Subpages cleanup: Complete Monster

I'd keep Lekain in personally. He crossed the Moral Event Horizon before we even met him, and in Radiant Dawn he just keeps going. Not only is he a repulsively nasty Smug Snake and Sinister Minister, it's clear that he's a raging hypocrite as well—until she awakens at the end of the game, Lekain doesn't even believe Ashera exists, making any religious justification for his actions null and void. If you look at his boss dialogue he's treated as though he were worse than Ashnard (likely due to the fact that, unlike Ashnard, he doesn't have an insanity excuse).

Okay, with Largo dropping support, I take it that Rune is finished discussion.

For Doubletone, the rule is pretty simple - you have to say the name of the series he comes from before I'll even look at it.

For Fallouot -

Talon Company mercenaries are still groups, so no. If all they do is attack, the only thing they'd qualify for is Elite Mooks. Easy cut.

The Enclave is sizable enough with enough members shown to be not Complete Monster status that you have to list individuals. That should also be cut.

For Fire Emblem -

My objection to Sonia is purely the "heinous" standard. Is she trying to become a globe-spanning tyrant? Because that's the level of evil we're dealing with for some of the major villains in the series.

I'm fine with letting Ephidel and Lundgren get cut.

Desmond apparently does care for someone else, so that makes him not completely devoid of positive character attributes. Cut.

Riev: Sounds like a potential case of Offscreen Villainy. Cut.

Valter: Okay, guys? The way this works isn't that you simply compare the character to another confirmed Complete Monster. It won't fly to say that he's simply the Fire Emblem version of The Joker. You have to actually describe what he's doing to show that he actually is doing crimes on the level of The Joker. Show, Don't Tell.

I'm also leaning against Lekain after the description in @1301. First off, you don't cross the Moral Event Horizon before a work starts - the MEH is the point where the story treats you differently. If the story treats someone as despicable from the get-go, then there was no crossing of the MEH. I have a rule - when one major trope is being misused in describing them, automatically be suspicious of any attempts to get them to work with another major trope.

Mind you, that's after I'm mostly fine with the entry from the sandbox. Reading that has me a bit more comfortable with the entry (after cleaning up a minor typo - herons are waterfowl, heroes are what oppose villains). I ask that folks please read up on definitions to major tropes before they start discussing them in this thread; we have to stop cascading trope misuse.

Heron was correct there. The heron tribe of the bird laguz (demihuman shapeshifters), which are well known for their absolute pacifism and disgust for war.

I will dig up some dialogue for Valter and will report back.

edited 29th Jun '12 10:07:25 AM by DarkConfidant

Heron is a terrible word, then, considering that real-life herons are fairly aggressive.

Finally, for the Tiny Toon Adventures example... hold on, I think we started discussing her earlier...

Huh. Could have sworn we discussed her. Maybe it was a different discussion of Moral Event Horizon. I seem to recall that the woman in question was actually possessed, and thus wasn't actually in control of her actions. As such, she's not a Complete Monster.

Exactly my point. So, what we need is for someone to briefly unlock the Cartoon Network page, in order to delete her from it.

And, for that matter, ditto for Mayor West on the main Western Animation page, for whom nothing he does is even touched upon.

edited 29th Jun '12 11:39:04 AM by SeaRover

If we're talking Mayor Adam West from Family Guy, I don't see how he could even be remotely considered a Complete Monster. Granted, I haven't watched since season seven, but I doubt his character could've undergone such a massive 180 in three seasons of a show with strong Negative Continuity.

Oh, once a Complete Monster page gets locked, it's staying locked. It's much easier to handle that way. If you want it removed, go to the thread for suggesting edits to locked pages in Frequently Asked Questions.

She's helping the main villain attain ultimate power, presumably to conquer the world. But I don't see why scale has to matter. Comparison to other villains, I suppose, but that's a comparison of atrocities, not their overall goal. She's treated as quite heinous, compared to most of the other villains in the story, and she has more story time to be developed (And despised) than the maniacs like Jerme and Pascal.

Anyways, Valter. Agreed that comparing him to another CM character doesn't count. I did say that he has the best claim to Complete Monster in that game, but I am willing to admit he may not count.

His actions are constant toying with the two main protagonists (Ephraim and Erikia) of the game, toying them and attacking them yet letting them run, to 'savor the hunt.' Though this does end up not working too well, since they always seem to get away from him. Still, his dialogue is quite disturbing, hinting that he wants to see them slowly die and plead for mercy. And in Erikia's case, probably do quite unpleasant things to her.

As well, he wants to prolong the war, which is devastating the country. He really doesn't care if anyone wins or loses, he just wants to see people die and suffer. When one of the other generals, Glen, talks with Erikia and figures out that something is wrong, Valter kills him to keep the truth from getting out. And then tells Glen's brother that Erikia killed him. Again, prolonging war and suffering.

However, his biggest problem in being considered a CM is that aside from a lot of talk and a few attacks, he really doesn't do much heinous acts on-screen. He kills Glen on-screen, but otherwise not a lot of other deaths are directly shown. Mostly it's just his talking and a few instances of meeting the main characters.

edited 29th Jun '12 2:37:47 PM by TriggerLoaded

Concerning Kingdom Hearts:

• The Kingdom Hearts series has Master Xehanort. He's responsible, both indirectly and directly, for all the hardships the main characters suffer and the creation of the three main monsters that are destroying the worlds. The secret reports in Birth by Sleep paint him as a bit of a Well-Intentioned Extremist, unleashing the Heartless and the Unversed to flood the universe with darkness in order to bring about perfect balance between light and darkness. However, that's in the backstory - in Birth by Sleep, he's clearly Jumped Off The Slippery Slope and whatever good intentions he once had are nowhere to be seen.
  • Describing Master Xehanort in such broad terms makes him seem positively tame compared to his actual portrayal. What makes Xehanort truly awful isn't the amount of harm he causes to the world, but the depths to which he sinks in his treatment of Ven and Terra. He takes Ven, an eleven-year-old (or even younger) child, in as an apprentice with the sole intention of training him to use the darkness, then stealing his body. When Ven proves himself not to be up to the task, he forcibly extracts Ven's darkness, leaving him comatose, then drops his apprentice's failing body off in his own much-hated homeworld to die. After realizing Ven isn't going to die, he gives him to his fellow Keyblade Master Eraqus, a man whom he considers to be a brother, to train until Ven's light grows strong enough that he can be forcibly reunited with his darkness and become a weapon that will allow its wielder to reshape the entire world. While he's there, he notices Eraqus' student, Terra, and immediately decides that he wants Terra's body. When Terra's finally about to become a Master himself, Xehanort convinces Eraqus that he ought to be tested to show that he's not dark, sabotages the test, isolates Terra from his friends, and uses his position as a Master to keep Terra from learning to suppress his darkness properly - then, he uses Terra's issues with the darkness to draw Ven away from Eraqus' protection to force him to fight and gain strength, eventually letting him know what he really is and sending him off to confront Eraqus, knowing his "brother" would feel compelled to kill Ven and Terra would do whatever it took to save him. He murders Eraqus while he's still weak just to enrage Terra, repeatedly tries to kill Aqua just because he doesn't have any use for her, callously uses everyone he comes across, and is willing to risk an apocalypse out of sheer curiosity. His predatory behavior destroys the lives of everyone he comes across, and what makes him even worse is that there's nothing anyone caught in his plans can do about it - the only reason he didn't succeed completely was because he didn't expect Aqua to survive long enough to interfere, and he still ended up with Terra's body in the end, with Aqua inadvertedly helping him keep it!
  • That's not the end of it. He manages to convince a group of scientists into manufacturing a batch an entire army of evil beings For Science!, while suffering from amnesia(!), throws his master into the middle of nowhere, steals his name, willingly splits himself into two(!!), his heart possessing a boy and manipulating a cartel of Disney villains from behind the scenes and his empty body manipulating said scientists (who followed his fate) into fixing something he was directly responsible for, treating them all like dirt and planning to off them all eventually anyway. The kicker? Even though Sora managed to defeat both his incarnations ten...eleven...TWELVE years later, he's now alive somewhere and whole...
    • And then 3D shows that he's even more of a monster than we ever imagined, as the game reveals that he's essentially his OWN Start of Darkness, that everything that's been happening throughout the series has gone exactly as he planned IN SPITE of the heroes' interference, that he lied to Organization XIII about the true nature of Nobodies and their goals, and that he purposely turned them into Nobodies in the first place!
    • Let's not forget his But for Me, It Was Tuesday reaction to the events of BBS. Ruining the lives of three aspiring Keyblade wielders (one becoming his vessel, one falling into darkness to save said friend, and the other having his heart broken) merits nothing more than a smug, matter-of-fact reaction from Xehanort.
  • Ansem, Seeker of Darkness is possibly the worst of all his incarnations. Carrying on Xehanort's wishes, soiling the name of a saint, screwing Radiant Garden, manipulating Disney villains, and possessing Riku and gleefully having him try to kill his best friends. It must have been so bad that Riku had to blindfold himself to hide the shame.
    • And 3D makes it even worse. See the part above about Xehanort being responsible for his own Start of Darkness? That wasn't Master Xehanort's doing. This guy was responsible. Lacking a body, ASOD traveled back in time and convinced a young Master Xehanort to go through the annals of time himself and recruit thirteen different incarnations of Xehanort to form a new Organization XIII. The young Xehanort then proceeds to return to his time and work his way through the events of BBS just so he can make it back up to the point he (as an amnesiac Terra-Xehanort) loses himself to darkness (again) so that he can become a Heartless and Nobody, thus ensuring a Stable Time Loop. When Sora discovers this chain of events and inquires about it, Xehanort even admits that he doesn't fully know what's going to happen next. Xehanort is so depraved, he even used himself as a pawn in his schemes. Just when you think Xehanort can't sink any lower, he proves you wrong. And this becomes even worse when you realize that, while Xehanort, in general, is Sora's Evil Counterpart, his younger incarnation is Riku's; had none of this ever happened, he'd just be a boy living out his remaining years quietly on the Destiny Islands...

I take issue with the whole The secret reports in Birth by Sleep paint him as a bit of a Well-Intentioned Extremist, unleashing the Heartless and the Unversed to flood the universe with darkness in order to bring about perfect balance between light and darkness. bit there (and the Example Indentation and Word Cruft in the rest of the entry), as it sounds like it makes him a Well-Intentioned Extremist

• Vanitas, Master Xehanort's apprentice, gets a special mention, since not only is he a Complete Monster, he's also made purely of darkness, so he couldn't be anything but a Complete Monster.
  • He's a murderous Psycho for Hire, but next to Master Xehanort, he's like the diet coke of evil, even considering the severity of their deeds only. The fact that he never had a choice to be anything else, while not enough to really cause pity for the guy (as, unlike say, the Nobodies, it means he was never once GOOD either, and he does have actual emotions so that he can genuinely enjoys his evildoing) does make him a lot more understandable and far less disgusting than the willfully malicious choice to be evil made by his master.

Clearly a non-example. Let's just cut it.

• Also, Evil Queen, Master Control Program, and Shan Yu all count, but this is all because they are as evil as they were in their original films.
  • As of 3D, we can add Judge Frollo to the list.
  • And so we can, Clu.

A bunch of Zero Context Examples. I have always been using the standard that if an example doesn't fit, it gets axed and maybe dumped on a discussion page. So I propose to cutlist this page, dump anything salvageable on Monster.Video Games and drop the X Just X stuff onto Monster.Video Games Discussion with a note to consult this thread if someone wants to readd it.

Master Xehanort is not a Well-Intentioned Extremist. That's just WMG sparked by reading the reports. His actions don't point to good intentions, only greed for power.

"First off, you don't cross the Moral Event Horizon before a work starts - the MEH is the point where the story treats you differently. If the story treats someone as despicable from the get-go, then there was no crossing of the MEH. I have a rule - when one major trope is being misused in describing them, automatically be suspicious of any attempts to get them to work with another major trope."

You do realise that nowhere on the Moral Event Horizon page does it say that it has to be crossed in-story? It says only that after committing this act, the character can never be forgiven, and that it cannot be crossed more than once. In the backstory Lekain ordered a genocide and forced the leader of Kilvas to sign a blood pact. The revelation that he did so is the point at which the story goes from treating him as a standard corrupt politician to an irredeemable bastard who is number one on every hero's hit list. There is no going back from that, and as the example notes, he gets worse from thereon in. My main point—if Moral Event Horizon is supposed to be something that happens to a formerly sympathetic character, it needs to say that on the trope page.

edited 30th Jun '12 7:57:05 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar

I deleted Vanitas, but Master Xehanort and all his incarnations stay. I think that the page should be CUT, and we should add Xehanort to the general list since he (all his incarnations), and Clu seem to be the only C Ms in the whole game.

I also think of removing the examples of Disney Villains (I deleted Frollo) but I am kind of hesistant since they are Complete Monsters in their films. I leave Clu and elaborated why he is a CM.

Sub-pages are made when games contain a lot of C Ms which doesn't seem to be a case for Kingdom Hearts series. So as I said, cut the page and put Xehanort, and Clu to the main list (Video Games).

edited 30th Jun '12 1:52:29 AM by Krystoff

The Justifying Edit for Vanitas is wrong. It's WMG and Alternative Character Interpretation. Vanitas is never portrayed as sympathetic in the game, and he's never given the "he was torn from his other half, now you must pity him" treatment. That's nonsense. He's portrayed as completely vile. You jumped the gun.

edited 30th Jun '12 1:57:35 AM by lu127

Okay, I am adding him back. Mods always know best.

No, as the entry is currently written it's not an example. You need to rewrite it before you readd it.

Concerning Xehanort, I think that simply deleting the questionable line may suffice.

On a different topic, would it make sense to compile a list of persons that aren't Complete Monsters on the discussion pages?

I doubt it. This trope is for those who are. I find no point in that.

The point is to avoid bringing up people more than once. Nobody's going to look though the entire thread to know whether they were already brought up.

The only problem is that it seems most posters don't check out the discussion page.

Still, one place where all of the rejected C Ms can be listed sounds like a good idea.

Also Krystoff, I deleted the Disney villians at the bottom, including Clu, due to the lack of real explanation. Even Clu, because while making you fight your friends is a dick move, that alone wouldn't push you over the edge.

edited 30th Jun '12 4:24:46 AM by Shaoken

Okay, so there as so few C Ms in Kingdom Hearts than wh not cut the page, and put Xehanort and Vanitas on the main page?

edited 30th Jun '12 4:35:39 AM by Krystoff

We still need to rewrite the WMG and Justifying Edit mess there before we can add it to Monster.Video Games. And put some coherent Example Indentation in there too.

I guess it would depend on wether or not you'd treat Xenohart and Ansem as different characters or not. If so, and all of the examples on the page are good (although it seriously needs some trimming here and there) then Kingdom Hearts has three C Ms which puts it in that threshold for it's own subpage (and the length of the entries makes it a better fit). If there are less than three C Ms then we should just clean it up and put it on the main page (also finding and removign enough bad examples to make space for it).

EDIT: For the main page, could we get a Sandbox or something so we can organise the examples alphabetically, because having three sub-folders of unorganised examples seems a bit unwieldy.

edited 30th Jun '12 4:51:28 AM by Shaoken

It's a little late to comment on it but a list of rejected CMs sounds like a good idea to me.

I think a reasonable approach would be to put some things aside and focus on the subpages that are locked. Make a sandbox on Video Games for instance, where we put any characters that seem to fit the criteria from the main page, without the cruft and natter. After we're done sorting through them all, we can swap the pages.

Sandbox.Video Game Monsters.

Here's somewhere where we can dump examples after we've cleaned them and verified their status as a Complete Monster.

I think that this is much better way of solving the problem, than just bringing new and new villains to this thread. Now we will be soon done with the list.

I am going to throw Majd Addin from Assassins Creed and Marco Barbarigo from the second game and possibly Silvio Barbarigo.

• The Assassins Creed series has some but very few. While it seems that nearly everyone you murder as an Assassin is an Asshole Victim, most of them are True Believers in the Templar cause to make a better world through removing humanity's free will. Some of them, however, stand out for their unnecessary and premeditated evil.
  • Assassin's Creed gives us Majd Addin. While most of Altaïr's targets think that their actions will be good for the world, that is not the case for this psycho. Majd Addin, the de facto leader of Jerusalem who regularly orders and personally carries out mass executions of innocent people, openly admits on his deathbed that he doesn't think it will help anyone, he does it because he finds it fun.
  • 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.doesn't think it will help anyone, he does it because he finds it fun.
    • Silvio Barbarigo could be even worse for having the children of a rival family massacred at a party

Now, time to mention another villain; the Joker from Batman Arkham City

• The Joker from Batman Arkham City kills multiple people, sets Bane up to be tortured, freely talks about being physically abusive to Harley Quinn, offers to let his men rape Harley, covers all the usual Bad Boss bases, tries to turn Jim Gordon into a 'roided-up monstrosity, kidnaps Nora Fries to force Mr. Freeze into helping him, blackmails Batman into helping by sending his poisoned blood to hospitals in the Gotham area, etc.

And finally, the MOST evil villain in game history! (my opinion at least)

• The Emperor (NO! Not Palpatine!) from Star Wars The Old Republic is a really, really cruel man. First, he disintegrated T3-M4, murdered his own parents, drained the energy from a planet, forced Revan and the Exile into his mind, telepathically tortures Exal... it says a lot when the ancient Sith Lords preferred Exar Kun over this guy. It says even more when the Dark Council plotted to overthrow him. And that's not even getting into what Kira endured thanks to him. She fled the Sith because of his evil and during the Jedi Knight's battle with Angral, he possesses Kira purely to do away with her friend. Why? Because he saw visions that her friend might be the one who will defeat him and being Dangerously Genre-Savvy he's decided to take the hero out now while he or she is still weak.

edited 30th Jun '12 8:43:38 AM by Krystoff