Subpages cleanup: Complete Monster

I agree, he may be a Knightof Cerebus but not a CM. I do not think any Ernest villain could qualify really.

jjj

Since everyone is in favor of Machete's Torrez, in a day or so I'll add him to the YMMV page and the edit request thread so he can be added to the Film subpage. I'll also be adding the Djinn from Wishmaster to that thread, whose write-up was previously approved in this thread, but we forgot to add him to the subpage.

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The Chronicles of Riddick franchise has a lot of issues. There are a lot of characters listed, so this will have to be a long post.

• Complete Monster: Jaylor, Revas, and Spinner from Assault on Dark Athena. Aside from maybe some Butcher Bay inmates (Rust in particular) in Escape from Butcher Bay, none of the other villains quite approach this level. The Lord Marshall and Vaako believe in a twisted version of Utopia Justifies the Means, Dame Vaako is a power-hungry Lady McBeth, the monsters in Pitch Black are mindless predators, Johns is a self-serving bastard but not a monster (although he does cross the Moral Event Horizon on two occasions), Toombs is in it only for the money, and Junner, Hoxie, and Abbot seem to be consumate professionals, even if their line of work is inhumane to the core (more a result of the Riddick universe being a Crapsack World than any fault of their own). Chillingsworth is a good contender, however.

That example needs to be less about what characters aren't Complete Monsters, and more about what characters are. The Riddick universe is very much a Crapsack World, so the characters are going to need some seriously heinous actions to qualify. The characters listed are Jaylor, Revas, Spinner, Rust, the Lord Marshal, Vaako, Dame Vaako, the Bioraptors (the Pitch Black monsters), Johns, Toombs, Junner, Hoxie, Abbot, and Chillingsworth (that's almost all the villains in that series, actually). Jaylor, Revas, and Chillingsworth seem to be the only ones who could qualify for this trope.

First those who don't, and the reasons I think why:

• Spinner is said to have been a mercenary soldier who took in Revas when she was a child he found in the slums, and took her in. Even Evil Has Loved Ones as a redeeming quality.

• Rust is hinted to be this, but all we see him do is break someone's finger and run the prison wing like a bully, making him fall far short of the CM contenders.

• The Lord Marshal is a world-conquering Evil Overlord who committed genocide against an entire planet, but he's a Dark Messiah who believes he is leading his people, the Necromongers, to a better world.

• Vaako and Dame Vaako also both fall into the Utopia Justifies the Means territory as their leader, and also clearly love one another, with Dame Vaako encouraging her husband to perform a Klingon Promotion to see her husband in a powerful position.

• Bioraptors don't qualify, they're mindless alien predators.

• Johns almost seems like one in Pitch Black, letting a man die in complete agony because he stole all the morphine, keeping a Faux Affably Evil demeanor throughout the movie, and being a coward who's perfectly fine with killing a child to distract a bunch of monsters. Bonus material also reveals that he threatened to kill several children to capture Riddick, but this is Offstage Villainy, so this probably shouldn't count towards his assessment. His addiction to morphine because of a spine wound Riddick gave him also serves to make him more tragic. He gets more character development in prequel installments, where he's still a bastard out for number one, although he does team up with Riddick. I'm doubtful about this one, but leaning towards a cut, compared to the better candidates coming up.

• Toombs is treated too much like an inconsequential threat in his appearances, being easily outclassed by Riddick again and again. If I recall correctly he doesn't even get to kill anyone at any point. He's basically treated as a Harmless Villain.

• Junner doesn't really go beyond standard villainy. He follows Chillingworth's orders, doesn't engage in violence or murder just for the hell of it, and has a swordfight with Riddick. Nothing to really make him stand out.

• Butcher Bay Prison's Warden Hoxie and Captain of the Guard Abbot are rather ambiguous. They're never all that heinous onscreen, and it's very arguable to what extent the horrible conditions in the Butcher Bay prison can be laid at their feet.

The characters who probably qualify:

• Revas is the captain of the mercenary ship the Dark Athena. She was taken in by her current second-in-command Spinner, and joined the crew in her teens. She seduced the original captain, then had him overthrown and thrown in a cell. She refitted the ship so they would attack unsuspecting vessels and settler worlds. The planetary assaults are complete Rape, Pillage, and Burn, with unarmed civilians being indiscriminately killed and tossed in sewers, the settlements wiped out, and the survivors harvested into remote-controlled cyborgs, openly called out as A Fate Worse Than Death. The ship also functions as a slave vessel, with decks upon decks of prisons with people her mercenaries captured, locked up until they can sell them or convert them into cyborgs. She personally tries to murder a child twice, and doesn't show any real interest in people besides using some good-looking mercenaries as sex toys. It's said that she grew up in the slums where she had to learn to survive, but considering her later crimes it falls a bit short as a Freudian Excuse.

• Jaylor is an utterly sadistic member of Revas's crew, before he was stripped of his rank and thrown in a cell for his crimes. The moment Riddick meets him he seems friendly until he reveals that it's just a smokescreen. Jaylor continously expresses interest in raping a female prisoner a few cells down the line, and when Riddick refuses to "rile here up" for him, he promises that as soon as the prisoner riot starts, he'll kill her, THEN rape her. He's a necrophiliac rapist and a murderer. He later kills the woman in front of her little daughter, and gloats about it to Riddick before he he gets killed by him. Bonus material shows that he's a complete psychopath who simply indulged in rape and murder when he was still a mercenary, to the point that he freaked out all the others. While that's Offstage Villainy, I think his onscreen crimes are enough to qualify him as is.

• Chillingsworth might qualify. Like Revas, she also commands a mercenary ship. She's a bounty hunter whose hobbies are collecting criminals and notorious fighters to place them in her collection of living statues, where they're frozen so that it takes them a whole day to so much as blink an eye, and they're conscious the whole time, the sole purpose of which is to create "art". She throws Riddick in a pit with people-eating monsters together with two innocent friends he's made, and is unmoved when one of her own men falls in and is devoured. She later tries to kill Riddick (standard villainy). She's never humanized. Riddick explicitly calls her out as a psychopath, but that's more You Monster! than Complete Monster.

edited 27th Jun '13 7:41:37 AM by Morgenthaler

You've got roaming bands of armed, aggressive, tyrannical plumbers coming to your door, saying "Use our service, or else!"

Revas and Jaylor certainly get my vote. Chillingsworth, I'm not so sure about, but that may just be because her crimes seem much less heinous when put next to the formers'. I won't vote against her, but I'm not going to vote for her inclusion either right now.

Revas and Jaylor. Chillingsworth.

@14249: Looks like a pretty sweet Torrez write-up to me.

@14251: Yeah, we agreed on Dick Hardley during the Monster.Cartoon Network page clean-up.

@14255: I'm going to have to agree with Ambar in saying it sounds like neither Hawkfrost nor Darkstripe count. Even disregarding the redeeming quality of Darkstripe and the questionable moral agency of Hawkfrost, neither seem anywhere near heinous enough to qualify. They just sound like jerks and thugs.

@14257: Going to vote against Nash. Doesn't really do enough to qualify.

@14264: Revas sounds like a definite keeper. I think Jaylor sounds like he falls just a bit short of the heinous standard when compared with Revas. He only has one attempted rape and kill to his name onscreen and I'm not sure that's enough to qualify him in Riddick's crapsack world. Chillingsworth I think might be a keeper. Everyone else is a cut.

edited 27th Jun '13 3:41:55 PM by OccasionalExister

I'll vote for the three from Riddick

I'm going to say yes for Revas, and no for Jaylor and Chillingsworth because they don't see as heinous in comparison to Revas, especially since Jaylor is a subordinate of Revas and therefore might have questionable moral agency.

Fair warning: I can get pretty emotional and take things too seriously.

That's kind of an iffy definition of moral agency.

I'm leaning towards a yes for all three of them, although Chillingsworth might not be as heinous and doesn't really sound sane, so not sure there.

edited 28th Jun '13 12:55:00 AM by nrjxll

Comics lock in 12.5 hours.

CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts

Sorry to pester anyone here, but has anyone discused Robert Turner from Disturbia? I'm not suggesting him because I think he may not count due to Offscreen Villainy (he killed dozens of people), but he did snap a police officer's neck, implying that he killed him and he tried to kill the protagonist's mother.

Here is the wiki for his biography. Please forgive me if I'm wrong.

edited 28th Jun '13 6:19:20 AM by MsCC93

Seems like a generic villain. And "Blind Idiot" Translation ahoy.

CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts

I can see Turner. Can't think of a reason to disqualify him

How does Enemy Without interact with this trope? Do such characters have adequete moral agency (if sentient) or not? The trope is related to but different from Made of Evil.

Found some more examples in the VN section worthy of discussion.

1. EVA-Beatrice. Currently on page, but I propose cutting her for two reasons. 1. Has a Morality Chain in the form of Ange. 2. Is supposed to represent a specific culprit theory (that's actually false) so there could be issues with moral agency. She is legitimately Ax-Crazy and sadistic about how she kills people.

2. Bernkastel. Same series as above. The most heinous character by the standards of the story by a long shot. Often called the "Visual Novel counterpart of Terumi" and with good reason since she's easily one of the cruelest, most sadistic Trolls in modern fiction and like Terumi is also a Hope Crusher. The only problem I could see is her status as an Enemy Without to Rika Furude, which is why I asked for a ruling about Enemy Without.

edited 28th Jun '13 11:10:13 AM by magnum12

Umineko: When They Cry:

EVA-Beatrice fits up to a certain point. But taking the entire series in mind as well, no. She's basically a good guy in the final conflict. But considering that the separate games are worlds in themselves (it's complicated), I don't think she shows any disqualifying traits in games 3 and 4. She's a side of Eva who's rebelling, but she's no personification of Evil, so she does have moral agency.

Bernkastel does have the moral agency to qualify. I don't know if there's something in the extra material that says so, but I don't remember anything saying for certain what exactly her connection to Rika is. There are a lot of implications, but I don't think she's an incarnation of Rika's Evil or something. Perhaps a part of her that suffered, but that still makes Bern a part of Rika that includes a moral agency. What counts against her is that she has suffered a thousand years of pain, which is her motivation for being cruel, so she can forget about her own past. Or something like that.

If there's anyone I'd doubt the moral agency of, it's Erika, considering she's a creation of Bernkastel. More or less. Maybe. Both of them can appear rather affable, but when all's said and done, they both do a lot without regret.

edited 28th Jun '13 11:58:57 AM by AnotherDuck

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I've said that everyone but Bern should be cut before, and I stand by that. Bern and Evatrice have moral agency, but given the weird-ass narrative of the story, it may be very likely Eva-Beatrice may never have actually committed a single crime despite how the story portrays her in Episode 3. Of course, what is certain is that she's obviously heroic in the final episode, so she goes out.

Bern's Freudian Excuse goes out the window when you take into consideration that she's perfectly willing to inflict it upon others for her own amusement.

I agree with the above as well.

Requested comics lock. Well done everyone. Stephen King sweep to come, but again: Is The Stand's The Kid a monster?

CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts

There's also the theories running about that EVA Beatrice is Beatrice's way of telling Battler that there was more than one culprit. Its also unclear exactly how many people Eva actually killed in the 3rd game. Theories typically vary from killing no one to killing at max 7 people. Personally, I'm inclined to believe 3 kills, but not due to evil intentions (more like a toxic combination of Eva's hot headed temper, misguided vigilantism, and a rapidly deteriorating emotional state).

Anything of what actually happened rather than what's shown in Umineko is Off Screen Villainy. It's not shown, and it's not certain that's what happened anyway.

EVA-Beatrice qualifies as she was portrayed in the third and fourth games, and only there, but otherwise she doesn't. I don't think that's enough, considering she appears outside the game board (like meeting Ange in the future), which means she's probably the same person between games. She's one of those pieces it's not really clear whether she's just a piece in that particular game, or if she's a persistent one who has knowledge of it being a game in the first place. Or there are two versions of her, one piece version and one meta version, like with Battler.

In other words, I'm leaning no on EVA-Beatrice.

Check out my fanfiction!

The Dragon Ball examples we decided to cut are still on the page, could someone take care of them.

If I hear about Sauron and Complete Monster again ... We haven't had such a long and vicious argument over a character since Ghetsis (in fact this may surpass Ghetsis, Syndrome, or Discord). Can we just add him to the "Definitely a CM" page and never speak of him again.

Also we should add Shen Yu from Mulan to the "Definitely A CM" list while we're at it considering the amount of times he's been discussed. Even though the movie's a comedy, he's evil and sadistic enough to count.

Also does the Atlantis The Lost Empire example really count? I mean said villain sounds exactly like the Jackie Chan Adventures example only with a higher body count from the description and although I haven't seen the movie in a long time, I don't recall him doing anything special.

The Jackie Chan example was rejected not due to insufficient heinousness, but because the setting was too light.

The pig of Hufflepuff pulsed like a large bullfrog. Dumbledore smiled at it, and placed his hand on its head: "You are Hagrid now."

In regards to Rika's connection to Trollkastel, IIRC, Word of God says that she's supposed to be an algamation of every Rika that didn't survive the June 1983 scenario, more specifically the pain and rage aspects. The Dice Killing Chapter in Rei is supposed to be the event that split the two apart.

@14282: Atlantis: The Lost Empire? It's been awhile since I saw that movie but I remember clearly that no one in that movie was heinous enough to qualify for being a Complete Monster.

Fair warning: I can get pretty emotional and take things too seriously.

We already discussed and voted on Rourke. A big difference is he's willing to commit intentional genocide just to increase value of his theft.

RE: Enemy Without: It's distinct from Made of Evil yes, but characters that fit this trope are very hard to qualify for Complete Monsters because they're a person's physical manifestation of their inner dark side, rather than just a generic Anthropomorphic Personification of evil (although they can intersect in some cases). It's hard to argue moral agency when their entire being is negative emotions.

RE: Riddick:

So that's a definite yes for all the cuts. Counting votes for the three candidates (including myself, as I've now decided I'm personally in favor of all three), for Revas that's 6 votes in favor and 1 maybe; for Jaylor 4 votes in favor, 2 against, and 1 maybe; and for Chillingsworth 4 votes in favor, 2 votes against, and 2 maybes. That would indicate a yes for all three.

Curiously Revas and Jaylor are both from the same installment, the videogame Assault on Dark Athena, which might be the darkest entry in this series yet (most of the game you're basically walking through a desolate warzone). Chillingsworth comes from a different installment than the other two (the short tie-in animation Dark Fury, the most obscure work in the franchise), but since all the works in this franchise are in canon with one another and part of the same continuity, they should probably be counted as one whole.

To address some of the questions brought up:

There isn't really an argument for Jaylor having no moral agency. He was actually thrown in prison because he was such a sick puppy that the other mercs (presumably Revas included, since she's the CO) thought he crossed the line and threw him in a cell, so he actually chose to go against their accepted standard of atrocities. I recall he also has another onscreen crime to his name; he orders Riddick to kill the mercenary who turned him in to get revenge, and to retrieve one of his golden teeth so Jaylor has evidence that the guy is dead and has a souvenir of the dearly departed. The main reason he might seem less heinous than Revas is because he's lower on the totem pole in the grand scheme of things, and is in a cell most of the game. He actually comes across as more vile personality-wise than Revas; while Revas does much more harm with her borderline-genocidal campaigns, she's out for power and riches, while Jaylor's only goal is sadistic pleasure.

Chillingsworth actually seemed perfectly sane (nothing to suggest she's out of touch with reality, in any case), if pure evil. The thing with this character is that she's obsessed with the art of killing and death. There's dozens of people in that living statue collection of hers, and she actually gloats to Riddick that they're mentally trapped in a nightmare world for hundreds of years to come. You can't even really say that the "art" she creates is for a higher purpose, only her own enjoyment (she defines their "audience" as herself only). She doesn't care about any member of her crew she sends against Riddick and died (just that she apparently paid them too much), and only gets a Villainous Breakdown at the end because he foiled her plans to make him part of her collection. The fact that the person calling her out as an irredeemable psychopath is himself pretty much a sociopathic Noble Demon I think says it all, really.

edited 29th Jun '13 7:24:56 AM by Morgenthaler

You've got roaming bands of armed, aggressive, tyrannical plumbers coming to your door, saying "Use our service, or else!"