Subpages cleanup: Complete Monster

I'd be hesitant about adding the Yu Gi Oh Zexal example until his arc is complete. I'm inclined to think here of Medea from Saint Seiya Omega, who was happily on her way to a place on our Anime & Manga page until she decided that having her son serve as her Brainwashed and Crazy enforcer whilst she reigned as the tyrannical goddess of a new world was OK in theory, but a step too far in practice, and instead ended up Taking the Bullet when the force of elemental destruction she'd unleashed tried to kill him.

edited 31st Mar '13 4:24:24 AM by Iaculus

That's genuinely impressive in its out of nowhereness. Going to agree that we should hold off on Zexal until the arc is over. Anybody else remember how much of an SOB Pegasus seemed to be prior to the end of Duelist Kingdom? Yu Gi Oh is just as prone to those sorts of surprises as any other shonen series.

Eh, it wasn't completely unforeseen - before that turning point, she and Eden had had a sort of Handsome Jack/Angel 'are they just a tool or do they actually care for them?' thing going on, only without the constant abuse (or any abuse, for that matter - she saved that for her stepdaughter).

But yeah, you really do have to be cautious of these things with shonen - Fist Of The North Star is a particularly infamous example.

edited 31st Mar '13 10:12:02 AM by Iaculus

I'm gonna have to look over the Diablo examples

• Complete Monster:
  • Adria, who ranks right up there with Izual himself as one of the worst traitors of Diablo history. Not only does she betray all of humanity by cruelly using her own daughter as a vessel for Diablo himself to be reborn as the Prime Evil, but it's also implied that she once shared rulership of the Dark Coven with Maghda, herself a monster in her own right, before leaving to find Diablo in Tristram.
  • Zoltun Kulle. This is a man who attempted to usurp his Horadrim brethern by using the Black Soulstone to control the Great Evils, even murdering and dismembering his own wife just to fuel his twisted experiments with the Soulstone. Is it any wonder the Horadrim went to such extremes to keep him down?
    • One of the achievements related to him is even called "Murderer. Torturer. Monster.", which is pretty damn accurate.
  • Maghda and her Dark Coven, who burned down the town of Wortham just to get a piece of the angelic sword that Maghda wants, murdered Deckard Cain right in front of Leah and massacred the people of Alcarnus. They're also quite fond of both physical and magical Cold-Blooded Torture, and like to incorporate it into their magic, such as the illusion ritual over the Black Canyon Bridge. They also serve Belial, one of the Great Evils, with a good amount of Human Sacrifice.
  • Archbishop Lazarus, who played an integral role in King Leoric's descent into madness and eventual transformation into the Skeleton King. This guy manipulated Leoric into torturing and executing his own innocent subjects (as well as sending his soldiers into a needless war against Westmarch) and even turned him against his own queen so that he would have no obstacles to using Albrecht, one of Leoric's two sons, as a vessel for Diablo himself. And all this in addition to the stuff he did in the very first game, which involved feeding villagers and would-be adventurers to the demonic Butcher.

Adria seems like a keep....for now, however we have to be wary if she gets humanized to a degree in a future expansion.

Most of Kulle's actions were in the backstory and unlike Adria, he never does anything heinous onscreen.

Magda's actions seem to be "the standard for evil in this setting" and isn't really that different from any evil cult leader. Plus Cain's death is more of a Moral Event Horizon and we have to be careful about these examples derived from Protagonist-Centered Morality.

Lazarus is a keep, but he should be moved to the Diablo page YMMV as he never appears in Diablo 3

So, should I clean up the Highlander examples?

Not yet. Let's wait for a bit more consensus and discussion

So, for the main comics page, shall I request a lock?

Ooh, just saw another probably easy cut from Two and a Half Men:

• Complete Monster: Rose is arguably one. Before killing Charlie, she psychologically and emotionally manipulated him throughout the years, plus the stalking him and any girl he was trying to date long term, like Mia and Chelsea.

Obviously a played for laughs example on a comedy show. The murder thing was also played for laughs. Because of all of Charlie Sheen's... issues, they killed him off in a way that was basically Put on a Bus to Hell.

Don't lock comics yet. Gonna go over it once or twice more.

BURN. BURN. BURN that example, Hodor. Burn it like Melisandre at a Baratheon family reunion

Thanks.

Giving my thoughts on the others...

The Diablo examples...

Keep Adria. Keep Lazarus. Cut Zoltan and Maghda. however, I wonder if Diablo himself shouldn't count for all the horror he does. While he is a demon, demons and angels can do against their nature so he satisfies moral agency.

As for Star Trek, my final thoughts... Keep Lore and the other example Irrose named...cut the rest

For Highlander... Keep Kalas Keep Kronos Keep Kern Keep Felice Martins Keep Daimler

Cut the others. Those need a rewrite as well.

@10784: Re Star Trek: I'll vote to cut all of those examples save for Lore and Favro.

@10787: Re Highlander: Keep Kronos, Kalas, Martins, Kern, and Daimler, cut everyone else.

@10798: Reading that I'd have to say Verger counts but I highly doubt Grutas does as well, especially since Grutas's crime seems to be cannibalism which Hannibal's got a pretty firm lock on as the boss of that department. Cut all the Dick Tracy examples since nothing's there.

As for Shawshank, you know I've never found Norton that heinous. I know he orders Tommy's death but Hadley is the one who carried it out, and Hadley is also the one who beat a man to death for making a racket and tried to throw Andy off the roof when he thought Andy was insulting him. Take into account Boggs, who rountinely beat and raped Andy, and Elmo Blatch who murdered Andy's wife and her lover and then laughed when he found out an innocent man went to jail over it... I just don't see Norton as the worst villain in the movie. To be honest, the only one I could see keeping is Boggs.

@10804: Re Diablo: Keep Adria and Lazarus but cut Zolton since he's only committed Offscreen Villainy and his character page called him both a Well-Intentioned Extremist and said he had an Even Evil Has Standards moment. On-the-fence with Maghda, from the looks of her entry it sounds heinous enough but I never played the games so I'd need to know how commonplace such crimes are.

edited 31st Mar '13 6:41:27 PM by OccasionalExister

Hodor: Cut Rose.

The thing about Grutas and Hannibal...

Hannibal killed people who 'deserved' it. Grutas cannibalized a child. And he's a crime boss besides. And a Nazi war criminal.

Is any of that really explored though?

Cut Rose.

I might be able to come up with one or two Dick Tracy villains who qualify, but in the meantime, burn the current example.

edited 31st Mar '13 6:51:38 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Yep. Grutas is briefly seen as a crime boss at the film/book's end (The stuff with Hannibal's sister happens in flashbacks). He's seeing at the Nazi job slaughtering civilians early on and I believe sawed a rabbi's head off

I'm on the fence about Diablo. The problem with calling anyone in the story a CM is that the bar is set so high by the crapsack nature of Sanctuary (the mortal realm) that it's really hard for anyone to stand out. We have cultists sacrificing victims to demons by the bushel, chancellors turning their kings into vessels for demonic possession, kings committing entire villages to death by torture, and over it all, the Great Evils delighting in the death and destruction they and their servants cause.

I would not call the Evils themselves, or indeed any demons, CMs, if only because they are said to be Made of Evil, which gives them something of a moral excuse. They are literally fragments or scions of Tathamet, the original Prime Evil, which was itself a part of Anu, the franchise's ultimate divine being. Angels and demons are bound by their fundamental nature, unable to change or experience true free will. Therefore I do not accept the nomination of any demon as a Complete Monster.

The only creatures capable of the level of self-determination required for CM status are the mortals of Sanctuary, a power explicitly granted to them as the product of the union of angel and demon. Among those characters, the following really stand out in the narrative:

• Archbishop Lazarus, chief advisor to King Leoric, was the individual responsible for releasing Diablo upon the world after his banishment to a soulstone by the ancient Horadrim. He presided over his king's corruption by Diablo and resulting turn to madness, encouraging him in his paranoia and delusions and gleefully helping him torture and sacrifice his people. He is literally responsible for the events of all of the games. Lazarus is most pertinent to Diablo I, but you get to see some of his deeds in Diablo III as well. The only mitigating factor is that his acts are mostly offscreen, as he's dead prior to the events of the first game, but you discover some of them in ghostly flashbacks and books.

• Adria is a keeper. I originally wasn't sure about her, but then I remembered that she was originally a co-leader of the cult of the Great Evils along with Maghda. She broke from the cult to pursue Diablo, with the intent of aiding him in his Xanatos Gambit to conquer the High Heavens. Her most horrifying act is to sacrifice her own daughter to give Diablo a new body.

• Zoltan Kulle, in addition to his villainous acts being both entirely offscreen and almost entirely informed, is most definitely a Well-Intentioned Extremist.

• Maghda is leader of the cultists who worship the Great Evils, and does plenty of horrible things, including murdering Deckard Cain, sacking Wortham, and sacking Alcarnus; in the latter case she sacrifices everyone in the town to Belial. A nasty piece of work, except she's overshadowed in the narrative by... Adria, who was her coequal in the cult but broke from it to pursue Diablo. Since Adria is a worse CM, Maghda may be disqualified by being insufficiently heinous.

Are there any others in consideration?

edited 31st Mar '13 7:07:56 PM by Fighteer

It's implied Adria forced the sexual encounter she had with Diablo, actually.

And here's the thing...Tyrael changes immensely via character development from his original self who was little better than a jerkass Knight Templar like the angel Imperious.

The Prime evils are fragments of Tathamet but we have seen from other demons they can reject their evil nature if they so choose. Sanctuary was born by demons and angels who went renegade and mated to produce humanity...only one of those demons betrayed the others and stayed evil.

Ok for those who don't know Diablo, while Dark and Gothic in it's own light, is pretty a lighter video game version of Berserk which means the big bads are demons and(in the third game at least) their human followers. Through Magda is a pretty crazy bitch, Adria and the Prime Evils are more heinous.

As for Diablo himself, the title character, if someone can do a good write-up I'll see whether he qualifies or not. One can make a case for him qualifying instead of making a zero context "hey he's Satan" entry.

Also, while Lazarus is a keep, move him to the main Diablo YMMV page please as he never really appears in D3.

So again for me is Keep Adria, keep and move Lazarus, cut Zoltan and Magda, and on the fence about Diablo. And plus the final boss is less Diablo and more Tathamat so the Made of Evil argument is kinda ruled out.

edited 31st Mar '13 7:11:18 PM by xie323

I changed my mind about Adria, as I remembered that she started as a cultist, and so was evil all along. With respect to demons and angels, they can learn; they can adapt; they can be coopted or corrupted, but the spark of their original essence remains in them for all eternity and can never be completely changed. Their fate is written in the Book of Prophecy and is ineluctable. Only the mortal nephalem have true free will.

Thus, no matter how heinous the Great Evils' acts may be, they are inherent to their nature and should not count for CM status.

I don't believe the existence of destiny negates their position as beings with choices.

While Lilith remained evil and murdered her fellows, the indications are her fellow demon were protective of their kids and were ready to live in peace. Inarius was also as evil as any demon by the end.

Tyrael also subverted fate by giving up his angelic nature. Even before that, Tyrael began life as a brutal Knight Templar who would happily have seen the Nephalim burn...he changed. while being evil may be innate to Diablo, he and his brothers had every chance to change, particularly as they spent so much time amongst the Nephalim.

As for Diablo's crimes? This is gonna be a doozy...

In Diablo 1, Diablo was imprisoned under Tristram so long he was forgotten. He was given King Leoric as a host but Leoric was too good for him to control completely. Diablo was driven out, but solely out of spite, drove Leoric insane and destroyed any goodness in him. Diablo then possessed Leoric's child Albrecht instead and tortured him mentally...while making his nightmares manifest.

after turning Tristram into hell, he does the same as he hunts down his brothers.In the final game, it's kind of revealed he had the whole Black Soulstone plan all along, meaning he was betraying his big brothers.

and not only that, the side materials reveal he corrupted the most holy, beautiful city on the world because he just hated how they resisted him, by disguising himself as an archangel and luring them into damnation.

edited 31st Mar '13 7:17:54 PM by Lightysnake

Many angels have been corrupted by the demons over the centuries. Despite that they become evil in the process, it is explicitly stated that their fundamental natures remain, no matter how deeply buried.

There is no question that Diablo is heinous; the question is whether he has true moral agency.

edited 31st Mar '13 7:18:50 PM by Fighteer

That doesn't do the position any favors. While there might still be the 'spark', that shows they can change.

And there was no goodness left in Inarius at the end. He was an insane egomaniac who even his son knew was beyond redemption.

@10821

With this said, I think there's enough proof, if you use the Morgoth debate as precedent to qualify Diablo as CM, changing vote from on the fence to yes.

So at the moment is 2 for adding Diablo and 1 against.

edited 31st Mar '13 7:24:23 PM by xie323

Despite Tyrael becoming mortal, it's not clear that his fate becomes suddenly unknown. Ithereal specifically says that it's the Nephalem's destiny that is unwritten in the Scroll of Fate. If Tyrael became included in that by becoming mortal, it seems that he would have mentioned it.

Angels and demons are not automatons; they can change their thoughts and feelings, experience love and hate, become redeemed or corrupted. That doesn't mean they have moral agency. Think predestination versus free will, in a world where predestination is literal. The narrative of Diablo III deliberately makes this point, and ironically, Diablo himself is a non-presence for most of the story, committing less evil on a purely personal scale than Maghda or Adria. Destroying the High Heavens is Generic Doomsday Villain material, not Complete Monster material.

Let me put it this way: we accept that Diablo is going to seek to destroy the High Heavens and corrupt Sanctuary because he's Diablo. That's what he does. We don't hold any special hatred in our hearts for him; expecting him to do anything else would be pointless. On the other hand, we can hate Lazarus, Adria, Maghda, etc., because they are voluntary participants in Diablo's evil. They chose to do those things, when they could have chosen otherwise. That's the difference.

edited 31st Mar '13 7:36:02 PM by Fighteer