Subpages cleanup: Complete Monster

The Sopranos has too many listed, but most aren't IMO.

- Tony is constantly worried about doing the right thing, he struggles with his sociopathic nature and has a very powerful freudian excuse, so that rules him out.

- Jesus Rossi could be the worst character in a show full of sociopaths but he is not given enough characterization beyond being a rapist in one scene, so I'd say it doesn't count according to what I've been reading.

- Paulie is a nasty cheapskate but he has a heart as shown by a) Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas and b) He really cares about Christopher, his disciple for a while. He has kick the dogs moments but most of his murderous acts are motivated by greed.

- Phil is homophobic and ruthless but he shows Pragmatic Villainy for a while when he renounces to vengeance after the death of his brother. He's also shown as a fragile human being capable of empathy when he has a heart attack. Homophobia aside, his nastier deeds do have a justification. He loves his grandchildren.

- Ralph is a jerkass extraordinaire who kills a pregnant woman -his lover- with his bare hands and keeps a jovial demeanor about it, but he is given a Redemption Equals Death final sympathetic moment, so I'd rule him out too.

- I can't think of something good to say about Richie Aprile, homophobic, Would Hit a Girl, Sociopath. edit before turning into The Starscream he tries a goodwill gesture with a gift, which is rejected, so the complete part may fail here too.

- Livia... hmm evilmatriach who conspires to kill his own son, made the life of everyone around her miserable and she is bashed at at her own funeral. A well rounded freudian excuse for the protagonist and perhaps the closest thing to a monster in the show but she seems to care for her grandchildren so I wouldn't know.

edited 26th Sep '12 3:05:31 PM by TrollBrutal

I too agree with placing the trope under Spoilered Rotten given the nature of this. It may be obvious from the start, but it may just as well concern someone who really is unredeemingly bad down the road.

Not to mention that, by the very nature of the trope a CM is far more likely than say, your average run of the mill villain to kill one of the heroes, wipe out civilisations, and other spoiler-worthy events.

I'd like to discuss Arkady Duvall on the DCAU page. At the end of the episode, Ra's al Ghul spends his last few moments with him, because it's revealed that Arkady is his son. Does that disqualify Arkady from being a CM or does that just mean that Ra's was trying to be a good father?

edited 26th Sep '12 3:20:33 PM by TVRulezAgain

We would need some more details. Ras loving Arkady matters far less than the other way around for CM standard and without any more detail I'd say that Arkady stays.

I would also support the addition of Complete Monster to Spoilered Rotten.

@Fighteer

Let me chime in on the World Of Warcraft examples:

Loken: Standard Villiany. His only heinous act is apparently what he did to his brother, if so that's only a Moral Event Horizon. And he could arguably be corrupted. So cut

Frostmourne's curse: Not a person, cut

Chargla: Cut for the same reasons she was cut from Video Games section

Gul'Dan: Keep, but move to YMMV Warcraft since he didn't appear in World Of Warcraft aside from a vision

Kael'Thas: Spends most of the Burning Crusade as a Well-Intentioned Extremist. He only becomes outright evil in 2.4, and that was due to him becoming a Wretched. Easy Cut

Deathwing: A bit iffy here. On one hand his actions in Cata weren't directed by the Old Gods themselves, but on the other hand, his mentality was warped by them. This might have to be taken to Ask The Tropers, very split here.

Old Gods: Even if you take the WMG of them as the Ultimate Evil into account, they are a group and automatically disqualify. There's also Blue-and-Orange Morality to factor in as well.

Sargeras: He's the source of all evil for sure, but he had a arguably justified reason and was good once

Archimonde: Generic Doomsday Villain. Cut

Kil'Jaeden: Despite not appearing on the YMMV page proper I'm gonna have to throw this in here since I know many people from my Warcraft lore site(that I left last month), that believe he is one. However, while he is the cause of the Orcs crimes, how much of it is done by him directly? And how much by his minions? This vagueness is enough to cut him.

Gallywix: Potential Values Dissonance aside, apparently the backstory shows he did have a soft spot for a parent figure. So cut for being 99% Monster.

Magatha Grimtotem: Leaning towards keep, but her only crime was a Moral Event Horizon and does nothing much afterwards.

Garrosh: Cut, too early. And if Blizzard is anything to go by, his corruption could have been done by the Sha, which may imply his apparent worst acts are done after he is corrupted, could disqualify him for good if this happens. and he's just a generic Genghis Khan/Attila the Hun style conqueror + General Ripper atm.

For Warcraft:

Cut the curse, it's a cursed sword, does it have sentience, from that post, no.

Chargla Razorflank: That it? Cut.

Deathwing: From what Fighteer says, I say cut.

Mists: Wait for future releases.

As for Ras's son Duvall, yeah, that's just a pet the dog moment for Ras, not for Duvall, he didn't instigate it, or show any affection (He was kinda mentally gone at the point)

Alright. Just checking.

Alright, I was redirected here to state reasonings why Ghetsis should be a complete monster.

I think there are things to consider concerning Ghetsis that I think was left out.

1. Yes he raised a Tyke Bomb character but N isn't all the way there (at least in Black/White). He's under Ambiguous Disorder because there is something wrong with him mentally that can only come from Ghetsis being an Abusive Parent toward him. It's implied that Ghetsis has been saying those horrible thing to N for years and the revelation of calling him useless is to show how much of a monster he is. Cheren and Alder call him one in universe. 2. Ghetsis even admits to the player that he enjoys seeing people cross the Despair Event Horizon (and uses Bianca as the perfect example). 3. He tries to kill the player in Black/White 2 with only Darkrai being the other character to outward try to kill the character and be on the list of Complete Monsters (and then you got all the anime examples). 4. He tortures Kyurem in the sequel. N even comments that his dragon senses that Kyurem is in extreme pain from all the abused it suffered. The way it's implied that Kyurem was abused is similar to how the Pokemon in Orre are abused to make Shadow Pokemon. And remember, Ghetsis forced Kyurem to fuse with N's dragon and has a device of some sort to prevent Kyurem from being captured.

By a normal anime/video game standard, that's rather generic but this is Pokemon we're talking about. I know the entire Disney section has plenty of Complete Monsters but I honestly think there is a limit to what Pokemon can and cannot do onscreen. I was surprised that the whole Darkrai thing in Mystery Dungeon got away with it.

That's the thing though. We can interpret all of Ghetsis' crimes, but how many of them do we see? The crimes we see him commit are:

• Authorize Plasma Grunts to kidnap and torture Pokemon (the Munna at the beginning, not to mention all the Pokemon forced to build N's Castle).
• Verbally Mind Rape N after the hero of B/W1 defeats him.
• While we don't actually see him abuse N outside of the above, we can certainly see the affects of it given how screwed up N is.

And that's for the first games. In the sequels, he:

• Tortures Kyurem in order to draw power from him.
• Literally freezes Castelia City, putting hundreds of lives at risk. Not to mention he planned to do the same to all of Unova.
• This goes a little into his actions in the first game, but he shows an utterly callous disregard for his minions, and this eventually comes back to bite him at the end.
• Finally, he tries to murder a 10-13 year old boy girl. Brutally. This is the first time any villain in the main games has tried something like this.
• Finally, at the end of the day, Ghetsis is acknowledged as a monster in story. Cheren and Alder are horrified by his actions at the end of 1, and by the end of 2, even Zinzolin and the Shadow Triad, who have been shown as fanatically loyal to Ghetsis, are sickened by him, and the only reason the Triad continue to look after the now near-catatonic Ghetsis is due to their debt to him.

Is all this enough for him to qualify? Honestly, I'm not sure anymore, but that's just my view on him.

We have a problem on the Song of Ice and Fire subpage. First of all, there's this:

"The series as a whole is quite even-handed towards the cultures that practice slavery, giving pro-slavery arguments a fair hearing, acknowledging that slavery is Not so Different from the sort of "free" servitude that is used in Westeros, and using Deliberate Values Dissonance to have several admirable characters who don't see a problem with it. Despite this, when the Great Masters of Meereen nail one hundred and sixty three slave children (still alive and dying slowly from disembowelment) to the milestones to their city as a challenge to Daenerys, it's really hard to see them as anything but depraved monsters. When Daenerys punishes them by nailing one hundred and sixty three of the Great Masters to sticks and leaving them in the middle of the plaza to die, it comes off as a Kick the Son of a Bitch moment."

This is a clear violation of the "no groups" rule.

Then there's this:

"The Brave Companions (a.k.a. the Bloody Mummers) are an entire team of Complete Monster Psycho for Hire thugs, who perform sickening deeds throughout Westeros for nothing more than their own amusement. They're also known as The Footmen...why? Because they like to cut people's feet off, of course. They're exceptionally cruel and, worst of all, have an incredibly twisted sense of humour about it, humiliating people even as they kill them horribly. The closest one of their members comes to being sympathetic is the Septon Utt, because he at least feels bad about raping and killing young boys. Rorge, a disgusting rapist and killer of children, stands out as the worst among them."

Again, no groups, plus there's the acknowledgement that a) Septon Utt doesn't qualify, and b) Rorge is worse than the rest. I'd be fine with an entry for Rorge, as he's a thoroughly disgusting piece of work, but the rest of this needs to go. We can probably keep the entry for Vargo Hoat, their leader, which is located just below this one.

Finally, there's this from the top of the page:

"A Song of Ice and Fire has many complex antagonists with very understandable motives. For example, Queen Cersei acted to protect her children and twin brother Jaime. However, as in most works, there exist several people who are indeed monsters."

As in most works? Really. Way to go subpage. This encourages exactly the kind of attitude that we're trying to get rid of, namely that CMs are present in most works and need to be identified. I'm going to request that all of these things be removed from the subpage (it's locked).

EDIT: More fun on the literature subpage.

"* From Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead, Staff Sergeant Sam Croft is the Commander of a Recon Platoon, which he rules with an iron fist, during World War II. At first Croft comes across more of a simple martinet jerkass. Soon, however, the audience is first introduced to his sadistic side, when he gives a Japanese prisoner cigarettes and chocolate and thus the illusion he'll live before killing him even though he has just learnt the soldier has a wife and kid back home. From there on it's made increasingly clear that Croft is a cold-blooded killing machine, who loves combat and killing. His first kill was not even in the war, but when he was serving in the Texas National Guard, during which he killed a man in a riot just to see what it was like. When Ensign Newbie Lt. Hearn is assigned to the platoon, he resents being placed at second-in-command. Later, after he crushes an injured bird to death to spite a soldier, Hearn forces him to apologize. Croft experiences this as humiliating, leading to him retaliating by misleading Hearn into thinking the path ahead is clear, thus getting Hearn killed by a machine gun. Later, Croft quells a mutiny in his usual manner by threatening to shoot those responsible. He also never faces any consequences for his conduct.

• In the same novel, General Cummings is an intelligent man putting up an affable front for the enlisted men, who in reality is a tyrant with a desire to break down their morale into obedience by making them feel inferior to the officers. He assigns Hearn to recon as revenge for the latter's rebellion, expecting, perhaps even hoping, he will be killed. Like Croft, he avoids any aversive consequences. His only punishment is the humiliation of his blundering 2IC, Major Dalleson, winning the campaign by accident, although he is given the credit for the victory."

One of these things is not like the other. How the general could possibly qualify given the sargeant's actions is beyond me.

"Mitsuru of Brave Story. He is generally psychopathic and leaves a trail of blood and tears behind him. His complete monstrosity is finally confirmed when he destroys a kingdom and releases a horde of demons just so that he can get his wish. At least he pays for it in the end."

This tells us nothing.

"Villain Protagonist Patrick Bateman of American Psycho may be one of these. If you choose to believe he does everything in the book for real, that means he 1) horribly tortures a homeless man for no reason, 2) orders a pair of prostitutes, skins one alive, then tortures the other with a drill, cuts her head off, then fucks it in the mouth, 3) slits a child's throat to see what it feels like(he doesn't like it, not because of guilt, but strangely because he feels it wasn't evil enough), 4) stuffs a live rat up a girl's vagina and 5) kills many other people just for fun. However, due to the ambiguous nature of the novel and Word Of God, these may as well be the thoughts and imaginations of an incredibly fucked-up individual, who wants to be a monster."

He may qualify? Ambiguity of the entry aside, why does this character provide the page quote if there's a decent chance he doesn't qualify? Looking over the page for the book, he also appears to have an attempt at Pet the Dog, and refuses to kill people who admit to loving him.

"In Murder on the Ballarat Train, there is a gang that supplies young orphans to brothels. The worst one is the man, who rapes the kids to help break them, considering it all part of his compensation for leaving his previous legitimate job.

• In Murder in the Dark, the sociopathic killer-for-hire (and Self-Made Orphan, as it turns out) who trades under the name "the Joker" (no, not that one). A sociopathic Master of Disguise who sent a coral snake to warn someone to stay away from the scene of his next job, then locked a little girl into a disused outbuilding to die slowly of starvation.
• In Queen of the Flowers, Rose Weston's grandfather, who makes pre-reformation Scrooge look like the Ghost of Christmas Present. Scrooge at least paid his employees' wages, if not generously — Weston was always late in paying wages and prone to not pay at all when servants quit, and topped it off with bad food and terrible working and living conditions, both for the staff and his own family. And selling his 12-year-old granddaughter to a partner in an insider trading scam, then conspiring to have her discredited or killed when she became unstable (he doesn't seem to care which happened)."

I'm not sure any of those count. The first one in particular is totally lacking in detail, and the other two are pretty sparse as well.

"Mike Carey's Felix Castor series includes a number of demon villains (notably Asmodeus and Moloch) who could easily qualify, but more frightening are the human villains, notably Satanist Church founder Anton Fanke and human-trafficking pimp Lukas Damjohn, who deliberately and voluntarily head in this direction every chance they get. While we don't get much background on either and so aren't in the best position to judge their culpability, they do actively, knowingly, voluntarily, and not least happily inflict a level of damage on others that appears to bear no particular relation to anything they themselves may have been through. (And Damjohn, in a psychic flashback by the main character touching him, appears to have positively welcomed his first chance to make others suffer, ultimately gratuitously, in his early childhood, so that he himself could get ahead, during the Balkan conflicts.)"

Again, not much detail here. What do they do?

I could keep going. As near as I can tell the first lot of entries on this page are all like this—sparse, poorly written, and done with the assumption that the reader is familiar with the series.

edited 27th Sep '12 11:09:10 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar

I think Ghetsis has officially just crossed the "Discord Line" for me.

I concur with all of that.

I've put in requests for the edits to the page for A Song of Ice and Fire. They changed the line at the top of the page, but have yet to remove the two groups. Why I'm not sure. I've posted about it, asking why.

Unless there are objections, I'm also going to start cutting anything from the literature page that is too short and sparse (there's a lot of that going on early on). I'll make sure to post any entries I cut here. Also, I'm removing the Patrick Bateman quote from the top of the literature page. Bateman's own entry admits that he may not qualify, and the page for the series would seem to indicate that he does not. Even if we decide to keep him, I'd prefer to have a quote from a surefire example, not this sort of one.

EDIT: I've removed Patrick Bateman's entry. I also cut one for Judge Holden from Blood Meridian because while the entry talked about how frightening he was, it does not list a single crime that he commits (going instead with "it would take up too much space to list all of his crimes). Entries like that should not be here, as they are not only uninformative, but set a really bad example.

EDIT: Have cut the General mentioned in my earlier entry, as there are again, no crimes besides a possible Uriah Gambit. Also, he just doesn't stack with the crimes committed by his Sergeant. I've removed Mitsuru from Brave Story due to the sparseness of the entry.

I haven't cut this entry for Darken Rahl, because I'm pretty sure he counts from what I remember, but could someone do a better write up please?

"* Darken Rahl from Terry Goodkind's Sword Of Truth series buries a kid up to his neck in sand, starves him, kills him by pouring molten lead down his throat, and then turns him into a hellbeast mount to ride into the underworld. And that's only the first thing we see him do, since Wizard's First Rule is a Doorstopper, and part of a long series of the same.

• And, to top it all off, his chief henchman is a prolific rapist and murderer of young boys; it was only at Rahl's insistence that the boy in the above example was brought to him undefiled."

EDIT: Some more iffy ones. Some of these sound like examples, some do not.

"* The The Millennium Trilogy has many.

• In the first book:
• Martin Vanger is the likable CEO of a family corporation, troubled since his sister vanished long ago. He is a nice guy and saves the protagonist's life in the movie. But in the end, Martin reveals his True Colors: he is a serial killer, who has been torturing, raping and murdering hundreds of women since he was a teenager. His chilling explanation is: "This is every man's innermost dream. I take what I want." In the movie version, Martin suffers his come-uppance, when Lisbeth denies him the same mercy he denied all his victims.]]
• Martin's father father, Gottfried, is an anti-semitic racist nazi, itself a horrid way to make a first impression. Gottfried rapes his own daughter and murders at least 7 women in parodies of Old Testament (specifically, Leviticus) punishments. He is also the one responsible for raising Martin into an individual like himself. In the end he is drowned by his daughter during an attempted rape.
• [[spoiler: Nils Bjurman may not be a killer, but he is a sadist and a rapist exploiting his control over Lisbeth's finances for sexual favours from her. Her eventual payback is brutal.
• In the second book:
• Lisbeth's father, Alexander Zalachenko, is a crime lord, who smuggles in whores and drugs. He physically abused his two daughters. When Lisbeth fought back by setting him on fire, Zalachenko swore revenge on her, further showing him as unreasonable. Zalachenko gets killed by his handlers, when he tries to bully his way out of trouble one too many times.
• In the third book:
• Dr. Peter Teleborian is a respected psychologist, who is, in fact, a closeted pedophile with a knack for physical and emotional abuse of his patients. He kept Lisbeth tied in restraints for more than a year and is one of the ones most responsible for turning Lisbeth into a traumatized individual she is. Teleborian winds up getting exposed as a dishonest fraud by Lisbeth's lawyer in a CMOA before being dragged out for possessing 8000 pictures of child porn."

edited 27th Sep '12 8:10:21 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

I personally think that's a lot of information to still have Ghetsis on the Complete Monster page honestly. I think I'm starting to realize how much the fandom took how evil he is and ran away with it ALTHOUGH it's not out of character for him to do all the things that people think he would do.

I'll just wait for the mod to respond to that since I don't want to be in trouble of adding something that was removed. :/

The group examples are now gone from the A Song of Ice and Fire subpage.

Hey guys, I just deleted Transformers Animated's Complete Monster Example.

• Complete Monster - Lockdown and Prometheus Black/Meltdown. The former is a sadistic bounty-hunter who killed his old trainer to steal Transformer-infants and the latter exemplifies Playing with Syringes. Even the Decepticons look good in comparison.

Reasons: These example are just too weak.

• Porter C. Powell arguably counts, although he leans more towards being a Smug Snake. His Moral Event Horizon is kicking a little girl out of her home after her father went missing.

Reasons: It looked like a Kick the Dog moment for me rather than a Moral Event Horizon.

Also, I think we should put back Katejin....

'''NO!'''

.... never mind. But still, Tomino did stated that even death is too gentle for Katejina.

Recently, we had an Edit War regarding Caius Ballad of Final Fantasy XIII 2 on that work's YMMV page. Should I bother writing up a detailed summary of who he is, what he does, and why I don't think he's a Complete Monster in case someone tries to get him added via the legitimate route (i.e., this thread)?

edited 28th Sep '12 2:57:15 AM by Iaculus

Sure, go ahead.

From the FAQ:

edited 28th Sep '12 3:12:03 AM by nrjxll

Hmm... I did see a post from long ago recommending the removal of the League of Legends subpage (for the villainy being played for laughs). By the looks of it, the entries are weak as well, with one of the entries flat out saying that he's "not as bad as his teacher" (Singed, which for the reason stated earns an insta-cut). Let's see:

• Fiddlesticks. Stands there? Not doing anything? Aside from matches and being summoned? Blatant use of "definitely qualifies"? Cut.
• Warwick, Mundo and Nocturne. Lacks clarity beyond the brief sentence or two for each. Just why are they considered CMs, as opposed to mere psychopaths, in the first place?

And from the YMMV page:

• LeBlanc and Swain also suffer from the lack of clarity inherent in the other examples.

And given that LoL is a MOBA, in which almost all characters are playable, looks like that neither the subpage or even the contents thereof is worth keeping.

edited 28th Sep '12 7:49:13 AM by EarlOfSandvich

Yesterday... not a good day. Meant to comment a bunch on things, but got overwhelmed. Let's see...

For World Of Warcraft, it looks like every single example either isn't capable of moral judgment (the curse), a group, has some redeeming feature, isn't heinous enough, or just is too underdeveloped. Based on what Fighteer said, I'd cut the entire page. Guldan comes closest, but starting wars isn't quite on the same scale as destroying worlds.

For The Sopranos, too many have someone they love. Richie is the only one I'd consider, as there are reasonable arguments to be made that his move was more to lull Tony into a false sense of security (which didn't work).

@3462 I approve of all those suggested removals from the A Song Of Ice And Fire section. For The Naked And The Dead, the general is small potatoes compared to the sergeant, and I would cut the general.

For Brave Story... geez, none of the pages really explain who Mitsuru is. The trope page for the story is one of the worst, most context-dependent pages I've seen. Cut and see if we can get someone in here to give some explanation.

For American Psycho... geez, I've dreaded having to make a judgment on this. For one, it's made completely ambiguous whether or not the deeds took place. Moreover, it's not clear if Bateman actually reciprocates the emotional attachment to the ones who care about him or only keeps them alive to fuel his vanity. I feel like we have another Heads, Tails, Edge situation - the highly qualified entry looks like the best compromise we have.

The Murder In The Dark example looks like it fits to me - death by starvation is torturous, and his "warning" involves sending highly poisonous snakes to people. The other two, though, should be cut.

The Felix Castor examples should be cut for lack of detail.

@3468 Yes, do that write-up. Haven't played it yet; I would like detail on Caius. He wasn't on Monster.Final Fantasy when we cleaned that up; we should make a judgment.

Well, I always thought of Patrick from American Psycho as a pretty clear example, but due to the ambiguity, it's better to cut him I guess.

As for A Song Of Ice And Fire, I actually saw this and wanted to bring it. Thanks Ambar. Brave Companions violate "no group' rule, but their leader Vargo Hoat could still go I guess.

Transformers Animated Examples:

Powell: Cut, he's far less evil than the decepticons, and many of his evil actions are, as you said, kick the Dog. Also, the example kinda calls him a CM, we want straight examples.

Lockdown: Cut also. He's a sadistic bounty hunter who cuts people up and steals their parts (like with Ratchet and Optimus). He killed Prowls master (Offstage I add), but in the episode before that he offered to take prowl under his wing as he was impressed with Prowl's skill and seemed to like him (they were hunting starscream, and Prowl turned on him when he revealed he was working for megatron).

Meltdown is a different case. He has two mutant henchmen, he claims that one of them was his lawyer who he captured and mutated when he went to jail and lost his company (Word of God confirms the other to be his stockbroker). He captures the daughter of his rival to mutate her, if she doesn't survive... oh well. He tortures the Dinobots into working for him by burning them, and almost kills Blackarachnia when she comes to him, and he tried to remove her cybernetic parts. I'd say keep.

edited 28th Sep '12 9:51:26 AM by DrPsyche

Vargo Hoat is still on the page. I'm not cutting that slavering barbarian. The other changes have been made.

I removed the American Psycho quote from the top of the page, and cut the example to ask for better clarification. The book example, I think, needs to go. I haven't seen the film, but in the book he goes to donate money to a woman whom he believes to be starving and homeless. Combo that with his mercy towards those who love him, and the fact that we don't know if he's actually done anything and I think that's ambiguous enough to get it off the literature page, though I'm open to counterarguments. Either way, he should not be the guy providing the page quote for Monster/Literature. Can anyone think of a better quote from an unambiguous example?

EDIT: I've cut a few more examples for lack of detail. As ever I've posted a request at the top of the page asking people to come here and clarify why they think the characters count. Also, somebody familiar with the Honour Harrington series needs to look at the three examples left there (after I cut two groups). It sounds like the last guy is far worse than the first two.

edited 28th Sep '12 11:38:59 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar

I agree with Game Sorcerer. Kiriyama needs to be added to the Monster.Film list.