Subpages cleanup: Complete Monster

The Winx Club examples aren't very good. The Trix are pretty much the least threatning and dangerous villains on the show. They don't do much beyond standard villainy and are treated far too lightly. What kind of Complete Monster is defeated by a ladybug (Just watch that one sprite episode).

The Wizards of the Black Coast don't apply due to being somewhat Played for Laughs and the no group rule. The leader may actually count provided we can make a good entry for him.

We talked about these earlier, many didn't see their threatening potential, and they became lost in the discussion.

@3513 The reason why I said that you should bring examples in and wait for actual voting (rather than just 9 hours) is because you can't be certain that everyone will agree with you on how bad an example is. As I've made it clear, I haven't (although Largo's example in @3516 is better, with the @3517 suggestion appended to the beginning).

We could go back-and-forth, but when it comes down to it, it's pretty simple. No single opinion rises above any other opinion; and if we want others to obey the rules we've set out in this thread to handle examples, we have to obey them too. I really don't think I'm asking anything outrageous of anyone.

@3519:

Monster.Disgaea needs a huge rewrite. Terrible use of spoilers, poorly worded... ugh. I'll give a rewrite a crack on Monday.

Monster.Kirby should be cut from the Video Game section; the only mention from a game is the first item, which should be cut. I'd have to give the others a solid look to see if they still belong in the Anime section (admittedly, likely not).

Monster.League Of Legends is almost totally without context, and what little context is there mostly sounds like Offscreen Villainy. And we even have a "... isn't as bad as..." mention for one of them. Cut them all.

For Monster.Mario -

• Of the three Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door examples, only Shadow Queen qualifies; the other two pale before her (Grubba's entry even mentions that fact).
• Dimentio of Super Paper Mario belongs - while I ordinarily don't like direct comparisons to other qualifiers, the fact is, they entry describes just how close to Kefka of Final Fantasy VI Dimentio reaches.
• The Shroobs in general don't count. Princess Shroob is their leader, though, and her crimes apply to what they did, as she ordered them. That said, she's a Generic Doomsday Villain. Cut.
• Dark Star is sentient... that said, he's trapped for most of the game, and his MO when he gets free is to copy the most powerful guy around (Bowser) and try to take over the world. Practically the poster child for Generic Doomsday Villain. Cut.

So, I'd move the two Paper Mario examples to the main page and cut Monster.Mario entirely.

Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.

Moving on from the back and forth, I concur that Largo's rewrite is considerably better than the original. I would be glad with either a variation of it (preferably containing an added description of what crimes Bateman claims to have committed) or the rewrite I attempted going on the page. Either one is, I feel, a significant improvement and will not encourage others to post bad examples. The link to Unreliable Narrator in the writeup that Largo did is key, as I think it'll make it clear that the problem is whether we can trust Bateman, rather than if he's heinous enough, etc.

Anyway, I'm going to try and go through some more literature examples over the course of this week (though regretfully my schedule is tightening up). If some more people wanted to weigh in on the Millennium Trilogy and any of the others I've already posted about that'd be great, as I've only gotten one or two opinions so far.

EDIT: Found one already.

"In Crime and Punishment, another novel by Dostoyevsky, Svidrigailov has few if any redeeming qualities, seeing how he tries to rape Dunya, among other things. Luzhin almost looks nice in comparison to him(although completely and unambiguously lacking in redeeming qualities). He does have a Pet the Dog moment, when he leaves his money to Sonya - and then blows his brains out with a revolver."

Let me count the problems here. Only one crime is mentioned, with no context for how bad that is by the setting's standards. There's a comparison to another character, who also isn't described (meaning the comparison is useless), and there's a comment about Pet the Dog, though whether it's meant to be attached to Luzhin or Svidrigailov I do not know. Is anyone going to be real sad if I axe this one quickly?

EDIT: I think I mentioned before that someone needed to look at the Honor Harrington series examples. Since They're right beneath that last one I posted, I think I'll just put them up here.

"* In Honor Harrington, David Weber does Even Evil Has Standards very well, with honorable enemies who put Honor Before Reason and really aren't that bad. However there are some exceptions:

• Saint-Just, who calmly detonated a nuke in the middle of a large city to destroy his opposition, made all the worse by the fact that he seemed a Magnificent Bastard at first and degenerated from there. Fortunately, Weber also does the Karmic Death exceedingly well.

—>Thomas Theisman: I think we've had quite enough of those kind of trials. Goodbye, Citizen Chairman.

• Lord Pavel Young is a self-entitled, cowardly rapist who despises the heroine for getting ahead by being heroic (despite being low-born). It's implied that his father was the same - and his grandfather was worse. He does, however, receive a Karmic Death at the hands of the heroine.
• Still, the unrivaled position of top Complete Monster of Honorverse goes to a one-book character: Andre Warnecke from Honor among Enemies. He is a revolutionary from the Chalice Cluster of Silesian Confederacy. A Smug Snake as well as a Complete Monster, he did not have any of the justifications of others. Nuking a city? Saint Just did that to save his ass, cold-blooded as it may be. Warnecke did that to prove a point. Torturing prisoners and raping women? Masadans were religious fanatics who did this to POWs. Warnecke's men did that to the civilians of the world he took over, who had no defence, and the crews of the defenceless merchant ships they captured, for entertainment. By the end of his part, you loathe him so much that him getting his comeuppance at Honor's hands and his hanging by the citizens of Sidemore does not even begin to soothe your rage."

First of all, the entries for Saint-Just (nice Meaningful Name by the by) and Lord Pavel are both pretty weak, listing only a few crimes and giving no context. Secondly, they don't sound like much compared to our man Warnecke. Even his entry, though, has problems, as it's written in the tone of "and he's SO much more EVIL! than anyone else." Is anyone here actually familiar with the series? Because I'm out at sea here.

From a Brandon Sanderson novel we have:

"In Warbreaker, there's Tonk Fah, who has a running gag of going through pets at a phenomenal rate - until we learn the reason for that is: he can't keep himself from torturing any animal that comes into his possession to death. Brandon Sanderson has explicitly confirmed him as a genuine sociopath."

Relying on Word of God is bad, as is the fact that he apparently only kills animals. On a sidenote, the start of Sanderson's entry goes on about how he normally writes more complex antivillains. Seeing as that's just going to encourage the Anti-Villain or Complete Monster dichotomy we've been trying to ditch, I'm altering that to say "complex villains with understandable motivations."

"Krait, the Psycho for Hire from Koontz's The Good Guy, counts as well. The scenes narrated from his point of view actually make him more nightmarish."

One line, no context. Someone also needs to take a look at the entry for Victor Helios from Koontz's Frankenstein series, because the entry is over long, nattery, and argues with itself. He qualifies from the sounds of things, but it could read a lot better.

"Nefarian Serpine, from the Skulduggery Pleasant series of books. Geez, where to begin with this guy? He was The Dragon of an evil wizard who started a war to revive Eldritch Abominations, and he killed the protagonist's family then tortured him to death. However, after the guy somehow manages to come back to life and leads his side of the war to victory, Serpine double-crosses his old buddies by becoming The Mole and selling everyone out to get his own ass out of the fire. This, just so, many years later, he can get his hands on a super-powerful MacGuffin to start everything from scratch and kill everyone who even looks at him funny. It doesn't help that he only uses said MacGuffin on real powerful people because it kills them very fast and painlessly, while he prefers to kill everyone else in the most slow and painful way possible.

• Serpine looks like The Messiah when you compare him to the Faceless Ones though..."

Anyone familiar with this book/series? Are the Faceless Ones worse? And if so, are they worse enough to cut Serpine? Or should we just be cutting the one throwaway line about the Faceless Ones since again, one line, no context?

Seriously the number of one-line entries on this page is bad. Can we at least agree to cut all one line entries?

edited 30th Sep '12 5:21:40 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

I’ve only read the first three books in the series, but I’d say Serpine counts while the Faceless Ones don’t. The Faceless Ones are Eldritch Abominations and, from what I’ve read up to, they’re really only defined as big scary unfathomable monsters that will destroy the world if released. No actual personalities have been given. Serpine, on the other hand, is a human that just loves being evil and has done enough heinous things to qualify, in my opinion.

Agree with cutting Krait for lack of information on him. Also agree on cutting Tonk Fah for the moment, since the torturing animals to death is all that’s listed on him. If this ever transitioned into torturing people in Warbreaker, then he’d have a better shot.

Speaking of Brandon Sanderson, in his novel Elantris, the Big Bad Dilaf is a Knight Templar that wants to commit genocide against two races of people. However, his reason for wanting to do this is because his wife was turned into an Elantrian, essentially a zombie who continues to feel hunger and who’s pains never go away, accumulating to the point where the pain drives them into complete madness. He burned her alive to Mercy Kill her, and losing her drove him completely insane. Seriously, he constantly hears her screams in his head. Loving his wife, coupled with his belief in the righteousness of his cause, does anyone else agree with me that he doesn’t count as a Complete Monster?

Anyhoo, eons ago, when the earth was young, I said that Christopher Carrion from the book series Abarat didn’t count because of his Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds nature and the fact he feels love for the heroine. I also recommended getting rid of Princess Boa for not being heinous enough. Would anyone object if I removed these examples?

@3525: Thank you.

edited 30th Sep '12 5:48:58 PM by OccasionalExister

The Crime and Punishment is bad because 1) It is confusing and 2) a Pet the Dog moment means not completely evil.

Honor Harrington:

Saint-Just is a poorly worded example. He might count but there isn't enough detail to say for sure and the bits about MB and Karmic Death are extraneous.

Lord Pavel Young: If his worst crime is being a rapist that he isn't measuring up to the guy with the nuke also the example says that his grandfather is worse meaning that he isn't bad within his own family let a lone the series. Again Karmic Death dialogue is exctraneous

Andre Warnecke: " top Complete Monster" ... the troper doesn't seem to have a full grasp on the concept of what it means to be a CM. Andre does seem to equal the standards of heinousness for the series but the emotional language does need to be removed. The entry comes across as a "He is a Complete Monster because I hate him so much" In the end not sure if he counts as I have not read the series but definitely needs a re-write.

Warbreaker - Tonk Fah: While torturing animals to death is bad that alone isn't really what I would consider to be in Complete Monster territory. Also Word of God does not a Complete Monster make.

The Good Guy - Krait: Not enough description and not even a single crime mentioned.

Skulduggery Pleasant - Nefarian Serpine: Possible candidate but the entry does need to be rewritten and his actions measured against the standards of heinousness for the setting.

I would agree that cutting one line entries should be safe. I don't think that it is possible to convey the amount of information necessary to confirm CM status in a single line.

edited 30th Sep '12 5:51:18 PM by SophiaLonesoul

I was wondering about Dilaf actually. The example for him on the page isn't very well written, and acknowledges the "loving his wife" part in it. Looking at your description of him, I really don't think he qualifies. I'd support cutting it.

Given your description I am also inclined to say that Dilaf doesn't count. He cares about his wife and his current actions seem to come out of that from your description.

Regarding Lieutenant Sayle from The Drowned Cities: from what I know of the series Sayle is head and shoulders worse than the other people in series. The example looks pretty good. The only thing that I would suggest leaving out is the last bit about Ocho's opinion.

Re Tonk Fah, I've read the novel, he could count, not quite sure. Word of God explains further something implied in the novel- basically, his less villainous partner Denth permits him to torture animals to death in lieu of allowing him to do that to people- in one instance wherein only the aftermath is shown, Denth didn't pay close enough attention to Tonk Fah and allowed him to interrogate a prisoner, and Tonk Fah tortured the guy to death.

One issue is that the less villainous Denth's own plans (which Tonk Fah took part in) involved killing about a dozen people, and the likewise well-intentioned big bad plots to cause essentially a world war- so I'm not sure if Tonk Fah is evil by the standards of the story.

Tonk Fah is also presented somewhat humorously- but in the manner of Xykon or the Joker- sort of a deconstruction of Comedic Sociopathy.

Hodor

I found more questionable entries on the literature page:

"Bernard Cornwell often presents rather multilayered villains, who are sometimes even likable and no better or worse than the heroes. However, when he creates a villain less humanly relatable, he creates an utter monster of a villain.

• The most notable is Obadiah Hakeswill, the enemy of Richard Sharpe. Hakeswill is a sadistic British Sergeant, who relishes tormenting those under his command. He murders the goodhearted Colonel Mc Candles, who was going to turn Hakeswill in for abuses of power, kills Sharpe's first wife and deserts the army to lead a band of murderous, rapist brigands. He meets his end, when Sharpe performs the coup de grace at his firing squad execution.

• Kjartan the Cruel of The Saxon Stories, a brutal Viking overlord who seizes power by betraying his own lord and burning him alive in his home. He also takes the lord's daughter as a sex slave for his son and lets every man in his garrison have her until she mutilates herself to make herself unattractive. He suffers the worst fate a Viking can get when the sons of the murdered lord kill him and deny him the honor of holding his sword at his death, consigning his soul to Nifleheim.

• Sir Martin from Agincourt id a corrupt priest, who abuses his authority to rape and murder as he wants. Sir Martin's karmic death is executed masterfully with absolutely perfect symmetry. For those who don't have time to read the magnificent book, Sir Martin attempts to rape the hero's wife while he is out defending their lives against a superior force, all the while saying the hero is unworthy to have a wife at all, mostly because the hero's mother spurned him. Then, as he begins to scream "Let's make a baby!" A moment filled with Squick, she uses a crossbow hidden in her bag the hero gave her to shoot him through the scrotum and up into his bowels, leaving him to slowly bleed to death in agony. "

To anyone who knows, are these from the same series? book? world?

Also all three entries talk at length about the deaths of the characters which doesn't really relate to their CM status.

Obadiah Hakeswill: seems like a pretty bad person but I don't know if he is bad enough to count. There isn't any indication in the entry that he goes the extra mile for evil.

List of crimes seem to be: killing two likeable characters, being a Bad Boss, enjoying abusing power and being a rapist

Kjartan the Cruel: lots of extraneous material in the entry and again I am not sure that he is heinous enough

List of crimes seems to be: gaining power by killing his superior and turning his superior's daughter into a sex-slave.

Sir Martin: Very non-specific crimes and only one line of pertinent information. The rest of the entry being "and this part is so awesome"

edited 30th Sep '12 7:01:58 PM by SophiaLonesoul

What about Sarda?

His malice toward the Light Warriors? Justified. His sadistic hatred of everything else except his younger self? Not so much. Because the Light Warriors straddle the line of monstrosity themselves (except Fighter), so his torture of them is less applicable. But look at how he treats everyone else, one of those people could not respect him more.

Sarda isn't taken seriously.

I think I've fallen so far behind this thread now that the only thing I can do is go and read some of the subpages for myself, then come back and offer my opinions.

However, in regards to the one example that does seem to be clearly under discussion right now, I'd say Tonk Fah certainly does not count - the only way he can be considered "heinous by the standards of the story" is that basically everybody else in it is at least a somewhat sympathetic figure. But in terms of his actual actions and goals, he's essentially just a glorified mook. I don't think he counts.

I think he's actually taken more seriously than most of the characters, especially once he starts taking a more prominent role in the story. But absolutely no one in Eight Bit Theater is taken seriously enough to be a Complete Monster, and as far as actual actions the protagonists are much worse anyway.

edited 30th Sep '12 7:24:19 PM by nrjxll

I'd like to challenge Total Drama Island character Chris McLean's status as a Complete Monster. Chris has done a ton of evil stuff, it's true, but his disregard for the lives of the competitors/his interns is never played seriously and is always Played for Laughs. Plus, he has a few Pet the Dog moments, such as the times he's shown to actually like Owen. There's also his Villainous Friendship with Chef Hatchet, and the two truly care about each other.

edited 30th Sep '12 7:27:11 PM by GameSorcerer

I'm not real familiar with Bernard Cornwell's work as a whole, but I've read Azincourt and I'd say Sir Martin qualifies. He abuses his position as priest, telling women that the Bible requires them to get naked in front of him, then rapes them, and if their husbands complain, murders them. He tries to kill the main character, Nick Hook, and when Nick hits back, runs to the local lord to whine about how Nick struck a priest. He later frames Nick's handicapped brother for stealing so that King Henry will hang him, and makes repeated attempts to get Nick in trouble with the rest of the army for, I kid you not, "living in sin with a Frenchwoman"; what he's really upset about is that he wanted to rape Nick's eventual wife himself and Nick got in the way. Finally, when the fighting at Agincourt is at its heaviest, Sir Martin decides the battle is lost, and sneaks off to rape Nick's wife while everyone else is busy, leaving his cousins, brothers, and bastard sons (he's got a few) to what he believes is their certain death. He's a disgusting guy.

Leastaways, that's how I recall it. I confess it has been a year or so since I've read the book, and I don't have a copy of it on me.

edited 30th Sep '12 8:15:37 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

While I am in favor of cutting the Crime And Punishment example (due to Pet the Dog), wait until we get a few more opinions on the matter. As was pointed out before, this is not a race. We can afford to take the time to do things right.

For the Honor Harrington examples, I honestly have a hard time seeing how the first two (particularly the second, who has no supporting argument of note listed) compare to Warnecke. I'm inclined to keep only that one.

For Tonk Fah, I've said before that, as terrible as I personally find animal cruelty, it alone is not enough for Complete Monster status. Cut.

For one-line entries in general, I want time to go through those (especially since I'm trying to wrap up the Video Games page... seriously, it's almost done!). I bet there's at least one that I can personally improve upon just from my own experience (or at least one that I can definitively cut beyond just being a one-liner).

Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.

Keeping track of the votes for cuts and additions so far we have:

Tonk Fah: 5 votes cut, 1 maybe keep

Svidrigailov: 3 votes cut

Krait: 3 votes cut

Serpine: 3 rewrites; agreement to cut the line about the Faceless Ones

Dilaf: 3 leaning towards cut

Saint-Just and Pavel: 3 cut

The Millennium Trilogy: Two votes to cut Zalechenko and Bjurman; unsure yet about any and all of the others.

Lietenant Sayle: 3 votes to add (including my own, since I am the one who wrote it up)

If I've miscounted or misrepresented anybody, feel free to correct me.

edited 1st Oct '12 9:05:13 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar

What about Brie and Sloan from The Wild Thornberries movie? I think they fit well enough.

• Unlike the other villains in the show, they're not played for laughs in the slightest.
• At first they act all nice, offering to help Eliza get back to her family and helping save an injured rhino and telling her they run an animal sanctuary. But that's all just an act as it's revealed that they're so-called "sanctuary" is just a cover for them to poach animals(and they were the ones that injured said Rhino) and not only that, they plan to kill thousands of elephants with an electric fence.
• I know animal cruelty alone isn't enough to qualify for the list, but Sloan and Brie go beyond that when they threaten to kill Debbie unless Eliza tells them how she knew about the fence, then after they're plan gets thwarted, they decide to fly in with a chopper and shoot the elephants despite Eliza being in the vicinity, even they're own Mooks question they're actions, Sloane says that he dosen't care and when Eliza tries to stop him, he attempts to throw her to her death.

Trying to kill the hero is considered par for the course for any villian, ditto not being played for laughs. Ditto being liars. Which just leaves the animal cruelty which fails because What Measure Is a Non-Human??

So I vote against them.

I seem to remember that we actually specifically discussed and cut these guys a while back (although all the purported cartoon CMs tend to blur together in my mind), but keep in mind: it's "heinous by the standards of the story", which might be lower in this case.

(Also, that's an incorrect use of What Measure Is a Non-Human?)

Cleaning up Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness's complete monster entry.

• Complete Monster: Affably Evil aside, Tong Fo qualifies. He attempted to destroy the Valley of Peace for seemingly no reason, his actions are taken seriously, he shows no remorse for the devastation he brought or attempted to bring, and has no redeeming qualities that we know of.

Reason: Destroying the Valley of Peace for no reason doesn't qualify at all. The only one qualify was he doesn't have any redeeming qualify.

• Ungrateful Bastard Hundun could also qualify, amusing speech patterns and Butt-Monkey status aside. He wants to kill Po and his friends out of blame for Po for problems that were not even his fault, and as Po puts it, he doesn't seem to have a heart.

Reason: He's just a ungrateful jerk who wants to be a dragon warrior. That's it.

• What about Scorpion? Before the events of the first movie, she brainwashed the entire valley. In the present, she brainwashes Monkey into trying to kill Po For the Evulz. In her second appearance, she convinces Po and Mr. Ping that she's changed only to poison everyone in the valley. she was capable of killing everyone but chose the more sadistic route of shutting down their motor skills.

Reason: Well, I never watched that episode yet. But I still cut that anyway.

edited 1st Oct '12 4:04:25 AM by flamemario12

You're not suppose delete them until we've decided.

edited 1st Oct '12 4:57:31 AM by ChaoticQueen

Still, we have to draw the line somewhere at where the bar starts, so we don't get repeats of he-who-must-not-be-named and Discord. Henious by the standards of the story only goes so far, if the standards are low enough it becomes impossible for that work to have a Complete Monster because that irredeamable level of evil is simply unobtaniable.

Also I probably screwed it up, but I was more pointing out that killing hordes of animals, while bad, wouldn't push someone into CM territory since animals aren't considered on par with humans.

Even killing humans is usually (except possibly in the most lighthearted show) not a CM level. Killing animals in just Kick the Dog while killing humans is something villainous but does not usually push you over the edge. And this is why, as Fighteer said many times; kids shows should not have complete monsters because of the low standards (but I guess exceptions can be made for the most extreme cases).

I vote against those guys as well; I hope none of them is on the list.

Also, Shaoken he who must not be named, did you refer to brony?

edited 1st Oct '12 5:49:15 AM by Krystoff