifs, ands, or buts. As the poster above notes, they are the standard against which all other villains are to be measured.

That said, you can, in point of fact, have more than one CM in a 'verse. They just have to operate at different tier levels. To cite an obvious example, both The Joker and Brainiac qualify because while they might live in the same universe, they exist at completely different levels of power. The Joker is incapable of doing the kind of damage that Brainiac does, not because he doesn't want to, but because he lacks the resources to do so. Give him Brainiac's technology and mental prowess and he'd be every bit as bad.

In another example, both Bask Om and Yazan Gable of Zeta Gundam made the list. Bask's the leader of the Titans and is responsible for ordering the worst of their atrocities. Yazan's a fighter jockey who wouldn't recognize The Laws And Customs Of War if they bit him in the ass. Both commit as many crimes as their relative statuses will enable them to, and it's fairly clear that if Yazan were promoted to Bask's level he'd be just as bad, if not far worse.