Subpages cleanup: Complete Monster

Wikipedia on Owen Crawford from Taken

edited 16th Oct '12 1:16:00 PM by SeptimusHeap

OK, preliminary entry for Gohda:

• Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex has Kazundo Gohda, director of the Cabinet Intelligence Service. A charmless, callous, and totally amoral manipulator, Gohda's (largely self-inflicted) inferiority complex and obsession with Great Man theory led him to kill hundreds with the terrorist-producing Individual Eleven virus, to come within inches of starting a genocidal war, and to try to nuke a crowded city-state half a mile off the coast of Japan just to show that he could. To give some impression of how severely he eclipses the other villains of the series in heinousness, one of his most minor crimes was to deliberately expose labourers to a dangerous work environment (he asked them to excavate a buried ruin, but didn't tell them it was a heavily-irradiated nuclear facility), and then cover it up with a string of murders. Someone else did something similar on much the same scale elsewhere in the series, and it became the driving force of most of the first season.

Reads alright for a first draft. You might add a few links to it, but I can't think of too much more that it needs.

After brief forays into anime and comics (and I'm still waiting more discussion on Nardo) I have returned to the literature page. Someone added this without coming here first.

• From Artemis Fowl we have the vicious pixie Opal Koboi who, not only instigates a gang war between fairies and goblins, kills Julius Root, attempts to trick the humans into devastating Haven, and attempts to destroy humanity to gain power among the very people she tried to kill earlier, but did all of this out of spite and malice at the main characters, Foaly in particular who beat her in a science fair in college.

It easily sounds like this could qualify, but there was no discussion of it here. I've pm'ed the author and asked him/her to come here and clarify it.

edited 16th Oct '12 5:35:48 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Sorry about that, I didn't know I needed to discuss it here. I'm kind of new to this .

Anyway, Opal Koboi is the antagonist of about half of the books in Artemis Fowl. She is the head of and founder of Koboi Laboratories and is well known for her attempts to gain power among the fairy world, usually by killing off the human race.

Her evil deeds include causing a gang war in Haven, killing Julius Root, the commander of the LEP recon (a fairy police force), while taunting Holly Short, a main character and a close friend to Julius Root, about it just to make her suffer, trying to murder everyone involved in stopping her previous plan, attempting to trick humanity into destroying the Fairy city of Haven,working with a group of extinctionists to become all powerful, causing a time paradox that devastates both the human world and the fairy world by murdering her past self, and attempting to destroy humanity with resurrected fairy warriors.

What really makes her so evil is that all of this is motivated by revenge on the heroes for impeding her ambitions and making her look inferior and sees no one as her equal. Practically everyone she sees is either a slave to her will, or an enemy to kill. Whats worse is that she tries so hard to make her enemies completely lose themselves in despair before she kills them.

Is that the clarification you were asking for?

edited 16th Oct '12 6:52:37 PM by metaghoul1

Welcome to the forum. Anyway, the way things work around here is that, thanks to rampant misuse of the trope all over the site, all new examples have to go through us. You come here, you tell us a) who the character is, b) what they've done, and c) how they fit our three criteria (which can be found on the main page for CM). The forum mulls it over, we vote on it, and if, after a few days, a majority of the forum is in favour, the example goes on the page.

Regarding your specific example, who is Julius Root? Why does she kill him? For that matter, what does she want revenge for? Assume when you make a post here that nobody has read the series, and that you must educate us.

Alright, Artemis Fowl: Opal Koboi, I've been meaning to bring her up.

Opal Counts.

Her Crimes:

In Book 2 she comes off as the lesser of the two evils, paired alongside Briar Cudgeon. Cudgeon plans to betray her and killer her "Ms. Koboi will have a tragic Accident, Perhaps several Tragic Accidents." She organizes the goblin rebellion, and plans to turn against them. She even drove her father to insanity by destroying him financially and taking all he ever knew. Holly and Artemis, the heroes, stop her.

Book 4 she really starts doing bad things. She sets up a complicated Gambit, where one of the leaders of that Goblin Uprising escapes. She escapes from prison by pretending to be in a coma, and replacing herself with a clone, something that was outlawed, because a clone is just a life created to be a non-person and die, and the ethics committee shot the idea down. Holly and her Chief, Root, find him but find he's been mesmerized (mind controlled). Opal reveals a television with a bomb on him, which attaches itself to Root, and smashes his ribs. Koboi tells Holly that the bomb has a weakspot, a red dot, So Holly shoots it. Root explodes, killing him and the general (Scalence, I believe his name was). She later admitted that there was no real weak spot, she just wanted Holly to do that, because she knew Holly took any risk in hopes of success. This act was just to screw with her, and to make it look like she'd shot Root and killed him. She then hypnotizes an old billionaire (One of the few whom the fairies seem to like because he's a big environmentalist), and has him send down a drilling probe which she would sabotage and direct into the Underground fairy city. She hoped that this would spark a war between the two races, which would ultimately allow her to seize power. This fails and she is imprisoned.

Book 6: Artemis and Holly travel back in time to find an endangered Lemur that Artemis had sold to a bunch of guys called the extinctions. They need the lemur because Artemis's mom had a fairie disease. It's revealed that the killing chamber for these endangered animals really is a cover-up for Opal and her henchmen to get the animal's blood and get more powers. She fights Artemis, and then uses the portal to get to the present before they do. She hides out before the book began, and uses her magic to make The mom have symptoms of the disease and therefore starting the whole events of the book. She's defeated, but she escapes in the present.

Book 8: Okay, this is kinda confusing, but this is where she really shows off her evil credentials. Present Opal has two sleeper agents capture Her past self, break her ankle and blind-fold her, and threaten to kill her unless her present self is released. The LE Precon (fairy police) do not, but they find that if Opal kills her past self, all sorts of bad stuff will happen. Among them, every thing she created or influenced (everything her past self did) will explode. Opal owns one of the largest machinery and software companies on earth. Opal herself would explode, the present one that is. We even get a look into the Past Self's mind, as she cries and begs her captors not to kill her, and she fears what will happen, Presnt!Opal calls her whiny.

That's as close to a Straight Alas, Poor Villain that she will get.

Artemis has the jailers shove Present!Opal into a volcanic vent that they use for transport, and has immense metalic shielding. When Past!Opal is killed, a huge influx of magic occurs. Presnt Opal is destroyed compleetly, but she is conscious as her material has not left the enclosed Vent. She reassembles herself with immense power.

Then all the consequences of that action. Power goes out all over the fairy world. Buildings and cars explode, thousands die. The LEP building nearly collapses. The Weapons that they still had from her company take out officers. She even had those two henchmen send out Koboi company cell phones to at least 60 officers, killing/maiming them so they could not interfere. She turns the fairy world into chaos, all so the armed forces would have to rescue the people. Now in the real world it's been revealed that her technology helped give some advances in the internet. Parts of her tech was sold to humans long ago, which has since been integrated into cars planes and hospitals. These parts that were influenced by her explode, crippling the planes in mid-air, knocking out global communications, and killing countless more humans.

She escapes, killing the volcanic shaft regulator in a humorous way (it involved the fact that her energy form does not have fingernails, and it was more a Dying Moment of Awesome for the guy than anything played for laughs).

She get's to the surface, kills her remaining henchman, and set's free a bunch of Fairy ghosts. Those Ghosts had been sealed for over 10,000 years, from the last time Humans and Fairies fought. She convinces them that Humans are still evil and ravage the planet (and shows them some of the factories and cars, and deforestation), convincing them to work for her, despite the fact that many want to just ascend (Being kept for so long has made their souls wear away). Koboi has them posses animals, children, and the Deutagonist's sister. They all try to stop Artemis Holly, and Artemis's butler... Butler. Holly even recognizes some of the spirits from the great war stories, the people here are remembered for making the ultimate sacrifice to keep the fairy kind safe. Opal manipulates them, and ultimately, she almost wins, save for the Heroes using her clone (which has her DNA) to cancel the procedure she was about to use to destroy the humans, and the ghost spirit stabs her in the heart. The closest she get's to an Alas, Poor Villain (I do not consider this an example, like her past self) is that the heroes lament that she was just so obsessed and petty, and she could not benefit the world at all, just being vengeful and hoping to seek power.

My fingers now hurt. That is why she qualifies.

EDIT: Whoops, you beat me to it, took so long to write this I didn't see you, Like Ambar said, welcome to the forum

EDIT: Whoops again, forgot a part. When prisoners go to jail, they have a chip embedded in them, which allow for tracking, and to stop them if they commit another crime. When she turns to energy, her chip is destroyed, but she controls over a hundred goblins, driving them near crazy with pain and delirium to attack Foaly's house (Foaly is her scientific rival, and foiled a few of her schemes). They were meant to kill his wife, to make him suffer.

edited 17th Oct '12 12:01:43 AM by DrPsyche

...what he said

Seriously though, good job, I even forgot about her attack on foaly's wife

edited 16th Oct '12 7:21:19 PM by metaghoul1

Wasn't there supposed to be a commented-out note about adding examples on each page?

Thank you. I forgot about the wife thing to when I first wrote it.

Can you elaborate on that?

On another Note Shortpacked

• Complete Monster: Amber's dad—he's physically and emotionally abusive, a massive philanderer, and he dragged his family into Mafia dealings. He's so bad that other characters with shitty fathers use Amber's dad as a point of comparison, with Robin saying her own cheating father is about .2 "Amber's Dad Units". The comic so unambiguously paints him as one of these that pretty much the only reason he's here and not on the main page is because this is a YMMV trope by default.

Okay, this example is important to me. Before I got onto this thread and learned about the specifics of a Complete Monster, I would have included him, I was even going to, but now, I believe that he doesn't count, and I give thanks to the thread and the contributers for helping me understand this.

First, and most importantly: Most of his abuse is Offstage Villainy.

Second: Yes, when he shows up, the comic got darker, and Amber was clearly afraid of him and was bullied into going with him. If memory serves, I believe that he punched her friend Ethan. He is played seriously.

He also had affairs with numerous women, and it's revealed that the employee and Amber's Coworker Faz is his illegitimate son.

Also, while this is a YMMV trope, it's not on the main page because, not only does he not count, but Our Milage does very much vary on CM's, and not because it's a default, but because we argue about it.

The Link falls under You Monster!, and isn't really telling for the trope, I will however give some points to the fact that the words it's linked to provide information enough so I don't have to click on it (I can infer that it's a scale)

Finally, this is a spinoff from a comic where an Alien kidnapped children and murdered a bunch of humans to spark a war with Humanity and an Always Chaotic Evil species of Martian... I'd say daddy dearest fails the Heinous standard.

Unless we get some more of his actions (which is unlikely seeing as he died), or get some brutal flashbacks, I'm saying we cut him.

Also, his name is Blaine, but everyone calls him Amber's Dad.

edited 16th Oct '12 10:41:19 PM by DrPsyche

It was in reference to this comment:

I'm pretty sure that we had decided earlier to have some measure - at least on the CM subpages themselves - for deterring the addition of examples that didn't go through this thread. My question is basically: what happened to it?

Well, I believe that Shaoken put the Double Parenthesis note on the Main CM page for people to know to run examples through us. I asked if we could put it on the page fully visible (Like the Transformers CM page), but I was told that Fast Eddie wants the Wiki to be used by anyone, not just editors, and the discussion like this is mostly an editor thing. Essentially, making the wiki smoother to read.

It's only on the main page?

In that case, I recommend we add it to the subpages.

I think it might apply to the subpages as well... But it's already on the Transfomers Subpage (That's how I found this thread), so I don't know.

edited 16th Oct '12 11:59:09 PM by DrPsyche

First off @ 32 Footsteps, I cut Ultron without discussing it because it wasn't an example, it was a line saying "if you know who this other character is, just think of Ultron as being him but Marvel." So straight away, nothing about the example as presented counted, so I cut it because having it on there just encourages more bad edits. I don't see the need to have to come in here for every one-line example and say "this example is terrible and has no detail, does anyone know if the character actually counts? If so we should expand it." Terrible non-examples or examples that blatantly go against the criteria (like the "no-redemption" clause).

Ultimately I don't really have an argument against Ultron being a Complete Monster, I would just like it if people would actually put some effort into these examples instead of throwing out garbage and us having to make the example.

As for the other one I cut (fun fact: I actually cut about six different examples that all blatantly violated one rule or another), the Quartet were written as a group and just seemed too damn generic. Murdering people in the Marvel Universe isn't even enough to get you on the Punisher's list. And none of them as individual qualifies: half of the X-Men's villians have brainwashed someone or tried (and had various sucess at) destroying schools, selling your brothers into slavery is a dick move but it's not enough, body horror against your partners is far from unique and torturing animals is just getting into evil is petty levels, and again disecting people and playing frankenstein has been done a lot.

To sum it up, none of them come close to the henious standard individually, and they were still all listed as a group.

Onto Reaver from Fable, he counts. He realised he did something horrible, but then decided that it was too late and dived head-first into being as horrible and decadent as he could.

It should be noted that, despite all he's done, Lionhead seems to love Reaver and constantly try to paint him in a good light, particularly in the third game. At least, that's what I've heard anyway.

Since when is being generic a non-criteria? Aren't Complete Monster-Villains in general pretty often generic? Don't see a point. Acoording to that, we'd have to cut half of the examples on the page (Romulus for example is pretty damn generic too, and a Villain Sue).

Now that I've listed their deeds, I see every criteria filled.

"The character is truly heinous by the standards of the story, which makes no attempt to present the character in any positive way. " Check. The fact that they are pre-teen kids underlines this fact even more.

"The character's terribleness is played seriously at all times, evoking fear, revulsion and hatred from the other characters in the story." Check. Wolverine even considered to outright slaughter them all.

"They are completely devoid of altruistic qualities. They show no regret for their crimes." Check. No regret, just lust for power and money. And having fun in spreading terror.

Read the FAQ in the first post. Being a member of a group means you can't qualify. That is an absolute rule.

I don't intend to post them as a group again.

Then each one has to qualify individually on their own merits, not on the basis of membership in a group or actions taken by other members of that group.

edited 17th Oct '12 7:58:43 AM by Fighteer

(Ignore the first paragraph then) I posted their personal deeds in 3843.

The point seems to be that they fail the heinous test because their acts are par for the course for villains in that universe. None of them stands out in any particular way. You have to be exceptional not just in an absolute sense but in a relative sense for the story you're a part of.

@3843 The problem is that, in the Marvel Universe, there are many worse actions than that. Hell, Magneto has done worse than many of those. I have to vote no on all four.

@3849 Taking a quick look on various villains, we have Mano, who destroyed his planet Angtu with his powers, Kivuun Roxas basically killed off all of Element Lad's race, and arguably Garlak of Khundia (depends on just how far his "conquering" was going to go, which read a bit vague to me). Nardo looks comparatively non-heinous next to those three, although I'll grant that he would otherwise qualify.

@3852 Other than adding a couple appropriate tropes as pot holes, I think that's good.

@3856 That looks like it has enough detail to qualify, although you will need to make sure to sort out what's actually her evil deeds (tricking someone into doing an action that would murder another, convincing a bunch of ghosts to go homicidal on humanity) and what look to be incidental deeds (it's not clear just how much she is to blame for the tech-going-out issue from the above description).

@3859 I'm willing to let Shortpacked slide on the heinousness scale, since the comic does mostly try to divorce itself from the level of seriousness that Its Walky dealt with (much Lighter and Softer, not that it's all that hard). That said, much of the character's deeds being Offscreen Villainy, so I believe he should be removed.

@3864 Look, I agree with all of the removals that you did (and removing groups at this point is pretty uncontroversial), but one problem we have is for some folks freelancing and handling things without going through the thread. We've got to hold ourselves to the same standards that we expect other people to conform to.

@3866 The problem with being non-specific is that it does absolutely nothing to show why a character qualifies. We're trying to make it so that all characters are obvious qualifiers, even if the reader has never seen anything from the work in question before.

If these new rules are the only way you can qualify for being a Complete Monster, why are there more than 1 examples on all of these subpages? Plese don't assume I'm using this trope for Entry Pimping reasons(I don't even know how someone goes about doing that) I would just like some clarification.

Because more than one person can meet the "heinous" requirement. It's not necessarily modelled on the literally worst villain of a work, it also includes general setting standards.

Okay, thanks for clearing that up.