Subpages cleanup: Complete Monster

We're keeping "by the standards of the story" in mind with that one; he's perhaps the best boss out of all the villians we see except for Two-Face (who cut a guy in half for some trival reasons and that's it). We only saw that he interrogated one of his men to get the truth of his fight with Batman out of him.

Actually, there's a good argument that Strange is actually the worst boss of Arkham City. It's explicitly stated that the Tyger Security men that Strange "employs" are actually all victims of Mind Rape (he broke them and brainwashed them to be completely loyal to him). Yes, he treats them well after the fact, but subjecting them to chemical and probably technological mind control to get them to that point does not speak well to ones' ability as employer.

There is the argument to be made, of course, that Joker just prints up the subtrope list under Bad Boss and uses it as a checklist on how to treat his men, and thus is worse. But Hugo Strange is at least in the discussion.

@ Shaoken: "Could he have found ways around those actions? Probably, but they weren't 'totally unnessicary for his goals. Everything he did he did for a purpose."

It's true that heinous actions without a purpose are worse than heinous actions with a purpose, but it isn't by much. Chaotic Evil is usually scarier than Lawful Evil but largely because it's unpredictable what characters of the former type will do. Is Joker the worst character in the series? Most definitely. But that doesn't mean other villains can be atuomatically ruled out.

"We're keeping "by the standards of the story" in mind with that one"

Even going by the standards of the story, Strange is probably the second-to-worst character in the series, being the only character, other than the Joker, to commit mass murder onscreen. In the comic prequel to the game he ordered the Trask twins to attack the new city hall. When they failed, Strange personally detonated the suicide bombs planted on them, causing the deaths of over 300 innocent citizens. And he did it all to get support for his Arkham City project. Then, at the end of the game, we see him quite clearly ordering the commencement of Protocol 10, essentially the murder of every inmate in Arkham City, including the innocent political prisoners that he put in there. Plus there's his onscreen torture of his guard captain to death just to get the maximum amount of info out of him (which is monstrous no matter how you look at it), his ordering of a teenage girl to be shot, and his delivering female members of his staff to the Mad Hatter to be killed (and possibly raped) in order to get Hatter's help to mind-control Sharpe. And to top it all off, he doesn't care about the innocents he has hurt. At all. All those people dead and he feels nothing for them. He used them as sacrifices for his own ego and dogma, and that's why Strange counts as a Complete Monster in my book.

edited 29th Nov '11 4:45:02 PM by OccasionalExister

I'll just take it to the three criteria we are left with;

• The character is truly heinous by the standards of the story, which makes no attempt to present them in a positive light - He passes this criteria.
• The character's terribleness is played seriously at all times, evoking fear, revulsion and/or hatred from the other characters in the story - He passes this criteria.
• They are completely devoid of altruistic qualities. They show no regret for their crimes - He fails this criteria. He has one altruistic qualitity, that his ultimate goal is a good one. He is not completely a monster, just overwhelmingly so.

Adding Strange here would cause too many problems with open season being declared on all Well-Intentioned Extremist characters.

I will assent to denying Strange's place on the Complete Monster roster, but I will note that he's much closer to the third point than you're giving him credit for, Shaoken.

The ultimate reason that we have to deny him is that there isn't anything clear-cut to show that he isn't lying about his ultimate aim to create a better, safer world, starting with Gotham City. There are several hints that he might be lying (most prominently, in the Ridder interview tapes... those leave hints that the game version of Strange shares his obsessions with the comic version of Strange). That said, while it's possible that he's lying, the game gives just enough wriggle room that we can't confirm that he is or is not.

Now, it wouldn't necessarily surprise me to find out that, similar to the first game, they hid a secret room somewhere that shows definitively whether Hugo Strange was honest or not, and we just haven't found it yet. Or maybe they'll do a third game and will show it one way or another then. But unless we get further clarification, we cannot automatically assume that he's lying. So he's another nominee that can't quite make it... yet.

edited 30th Nov '11 8:27:02 AM by 32_Footsteps

Altruism, by its very definition, occurs when it is done for unselfish reasons. Strange isn't acting selflessly. He wants glory and to achieve figurative immortalitythough now that I think about it, he could mean literal through his work.

"Adding Strange here would cause too many problems with open season being declared on all Well-Intentioned Extremist characters."

Not if we stress that he's a Knight Templar not a Well-Intentioned Extremist. I mean, Disney's Frollo thought he was doing good. He believed he was purer than the common man and was enforcing God's will by stopping the Romani from spreading their infectious "witchcraft and sorcery" amongst the population. It didn't matter to him that he was attempting to commit genocide, or that members of the population he was trying to protect would be killed in the crossfire.

Strange is no different. They're both men who see evil in everyone other than themselves (regardless of their own crimes), who hurt others for their own selfish motivations and like doing it. I know Frollo's actions are worse, but that's not the point. The point is they both believe they're doing good, when it's abundantly clear they're not; they believe they have a "noble" goal. There are lines between truly good people attempting to do what they believe is right, and people who are evil, who are only using a facade of "doing good" in order to obtain their own selfish desires and have an outlet for their sadism. And enough is shown of Strange, in the game and in the comic, to know he qualifies for the latter.

edited 30th Nov '11 9:11:04 AM by OccasionalExister

@356 You seriously don't want to bring Frollo into this discussion - there are more arguments about him than nearly every other Disney villain, and he's the one constantly most likely to be scrubbed from the page. There's a reason that Pere Frollo from the source material is most pointedly not on the Literature section for the trope (when his actions and motives are really along the same lines).

But you're failing to see what Shaoken is saying, at any rate.

The catch with Strange is that the most likely interpretation of his character is that he does have some good motives. Thus, while he would be a monster, he isn't completely one. Until we are given evidence to the contrary, he gets credit for having at least a small spark of good in him, and thus he cannot be considered a Complete Monster.

Again, keep it in mind, folks, that "complete" is just as important to the name as "monster" is.

I think Star Wars should get it's own section, given how much media there is

Sorry, I'm not trying to be difficult but doesn't every Knight Templar technically have good intentions? Since they're eligible for the Complete Monster trope, I thought that meant that theoretical good intentions don't matter anymore once they crossed the Moral Event Horizon badly enough.

That's probably a good idea, there are tons of Star Wars examples.

Knight Templars believe their motives to be good. This ought to disqualify them, in theory.

@359: There's a difference between "allowed" and "qualified."

The problem ultimately comes up as to the morality of the character itself. After all, there is what said character believes good to be versus what we, the audience believes good to be. And that isn't even getting into the standard debates about how many lives one is allowed to sacrifice for the greater good (keeping mind, of course, the standard problem of ascertaining whether their motives were, in fact, for the greater good). You might not believe it when they say I Did What I Had to Do, but some will.

@360 To be fair, the Knight Templar page, at the moment, says that it is possible for one to be qualified for both tropes, although it's specifically listed as "resistant." TRS or admin fiat would be required to remove that.

Okay, the 10th is coming up soon, so I'll be requesting a lock on the Tabletop Games section then. I'm also going to request that image links be locked due to a flood of bad examples if nobody has any objections. Are there any other pages that we're satisfied with that can be locked?

There are a few bad examples on the Tabletop Games section still, so let me go in and whack those first.

Okay.

Also I think in every page we need a notice that let's people know to come here before editing.

I put one in all the main pages. There are a lot of work-specific subpages that I didn't have time to get to, but you can copy and paste my markup. We should also unify the formatting.

@354:

Judging by the video game section, it's pretty much already open season on Well-Intentioned Extremist types.

Problem is, the trope is defined by objective measures, but is considered subjective because of questions of morality. Perhaps much of this could be solved if the trope was measured by author intent rather than broader questions of good and evil?

edited 7th Dec '11 11:00:10 PM by OnagaIsComingToTown

The problem is that some Complete Monsters might not be intended to be such (or alternatively might be intended to be one but doesn't come across as such), which is why we have the objective criteria as it is. Word of God is going to be too much trouble in this instance.

Had to cut Rampage again. He has a Pet the Dog. He hates himself. His response to "you'll regret this" is to say "I regret everything my dear." He's arguably a Death Seeker. Not this. The cut was discussed and agreed upon before. This is the third time it's had to be done, second time I've had to do it. Can someone explain to the guy who said "that doesn't excuse his actions" that they don't have to?

edited 7th Dec '11 11:37:34 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

PM him, send a link here and request a lock on the page ASAP.

EDIT: Okay, I've decided to add the link to the forums on every subpage just so people get the message (in case they head directly to them). On that thought, I think we need a deadline for the cleanup on the video game section to motivate people to clean it up. I suggest two months, since that should be more than enough time for it, or at least the subpages. Most of them are pretty short, so if we split it up we could get through it in less than a week.

Example: I suggest that, since I've cleaned the Mass Effect page, that some of you check it out to see if any examples don't fit. If not, we take it back to the drawing board, fix it, repeat the process, then lock when we're all satisfied.

Thoughts?

Edit: I think the Monster/Fable , Monster/Fallout and Metal Gear sections are all ready for review.

edited 8th Dec '11 1:23:05 AM by Shaoken

{{366}}: "Judging by the video game section, it's pretty much already open season on Well-Intentioned Extremist types." If exist Well-Intentioned Extremist examples being listed, said examples must be removed.

I PM'd the guy and told him to bring it here if he wants to talk about it.

Okay, good.

So anyway, to reiterate my point I'm going to ask for a lock on the Tabletop Games tomorrow and Professional Wrestling sometime over the next four days, so if I could get some kind souls to look over those examples and see if they're good enough in your opinion. If there's a problem I'll delay my request for lockage and work on fixing them first.

Also, could I get someone to check out the following pages for feedback; Fable , Fallout , Mass Effect and Metal Gear , thanks in advance.

edited 8th Dec '11 3:10:05 PM by Shaoken

There's a whole lot of examples on Tabletop Games of people putting down entire factions. I don't know if they're right or not, but it certainly causes the list to look rather bloated. Should we be cutting it down to individual NPCs and the like? I don't mind comments about how say, any player who hits morality 0 is treated as a CM in White Wolf's games, because hey, that's what the Karma Meter is for, but the listing of entire factions, most of which are made up of faceless Mooks just seems kind of off to me.

Hmmm, do you want to bring up all the factions you think are bloating the list and we'll get a concenses about it?

For the record, I was planning on purging some of those "entire faction" entries when I got around to the cuts I'm planning for that page.

edited 8th Dec '11 6:05:16 PM by nrjxll