Subpages cleanup: Complete Monster

Anyways, I promised some other candidates recently, and I intend to deliver.

Let me start with some classic cinema

Alfred Hitchcock had two I would consider a Complete Monster.

The first is Uncle Charlie from Shadow of a Doubt

Who Is he?

Charlie Oakley, charming, debonair, and a ruthless serial killer. The Merry Widow Murderer who seduces, murders and steals from widows.

What Does He Do?

Well, see the above? Yeah, he does it. He murders wealthy widows for their money. Now, during the course of the film, Charlie arrives back at his home with his family and his niece who idolizes him. However, she does discover his little secret. His niece, Charlie (Charlotte being her full name) begins having near fatal accidents: falling down the stairs, being trapped in a garage spewing exhaust fumes...and finally, Uncle Charlie agrees to leave by train, but pulls Niece Charlie to the train, planning to murder her by shoving her out when it's fast enough. He manipulates her into keeping quiet by going on about how awful it'd be for Niece charlie's mother, his sister if anyone uncovered his secret...

Redeeming factors?

In a word, none. It's abundantly clear that Charlie's affections for any human being are fake and he has no compunction murdering them to keep his secrets

The second is Bob Rusk

Who Is He?

Misogynistic serial killer, known as the Necktie Killer for his method of strangling women with his ties.

What Does He Do?

This one's kind of easy. He strangles multiple women with his tie and then frames his friend Richard Blaney for it by setting up fake evidence against him)

Redeeming features?

Nope, none. Short entry, yes, but Rusk...isn't complicated, honestly. He kills people and frames his friend to take the fall.

And finally...an Orson Welles complete monster from his film The Stranger

Who Is He?

Franz Kindler, AKA Charles Rankin,a Nazi War Criminal who's adopted a new name and fled to a sleepy little suburban community, taken a wife where he lives in relative obscurity, peace and quiet until a Nazi hunter comes looking

What Does He Do?

When a repentant Nazi tracks him down to beg Kindler to confess, Kindler strangles him to death and poisons his wife's dog when the dog sniffs where he buried the body. Eventually, he attempts to murder his wife to keep cover. I'm also not sure if it qualifies as Off Screen Villainy or not, but Kindler was a leading figure in Nazi war crimes, and we see photographs of his handy work. In fact, he helped invent the final solution in the film.

Redeeming Features?

Like Rusk and Charlie above, the only ones he have are just Faux Affably Evil attempts by a sociopath to cover up his evil. When he desperately claims he was just following orders, said Nazi orders responds "You gave the orders."

edited 19th Sep '13 9:23:24 PM by Lightysnake

The literature page continues to be a goldmine of badly written examples. Like the following gems:

• The Black Angel:
  • Garcia, the latest recruit of the Believers, a serial killer with a habit of kidnapping prostitutes, murdering them, and then using their bones for art projects - including the twisted sculpture of the Black Angel itself. And it's implied that before coming to America, he did even worse.
  • Brightwell, the immortal second-in-command of the Believers; assisting Garcia in the worst of his exploits, he also goes about much of the Black Angel's dirty work across the centuries: murder, torture, brutal assaults upon defenceless monks and a host of other offences. For good measure, he has a nasty habit of consuming the souls of his victims and adding them to "the great chorus within..."

The first one states outright that any actions he did before coming to America are implied at best. Similarly Brightwell's entry says "a host of other offences" and doesn't list them; indeed the OP's apparent lack of knowledge about the Offscreen Villainy rules makes me suspect that what's listed for Brightwell is something given in a monologue rather than shown in flashback. If all he does onscreen is help Garcia he's a cut, and unless somebody familiar with the novel confirms that Garcia actually qualifies I'm going to say cut the whole thing.

• Coraline contains a living nightmare of a villain. The Other Mother invites children into her world by making them living funner life they've always wanted. Then she sucks their life out and steals their souls, though not before she tricks them into letting them sew buttons on their eyes. She also cheerfully disfigures and tortures the beings she creates to capture children, just because they try to resist her.

This thing have actual moral agency? Because it sounds rather Lovecraftian going off of the description. Also "funner life they've always wanted". At the very least we need a rewrite that doesn't include that phrase.

• Wesley and Thelma from Island by Richard Laymon murdered the parents of two teenage girls who are living on the eponymous island, and kept those girls as sex slaves.

This one has come up before but I don't recall an actual decision being made. Given how utterly depraved Richard Laymon's books are in general (at least according to his other entries on the page), these two do not sound like keepers.

• Mr Grin from Andersen Prunty's Jack and Mr Grin kidnaps Gina Black, Jack Orange's girlfriend, then calls him to tell him he has two days to find her or he will never see her again. After merely hearing Mr Grin's voice by phone, Jack can immediately imagine him with an unnatural grin based on his malicious tone without true joy. After Jack's quest to find Gina begins, Mr Grin proceeds to phone him occasionally to let him hear Gina being sexually abused, even being explicit about it. Prunty manages to paint Mr Grin as a sleazy, disgusting scumbag. There's no motivation provided fro Mr Grin, so you'd guess he merely does it for fun, which fits in a surreal horror story along the lines of The Twilight Zone.

We're listing people on the basis of imagined, joyless grins, huh? I don't think I need to comment on how badly written this one is. Rather then talking about his actual crimes, it's all about his imaginary smile and Twilith Zone comparisons. Also, we can't say he does it For the Evulz unless that's explicit.

• The Markhagir from Kushiel's Avatar practices sexual torture, mutilation and degradation of all kinds and is just overall a master at tormenting people psychologically as well as physically, with a priesthood to back him up as well. The author makes it clear, though, that while he may have supernatural evil on his side, the Markhagir is the product of human atrocity.

Another generic entry. Can anyone tell me what, if any, sexual torture, mutilation and degradation he gets into onscreen?

• Jordan Krall's King Scratch includes a few nasty individuals:
  • Jim and Peggy take a ride from a Scary Black Man named Fred. He looks jovial, if odd at first, but with a little bit of conversation, both Jim and readers realize what a scumbag the guy is when he casually states he could rape Peggy (who is lying unconscious on the backseat). Then, while driving, he tries to strangle Jim with his other hand. Luckily, Jim keeps a knife with him just in case and stabs him in the chest before taking control of the car, driving to the side and kicking Fred off. However, when Jim is going to hide Fred's corpse in the trunk, he discovers dead babies with bite marks on them.
  • In Keith's moonshine-induced flashback, we meet General Entwistle, who, we're told, likes sending his troops into certain-death situations and pleasuring himself while watching them get slaughtered.

Another one that's come up before. General Entwhistle appears in a flashback caused by moonshine. I don't know about the rest of you, but that makes me question its veracity. As for Fred—he is apparently listed more because of what he says than what he actually does. Going off of descriptions here, this sounds like a dark book/series. Can anyone elaborate as to whether either of these guys actually meets the heinous standard? Otherwise I'm going to say cut.

• Mona, the stepmother in the dark Cinderella story Sunny Ella, poisons her second husband (and is implied to have similarly disposed of her first as well), fires the hired help, forces Ella to do all her chores, and removes Ella's voicebox when she complains, which leads to Ella losing her mind. Mona also tells her own daughter that, if she doesn't win the prince's affections, she needn't bother coming home.

One murder. The rest is just being an extremely abusive bitch. Even if we keep her, the part about it implying she killed her first husband has to go.

• Vorkosigan Saga
  • Baron Ryoval is such a degenerate even other Jacksonians find him repulsive. He has his own father murdered, takes over the family business, then wipes out the rest of the family — by assassination in the case of the men, by mutilation and sale into sexual slavery in the case of the women and younger boys. That's before what he does to Mark ...
  • Admiral Vorrutyer and Crown Prince Serg are sadists seeming to spur one another on. We're not given any actual details about what they do, but the little that's brought up in the narration is bad enough. Vorrutyer would have his schizophrenic assistant rape a woman until she got pregnant, then give her to Serg; whatever Serg did with them are noodle incidents probably best left without description. Likewise, we're told obliquely of Vorrutyer's 'toy' collection without any actual examples. Given that such a degenerate as Serg was heir to the Barrayaran Imperium, it's no wonder his father the Emperor invented a war to provide an opportunity to kill him. It wound up taking down approximately five thousand other Barrayarans and an unknown number of Escobarans in the process. Ezar is more a Magnificent Bastard than monster, however, because he knows Serg would destroy Barrayar and the only way to get rid of him without igniting planet-wide civil war is to kill him and make him seem like a hero. His methods are brutal, but stabilizing Barrayar is the goal of everything he does.

The first guy might qualify if it's onscreen. The second two's actions aren't even detailed, apparently, and half the entry is talking about how some other guy qualifies for MB. Terrible, terrible writing here.

A few of these have come up before during previous sweeps of the lit page, but no decisions were ever reached. Hopefully we can come to some this time and get rid of and/or fix them.

edited 19th Sep '13 9:52:55 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

The Other Mother we've discussed before. However, she's a very comprehensible being;. The entry needs rewriting.

Garcia and Brightwell, from what I recall, do plenty together. Brightwell simply has a habit of consuming the victims' souls at the end.

Mr. Grin...the keeper thing there seems to be the sexual assault, but that's SO badly written.

The Mahrkagir, however...besides horrible child abuse, he raped the heroine with an iron rod, brutalizes her nightly and others bits...he once had a slave girl fond of his favorite torture toy executed and promised the boy he'd spare her if the boy would swallow the Mahrkagir's piss. He didn't succeed, so the Mahrkagir raped her and cut her throat in front of him.

Fred looks the kep, Entwhistle the cut.

Mahrkagir sounds like a qualifier. If you can do a write-up that actually includes his crimes, I'd have no issues with that staying.

I would describe Ryoval as Ramsay Bolton Recycled In Space. Definitely keep there. Here are his main crimes:

• Here's a quote from the protagonist that pretty much says everything:

"About this time the old Baron Ryoval died, not too mysteriously, during an early attempt at a brain transplant. I say not too mysteriously because of the character his son and successor, the present Baron Ryoval, immediately revealed. His first project was to get rid of all his potential sibling-rivals. The old man had sired a lot of children. Ryoval's early career is something of a Jacksonian legend. The eldest and most dangerous males, he simply had assassinated. The females and some of the younger males he sent to his body-modification laboratories, and thence to his very-private bordellos, to service the customers on that side of the business. I suppose they're all dead by now. If they're lucky."

So, the guy murdered his father and many of his siblings and those he didn't kill, he subjected to a horrific Fate Worse than Death.

In addition to the above, he employs a staff of torture technicians who allow him to get his thrills amusing himself with prisoners (and see the above for the kinds of brothels he runs). He also is involved in a business (as are other Jacksonians) wherein people have clones of themselves produced and then when those clones (note, actual, sapient people) grow up, they rip out the clones brain, and have their own brain implanted in- this is a way of cheating death. Ryoval himself has done it a couple of time IIRC.

I need to look a bit into Rusk- oddly enough, I'm not totally sure about counting him, to the extent he has an uncontrollable compulsion/was a genuine friend to the protagonist (before he ended up framing him for murder).

Incidentally, it is heavily implied (and discussed among characters) that Rusk rapes his victims before killing them (in a "nice" bit of Values Dissonance a female character who hears about this is made to comment that "every cloud has a silver lining).

edited 19th Sep '13 10:04:03 PM by Hodor

King Scratch... is that one of those books with racist undercurrents? The entry mentions Fred is black, as though the author was implying that makes him eviler somehow.

• General Mapache in The Wild Bunch, a ruthless and sadistic Mexican warlord who orders the massacre of a village, killing seven of the villagers, two by hanging; posteriorly captures Angel for stealing guns for said village, tortures him to near-death and brutally murders him in front of his friends. None of the bunch are what we call heroes but we root for them because Mapache makes them look like saints with his actions.

I found this:

• A Hero to His Hometown: Mapache, surprisingly enough. During the raid on the train station he's shown to be heroic under fire, earning the admiration of a messenger boy. He even gets a Pet the Dog moment shortly thereafter, brooding over his wounded men. This stands in stark contrast to his scenes with the Bunch, where he acts like a debauched maniac. When the Bunch go on their climactic rampage, many civilians take up arms alongside Mapache's soldiers.

Semi-group example:

• Silers and his gang from Winnetou und sein Freund Old Firehand. They attack the peaceful village full of innocent people and almost turn it into a sea of flames. When Silers' brother gets captured (which, according to Silers, is a motive of why they do all these things), half of the village tries to free him. When they do, he gets killed by one of the main characters. People leave the town out of fear, only to meet Silers with his gang. They try to explain to them every single thing and how they tried to help. What is the gang's reaction?

• Then they kill everybody, including the women and children.

edited 19th Sep '13 10:02:00 PM by TVRulezAgain

Just to note, added a description of Ryoval's crimes in my post above. He is definitely one of the more evil characters I've had the "pleasure" of encountering in literature. Incidentally, two other things about Ryoval- the guy lives on a planet that is a Wretched Hive and he's considered a monster even by their standards.

Ryoval is opposed by Baron Fell, the one brother who he didn't manage to kill, who is a notorious arms dealer (which includes chemical weapons and the like). The protagonist is willing to ally himself with Fell in order to oppose Ryoval.

edited 19th Sep '13 10:08:09 PM by Hodor

I don't remember Mapache as being that concerned. He seemed more annoyed than anything, but someone will have to remind me as I haven't seen Wild Bunch in a while.

I also must say I don't think Rusk was that good a friend any more than Charlie was an uncle. Just till it was convenient, at which part he was willing to let him hang for the crimes.

Hodor, any thoughts on the Vorkosigan Saga Prince and Admiral?

As mentioned, added on Ryoval. I've never read the prequels- is Serg ever "on screen"? I have to say the way people talk about him after his death, he sounds rather Joffreyish (i.e. an extremely sadistic Royal Brat), but I don't know if he can count since he's dead by time the series starts (fragged by his own father to prevent him from taking the throne).

I'm pretty sure Vorrutyer is on screen during the prequels, and as accurately described, he got his jollies by raping or ordering the rape of prisoners.

edited 19th Sep '13 10:13:41 PM by Hodor

Well, he may be the keep there.

Hows about Kindler and Uncle Charlie?

Hmm. I watched Shadow of a Doubt a year ago. It's on You Tube, maybe I should rewatch it to be sure.

While we're on the subject of literature, I made a post a long, long time ago (as in way before I was aware this clean-up existed) which does not conform to our current standards. I didn't explain either character's crimes very well, and wrote it as a single giant block. They both absolutely qualify, but I am going to post a rewritten version here that breaks up the entries and provides a better explanation.

Anyway, here's the original post:

• The Morgawr from The Voyage Of The Jerle Shannara. He's a half man, half lizard freak who slaughters Grianne and Bek Ohmsfords' family, kidnaps Grianne, tells her Bek is dead, and convinces her that Walker, the Druid, and his Arch-Enemy is behind it, then raises her to be as bad as himself. He's also a magic-draining leech who feeds on the souls, minds, and magics of his victims and turns people into People Puppets by pulling their brains out through the back of their heads and eating them, leaving them with their skills, but no free will. Witnessing his actions is enough to scar both Ahren Elessedil and corrupt Federation Prime Minister Sen Dunsidan for life, and to drive the turnkey to suicide. He never repents and, unlike every other villain in the Shannara universe, has no excuse. He's not a Demon, he's not subverted by the dark magic like Brona or Rimmer Dall and the Shadowen, he's just evil. His Dragon, Cree Bega, is every bit as bad. A Smug Snake of a Mwellret with a penchant for murder, Cold-Blooded Torture, Kick the Dog, Fantastic Racism, and (possibly) giant-lizard-on-female-human-rape, Cree Bega is chiefly responsible for turning Ahren Elessedil into The Woobie (by forcing him to watch The Morgawr feed on an airship crew) and causing his crush's suicide, which he then mocks Ahren about (She took ssso long to die little Elvesss. Ssso long it ssseemed it would take forever. Do you want to know what we did to her, when the Morgawr gave her to us? How she begged for usss to kill her?). Contemptuous of all the Little Peoplesss, Cree Bega Loves the Sound of Screaming, and looks forward to hearing it as often as possible. In the franchise of over 20 books, they are the only villains to indulge in onscreen torture and the only ones who ever indulge in villainy for reasons other than achieving their personal goals.

Here's the rewrite:

• In Terry Brooks' Voyage Of The Jerle Shannara, we are presented with two of the worst villains in the entire franchise. Unlike most of their contemporaries they aren't Demons, or subverted by the dark magic; they're just evil:
  • The Morgawr is The Big Bad of the trilogy. He's a half man, half lizard freak who slaughters Grianne and Bek Ohmsfords' family, kidnaps Grianne, tells her Bek is dead, and convinces her that Walker, the Druid, and his Arch-Enemy is behind it, then raises her to be as bad as himself. He's also a magic-draining leech who feeds on the souls, minds, and magics of his victims and turns people into People Puppets by pulling their brains out through the back of their heads and eating them, leaving them with their skills, but no free will. In the opening pages of Morgawr he drains two-hundred fifty men onscreen, scarring witness Sen Dunsidan for life, and driving the latter's Torture Technician to suicide. He later does the same to the crew of Grianne's ship, Black Moclips after she betrays him, before hunting her down and trying to kill her because he considers her life his property to dispose of how he wishes. Completely comfortable with his evil, The Morgawr takes pride in having brought Grianne down to his level, and finds her desire to better herself completely laughable.
  • Cree Bega is The Morgawr's Dragon. A Smug Snake of a Mwellret with a penchant for murder, Cold-Blooded Torture, Kick the Dog, and Fantastic Racism, Cree Bega is contemptuous of all the little peoplessss, and develops an unhealthy obsession with Ahren Elessedil, making it his personal mission to transform him into The Woobie. He forces Ahren to watch The Morgawr feed on the crew of Black Moclips for no other reason than traumatising him, and upon Ahren's escape, is given custody of his crush, Ryer Ord Star. He and his Mwellrets proceed to strip her, beat her, break all of her fingers, slash the soles of her feet, defile her until she faints, and then after she wakes up, tie her to a yardarm, lash her with a rawhide whip, and leave her to bake in the sun, leading to her suicide. During his final confrontation with Ahren, Cree Bega stabs Elven Hunter Kian In the Back, and then gloats to Ahren about what he did to Ryer Ord Star ("She took ssso long to die little Elvesss. Ssso long it ssseemed it would take forever."), before trying to kill him. The cumulative effect of all the trauma that Cree Bega puts Ahren through is an eventual psychological implosion that leaves him utterly shellshocked and broken into the next series.

Those sound better? In case anyone is wondering, yes these two are the absolute worst that the trilogy and the franchise as a whole has to offer. You could make the case that was Antrax (a supercomputer from the same trilogy) does to its wronks (slaving them to its will while leaving the human mind awake) is every bit as bad as what The Morgawr does, but Antrax does that twice onscreen, while The Morgawr does is several hundred times onscreen; additionally Antrax is a Knight Templar Robotic Psychopath bound by its programming while The Morgawr and Cree Bega have chosen to become what they are. The same comparison can be made in the cases of Rimmer Dall, Tael Riverine, The Dagda Mor, and other big bads of the series; not only is The Morgawr nastier than all of them, but he has full moral agency, and they do not.

As for Cree Bega, he's an oddity in the series, given that he's a non-powered human (all Trolls, including Mwellrets are mutated humans), who is nevertheless more depraved than any of the evil sorcerers who make up the majority of the villains, and stands head and shoulders above other non-powered villains like Pe Ell (a psychopathic assassin who nevertheless prides himself on killing quickly and cleanly) and Arik Siq (a Manipulative Bastard and a treacherous sneak, but not a torturer) in terms of the lines he's willing to cross in the name of victimising one kid. The damage he does to Ahren really can't be overemphasised; in the sequel, twenty or thirty years later, Ahren is still a wreck and ultimately goes to his death without even caring he's so trapped in the past.

edited 19th Sep '13 11:22:51 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Oh, and I remembered another one of Ryoval's crimes. The Mark who is referred to is Miles, the protagonist's clone/brother, and because of circumstances (Miles was temporarily dead), Mark had to imeprsonate him and ended up captured by Ryoval. Ryoval didn't really know or care it wasn't Miles he captured, and proceeds to torture Mark.

The torture involves drugging Mark with chemicals that remove his impulse control and then force feeding him and forcing him to rape prisoners. He also likes to have Mark sprayed with chemicals that burn off his skin.

Yeah, he's a keeper...

Thoughts on Charlie and Kindler, hodor?

Yeah, as I said (not a plagiarism accusation; just an observation of similar characters) but Ryoval is basically what you'd get if you gave Ramsay Bolton access to futuristic technology.

Yes to those two, I think.

Ryoval sounds like a keeper. Any thoughts on any of the other examples, or some of the recent rewrites?

I don't disagree. And it's an entirely fair comparison from the sounds of it. Any opinion on the two Shannara examples I posted last page? As I said earlier, I just want to get the rewrites approved and swap it out for my old one, which is something of an embarassment to me.

For the record, when it says under Cree Bega that he and his henchmen "defile her until she faints" I really hope that Brooks is just talking about the torture. Because otherwise we are dealing with giant-lizard-on-teenage-girl rape. And I don't need to think about that.

edited 19th Sep '13 11:23:40 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Regarding Rusk from Frenzy, it's been nearly a decade since I saw the film, but I seem to remember it's more than implied that he rapes his victims before killing them - we actually see him rape and then strangle Blaney's ex-wife Brenda when she rejects his advances. (His rape and murder of Babs takes place off screen, though the camera tracking backwards down the stairs leading up to her flat after Rusk shuts the door does make for one of the most memorable sequences of Hitchcock's later years. Not relevant to his monstrosity, just a comment.)

At any rate, Uncle Charlie and Rusk get "yes" votes from me, and they're probably the only Hitchcock characters I'd say qualify.

Tv rulez: I say keep Mapache and Siliers. Just delete Siliers' gang.

Rewrites:

• The Mahrkagir of Kushiel's Legacy practices sexual torture, mutilation and degradation of all kinds and is just overall a master at tormenting people psychologically as well as physically, with a priesthood to back him up as well. The Mahrkagir violently oppresses the population of his home nation and is a cruel sadist on every level. Imriel as a child was his captive, and recounts a time when the Mahrkagir bargained with him to spare a girl Imriel was fond of, if Imriel would swallow his piss. Imriel tried and failed, so the Mahrkagir raped the woman and slit her throat at the end. When Phedre, the heroine, infiltrates his harem to help bring him down, the Mahrkagir brutalizes her nightly and even uses a spiked iron rod on her for sex, relishing every moment of pain. Only her unique gifts as an Anguisette (a being who derives intense pleasure from pain) allows her survival.

back in May, we qualified the demon Princes as well, here're those writeups.

• The Demon Princes series has the titular Demon Princes, a group of vicious space pirates who together massacred an entire colony world and sold the survivors into slavery. Three of them are the nastiest of the bunch.
  • Attel Malagate, known as 'The Woe' is a Smug Snake member of the alien race, the normally peaceful Star Kings. Malagate plans to despoil a peaceful planet and establish his own dominion over it, murdering anyone who tries to stop him. Malagate remains hidden for most of the novel, his two Co-Dragons committing murder and mayhem for him as he schemes to conquer his home planet and rise above humanity and his own people
  • Kokor Hekkus, a Serial Killer known as 'The Killing Machine' who kills sentient beings to harvest substances from their bodies that prolong his life. Hekkus has been at it for over a century and has no compunction kidnapping and doing his harvesting from children. Hekkus has remained on his planet for years in order to enact wars, conquests and atrocities for his own amusement, causing every misfortune that befalls the world solely for a love of the chaos he surrounds himself with.
  • Viole Falushe, ruler of the Palace of Love runs a self centered cult around himself and his 'beauty,' having the most beautiful people of his world taken to serve him for their whole lives. Falushe experiments with women in forced breeding programs to create a clone of the woman he once desired most, and force her to love him. The forced breeding program is what made the original woman commit suicide.

edited 19th Sep '13 11:30:07 PM by Lightysnake

I got two candidates from a movie called Bloody Birthday.

The three main children, Debbie, Curtis, and Steven, are all born as psychopaths due to an eclipse of Saturn. All murder random people with absolutely no remorse and are clearly depicted as the heinous villains they are. But the first two stand out.

• Debbie manages to kill her father and sister for being suspicious of her crimes. To avoid being caught, she betrays Curtis and Steven to the cops and escapes with her mother to create a fake identity so she can continue killing.
• Curtis is quite the smug bastard and is the more murderous child of the three. He tries to kill a kid by locking him a refrigerator, kills multiple people with guns, and murders his teacher. His smile at the end of the movie shows that he feels absolutely nothing.

If you watched the movie, feel free to expand on this.

@Ambar: for the Morgawr and Cree Bega rewrites. Having read the whole series, I agree that they are the worst in the whole franchise. Especially compared to the other villains who usually lack agency.

edited 20th Sep '13 5:57:48 AM by TommyFresh

Twister from Ip Man:

He's an arrogant British boxer in a Chinese Kung Fu movie. He's very openly racist and disrespectful of Chinese culture, and has no remorse for the fact that he killed a man in the boxing ring. In fact, he gloats about it, and says he'll do it to anyone who fights him again. Given the film is borderline Chinese propaganda, he's a completely flat character except for his racism and desire to fight.

Here was the (a bit overzealous) post that was being edit warred over:

• Complete Monster: Twister the British boxing champion from the sequel. Prone to racism, open disrespect for Chinese Warrior Culture and homicidal bloodlust in his fights, murdering elderly Martial Artists on a whim and then happily gloats how he is going to do it again and again until he has murdered every Chinese Martial Artist in Hong Kong. Yeah, this fella has issues.

Note that he never murdered anyone, his only kill was a legitimate Casualty in the Ring. He could have stopped (and should have stopped) but the fight was still technically going on the whole time. He is, interestingly, Lawful Evil since he's got the government backing him, but I still think he'd count since he has no redeeming traits.

The only issue I have with him being called a CM is that he doesn't really DO that much that's truly heinous. He says some awful things, but he doesn't start fights on the street (I can't remember the details, but the only unsanctioned fight he's in, I don't think that he even started it (though he did provoke the other people) and he's never shown hitting anyone who isn't a fighter. However, his jerkass behavior, his one kill (which he could've certainly avoided), and complete lack of any redeeming qualities make me think he still counts.

Here's how I'd reenter the example:

• Complete Monster: Twister the British boxing champion from the sequel. He completely lacks any sense of honor, is openly racist to the Chinese and disrespectful to their culture, and shows no remorse after killing a kung fu master in an exhibition fight. In fact, he happily gloats that he will do the same to any Chinese fighter who dares face him in the ring. He's lacks the characterization or backstory to have any redeeming traits.

edited 20th Sep '13 12:52:34 PM by Larkmarn

I've got one to add to Monster.Literature. I just spent a few evenings rereading Tom Clancy's novel Without Remorse, about a retired Navy SEAL who goes on a Punisher-style Roaring Rampage of Revenge against some drug dealers with the Vietnam War as a backdrop.

While there are a lot of vile characters in the story, his primary target is a man named Henry Tucker, who is a drug dealer and pimp from Baltimore, Maryland with dreams of making it into the "big time" — in this case, getting into the Mafia.

Tucker runs a narcotics ring, trafficking in unusually high-grade heroin which he smuggles from East Asia inside the cadavers of U.S. soldiers killed in action. He maintains a stable of prostitutes whom he and his men use as drug mules in addition to their usual purpose. He feeds them barbiturates, both to keep them compliant and to get them addicted so they won't try to flee. He and his men engage in sadistic abuse of the women, beating and torturing them regularly.

The protagonist gets involved when he accidentally rescues one of Henry's girls, Pam, who managed to escape. He befriends her and helps her recover from her drug addiction, but makes the mistake of being spotted. Henry and his thugs ambush them, badly wounding the hero and apprehending Pam. A day or so later, she's found in a public water fountain, raped, tortured, and mutilated, which we find out later was done by Henry and his second, Billy.

Later, after his operation starts getting taken down by the hero, Punisher-style, Henry arranges the murder of one of his own associates, mistakenly believing him to be responsible. The hero manages to rescue another of the girls, but Henry gets tipped off thanks to a corrupt cop and hires hitmen to kill her and her father. On the advice of his Mafia contact, he then decides to kill the rest of his girls as they have proven to be a security risk.

Henry is something of a straw character in that the author makes no attempt to give him any kind of justification for what he does, other than greed and a desire to earn respect in the criminal world. He deals drugs; rapes, tortures, and murders prostitutes; and sells out his own people. In the end, the hero kills him without pity.

Assuming that none of that falls under Offstage Villainy (Offscreen Villainy is a redirect to that), it seems like a qualifier.

If you're responding to me, Septimus, then no, it's all explicit, although the torture scenes are handled via Gory Discretion Shot, with bonus pathos from Henry forcing the other girls to watch.