Subpages cleanup: Complete Monster

More or less. Genuine love is always a disqualifying factor. Possessive love — lust, jealousy, etc. — is not a disqualifying factor. It doesn't guarantee that the character is a CM, but it is not a strike against.

edited 5th Oct '15 7:18:53 AM by Fighteer

Don't forget Bellatrix.
Also, Overfiend, the work that is to hentai-like to have a TV Tropes page.
Austin and Scraggle, could you please put the new writeups on YMMV.Coraline?

edited 5th Oct '15 7:25:40 AM by ACW

@ Hodor, no Overlord isn't an adaption or cleaned up version of anything. Though the magic system in it is pretty blatantly based off of Dungeons and Dragons.

Since we're on the topic of differentiating between genuine love and possessive love, I'm going to bring up a character I'm been thinking about for a while. Here is an effort post on Arklem Greeth, a lich and one of the antagonists of the Forgotten Realms novel The Pirate King.

Who is he?

Arklem Greeth is one of the antagonists (though not the titular character) of The Pirate King, the second book in the Transitions series of the Legend of Drizzt saga. Greeth is an extremely powerful lich and a member of the generally evil or at least morally ambiguous order of mages known as the Arcane Brotherhood. Greeth is the much feared Archmage Arcane and leads the branch in the port city of Luskan, while also serving as the city's de facto ruler. Residing in the Brotherhood's magical fortress, the Hosttower, Greeth is the reason why Luskan is one of the setting's worst WretchedHives.

What has he done?

In order to secure power for himself and the Arcane Brotherhood, Greeth allied with and empowered the five local pirate lords and turned Luskan into a haven from which the worst rapists and murderers in the realms could plunder the entire coastline without fear of reprisal. Although, Greeth ensures that everyone knows that he is the true power in the city by brutally punishing anyone who makes even the smallest cross against the Brotherhood. One such example involved sending some of his wizards out to burn down a man's home with him and his family still in it simply because the man pickpocketed a drunk mage's money to feed his family. It's worth noting the fireball caused a lot of collateral damage and killed many more unaffiliated people, but it served Greeth's purposes well as it sent a message to the pirate lords.

It's also revealed the Greeth had plans for dominating many of the lands around Luskan by sowing chaos throughout the region. One method was to cause the aforementioned piracy because it weakened the sea lanes along the Sword Coast. Another far more insidious plan involved allying with the Lawful Evil Baatezu and sending them as his envoys to try and recruit the orcs of the Kingdom of Many Arrows. This is noteworthy because, in the last novel, the orcs had made peace with the local dwarves and humans and had established their own kingdom. Greeth didn't need their help; he only wanted to break the alliance and create chaos to capitalize on.

The former action inspired the pirate hunter, and close friend of main character Drizzt Do'urden, Captain Duedermont to ally with a noble of the great city of Waterdeep to invade Luskan and depose the pirates and their benefactor. The latter action is what causes Drizzt and his friends to get involved in the events of the novel. Regardless, Drizzt and Duedermont rendevous and work together to unseat Greeth and destroy the Arcane Brotherhood. The battles in Luskan grow fierce but the pirate lords and the local civilian population remain neutral for as long as they can.

It's during this time we learn just how evil Greeth really is. As punishment for not helping to fight off the "invaders," Greeth travels to the ancient and warded section of the city with the sole purpose of releasing the ghouls and other undead trapped within. The undead, under Greeth's command, attack both Duedermont's forces and the civilian populace. Enough innocent people die that the event is forever after referred to as the Night of Endless Screams. This turns the civilian population of Luskan against the Brotherhood and they lose ground. During this time, we also learn Greeth is something of a Bad Boss. He regularly threatens his Dragon, Valindra Shadowmantle, with death if she doesn't comply with his orders. He finally outright orders the rest of his loyal forces to make a Last Stand to give Greeth enough time to prepare an escape for himself.

Shortly before he flees, Greeth does make a brief appearance on the battlefield and shows off how sadistic he is towards his enemies. He forces Drizzt through a portal to the Abyss to remove him from the battle and buries Captain Duedermont alive. While they both manage to survive, most of Luskan's civilian populace is not so lucky. Greeth sets up his own pocket dimension to teleport to another location while also sending out devastating waves of magical energy. This last act of spite towards the people of Luskan leaves thousands dead and the city never truly recovers. After his escape, Greeth collects the corpse of Valindra and turns her into a lich as well, much to her horror.

Valindra doesn't take well to the process and collapses into a coma. Jarlaxle Baenre, the true architect of the novel's events, offers to help Valindra in exchange for Greeth stopping food from coming into Luskan and thus securing Duedermont's role as Governor. Greeth accomplishes this by tracking down the ship's ferrying supplies from Waterdeep and unleashing aquatic ghouls ghouls to slaughter the crews before setting the ships on fire. In the novel's climax, when the pirate lords backed by Jarlaxle drive Duedermont from the city, Greeth takes the opportunity for one last act of petty vengeance. He destroys Duedermont's legendary ship, the Sea Sprite, to ensure Duedermont cannot escape his demise. Greeth then meets his demise in a Wizard Deul against Duedermont's friend Robillard, but survives thanks to Valindra keeping his phylactery safe.

Heinous standard?

The level of his crimes is not in anyway an issue. Causing the deaths of thousands of innocent people easily put him on the level of the other Legend of Drizzt monsters such as Matron Baenre.

Redeeming Qualities?

This can be tricky to determine and why I brought up this character since we were talking about what defines actual genuine love. It is shown throughout the novel that Greeth has a creepy obsession with Valindra Shadowmantle. He raises her as a lich to be with him forever and even sides with Jarlaxle to keep her from staying dead in her magical coma. Some of the novel's more interesting sections show inside his head and he appears genuinely distressed. But, if he truly loved her he would not have sent her to her death to raise her. Wanting her to stay alive would have shown he loved hr as a person. In the end, it's also made clear he also values her as an assistant since she keeps his phylactery safe.

Final Verdict?

In terms of crimes and sadism, he would absolutely count in most cases. This issue of his love was ambiguous enough for me after reading the novel that I wasn't even sure he was worth discussion. I'm still not entirely sure if it's the kind of love that would disqualify him as his sole redeeming trait like the Lord Regent from Dishonored or it's like Bellastrix or Volgin and isn't genuine or a disqualifier. I made the effort post to see what you all think.

@ACW, the page for Batman looks good. For the Superman page, one of Mongul's lines from "For The Man Who Has Everything" might do for a quote. Something like "Happy Birthday, Kryptonian. I give you oblivion." or his line (that I cannot fully remember) about how removing the Black Mercy was like Superman ripping off his own arm. The story shows Mongul at his absolute worst; there oughta be a line in there that sums up Complete Monsterdom. For the DC page, I'm not nuts about the pic (purely aesthetic reasons) or the caption (just doesn't feel right), but that's just me.

On a different subject, way back on page 1736, I proposed Zachary Comstock, the Big Bad from BioShock Infinite. I don't think I did a very good job on the effort post. Would it be okay if I took another crack at it?

One last thing, and this is just a question, does anybody keep track of "wait and see" possible CMs? You know, characters who don't yet qualify, but might later on (I'm thinking specifically of Euron Greyjoy, Roose Bolton, the Night's King, and Yellow Diamond), given more appearances. This isn't overly important, I'm just curious.

edited 5th Oct '15 1:25:17 PM by DeCarta

I keep track of Lighty's watchlist; don't know about others.

Bill, Skull Face, and Monaka

Unsure on Horton. Does serial child molestation meet the baseline?

Greeth

I'm keeping an eye on Book!Roose Bolton, but am unfamiliar with the others at the moment.

edited 5th Oct '15 1:46:33 PM by DemonDuckofDoom

I don't use watchlists.

Serial child molestation would seem to qualify.

If possessive love isn't disqualifying, then why wasn't Mother Gothel approved again?

Insufficiently heinous, as I recall. Keeping a girl locked up in a tower and trying to murder one person are a pretty low bar for Disney villains.

Anymore votes on Horton and Bill?

Gonna Horton

to Bill and Horton. Neither of them come close to the baseline; a single rape does not a Monster make unless your name happens to be Le Tenia (and even then, he had other stuff to push him far enough to become a CM).

And I'm sorry, ACW, but do we really need two different writeups to what basically amounts to the exact same character? It's really not necessary.

I could go either way.
As for Le Tenia, does he have other actions? His writeup only mentions the rape and assault. That rape must be REALLY bad then.

It lasts for literally nine minutes. Onscreen. In one take.

Okay, allow me to play Devil's Advocate, and I'm probably fighting a losing battle, but just because we (ahem) see all of it, does that make it worse when qualifying for CM than a rape we don't see all of but is still onscreen (even if Rape Discretion Shot)?

So did we discuss Genesis (from Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII) or not? If we didn't, I'll do a effortpost on him shortly.

Most of the time if you see a rape of a child onscreen it's almost enough to qualify unless you're out-heinoused by other villains like Joe from Dolores Claiborne having to compete with nearly every other villain in the King verse being worse.

edited 5th Oct '15 3:48:52 PM by Klavice

You have the search Engine. If not, feel free.

Horton is like a single episode character for a Very Special Episode, right?

If yes, I'd lean toward . The thing is, when you are talking about a multi-episode comedy/drama series, you can't have a Complete Monster without fundamentally altering the tone. And so I almost consider him and other "single episode villains" to be practically noncanonical.

If he had a greater appearance and/or the effects of his actions were felt in subsequent episodes then maybe he would count.

edited 5th Oct '15 3:57:35 PM by Hodor2

Very Special Episode villains on principle.

@Scraggle: It wasn't a single rape on either of their parts. The police claimed they saw pictures at his shop of several other children he's drugged and molestated. We also get on screen pictures of him showing Arnold and his friend kids he went skinny dipping with. As has Bill been claimed to have raped or attempted it at least on other women.

@Hodor2: Yes they were both two-parters of two Very Special Episode but we have let one-shot villains like this before, and yes their episodes did drastically alter the tone of the series, I think enough where tey could count.

To Horton. Horton does not sound nearly as bad as most other pedophiles. A lot of pedophiles violently rape their targets andor kill them afterward. If a child molester does not kill their targets and is not really violent with them, then they are not really even evil so much as they are disgusting. From what I am hearing, Horton would have just let the kid go afterward.

edited 5th Oct '15 4:11:33 PM by bobg

Well I did some digging and as it turns out... Genesis Rhapsodos has a few mitigating qualities unfortunately. While he is a Villain Sue and Jerk Sue on the same level as Sephiroth, he did kill Angeal and Zack, and is very similar to Sephiroth (being essentially a red haired Sephiroth) he nonetheless was betrayed and abandoned by his parents. Like Kuja, Genesis is also a prototype who was shunted for a much more efficient prototype giving him a valid Freudian Excuse. So yeah, he's an obvious no. I see no reason to discuss him. Sorry guys, I thought I had another candidate from the Final Fantasy series. Oh and unlike Hojo and Sephiroth, because he's pretty he gets away with everything. Yeah, Square loves their pretty boy Karma Houdinis don't they?

However, I do have this to say: Did we discuss Game!Ridley since the manga where he massacres and devours Samus' parents is more or less canon? Considering he's killed a ton of people throughout the games, (all of whom were innocent bystanders) I'd say an effortpost is required and he's got a shot.

Also, if Very Special Episode villains are a no, then shouldn't we rediscuss Verminous Skumm? He's done some other nasty things, but his worst crimes was trying to spread AIDS, taunting a kid with HIV and getting everyone to hate him. Or is he an exception?

edited 5th Oct '15 4:15:50 PM by Klavice

Well, considering MOST eps of Captain Planet were "special." And Skumm tried to get humans to nuke each other...I'd say he counts.