Subpages cleanup: Complete Monster

Next candidate is the first I'm not sure may make the cut, but I put him here for completeness.

Who is he?

Joseph Stalin, whose parents move to the Republican Union before he was born. As a baby his mother was murdered by George Custer, the first fascist leader of the Republican Union. Custer kidnapped him and raised him as his own son, renaming him Michael Custer. Once Michael/Joseph becomes older and starts making a name for himself, he re-names himself as "Joe Steele" and becomes the RU's leader after Custer's death.

What has he done?

The first of his actions come wen policing the Inferior ghettos in this universe's version of Chicago (named Shicagwa), where he, like most other people in his position, he assaults Inferiors at random. When he notices one Inferior keeps following him, Steele demands to know why. The man tells him that he's his real father and that Steele is actually of Eastern European descent. Steele promptly kills the man in a rage. When he notices that the man had a picture of him as a kid, proving his story true, Steele simply burns the photograph and prides himself on being a heartless bastard.

Once he takes over the RU, Steele solidifies the country as a one-party state, having his opponents killed or imprisoned regularly, and establishes a series of camps to work to death dissidents and Inferiors convicted of crimes. By 1954, in order to better prepare the RU for total war, Steele has tens of thousands of people killed in purges, including some of his close advisors. The following year, Steele demands the French Empire surrender their possessions in Canada, or else he will start a war (which, thanks to a complicated system of alliances, would quickly become global in scope). When France refuses, Stele invades, starting what's referred to as "The World War". Steele orders that all Inferiors captured in conquered territory be murdered, which results in hundreds of thousands of deaths. Steele also sanctions the actions of Charles Oswald, who completely destroys many of the towns and cities of the south while conquering it, and encourages him by supplying him with chemical weapons to continue his massacres. Steele also authorizes and begins implementing a plan to sterilize every Inferior in North America gradually. When Brazil falls to an anarchist revolution, Steele sends troops to crush it. To do this, they invade neutral Columbia and destroy large portions of the country just to insure it can't fight back. Finally, once the southern nations begin winning the war, Steele orders the first use of nuclear weapons in combat by nuking Loiusville, killing well over a million. Mercifully, Steele dies of a stroke not long after.

Freudian Excuse or mitigating factors?

None.

Heinous Standard?

Now here's where things get complicated. Despite having more resources than Viktor, Steele does somewhat less with what he has. Additionally, his successor, the aforementioned Oswald, does a great deal more brutal actions than him. So, after thinking on it, Steele seems to fail to stand out in a meaningful way.

Final Verdict?

I'm not sure he makes the cut.

Good example of that being Van Zant from DBZ.

I'll keep that in mind for the future. I'll get the next EP up in a few hours from now.

edited 19th Sep '17 11:23:22 AM by ThePest179

Yeah, I mean, in Fear, Loathing we have 3, which is a fair amount. 5 is pushing it unless they're significantly different.

edited 19th Sep '17 11:47:10 AM by ACW

I feel comfortable giving Charles Goodyear II a (seems sufficiently different).

But I will hold off voting on Stalin/Custer/Steele until I hear more about his successor.

edited 19th Sep '17 11:51:06 AM by MGD107

Carruthers

Following Lighty and Scaggle's logic, I'm rescinding any votes on What Madness is This until all candidates are up.

edited 19th Sep '17 12:16:35 PM by 43110

It's not that impossible for a single work to have a bunch of candidates. Fallout: New Vegas has 6 and RuneScape has 8. Yeah, those are video games but the point still stands.

Yes, but there's a question of how unique they got, how many villain there are, etc.

It's fair to wonder

Goodyear II

Steele

@Scraggle: A lot of your examples are pre-Code, I believe, while Carruthers was during the Hays Code at its height. So I would argue that there is a lower heinous standard. While I can see your argument, for me the revenge is so bloody disproportionate that he sticks out. Even Lorenzo Cameron was more screwed over than Carruthers.

As for Bride of the Monster, I saw that one ages ago. I believe the villain has redeeming qualities, but I could be misremembering.

Alright, one more Shirley candidate from me for now...

What's the setting?

This one comes from Cellars, one of Shirley's earlier books. Following Carl Lanyard, a former psychic and now a writer for Visions magazine, Lanyard enters the world of New York City, where bizarre is the norm and a bizarre cult seems to be active in the underground of the city. Approached by Lt. Gribner and commissioned by his boss Simon Maguss to investigate recent happenings, Lanyard's psychic powers and visions start to spike up again as dead bodies start popping up in the subways of the city. All of them? Ritualistic murders. The one behind them? Surprise, surprise, it's Maguss.

Who is Simon Maguss? What has he done?

Simon Maguss is the current head of Visions magazine and Lanyard's rather reclusive, stuck-up employer. In truth, though, Maguss is far more wicked... Maguss is actually the leader of a cult known as the Order of Ahriman. The murders? Are all his fault. Maguss precedes over several extremely brutal murders in the city... dead women start appearing in the subways, murdered by the Order, disembowled and ritualistic markings crudely carved into their bodies. Then Maguss starts to pick out new targets... children. Kids start turning up as the next victims at an alarming rate, each in horrible conditions — disembowled, mutilated, mauled, you name it — as the cult's new victims. Whilst these murders happen, Maguss commissions Lanyard to investigate them for his magazine before deciding it would be better if they met in person, flying into town and having dinner with Lanyard before Maguss confronts Lanyard about his apparent psychic powers. Maguss tells Lanyard that if he follows his "Gift," he'll end up at the temple of the people responsible. Lanyard tells him to piss off.

The murders continue. More dead kids. An entire family — the Escondidos — forcibly vanished into a manhole, the father and the pregnant wife butchered and their two-year old child sacrificed. Loose ends killed (in one instance, a man named Krupp who's horribly melted by a slime creature and sucked down a drain). Maguss continues to play the helpful support to Lanyard during his investigation, pointing him to a drug dealer with information on the cult named Merino, which ends with Lanyard nearly killed and Merino murdered. Eventually, though, Lanyard is manipulated into planting explosives near the cult's operations — resulting in a giant explosion that kills most of the cult and apparently crushes their god — and Maguss eventually reveals the truth.

Maguss had been setting up Lanyard the whole time to kill off Minder, the supposed leader of the Order — with the nice little quip that his rival is now "drowning forever" — and he is the rightful priest of the cult. Now, the reason why he's been doing all this? The cult appeases the "Head Underneath" with constant ritual sacrifices in order to control the power currents it sends out... which they exploit for personal benefit. Maguss' ultimate goal is to bring back the being he had crushed — that being the Head Underneath — and feed the entire city to it to master the power of the currents. He's kept Lanyard alive this whole time in hopes of getting him on his side, and once Lanyard staunchly refuses to help him, Maguss smugly dismisses his speech as "the sort made by the losers of this world!" and reveals he's had Lanyard's ally Madelaine brutally murdered and cut apart. A scuffle ensues and Maguss takes the opportunity to escape, which ends with Maguss' son Harold kid and Lanyard shot.

Unfortunately? The last we see of Maguss is him pretending to have been the innocent man he always claimed he was, thanking them for shooting the "madman" who killed his son. Lanyard, however, survives, and in a thankful aversion of a total Downer Ending, Lanyard vows whilst in prison to an enigmatic figure of light to track down Maguss and destroy his works forever.

Any mitigating factors?

Laughable. Maguss has no genuine loyalty to anyone despite his tall claims otherwise. Lanyard? The cult? His own son? Even the Head Underneath? They're all tools for his own personal benefit. He doesn't care an inch when his son dies at the end of the book, instead exploiting his death for personal sympathy and sobbing out crocodile tears all while planning to simply start anew. Nothing else to talk about, honestly.

Conclusion?

Keep him. Not the worst of Shirley's baddies, but Maguss is still a bastard.

Thoughts?

edited 19th Sep '17 1:14:20 PM by Scraggle

And a yea to Maguss

Maguss

There could well be room for five candidates but as Lighty said that's best assessed after all write ups are here for viewing to see what makes each candidate.

Someone got the idea to list Peter and Paul again. I cut the entry and PM'd the troper.

to Simon Maguss.

Maguss. Damn semi-Karma Houdini.

Maguss

Okay no one commented on my proposed rewrite, so I'm just going to post it again.

Adam Hart, aka Arnold Nordlond, born with vast Psychic Powers, considers people his playthings and has abused them since childhood. Taking a new name, Adam destroyed nearly every trace of his old life, brainwashing his home town’s mechanic to kill anyone who turned up asking about him. A true sadist, Hart enjoys playing with his victims, often inducing mind breaking hallucinations before inflicting agonizing deaths. When his old friend Professor Henry Hallson discovered the existence of another super genius, Hart became obsessed with removing a potential rival, murdering Henry by imprisoning him in a centrifuge. He then targets Professor Jim Tanner; manipulating events to look like Tanner killed Hallson before almost murdering him through induced pain. Going after Sally Hallson, Hart rewrote her entire personality, leaving permanently damaged and barely able to remember her husband. Stalking Tanner, Hart caused Professor Melnicker to die from a heart attack. To divert suspicion he faked an attack on himself, taking the opportunity to almost crush Tanner with an elevator. Hart then tried to run Tanner over before running him into the river, and set Doctor Van Zandt's house on fire, killing him and his wife. When Tanner finally confronts him, Hart attempted to torture him to death, forcing him to experience sub-zero temperatures, his flesh burning off, the empty vacuum of space stripping him down to the bones and reliving all his friends and colleges deaths, all whilst he cheerfully narrates.

So any thoughts?

edited 19th Sep '17 2:25:18 PM by MGD107

Maguss

Alright, one more book candidate. This one from Jeff Strand...

What's the setting?

In the town of Cromay, New Mexico, something terrible has happened. A giant forest has sprouted suddenly out of the ground and enveloped the entire town. Hundreds are dead. Monsters roam the forest, killing all they find. And nobody has any idea what the forest is or where it came from...

...looks like good business to me! Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to The Haunted Forest Tour, Jeff Strand's horror-comedy about a giant forest filled with spooks and scares of all sorts that suddenly appears out of the blue one day in New Mexico. A year after the forest blooms, humanity decides to make a profit out of it — of course they do — and the exciting Haunted Forest Tour is set up, offering an authentic experience in trams to allow tourists to ride through the forest and experience firsthand the scares the forest has to offer. This attracts many people, our protagonist excited teenager Christopher among them, but of course, something sinister lies underneath the surface. Let's meet the demon behind all this... Pestilence.

Who is Pestilence? What has he done?

A demon from another dimension, Pestilence is a creature with an affinity for the cold and a Faux Affably Evil demeanor like you would not believe. Seeking another world to dominate, Pestilence reached out into our dimension and made a deal with the corrupt businessman Bob Booth (although "deal" is sort of a loose term, as Booth mentions Pestilence threatened to strangle the guy with his own intestines if he didn't agree). Drawn into the world with several innocent sacrifices, Pestilence is responsible for allowing the haunted forest to grow in the first place — completely decimating the town of Cromay in the process and killing over two-hundred-and-thirty people — and had Bob agree to be his physical host in the world, arranging for Booth to set up the tour in the first place to attract at least sixty delicious sacrifices to the forest and allow them to be massacred by the outer-dimensional monsters teeming within as tribute to him. Pestilence also needs a willing sacrifice in order to complete its travel to Earth... and that's where we get to his direct role in the story.

We first meet Pestilence when Christopher is snatched by a giant bird on its order and brought to Pestilence's frigid realm, where Christopher sees the frozen bodies of countless innocents Pestilence has murdered and kept trapped under the frozen floor before Pestilence himself appears and confronts Christopher. Pestilence introduces himself, shakes Christopher's hand, and engages in a cheerful conversation with Christopher with playful threats until he finally reveals it brought Christopher to him as a sacrifice... whereupon him promptly stops being so friendly and starts torturing Christopher by cutting him apart (in one instance cutting a smiley face into Christopher's stomach and telling him not to fall asleep — or else he'll flay him alive), gleefully revealing his place in all this and revealing the overall intent of his plan; gather enough power to let the haunted forest envelop the entire world and devour all humanity to make room for his new reign. At the same time, Pestilence attempts to secure his willing sacrifice by tempting the old man Lee Burgundy through one of its other forms, trying to have him offer up Tommy — a young boy — to him as a sacrifice in return for him restoring Lee's youth, securing him a safe way out of the haunted forest, and the woman of his dreams. Lee firmly turns him down and Pestilence snarls out that he'll slaughter him and everyone else he's allied with before returning to Christopher.

Disappointed that Lee resisted his temptations but with other plans, Pestilence instead informs Christopher that he'll bargain with his mother before having his bird minion whisk Christopher off and following him to Mindy, Christopher's mother. Pestilence cruelly tries to egg Mindy onto sacrificing herself for her son. When Mindy retorts she can't trust Pestilence, he happily admits he's not trustworthy and then proceeds to have the bird start beating Christopher against the tree with full intention of murdering her and her allies — children among them — unless she gives herself up. Mindy agrees under pressure and Pestilence brutally decapitates her... and, with the willing sacrifice out of the way, the forest starts to spread even further across the world, and the creatures within start massacring everything in their way the further it goes; soldiers, innocent civilians, everything. The nearby town of Dover's Point is completely destroyed first with its populace butchered, and the forest continues to spread.

Pestilence, on the other hand, is left at a brief standstill considering that his host has just left the forest. Christopher, down below, comes to a conclusion... having received a brief flash to Pestilence's mind before his mother was killed, he realizes the entire plan can collapse if he mixes up the ritual. To accomplish that? The host has to become a willing sacrifice. So, in a brilliant burst of pure, pitch-black comedy, Booth's assistant Mark is rung up and told he has to torture Booth until he willingly commits suicide. For as delightfully dark as that is, it's played seriously (and Mark, obviously, regrets every single second of it) as Pestilence confronts and attacks Christopher, smugly remarking he'll make Christopher his personal toy to torture for the rest of Christopher's life. Before he can overwhelm him, though? Booth, miles away, commits suicide after having been tortured into a bloody heap, and the forest starts to sink back into the dimension it came from. Roaring and screaming the entire way through, Pestilence is sucked down alongside the forest and banished from Earth forevermore.

Any mitigating factors?

Oh my God, no. Pestilence is hilarious, but at the same time his jokes are always punctuated by a sharp edge of cruelty that manifests whilst he's torturing people and murdering people close to them. His deals? So double-edged it's just as hilarious; Pestilence suckers people into deals via the sound logic of "do this for me or I'll brutally murder you" and even when he offers to spare people as part of the deal as he does with Mindy, that's all moot because Pestilence's plan is "kill everything on Earth" — and that includes the people he "promises" to spare.

Hell, even Pestilence's one gripe with his own dimension — that it's horribly crowded — falls apart when Pestilence gets his own POV explored. Pestilence is a sadist and a nightmare who sees invading Earth as an opportunity for him to allow his kind to torture and butcher billions of innocent people at their own whim, and his ideal scenario after conquering Earth is to bathe in a pool of blood with the mangled bodies of his victims above him. There's nothing remotely redeeming about this prick.

Conclusion?

Keep, for sure.

Thoughts?

edited 19th Sep '17 3:22:55 PM by Scraggle

to Maguss and Pestilence. to Carruthers and Steele. Leaning to Goodyear but I'll wait for the rest of the E Ps.

edited 19th Sep '17 3:13:58 PM by TommyFresh

Next What Madness is This? candidate:

Who is he?

Midas Goldstein is a man whose father encouraged him to follow in his footsteps and become a banker. Goldstein instead takes the money his father set aside for him to become a doctor. Working under a military scholarship, Goldstein becomes one of the RU's most notable scientist.

What has he done?

Goldstein's first action as a scientist is to create a more lethal version of chlorine gas, earning him the praise of his superiors. Due to his belligerent behavior with his assistants (with male assistants getting physically beaten and female assistants sexually assaulted), Goldstein is transferred to Camp 222, which he is put in charge of. While there, Goldstein develops the plan to sterilize the entire population of Inferiors, and carries the plan out with glee. Goldstein also tortures to death many prisoners for the fun of it, has a camp riot crushed by ordering his guards to indiscriminately kill prisoners, has prisoners shot for looking at him funny, picks out female prisoners to rape, and has anyone he thinks isn't working fast enough to be beaten to death. All these activities happen over the course of several years.

Goldstein is ordered by the government to find cures for various diseases, due to his vast medical knowledge. To this end, Goldstein uses his prisoners to test the vaccines and cures on, killing thousands of them in the process. He finds success, however, and finds cures for polio and a deadly plague called "Scottish Influenza".

After the Republican Union collapses from a combination of overextending itself and going into an economic depression, Goldstein goes into hiding. After an apocalyptic nuclear war destroys much of the world, Goldstein is eventually discovered, and tortured to death by some of the prisoners who had to work in his camp.

Freudian Excuse or mitigating factors?

He does create cures for polio and the Scottish Influenza, but at a great cost and only because he was ordered to. So I don't think it's really mitigating.

Final Verdict?

An from me, but if the cures for diseases is mitigating enough to get him voted down, I won't complain.

to Steele for failing the heinousness standard. Abstaining on the other three until I can see the last one. I'm guessing Oswald is the last candidate?

to both Path of Exile candiates

So the E Ps for What Madness is This has got me wondering? What happens if we have a situation where all the possible E Ps are genocidal maniacs or commit crimes of literally the same nature. Since there is a EP I'm thinking of making, possibly a year down the line, an effortpost on a game mod that is not fully developed yet, and the worst characters in the setting are so far reputed to have committed atrocities of similar nature.

edited 19th Sep '17 3:23:08 PM by xie323

Then they likely don't count. Heinous standard, they have to stick out

I'm almost willing to give the first two Madness ones a go, but not the others and that's reluctant because they're all blending together.

Yes to Pestilence, though. Easily.

to Pestilence and Midas Goldstein.

We are voting on Steele again? I thought Steele was already determined a keeper (granted not a very easy keeper, but still a keeper).

edited 19th Sep '17 3:35:23 PM by username2527