Subpages cleanup: Complete Monster

On the great Beckett debate, I have a few thoughts. Throughout the debate, I've seen people's ideas about history, what the film wants to say, and what it actually ends up saying, colliding.

First off, on the historical context, lightysnake is more or less right. I'm in a course on the history of piracy right now, and hanging children, the way Beckett does, was rare. Even in this time period there was an expectation that kids were not as culpable as their elders, so right away that makes Beckett bad. He's also right in that, in this time period, piracy and regular commerce are tied up to the point where Beckett's plans to hang anybody even associated with piracy, would have resulted in thousands of deaths. The problem is, while this is historically true, we don't know how true it is within the world of Pirates of the Carribean. If whole buccaneer villages are being wiped out, I don't recall seeing it, which would make it Offscreen Villainy at best

As to what the film wants, I think the film wants us to believe that Beckett is the most evil guy around. He's an unlikeable Smug Snake, he has no good qualities, his hanging of the kid is portrayed (successfully I thought) as a Moral Event Horizon. The film wants us to think he's worse then Barbossa, Davy Jones, etc.

The problem is when we get to the message the film actually sends. While it wants us to think Beckett is worse then Barbossa or Jones, I just don't see it. We've seen Barbossa put a whole town to the sword. We've seen how nightmarish life is on Jones' ship, and the sorts of things his crew get up to. While the movie wants us to think that Beckett is worse then they are, it doesn't sell that message very well. Pirates clearly are a problem. They clearly are killing a lot of people. The ocean would be better without them. The arrival of their version of Blackbeard in the fourth film, only muddies the waters further, as he's objectively worse then Barbossa and Jones, and I would contend, objectively worse then Beckett.

In the final analysis, I think that, taking historical context, the film's intended message, and what actually got shown into account, Beckett is a near miss. He's without good qualities. He's well over the Moral Event Horizon, and the only way the film will end on a high note is if he leaves us (which he does). He is not, however, notably worse then his competition (just less likeable), and the sequel introduces an even worse antagonist. His Alas, Poor Villain at the end, was, to my mind, effective, and made it possible to sympathise with him, even if just for a second, as he dies. It is possible to see him as a very dark Well-Intentioned Extremist, and even if you don't, he just isn't enough worse then his enemies.

edited 4th Feb '13 6:08:10 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Basically summed up every reason I vote cut.

RE: the literary examples @ 8072 :

Vlad Tepes of Count And Countess - The example given doesn't meet minimum heinousness, cut

Lord Loss from Darren Shan's The Demonata - Specific crimes are needed, if none are provided by someone who is familiar with the work, cut

Fred from King Scratch - Fred doesn't seem to have much in the way of onscreen heinous acts, cut unless a good case by someone who knows the book is made

General Entwistle from King Scratch- The example mentions that he only shows up in flashbacks and I am concerned about how much of that is actually onscreen. I agree with Ambar that the General might have potential but unless someone comes forward with an expansion then it should be cut for now.

RE: Beckett : From what I have seen of the series and from the discussion I don't think that he outshines the other villains and therefore misses on the heinous by the standards of the story requirement.

Regarding Ambar's post, the reason I disagree:

We do see enormous lines to the gallows, so clearly a ton of people are being executed, and a lot of these people are dressed...not as pirates, but cooks, bar wenches, etc. the presence of so many women alone is an eyebrow raiser as women weren't even allowed on voyages in most cases, so Beckett is certainly killing a ton of people, particularly as we see people being hanged before the kid is put up

And the issue with the pirates being evil...well, logically yes, but look at Sao Feng, who's doing nothing but chilling in Singapore, ruling his territory. Only the Black Pearl was ever mentioned as the horrible marauder and the reasons for that were Barbossa and his crews' hunt for the gold to turn themselves human.

As bad as Jones is, he's far more limited. He preys on shipwrecks with pretty limited victims and he's shown to have sympathetic qualities. He sinks a few ships and likely has others, but most of his actions in the third film are because Beckett has enslaved him and orders him to be his personal attack dog. Also, bad as Jones' ship is, that's not intentional per se. His neglect of his duties has done that to the Dutchman, but he didn't set out to personally make life hell on board. As bad as Barbossa and Jones are, neither ever goes to the length of killing children, and if we take the supplemental material into account, he's a slaver as well.

I can't objectively argue against his death scene save to say my heart is apparently harder than Ambar's as I could only feel satisfaction

edited 4th Feb '13 6:45:13 PM by Lightysnake

Needless to say I Ambar's post. I was thinking about it, and I think that rather ridiculously, the films treat being a pirate like (say) belonging to a certain religion, holding a certain political belief, etc- as if piracy is a personal belief that it is evil to persecute

One other thing, I'm not sure if he should be used as a comparison, as the continuity is murky, but outside of Jones and Barbossa (who arguably do worse things, but do have redeeming qualities) Blackbeard in the fourth movie strikes me as being a worse person than Beckett

edited 4th Feb '13 7:11:28 PM by Hodor

I also agree with Ambar's reason for cutting Beckett.

Also, I missed some of the Teen Titan examples earlier: Blackfire is an easy cut; she simply doesn't do enough to qualify compared to some of the other villains. (She tries to take over a planet. And kill her sister when her sister tries to stop her. And that's about it. For reference, Trigon very nearly succeeded in wiping out all life on earth and would have moved on to other planets if not stopped.)

Regarding Slade: I'm not sure. He does seem to have at least a bit of a moral code (after all, he could have killed Robin in "The End" instead of letting them part ways), which I think might be enough to disqualify him.

Damien and the nanny from The Omen are listed. Do they qualify?

Also, Dr. Viper and Dark Kat from SWAT Kats are listed with no detail.

Add a vote to Beckett. He is just not heinous enough arguably pales compared to Blackbeard, and there is the fact that villains who weren't as bad or redeemed themselves did more onscreen, and frankly, if you are a soft-hearted person, even in monstrous examples like him who do not deserve pity, his death comes off as Alas, Poor Villain, and, it is arguable from an ultraconservative point of view(let's not get into it through), he can be seen as a very dark Knights Templar.

So, through he would qualify in other works, cut for not being as heinous.

edited 4th Feb '13 8:03:18 PM by xie323

An aside, but being a Knight Templar is not a disqualifier from being a Complete Monster.

Alright, gonna try to give a write up for the live action versions of Kanryu Takeda and Jin-E Udo from the Rurouni Kenshin live action movie:

• Kanryu Takeda likes to pass himself off as an successful businessman and an example of what the Japanese can accomplish in the new era of the Meiji. However, below that he is a oppressive drug lord who takes glee in finding, then murdering, police informants and putting them in the open so people could find. He also directly murders through Jin-E an entire department of the police while chasing after Megumi Takani who he had forced to make his brand new opium. Note-to test the new opium as well he kidnapped users off the street, locked them in his secret room in his office, and saw how far they degraded while under his new drug. All with a smile on his face. However his worst act is when he learns Megumi is taking shelter in the Kamiya Dojo and after Kenshin refused to be bought by him:he poisons an entire district all around the Kamiya Dojo. If it wasn't for Megumi, there'd be hundreds, if not thousands of deaths directly on his hands.

• Jin-E Udo seems like a normal Psycho for Hire, but he doesn't murder and kill for profit. He just likes to kill. When he pulled himself out of the mountain of corpses he accumulated in the Battle of Toba Fushimi, he took up Kenshin's killing sword as his own. And for ten years, he's committed murders in Kenshin's name-calling himself Hitokiri Battosai to strike fear into people. When he storms the police department on the trail of Megumi Takani, he could have easily just evaded the officers. He didn't, he went and purposely started a Nightmare Fuel attack on the station and left a gory tapestry of death, even messing with one officer with his 'Shino Ippo' to force him to stand still as Jin-E impaled him slowly to savor it. In the last act of the film he kidnapped Kaoru while Kenshin was saving Megumi from Kanryu. When Kenshin showed up, he first kicked Kaoru down a stone staircase to make sure she'd hit every step just to piss Kenshin off, and then using the Shino Ippo he paralyzed her lungs. Again, just to piss Kenshin off. And when Kaoru broke through it with her own spirit and after Kenshin had shattered his elbow, Jin-E has the last laugh by stabbing himself just to spite Kenshin and spit on his Thou Shall Not Kill code.

edited 4th Feb '13 8:22:09 PM by SuperSaiyaMan

Excellent, those two finally posted

@Ambar: Great job, I was on the fence about Beckett before, but now I agree, cut him.

Re: Cartoon Network

Krytus: He started a war between his people (Red Sentients) and his sister's (Blue Sentients), and killed most of his sister's populace. He kills his former dragon and tries to kill the heroes. At the very end, he even wants to restart the war, despite both sides wanting to end it. He has as much moral agency as the other Red Sentients (who, admittedly are stated to be more warlike, but even they stopped fighting).

When I brought up Drusa, I wanted to hold off on Atrocitous and the Anti-Monitor, the former has a Freudian Excuse, but does some terrible things, but future previews show he will re-emerge in the show and Fight Carol Ferris, so I'd reserve Judgement, and the latter just had his Big Bad position Hijacked, but he might (I stress this might) re-appear.

Him: Nightmare Fuel does not Equal Complete Monster. Also, he's too pleasant or funny to count.

Fred Jones, Sr. : He's Horrible Douche, but does he love Fred? He saves Fred, but Fred's parents (who are very shifty themselves) state it was because he needed Fred Alive to bargain with them. Also, on his Twitter, the creator responded to a question of whether or not Fred Sr. loved his son with a "Wait and see." Too ambiguous, so cut.

Blackfire: Cut

Trigon: Only time he was played for laughs was in New Teen Titans, and I wouldn't count that against him in the main series.

So is Trigon a keep or a cut? It was kind of ambiguous from what you said.

Also I agree with the arguments on Beckett. I was for him, but now I'm against him.

Also thinking back, I'm thinking of switching to keep for Slade. The problem is getting someone who watched Teen Titans/read the comics enough to tell us what he's done in a nutshell.

edited 5th Feb '13 11:54:23 AM by Klavice

There's a serious edit needed for the Toriko part in Anime and Manga. Here's what it is listed as currently:

• The key members of Bishokukai organization from Toriko, at least those who had enough time to show their true character, are a fine bunch of monsters. When the man who, as a general policy, kills everyone in his way is seen as the least psychopatic in the crowd, you know that this crowd is not a good one. Bogeyuz's main shtick is possessing people - by removing their skeletons and wearing the rest like a glove, with the victim remaining alive and possibly even conscious. Grinpatch is a cannibalistic, sadistic Blood Knight. Who will drink you alive. Tommyrod kills or attempts to kill everyone in his way, everyone anywhere near his way who provides him with a good chance to Kick the Dog, everyone who as much as annoys him by being too noisy, and his own subordinates who have failed him. If you're lucky, he'll just stab your heart out, but his favorite weapons are parasytic insects worthy of any Death World, which can kill you in a whole variety of funny ways, starting with just drilling right through your insides. For a relatively light-hearted manga, Toriko definitely is not short on terrifying villains.

Now, this was probably created before the 'No Groups' policy was started. Not to mention that so far, the only member of the Bishokukai who qualifies as a Complete Monster is Tommyrod, who needs a complete write-up to replace that.

And geez, I forgot! We agreed to add Trigon in DC and Vertigo waaaaaay back. I didn't do the writeup!

• Trigon the Terrible from the pages of Teen Titans is a demonic overlord who rules an empire where countless souls are kept i horrible bondage, with those who dare to resist (and 'resistance' can be defined as 'don't do as ordered quick enough) are ruthlessly exterminated. Trigon wishes to extend his dominion to earth and for that end, disguised himself as a handsome human being to impregnate a woman named Arella, revealing his true form and taunting her after. After invading earth, Trigon dominates the soul of his daughter Raven and corrupts her into a monster, forcing her to attack her own world and friends. Trigon's brutality extends to exterminating entire worlds simply to make a lesson. With no redeeming features whatsoever, Trigon is the most terrifying and powerful foe the Teen Titans ever faced

... androgynous?

He means "ambiguous".

@8084 This is hardly the first time someone has been described of even worse crimes than the ones that they were confirmed as performing on-screen. But the point of this cleanup is to make the strongest examples possible - no "implied," no "said by other characters," not even "shown mutilated corpses." I think you're getting too attached to the examples that you're proposing - trust me, you get burned out if you don't just let it go after a certain point.

If you really want to have a debate over explicit versus implicit actions, fine, we can do that. It's pretty late in this whole process to suddenly want to up-end it, but I can deal; the process has survived people arguing similar in the past. It'd be much better to just get that out in the open than constantly having to go back and forth over what counts as Offscreen Villainy, with me going by the page definition and you arguing that we should consider offscreen actions that can be reasonably implied as not actually being offscreen.

So, with that said, my complete argument.

The cleanup for Complete Monster was fitfully started multiple times before this megathread. People had been saying for years that there were hundreds of problematic examples, but there was wide disagreement over what examples actually counted as bad. One of the biggest problems, in fact, were people who were dedicated fans of particular works who were dead certain that, despite what others felt, their particular work truly had a character that qualified for Complete Monster.

I suppose it's easy to forget now, because it's been a fortunately long time since we had to deal with this, but we regularly saw calls for this trope to go to the Cut List. It's quite possible that, if we hadn't made headway, that it would have landed there. The mods used to hover over this thread much more frequently, and we were honestly very lucky that Fast Eddie reserved his Administrator fiat to redefining the trope once and for all over a year ago.

The fact is, when that happened, we were effectively put on notice that we had to crack down hard on what this trope is supposed to be. One of the biggest problems was that folks kept arguing over what was "reasonable to assume" regarding a qualifying action. The problem, we discovered, was the "slippery slope" issue was not fallacy in this case.

The problem is that not everyone agrees on just what counts as "reasonably implicit." Some works, yes, it's agreed by 95% of the viewers just what happened. Some, it's 50%. Some, even less. But the problem arises when one of the 25% point to a 95% example and say that the two assumptions are just as reasonable to assume. Putting aside whether it actually is just as reasonable (to be fair, sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't), it eventually became clear that allowing for "reasonably implicit" arguments just opened the door for more and more bad examples. The solution was clear; ban that which fell under the rubric of Offscreen Villainy. If there's a blanket ban on all of that, then you have to rely purely on what's shown.

The related point is that holds true even for examples where there's enough to qualify them even without the implicit actions. If we allow implicit examples in the cases where they'd qualify anyway, we thereby give approval for others to make such arguments themselves for anyone.

This isn't about "needing examples to be spoonfed," which is frankly insulting to the entire readership. This is about preventing abuse of a trope that was nearly cut because of how badly some were using it. The cleanup was able to make progress and make things better because we made qualification strict. To relax it now would be to revert to the lax definition that led to people arguing dozens of bad examples onto the pages.

Moreover, arguing for such lax standards also does disservice to the trope The Sociopath - all of the examples that I would strike from Complete Monster for lack of on-screen crimes are covered by that trope. Part of why that trope exists is because it's a proper holding place for characters who don't have the on-screen atrocity count to truly qualify as a Complete Monster. In short, we have a trope to put characters who have no redeeming quality that have a quantity of off-screen atrocity. Proper troping would be to place the characters in question there instead of shoehorning them into Complete Monster.

@8115: You need to specify the version of Teen Titans (via namespace) you're referring to.

edited 5th Feb '13 7:44:37 AM by Nocturna

If anyone else has an issue, Footsteps, they can say that. Otherwise, I'm going to echo Fighteer's opinion on the subject (I am not citing him as definitive authority), just to quote him back on the argument for Gideon graves:

"I would say that showing the kidnapped people is fairly good proof that the villain kidnapped them. The reason we disqualify Offscreen Villainy is that being a CM cannot be an Informed Attribute. Now, it would be OV if you had everyone going, "Yeah, and remember how John raped all those captives?" but we never see it nor any evidence of it. "

Applying this to "Showing mutilated corpses in the villain's bed and the villain cheerfully admitting he murdered them along with further elaboration" isn't a stretch for me. You disagree? Fine. I don't consider it Offscreen Villainy. If shunka said "hey, remember the time Brass raped and killed to teenagers" without visual evidence, that'd be another story.

In short, I strongly disagree with your version of 'on screen,' in these instances and that's also why I'm giving a vote for Gary Callahan. We see everything his orders do, and regardless of whether a court of law can prove his guilt, Spider does to the reader

edited 5th Feb '13 8:40:53 AM by Lightysnake

To me, I want to see the action. The outcome is less relevant, and if I am only told, it doesn't have the same impact.

On actual examples...

@8088 Actually, I'm not relying on subtext in regards to Slade. What is explicitly shown is that he's actually willing to kill the Titans in order to get his way - the finale of season 1 shows how he's infected four of the five with nanites that can can kill them to force Robin to obey. He tries to have Terra kill the Titans, and he even uses the overrides in the suit he gave her to try and force her to even after she decided that she wouldn't. He even dusted his mask with a drug that would cause Robin to have a deadly reaction on the off chance that he was defeated (naturally, the focus of an episode). Quite simply, Slade is the one who's all ready to murder when most of the other villains (even Trigon) don't seem that concerned with the prospect.

@8089 Actually, from the episodes of Courage The Cowardly Dog I've seen, that kind of thing is fairly standard for villains in the show. The only difference between that example and the others is the amount of Nightmare Fuel involved. That said, I'm not afraid of spiders. I favor a cut.

@8092 To go into more detail on Metalocalypse, it's specifically a satire. Black Comedy satire, yes, but satire nonetheless. I'll go into more detail than Largo here - everything in the show is either to make you laugh at how horrible things are, or set up such a laugh. Sadist Show also applies here. In terms of genre, I feel Metalocalypse is exactly like South Park - so I think the same standard applies.

@8101 Well, I think trying to infer that the filmmakers were trying to make Beckett a worse evil than Barbossa or Davy Jones is one of those Death of the Author debates (though given how back-and-forth Barbossa is, you have a much easier time arguing that Beckett was worse than him). Regardless, the logic is persuasive (though given that it's a different route to what I already voted, I may be biased).

@8107 Well, Damian definitely doesn't qualify for the first two The Omen movies. I haven't seen the third, but I did read the novelization back in the day; I'd have to review it to ascertain whether he qualifies there (he did embrace Then Let Me Be Evil by that point). The nanny... to be honest, I only remember her committing suicide. I'm going to venture forth that suicide in general is not going to qualify someone, unless said suicide is a catalyst for greater atrocity (like a pilot deciding to end it all for himself and everyone on the passenger jet he's currently piloting). While the nanny's suicide was to help prompt Damian's descent to evil, I don't think it counts.

Dark Kat and Dr. Viper were pretty generic villains; I vote to cut both.

@8112 I'm starting to regret bringing up Him. I formally withdraw my question about the character.

I think I have to look into Krytus some more, to see if he really distinguishes himself.

In general, I think I'm going to start making my official vote on characters from ongoing series to "Reserving judgment" thanks to this post. Perfect way to put it.

On more of an "old business" note, I decided to take a quick tour of the Final Fantasy YMMV pages, and I note that some on those pages that didn't make the cut. Specifically, Scarlet, Heidigger, and President Shinra of Final Fantasy VII; Ba'Gamman of Final Fantasy XII; and Algus/Argath, Barrington, and Cardinal Delacroix of Final Fantasy Tactics.

I removed the ones that had previously been voted to remove, but it occurs to me that Scarlet, Heidigger, Shinra, and Delacroix haven't technically been voted on yet (also, YMMV.Final Fantasy VII is locked, so I couldn't just remove those examples even if they had). I would vote to cut all four for not being as heinous as other examples in their respective games, but I figured it'd be best to get more definite votes before taking action. (Also, if it matters to folks, Delacroix's entry is a stub.)

I vote no on Scarlet, Heidegger, and President Shinra, if only because they get relatively little characterization. Added to that, President Shinra is almost entirely offscreen, Scarlet and Heidegger could be said to be Just Following Orders, and Hojo eclipses just about everybody else in the game for pure heinousness.

edited 5th Feb '13 9:10:48 AM by Fighteer

As far as the Omen three goes....I barely remember it, but Damian seemed pretty generic evil. he does have his cult kill a lot of people, including a baby, from what I remember.

as far as Him...cut, cut, cut. I cannot take a villain who's seen happily working out in sweatpants and greeting the girls cordially when they bust through his wall on his off time as a CM

I vote to cut Scarlet, Heidegger, Shinra and Delacroix for failing their games' heinous standard.