Subpages cleanup: Complete Monster

It depends. Usually it's a sign of enough amiability for a Worthy Opponent that indicates a redeeming trait, but there have been cases where it was influenced primarily by pride. For example, we've qualified a character from Sons of Anarchy who calmly accepted his death mostly as a "screw you!" to his arch-rival.

@ Scraggle: Well, to clarify, I mean when the story has the All Just a Dream elements so buried in subtext that it can be interpreted at face value. I don't suppose the reveal just being an Ass Pull or Shocking Swerve would be enough for that. After all, we've disqualified plenty of villains who were given out-of-nowhere redeeming traits, comicbook villains excepted.

edited 5th Jul '15 5:31:43 AM by Morgenthaler

@ST89: Usually it's not. It all depends on the situation, similar to Alas, Poor Villain. If the CM in question isn't remorseful over what he/she did before death, and if the CM isn't willingly letting his/herself die for the sake of some kind of atonement, then no. He/She is still a CM.

On the 456 issue, the current entry reads the 456 aliens as the monster. If it is a single alien or collective entity then a note should be made to clarify as such. No groups or organizations is one of our defining rules so the entry comes across as quite confusing.

I would contest that there necessarily has to be an element of remorse to it for it to be redeeming; accepting defeat so calmly is usually a sign that, if anything, the villain is not a Sore Loser who has to go out with a Dying Declaration of Hate or a last desperate attack.

Take Tom Cruise's character Vincent in Collateral. He's a contract killer who throughout the movie racks up an impressive bodycount and intends to kill pretty much every other character, but at least has enough grace to admit when he's defeated. I'd expect a CM to be much more spiteful in that moment if they're truly and utterly selfish.

edited 5th Jul '15 6:35:08 AM by Morgenthaler

You guys might want to take a look at what Diabolic Code is doing to Scar's Complete Monster entry (and the rest of the YMMV page for that mater) on YMMV.The Lion King. I'm pretty sure that information was only All There in the Manual and did not justify killing his own brother.

edited 5th Jul '15 8:58:43 AM by SatoshiBakura

Thanks, mate. Just removed that.

Morgen: I'll go through your list soon, and I'll do effortposts for those of the things I know that haven't had those adequately. I'll also note ones that had effortposts and were voted up. Kerrigor from the Old Kingdom was actually brought up the day I first joined the thread by Ambar, and was handily voted up, so that's one I believe that can be removed.

Oh, and Morgenthaler, while I pothole, I DO try to avoid having them linked together.

It's the over-abundance of them that's the problem, and that you're doing it all the time. You've almost made a game out of "how many vaguely appropriate potholes can I fit in there?", which you really don't seem to understand is not encouraged; we have a whole style article on the issue. You've also been politely asked to stop adding sinkholes that turn almost the whole entry blue several times before. The real question you need to ask is "does this pothole interupt the flow of the entry unnecessarily?". If you find yourself wanting to add more than 10 or so, it becomes a glut that turns off the average reader.

Just look at how an average trope entry anywhere else on the wiki is written. Not every mention of "does evil for fun" is potholed to For the Evulz. Not every mention of "the bad guy" is potholed to Big Bad. Not every mention of "narcissistic" is potholed to Narcissist. It's because a road full of potholes is hard to travel.

edited 5th Jul '15 10:42:19 AM by Morgenthaler

Well, I'll try to do better. I've just de-potholed some of this week's entries.

edited 5th Jul '15 11:40:24 AM by ACW

I made this image◊, which I think may be a better fit for the American Horror Story page. I think it's pretty straightforward, but for clarity's sake, the sequence shows Dandy Mott having cut off an Avon Lady's head, and having sewn it onto his dead mother's shoulder to create a giant corpse puppet. The caption could be something like

Dandy Mott: "Now you're my puppet, mother."

That's what he says in that scene.

And here's◊ another image I made for Katz from Courage. For the Image Links.

edited 5th Jul '15 4:14:11 PM by PostalDude47

Here is the old write up:

KGB:

• Verto and his gang. Their modus operandi is to lure women to their apartment under the pretense of giving them a job in Hollywood. They then film themselves raping, torturing, and murdering the woman. They blackmailed an innocent man into disposing of the corpses by abducting and raping his daughter, and then threatening to release pictures of her.

My rewrite:

• KGB: Verto lures women into his apartment under the pretense of giving them roles as actresses in his movies. He and his gang than rape, torture, and kill the women. Verto and his gang than make snuff films out of it and sell them to other criminals. He blackmailed a man into helping him dispose of the bodies by raping his daughter and threatening to release photos of it. Verto also intends to torture and kill Rukov after he and his gang find out that he is onto them.

edited 5th Jul '15 4:14:35 PM by bobg

Honestly, that picture of Katz would go much better as the image for Cartoon Network, because the current picture is... lacking.

Speaking of Courage, time to present a villain I've had on my mind for a while; on behest of someone else I won't mention due to privacy issues, enter Fusilli.

Who is Fusilli? What has he done?

Fusilli is the antagonist of the self-tited season one episode The Great Fusilli. The premise is that Fusilli is a magician who owns a traveling magic stage, with fantastical elements like an audience that isn't even there. Fusilli comes to Nowhere to lure Muriel, Eustace, and Courage onto the stage to perform. The three are naturals; although Courage is kicked around by Fusilli for a little bit, he eventually blends into the role and manages to help his owners with an act. After said act, Courage accidentally stumbles onto a door and the truth is revealed.

A dozen or so (at least eleven) human-sized puppets are seen in this room, hanging lifelessly from the ceiling with expressions of horror of their face. Just what these puppets are is revealed; Fusilli uses magical puppet strings to turn those performing onto the stage into lifeless puppets, essentially killing them; he then uses these puppets for his own amusement. Fusilli successfully manages to turn Muriel and Eustace into these puppets and tries to do the same with Courage, but ends up falling onto his own stage, where he's turned into a puppet by his own strings. The episode ends with Courage controlling the Muriel-Eustace puppets in a sort of reenactment of the beginning. This carries dark implications that have been theorized, but for clarity; Muriel and Eustace are dead puppets (as well as everyone else Fusilli has taken) and Courage now controls his life as a puppeteer. Negative Continuity undoes it all, but damn.

Any mitigating factors?

Fusilli doesn't have that much competition, but let's go over it anyways. Most of the one-shot villains usually have some sort of supernatural element to them, but are mostly relegated to trying to kill the heroes. Fusilli's unique because he's actually got an explicit body count; including Muriel and Eustace, he's got at least twelve victims. He's a fantastic serial killer, of sorts. Yes, he successfully nabs both Muriel and Eustace, but I won't dwell on that because, again, Negative Continuity.

As for the heinous standard, the only other two serial killers that come to mind are the zombie killer pair from Everyone Wants To Direct and Katz himself. Benton Tarantella and Van Volkheim have roughly as many victims (the show explicitly states they've killed twelve before) but there discounted because firstly, they've got kind of a Vitriolic Best Buds thing going on (they argue, but Tarantella is quite dedicated on reviving his partner) and Negative Continuity actually manages to make them less heinous; the next episode where Tarantella appear in completely changes his character and removes the whole "serial killer" thing, whereas Fusilli (who, due to his similar bodycount, is just as heinous) is a one-shot and isn't disqualified due to Negative Continuity. As for Katz, who always has that kind of trend with him, two things; I don't believe Katz had an explicit body count (he was a serial killer, but how many he managed to kill is uncertain) and he's got more resources and far more screentime to establish his evil than Fusilli anyways. It seems somewhat unfair to compare a minor villain to the Big Bad, Fusilli managing to stand out anyways.

Aside from that, given the nature of the show, Fusilli isn't played for laughs and has a pretty nasty modus operandi; the scene where Courage finds the bodies of those Fusilli has turned into puppets is quite dark, and there's little ambiguity to the survival of them anyways.

Final verdict?

As vile as Katz or not, Fusilli is one of the darker one-shot villains of the show. I haven't watched that much Courage so my knowledge on the other villains and how heinous they are is fairly limited, but I feel Fusilli stands out in his own right. Whether or not he counts as a Complete Monster I really don't know, but I'll leave that to you guys. Thoughts?

edited 5th Jul '15 5:04:32 PM by Scraggle

Edited: After thinking about it, I retract my vote for Fusilli. I'm not sure what I think at this point. I abstain for now.

edited 5th Jul '15 5:26:30 PM by PostalDude47

Wanted to ask thoughts about an example I came across which I think is a bad one- On Dial M for Murder:

• Complete Monster: Tony may have a semi-understandable reason for wanting to murder Margot (she's having an affair), but he's disturbingly cheerful about the whole thing, especially the way he kisses her and pats her on the cheek with a hearty "Good-bye, dear" when he's leaving her for (he thinks) the last time.

I don't think he's heinous enough, as he just tries to kill one person, his wife- initially by hiring someone to kill her and then, when she kills the assassin, doing Xanatos Speed Chess and framing her for murder (which is nastier than his original plan). And when you factor in murderers in various Hitchcock films, he doesn't really stand out.

Also, I know this is more YMMV, but Tony comes off as (or at least seems to be presented as) a genuinely affable guy whose only flaw is wanting to murder his wife. He's even a Graceful Loser when he's foiled at the end of the film.

Edit- I say it's more YMMV because there are of course complete monsters (i.e. the recently discussed Blaine) who have a likable and casual manner. But in those cases, you're talking about characters that are way more heinous in terms of the quantity and quality of their evil actions.

edited 5th Jul '15 6:42:39 PM by Hodor2

Speaking of such, we have Owen Davian...
Like the new Katz image.
If that dude's only a starter villain, how bad are the others?

Tony Wendice? He's not at all a CM. He's a real piece of work and an attempted wife killer, but not truly heinous enough and yes, a guy who accepts defeats and even offers drinks to the people who caught him is easily disqualified.

I'm not completely sure if this is a quote or just a summary of his attitude, but part of his motivation is British Stuffiness to the end that he feels committing murder isn't as bad as/is more "gentlemanly" than making a scene/pursuing divorce.

edited 5th Jul '15 7:34:05 PM by Hodor2

On Tony. One attempted murder isn't enough to push him through the heinous standard. His Graceful Loser moment might also disqualify him.

Yeah. I'll go ahead and delete it by tomorrow.

One other factor is that Swann, the guy who Tony hires as an assassin, is potentially worse (and Tony has a (hypocritical) distaste for him).

Swann is an all around bounder and habitually creates false identities and seduces wealthy, lonely women- leaving them after he's robbed them blind. In one recent instance (which Tony uses to blackmail Swann), he got his victim addicted to drugs and gained a hold through supplying her. She died of an overdose and it's sort of ambiguous whether this was "natural causes" or if Swann murdered her.

edited 5th Jul '15 8:33:08 PM by Hodor2

Tony

@ Scraggle: I have one problem with Fussile qualifying: While Katz has no confirmed tally for the number of people he has killed, in his fourth appearance, Katz Under The Sea, he plans to blow up a bunch of submarines so that his own submarine business gets all the customers. While we only see him try and destroy one submarine, he states that he plans to do I again and again, giving him an attempted bodycount in the hundreds.

Read what I said about comparing a minor villain to the Big Bad.

I kind of want to hear a second firsthand opinion on Fusilli, because from that writeup and what I know of Courage the Cowardly Dog, I'm not 100 percent convinced yet that he wasn't played for Black Comedy.

No on Tony. No on Fusili.

for Fusilli. He wasn't played for laughs.