Subpages cleanup: Complete Monster

Was he ever discussed earlier?

No you won't. I removed him with a note. Anyone who adds it back can have their edit ban handed to them.

Of course, if there is consensus, he will be readded.

edited 24th Jun '12 1:49:15 PM by lu127

I haven't seen the most recent episode yet, but if he is shown as feeling bad about how much he screwed up his children, that probably would disqualify him, as would the fact that he loved his wife (note the if here).

He's definitely on a smaller scale than Ozai (genocidal dictator vs city crime lord), although much more actively abusive toward his children. There is also an issue of his crimes being implied- like if he had killed a bunch of people via bloodbending, it would be a strong claim for him to fit, but that doesn't seem to be said outright- it's more like he threatened people using bloodbending (I think you probably are supposed to figure he's killed via bloodbending but they don't say so outright, unless it was mentioned in the last episode).

It's never said, but it is implied whatever he did involved bloodbending and was horrible enough to net him life in prison, and we're shown he has no qualms about killing people, since he tries to kill Aang with a smile on his face. But it is never outright stated.

And if its been decided by a mod he doesn't belong, then I'm fine with that, thank you for at considering it.

What do you mean brony99 flashbacks? The dude has been banned long time ago!

Also, I am trying to bring another potential REMOVAL from Video Games. Shaoken, remember, I am NOT trying to talk or argue with you anymore. You made your opinion, fine. I want an opinion from other users though.

• Marco Barbarigo in Assassin's Creed II has a hit ordered on his own bodyguard, Dante Moro, just so he can have access to his wife. When Dante survives being stabbed in the head, Marco takes advantage of the resulting brain damage by having him annul his own marriage- and the next visual on the target briefing shows Dante standing guard at the bedroom door while his ex-wife is dragged away by Marco.

To me, he sounds no more evil than any other characters. By that logic, we should add every single villain from the game. Do we remove him??

edited 24th Jun '12 3:03:50 PM by MONEYMONEY

Yes, but the way in which people keep trying to add Yakone on is very reminiscent of his little crusade to list Discord (or whatever the guy was named).

I'm inclined to think we should be keeping a watch on the page right now.

Exactly. Hell it can even be inferred that he got with Tarlock's mother for the soul purpose of trying to sire Waterbenders to be his tools of vengeance.

The problem with all that is that you're making a lot of assumptions and most importantly of all, so important I'm giving it it's own dot point and putting it in bold;

• All of Yakone's henious deeds are offscreen and only implied, he has a confirmed body count of 0 and throughout all his scenes he only attempted to murder one person compared to Ozai trying to burn an entire kingdom's worth.

And I repeat my previous point; he spent days looking for Narolak after he ran away, and stop trying to turn Tarrlok into a blood bender after that. If he really was a complete monster, emphasis on the COMPLETE part, he wouldn't have bothered searching for Narolak and would have just doubled his efforts on making Tarrlok his tool of revenge. He is clearly troubled after his eldest son's disappearance, and you can argue he's troubled because he lost his chance at revenge, but a Complete Monster shouldn't care. So he fails the "no redeeming qualities" test.

Next test, the henious standard. He fails; the standards of the story includes a man who tried to inflict Genocide on an entire kingdom on-screen, while Yakone's worst action on screen is either trying to kill Aang (before anyone says he was being more sadistic than nessicary by not going for a quick neck-snap, it's unlikely that Blood-bending can break someone's neck with ease) or abusing his sons.

Which brings me to the final strike against him; Yakone's most henious actions take place off-screen and are only implied, but from his trial we know that his victims were alive enough to testify, so Yakone doesn't even have a implied by-text body count to his name. Comparatively Amon spirtually-rapes at least a dozen characters on-screen and we know he's done the same to at least two-dozen more while Tarrlok oppressed non-benders and had them arrested by the truck-full. Yet nether can be put on the CM list due to numerous reasons.

So basically, Yakone doesn't count.

@ Money, I left Marco on the list because Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil, and Marco pretty much has been raping his bodyguard's wife while his bodyguard is implied to be standing outside the whole time, the only reason he doesn't do anything is because Marco stabbed him in the head so he could marry his wife, even though said bodyguard was completely loyal to him, and when he failed he used the resulting brain damage to get the guy to annul his own marriage so he could take his wife against her will. So this guy is the first confirmed rapist in the series, which puts him above his peers since Rape has always been one of those crimes considered more henious than murder (hell Dr. Light was put on the DC CM list because he was a mass-rapist, even though the guy is pretty much a joke with how hard DC is trying to push the rapist thing).

On the Assassin's Creed front, I'd like to disqualify Vidic on the following criteria;

• He can reasonably claim to be Just Following Orders since the emails you can find in the original game from his boss flat out tells Vidic to kill Desmond if he can't deliever by a certain date, as well as telling him to deal with Lucy since Vidic was the one who got them to spare her. I haven't played the Revelations DLC yet but going off that email it was Vidic who wanted to keep Lucy alive while his boss was fine with killing her, even if Vidic had alterior motives for doing so.
• The Templar cause as a whole can be classified as being made up of Well-Intentioned Extremist types (with a few Sociopaths and one or two Complete Monsters throw in) with a Utopia Justifies the Means goal of ending human conflict forever. If Vidic doesn't count despite sharing their goal, that suddenly opens up every other Templar to be added to the list, which sort of defeats the entire purpose of it.
• He's not particularly henious. Slimy yes, but compared to torturers, murderes, rapists, betrayers, and in a setting where a "good guy" has an entire family imprisoned and forced all the women to go unmarried for the rest of their lives all based on the actions of a handful of their line, he's only included because he's such a dick.
• His most henious act of making Cross a brainwashed mole isn't all that bad when you take into account '''The Templars and Assassin's are at war with each other.]] Any Assassin would kill a Templar in an instant, and that's not a henious act. When you're on opposite sides of a conflict killing the other side is expected.

"First of all, do we count tentacle monsters, which probably have some other morality, as Complete Monsters? Secondly, was this some sort of compromise to get all the Hentai examples off the page - if it was, my further complaints are moot. Thirdly, this entry is incredibly vaguely-worded, and given that there's exacting standards for Complete Monster, I think we need to either not have any mention of Hentai villains on it at all, or figure out a way to get a point across here without generalizations."

This was done quite a while ago to prevent edit wars over hentai, and a seven mile list of every CM in every hentai.

I haven't play Reveletions yet. It was Fighteer who added Vidic, talk to him. Maybe, he didn't play Revelations either. I am kind of regretful of requesting to remove Borgia; Offstage Villainy is no different than regular villainy for me. I wonder what about Abbas Sofian or Ahmet from Revelations I haven't play the game, but I can ask some users who did.

edited 25th Jun '12 12:38:44 AM by MONEYMONEY

Given the, ah, current situation involving such works, is that still necessary?

@Largo Quagmire: About the Hentai thing:

"Pick a non-comedic Hentai anime, manga, or game, any one of them. Chances are very good that the villain, if not some variety of tentacle monster, will be one of these. If they just limit themselves to rape, a victim can actually count themselves lucky. Listing them all would at least double the page length; worse, they often act as a protagonist."

The original wording of the thing was "and if they just limit themselves to rape, count yourself lucky." I personally went through and took out the other Hentai examples on the page while leaving this in, since it should pretty much be all you need to know about Hentai villains without going into the gory details. And when I say "count yourself lucky," I very much mean it — some Hentai villains do some really horrible things to their victims aside from raping them, especially if the work is a guro work.

edited 25th Jun '12 1:21:57 AM by TwoGunAngel

I removed it. There's no need for that, since we really can't elaborate on why Hentai villains are Complete Monsters and general examples about a medium or genre are discouraged.

All right, going over the Diablo stuff. I've taken out the Skeleton King example and expanded on the others a bit.

• The Diablo series is home to quite a few monsters, and we're not just talking about the demons here (though the Great Evils and their minions definitely qualify).
  • Archbishop Lazarus, who played an integral role in King Leoric's descent into madness and eventual transformation into the Skeleton King, as well as manipulating him into torturing and executing many innocents in the guise of "protecting his kingdom" (up to and including his own queen), feeding Tristram's villagers and the odd adventurer to the demonic Butcher in the first game, and having Albrecht, one of Leoric's two sons, made a vessel for Diablo himself.
  • Maghda and her Dark Coven from Diablo III. In addition to their service to the evil Belial, which involves plenty of Human Sacrifice, they are very fond of Cold-Blooded Torture through magical and other means, and use it for many of their sorcerous rituals, such as the illusion over the Black Canyon Bridge in Act II. They are directly responsible for the massacre of Alcarnus in Act II (including one hair-raising report from a refugee about people there being flayed alive) as well as the near-destruction of the town of Wortham, and the murder of Deckard Cain and the torture of human Tyrael.
  • The Inquisitors of the Templar Order, who were responsible for forcibly recruiting Kormac into the Order, piling false sins upon him, and torturing him into Laser-Guided Amnesia so that he would have Undying Loyalty toward the order in general.
  • Zoltun Kulle. This is a man who attempted to usurp his Horadric brethren 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.
  • But the worst monster of all besides the Great Evils has got to be Adria, who pledged herself to Diablo's service since first meeting Aidan in his Dark Wanderer guise, and had Leah with him for the sole purpose of using her as the vessel for Diablo's resurrection as the Prime Evil by means of the aforementioned Black Soulstone, which she successfully manipulates the heroes into finding and trapping the last two Lords of Hell into, in accordance to Diablo's grand plan. Adria's betrayal is the cruelest and most despicable one of the entire series, which not only kills poor Leah, but is directly responsible for allowing Diablo to kill a whole lot of people in Bastion's Keep and run roughshod all over the High Heavens in Act IV. The worst part is that this betrayal is the very last you see of Adria before she leaves through a portal to await being "called upon again" by the resurrected Diablo, and you don't even get to kill her in-game, which makes her a Karma Houdini.

edited 25th Jun '12 2:22:19 AM by TwoGunAngel

@ Money; we don't count Off Screen Villiany because it fails the Show, Don't Tell standard, and a Complete Monster is supposed to be self-demonstrating instead of the author telling us that a character is a Complete Monster without actually demonstrating the trope. Hence, Off Screen Villiany by itself doesn't count. The only exception that I've ever made for that is when a villian does the same type of action that the Off Screen Villiany was, or to add it in if the On-screen actions are enough.

Man, take one weekend off, and the whole thread blows up.

For the record, when I say that I won't consider a nominee because a series is continuing, the series continuing means that I won't even look at your arguments. My only objection to looking at your proposal is that the series is continuing. I may in fact have many objections to the text of the proposal once I do look at it.

The absolute last thing I'll say about Yakone is that Shaoken has completely convinced me that he should not be on the list. Let's move on.

On Marco, I'm fine with letting him stay.

Vidic sounds like he shouldn't belong.

Given the site's required purge of anything related to hentai, no mention of it should be on the page.

For the Diablo examples...

First, I said it before and I'll say it again, any example where you have to spoiler out the whole thing is a bad example. And I'm really not happy to have repeated that this soon after saying it about the same potential example. I'll be honest, considering that @1240 completely ignored one of the most important issues that I had with the proposed entry - and in fact made it worse by adding another point that's basically completely spoilered - I'm going to vote no without even reading the entry until someone can do a write-up that isn't completely worthless from a troping standpoint.

Agree. There is no point in listing Adria if you have to spoiler tag the whole thing. And she still doesn't qualify even objectively — a Moral Event Horizon does not a CM make.

While you're here, do you have an opinion on Vidic from Assassin's Creed being on the list?

I added him. He certainly has done monstrous things even for a Templar. But I suppose he could marginally count as a Well-Intentioned Extremist and, if so, wouldn't qualify as a CM by that definition.

Should we remove all the League of Legends examples? They are all played for laughs and aren't meant to be taken seriously.

I'm not sure about Tabuu's entry either, he might operate on Blue-and-Orange Morality, and might be an Eldritch Abomination and seems plus we never see him laughing or gloating over everything he does since Brawl is a silent story with no text, and we do not know much about his motives. Thus it's reasonable to assume it's Blue-and-Orange Morality at work. He's a cruel entity no doubt but so are Eldritch Abominations as a whole.

edited 25th Jun '12 9:39:25 AM by xie323

Tropes don't work that way.

You do not get to cite a trope on the work page but leave it off of the trope page because it's not an example. If it's not an example on the trope page, then the trope shouldn't be cited on the work page.

Also, saying "let's move on" is not an open invitation for someone to continue the argument. Particularly with arguments that are specious at best.

Since the implicit warning was obviously not enough, let's go with the explicit warning: if people continue to bring up arguments for characters where we have made up our minds, especially if said arguments involve ignoring the thrust of the argument on the other side, I'm going to holler for a mod.

I've said it before and I hope that I won't have to say it again: being a Single-Issue Wonk won't help anyone.

I am still not convinced Yakone doesn't count, I'm sorry. I re-watched "Skeletons in the Closet" last night, and he fits the criteria more than any other villain in this show, and just as much as Ozai from the first series

So trying to kill Millions of people to break the survivors' will is morally equivilant to trying to kill one person who was attempting to stop your escape, and putting your children through Training from Hell out of revenge for having your spirit bent without your consent (even though it was entirely your own fault)? Because basic arthmetic would state that millions is greater than one. The only comparable thing between Yakone and Ozai is that both are terrible parents.

You seem to be suggesting that he'd have to be a stupid, mindlessly Chaotic Evil villain to truly qualify. Think about this: Noatak (not Narolak) was his preferred son due to his power, while he saw Tarrlok as a weakling. Why the hell would he care to continue training Tarrlok in bloodbending after losing Noatak? He just lost his better weapon for revenge and was left stuck with the unwilling weakling.

Because he's not stupid? Tarrlok is a bloodbender, his present day self was quite good at it, so why would a Complete Monster abandon his plans for revenge at the first setback? That'd be like Palpatine deciding "Oh damn, my Death Star got blown up by the rebels. Oh well, I had a good run so I'll just throw in the towel here and give up my nefarious ways." There's not reason why a Complete Monster would abandon their plan just because their more promising tool ran off; they still have a tool that is perfectly capable of doing the job, a real CM would double down and work Tarrlock like a dog and beat that weakness out of him. Yet that is exactly the opposite of what happened; Yakone never even tried to make Tarrlok the instrument of his revenge, and his last scene in the series can easily be seen as him having a look of regret on his face.

And he shouldn't care? His firstborn son whom he favored and was grooming into his sucessor just called him out, bloodbended him, and left him behind! You might say that Yakone getting depressed over that is a human reaction, thus invalidating him of his status, but I disagree: sometime the worst Complete Monsters are just terrible human beings whose effect they have on people psychologically or effect they have on many future crises is far more heinous than physical actions like killing or torturing.

And this just shows you don't understand what a complete monster is. COMPLETE. Total, entirely, 100%, absolute. There is no buts with this trope, a character can't even have the slightest shred of humanity once they cross that point where they become a Complete Monster. There can't be a single scrap of decency left, nothing. You can go every fibre of their character with a fine tooth comb and find nothing positive about them.

And that stuff we see him doing isn't completely henious? The hell? And I'm aware that one can cross the Moral Event Horizon but not be a Complete Monster: I've argued this point alot. But like Fire Lord Ozai, Yakone crossed it while being thoroughly nasty and never had any redeemable or humanizing moments that made up for it in my book. Hiroshi freaking Sato is more redeemable than he is.

Then your book is wrong and we shouldn't consult it for this trope. COMPLETE. We can look at them and see the voids of redeeming qualties about them; when we look at Yakone you can easily make the case that he showed regret over what happened, which to make crystal clear is a 100% instant disqualification for this trope.

Yakone doesn't have to be included on the main page, but if many people view him as a Complete Monster for being the scum that he was, than why can't he at least be one on the YMMV page for the Korra series?

Because once upon a time we did that and the entire trope got put on the cutlist because of all the misuse, and it took a concentrated effort by a lot of tropers to get it off that list, and it was decided that there was no room for exceptions. If a character doesn't make it on the main page because this thread doesn't think they're a CM, then why the fuck should we let any page misuse this trope? That would defeat the purpose of the cleanup effort if any troper was free to ignore our decisions, and if that happens Fast Eddie is just going to axe the whole thing.

So no, Yakone is not going on the YMMV page if he's not on the main one, and anyone who tries to do so should get suspended for it.

People, this is YMMV because of all the mis-use. But we are trying make this trope as objective as possible. Just becuse it is YMMV doesn't give you right to add any random villain you like.

As for Yakone, I haven't seen the series, but seeing the majorities opinion, I can be convinced that he doesn't count. Nuff said.

Yakone doesn't have to be included on the main page, but if many people view him as a Complete Monster for being the scum that he was, than why can't he at least be one on the YMMV page for the Korra series?

I think that there is NO point of it, because, this is the main thing that caused users to add them on main pages. As I wrote above, we are trying to make this trope as objective as possible. And evidently not many people view him as a CM. Otherwise, he would be on the main page.

Also, I have to return to AC series again, since I saw that on Brotherhood YMMV page, there is a villain who should be removed (luckily he is not on the main page)

• According to Project Legacy, Micheletto Corella has kicked many women, possibly in the groin, he physically bullied Giovanni Borgia, he once used the boy as a distraction to strangle an apparent beggar, and when Giovanni fled his thoughts imply that Micheletto intended to strangle him too.

This is the description. Sure it sound monstrous, but it happened only in Legacy, not in the game itself. Do we remove him?

Also, I will inform you all that I am planning to change my name. I will no longer be called MONEYMONEY. I don't like this name anymore.

edited 25th Jun '12 12:41:30 PM by MONEYMONEY