Subpages cleanup: Complete Monster

So I finally got around to typing up that write-up for Ein:

• Cipher Admin Ein from Pokemon Colosseum. Ein was the head of Cipher's R&D department, and the person who came up with the concept of Shadow Pokemon in the first place. Shadow Pokemon are created by artificially closing the door to a Pokemon's heart, essentially using Mind Rape to cause them to lose their memories and turn into vicious, emotionless battling machines. Shadow Pokemon are traumatized so badly that, in battle, they will frequently self-harm and lash out at everything around them, even their own trainers, and the only healing method at the time required enlisting the aid of Celebi, a minor deity with power over time, to return them to their pre-corrupted states. Said Pokemon even included the likes of Entei, Suicune, and Raikou, who happen to be revered as deities as well. Ein's main objective was the creation of the ultimate Shadow Pokemon and to figure out a way to stop the purification process from happening, all for the sake of power, world domination, and science. At no point does he show anything resembling remorse for his actions, and the only reason he stops is because the player defeats him.

Make that a longer while for the Video Games sandbox review; real life has come a-calling.

Consensus seems to be against Cheesethief now. I'm still inclined to think he qualifies (by the standards of the first book, he's just downright revolting), but I don't care enough to really argue about it. I'll give it a day or so just to be sure (none of the others we axed had anybody defending them) and then do the cut.

I've removed the line about a CM in each book from the Redwall page. For one thing, it isn't quite true, and despite the increasing use of Always Chaotic Evil in the series, it's actually gotten less true. Villains have gotten increasingly incompetent and cartoony since Lord Brocktree, and the now taken for granted assumption that all "vermin" are Pure Evil means that newer villains would have to work a lot harder to hit the trope anyway. Worse still, the series occasionally reverts to it's earlier portrayals, muddying the waters. It's gotten to the point where I'm simply approaching characters on the basis of how heinous they are by the standards of the book they are in, as opposed to that of the franchise as a whole.

That's actually a problem I've had with the series. If a setting's approach to morality changes, how do we judge the characters? By the standards of the setting's new morality? Or by the standards of the entry they appear in?

EDIT: In the interests of getting the subpage ready for lockup as soon as I can, I'm wondering—is there anyone from Redwall who isn't on the list, but should be? The only one I can think of is Ungatt Trunn from Lord Brocktree. I'll have to think about that.

edited 12th Sep '12 8:58:11 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

@3151 That entire write-up is about things Ein did offscreen. This will apparently be my daily "Offscreen Villainy doesn't count" reminder. Not only that, while animal abuse (which is what creating Shadow Pokemon amounts to) is bad, it's not heinous enough alone to include in this trope. I'm going to continue to vote no.

That's an interesting question (although I'm not sure if it really applies to the specific example). Thoughts, everyone?

I'm not sure it applies to that example either. I'm just curious as to everyone's thoughts on the matter.

Wait, what do you mean by 'that example'? What I meant was that, by my recollections, Redwall villains seemed to grow more incompetent and cartoony after Lord Brocktree, but there wasn't a real change in the series approach to morality as such - while a later villain would be less likely to qualify, s/he wouldn't actually need to meet any different standards to do so.

edited 12th Sep '12 9:36:28 PM by nrjxll

The villains definitely become more incompetent and cartoony after Lord Brocktree. The series however, also has a shift in how the villains are treated. I couldn't tell you when exactly the trend started, just that it had reached truly mindboggling proportions by the end.

Anyway, in the first book, the characters make a point of noting that Cluny is the exception not the rule when it comes to rats. Most of his army is pressganged, and we're told that most rats, stoats, weasels, and ferrets keep to themselves. This trend holds true for the first few books, only to see a shift towards Always Chaotic Evil in the later ones. By the time the series ended the "vermin" were essentially standard fantasy orcs, and the heroes could kill them with no moral compunctions whatsoever.

In short, if we're trying to figure out if a villain is bad by the standards of the series, which standards are we using? Those from early on, when characters like Cluny were aberrations? Or from later on when his entire species is assumed to be like that (irrespective of if they actually demonstrate it).

edited 12th Sep '12 9:56:50 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

To be honest, I can't remember the "vermin" ever not being treated like standard fantasy orcs. There were good ones occasionally, and relatively harmless/funny ones more frequently, but they always seemed to be considered more the exception then the rule.

Either way, the actual behavior didn't change much, so it's largely irrelevant to the topic at hand. And the page has been pretty well covered as it is.

Also, I never read the last few books (and haven't read any in a long time), so I could be somewhat mistaken here.

edited 12th Sep '12 10:03:32 PM by nrjxll

Early on we weren't told they were all bad. When Constance states that she thinks Cluny and his gang are completely evil, she's told "Give a rat a bad name!" and the like. There definitely was a shift.

@3154: The problem with the second argument is that Pokemon are smarter and placed in a higher position than most animals and are considered semi to fully sapient in most canons. I also wouldn't call Ein's actions something that happened offscreen as their results are clear for everyone to see. The only thing we don't see is the actual process of Shadowfication itself.

edited 12th Sep '12 10:12:59 PM by rmctagg09

@3154: "This will apparently be my daily "Offscreen Villainy doesn't count" reminder."

Maybe everyone on this forum should just adopt the sig, "No seriously, Offscreen Villainy doesn't freaking count." Isaywithnosenseofironywhatsoever.

@3148: Anyway, here are some possible cuts from the videogame sandbox:

• Setsuna from Psychic Force. It either needs to be cut or rewritten because it lists no specific deeds this person’s done, and only speculates on how bad they could have been had certain circumstances been met.
• Mario Alcalde from Red Dead Redemption. He’s a pimp who killed his former prostitute in a rage, but I don’t think killing one girl is enough to reach the heinous standard set by the game.
• Leland Monroe from LA Noire. He’s a standard Corrupt Corporate Executive who tries to fraud war veterans with faulty housing, and the only person he tries to deliberately kill is one of the protagonists. He just doesn’t come off as bad as his partner, Fontaine, who has a much more direct involvement in the plot and shares much more responsibility for the deaths of the people burned in their houses, seeing as he was the one who drove a Shell-Shocked Veteran into becoming an insane, serial arsonist for his own profit. Also, Leland seems a little disturbed when Fontaine casually admits to murdering his protégé, Courtney Sheldon.
• Lucien from Runescape. It’s said that he killed a large group of heroes that the player had gotten the time to know. As the entry is currently written it’s all centered around him delivering a Player Punch, and nothing is said of Lucien’s personality or motivations. It should be rewritten to show why this is particularly heinous or cut.
  • Also from Runescape, Vanstrom. The entry states he kills two characters the player might have liked. He should be rewritten or cut for the same reasons Lucien should: nothing else heinous is listed, nor is anything stated about his personality or motivations, aside from serving his boss.
• From Shin Megami Tensei, pretty much every example needs to be either cut or expanded to give a bigger picture of these characters. The fact that some of them are listed as Knight Templar characters, further opens up the possibility of grey areas on whether or not they count:
  • “The Four Seraphs (Michael, Raphael, Uriel and Gabriel) and Metatron who are all Knight Templars seeking the complete submission of mankind to YHWH's will.” This example in particular should be purged, since this is standard minion behavior, with nothing heinous specifically listed.
• Clokwerk from Sly Cooper. He never did anything onscreen. He killed Sly’s parents and he kept himself alive through the power of hate. And that's it. I say cut, he’s a generic villain even if he is Sly’s most personal nemesis.
• Terry Higgins from True Crime New York City. He commits some fraud, tricks the Player Character into doing his dirty work, and frames an innocent, though dickish, man for betraying the police. He sounds like a standard, slimy criminal, not particularly heinous. The only thing that jumps out at me as really bad is him gunning down civilians but I need more detail on why he did that, if he was Axe-Crazy or it was just collateral damage. His extending an offer of partnership to Marcus, after having been his mentor/father figure, further has me questioning if he’s pure evil. He just strikes me as a standard baddie.
• Yami from Okami. The entry only says he’s the source of all evil, and that’s it. In the game itself, I don’t think it’s even addressed if he’s malicious or a mindless monster acting on instincts. For now I say cut. Though I have heard there’s a prequel to the game, so if he’s done anything bad there that could prove him to be sentient and malicious I’d like to hear it.
• Ridley from Metroid Prime. Not that the example isn’t good, it’s just that he does those things in the manga, so it should be moved to the manga monster page.

edited 12th Sep '12 10:17:08 PM by OccasionalExister

Last time someone made a suggestion to clear up Nyarlathotep from Persona 2. Here's how I think of it... Hmm....

• Nyalathotep, the Big Bad from Persona 2 goes beyond just Made of Evil. He's determined to prove that his views that humanity would lead themselves to destruction, so in his bet with his Good Counterpart, Philemon, he proceeds to break the rules and actively manipulates the emotions of many men so things go his way. His modus operandi includes gleefully manipulating the emotions of every humans, pushing their worst fears and generally claiming that they're all bastards and would lead themselves to destruction. Not only he's a master manipulator, his manipulation also caused total destruction of the whole world, save the city where P2 takes place. He practically won. And when the heroes pressed the Reset Button to undo his victory, Nyarlathotep actually counts on it and has planted seeds of his manipulation by manipulating the insecureness of the protagonist (Tatsuya) into a chain of events that would repeat the world destruction feat that he did. Why was he desperate to prove his point and driving humanity into its destruction? Because it's amusing to him, nothing more! If anything, the suffering of these men also greatly entertained him, and the fact that something as heinous as total world destruction is something of an amusement to him... Well, there you have it.

This is probably a badly written version, but let's hear what you think

edited 13th Sep '12 12:47:06 AM by ChrisX

First thoughts: the majority of that entry sounds like "extremely competent villain", not "extremely evil villain".

edited 13th Sep '12 1:13:31 AM by nrjxll

OK Lemme see how I trim down Nyarlathotep's accomplishment...

• Nyalathotep, the Big Bad from Persona 2 goes beyond just Made of Evil. He's determined to prove that his views that humanity would lead themselves to destruction, so in his bet with his Good Counterpart, Philemon, he proceeds to break the rules and actively manipulates the emotions of many men so things go his way. His modus operandi includes gleefully manipulating the emotions of every humans, pushing their worst fears and generally claiming that they're all bastards and would lead themselves to destruction, taking all delight in every of their misery. He also actually succeeded in destroying the world, something that he engineered by himself and gleefully boast it to the heroes who failed to stop his plans, as well as laughing at the death of an idolized character by the heroes... all also parts of his design. Why was he desperate to prove his point and driving humanity into its destruction? Because it's amusing to him, nothing more!

I really need an SMT/Persona expert in this. Nyarlathotep destroying the world and laughing at it is a strong point to his CM-dom...

edited 13th Sep '12 2:33:36 AM by ChrisX

What about Razzid Wearat? Or is he more Stupid Evil?

Hitting the rest of the video game examples in a bit. For now...

@3161 We're not talking about other continuities. We are talking about the main series continuity. Pokemon are not fully sapient, based on the fact that they live totally in the wild unless captured/bred by humans, the fact that there's no evidence of any sort of higher civilization in them, and the fact that they're apparently only capable of learning how to do four actions. Anything about how supposedly intelligent they are is purely Informed Attribute (Alakazam's mental faculties are a great example, considering that its in-game actions don't show it to be any smarter than Bidoof, the series' whipping boy for pretty much anything).

As for Offscreen Villainy - no, there are no exceptions. If there were exceptions, someone would have brought them up by now. So it doesn't matter if we see the effects - the fact of the matter is, because we don't see the actions in question, we A) don't know just how horrible the action may be, and B) don't know just who did the action, regardless of who takes credit for it. We cut all of the other examples where they did their actions offscreen but you see the effects onscreen. We are not about to make an exception for a given villain just because someone asked that we do so in this thread.

Qualification on Offscreen Villiany: I personally follow the idea that if a villian commits an act like the ones that take place Offscreen, you can take those related actions at face value. But they do have to be the same type of action, no "he tried to murder Sam, so clearly he really did rape those woman to death with a jackhammer!"

If the villain launches a nuclear missile but we don't see him press the button it doesn't count? Am I getting this right?

How do you know that the villain launched the missile?

No, Offscreen Villainy is something like characters saying that the villian is a horrible torturing rapist monster, but in the story itself he doesn't do anything nearly as henious.

In short, Show, Don't Tell in effect; we don't take the stories word on it that they're monsters, we demand that they show us the proof.

The issue isn't whether it is credible that they performed the action. It's the impact it has on the audience. The reason we don't allow Offscreen Villainy to count is because of the Show, Don't Tell principle. Now, this does not mean that evil acts can't be clearly inferred from their results: a graphic sex scene is not needed to understand that a person was raped, for example. Gory Discretion Shot doesn't disqualify from CM.

However, if a villain is simply said to have raped a bunch of people, but we never see them actually do it, it doesn't count towards Complete Monster. It can certainly count for other Evil Tropes, but the point here is to identify the worst of the worst, and you can't do that if you don't show them doing the things they are accused of.

Note: Flashbacks don't count as Offscreen Villainy, because we do get to witness the acts in question. Secondhand accounts are tricky, however, because of the Unreliable Narrator problem.

Edit: Ninja!

edited 13th Sep '12 7:25:23 AM by Fighteer

@Void 211

I'm not familiar with that example, and the Redwall wiki doesn't say much on the subject. He was removed along with a bunch of other examples that were all in one paragraph together. If you want to know if he counts, you'll have to post a description here and let us see it.

He's the Big Bad of The Rogue Crew. Remember how Cluny was a Bad Boss? Yeah, he's got nothing on Razzid.

@3168 You know, it's not necessary to say that their supposed offscreen actions should count because they did it onscreen as well. If they did a qualifying action onscreen, then the offscreen stuff doesn't matter; they clearly did the action onscreen and that alone is enough for consideration.

Anyways, picking through the sandbox for video games...

Well, first, I'd like to get some opinions on the debated Monster.Pokemon examples. So far, it's just been me and rmctagg09 going back and forth. If we have a consensus on the Pokemon examples as I outlined previously, there'd be only two, so I'd rewrite them and put them in the sandbox.

I'm a bit on the fence about Sakaki from .hack//GU. He does manipulate a suicidal girl and goes try an Assimilation Plot to make humanity subservient to him, and he fits the personality profile. But I'm not sure if basically using mind control to take over the world is enough for Complete Monster status. Mind you, based on what previously happened, the threat of Mind Rape is potentially lethal depending on when it hits (since it can render someone comatose, and the complications of that are shown in-universe), and Sakaki doesn't care.

I'd cut the spoilered line from the Alter A.I.L.A. entry - the fact that he's murdering his way through the story is enough for the atrocities. Though more expansion on Red's personality would help.

Since he was up before, considering that he was preparing to use the red flowers on humanity as well, I'm inclined to keep The Doctor from Cave Story.

From the Diablo example, cut "and her Dark Coven" from the second point along with the entire third point, for the standard "groups don't qualify" reason. The subbullet under Zoltun should be deleted as irrelevant - that's basically just the creator's opinion on whether they qualify.

I think the Etrian Odyssey entry should be cut. For one, it's heavily reliant on Offscreen Villainy (namely, actions that take place before the game). Plus, while whoever wrote that entry feels otherwise, I think the character qualifies as a Well-Intentioned Extremist.

Question - do either of the Heavy Rain examples do their actions on-screen? Both sound like they're offscreen actions for the most part.

The Golden Sun example should be rewritten, as the first half of the first paragraph goes on about who doesn't qualify.

I-No of Guilty Gear is The Sociopath, but most of her behavior is more Jerkass than anything else (yes, she did push Dizzy off of an airship which was in midair, but I-No knew she'd survive). Beyond that, she just likes to beat people senseless. I think she falls short of the heinous standard.

For now, that's what I have.

edited 13th Sep '12 9:11:28 AM by 32_Footsteps