Subpages cleanup: Complete Monster

Wait, Shaoken I'm confused. You said an example that's more than three or four years old can be cut. Did you mean less than three or four years?

@22220: Scar entry looks good to me. Maybe also a mention about selling out the hyenas to save his own skin?

@22232: Of course, Bellatrix is trying to convince her sister not to give away the details of Voldemort's top secret plan to assassinate Dumbledore to a person whom she suspects is a) a traitor to Voldemort's cause, and b) in the dark about the plan. So in this case it would make sense she's defying Voldemort since she thinks his plan was going to fail if Snape knew about it.

@22252: Kind of hesitant about Raphelson. Not because he has any redeeming qualities but because I thought his plan hinged on destroying the White House after Walker destroyed Air Force One in order to prevent Walker from nuking the Middle East. Can't really profit off of continuing war in the Middle East if his dragon succeeds in his plan to wipe out the Middle East. That would make Raphelson less heinous than Walker.

@22258: Agree with lighty to cut the High Executioner for being brainwashed.

@22260: Good entry overall, however, Frollo didn't become obsessed with wiping out the gypsies just because Esmerelda rejected him. He goal was always to exterminate them, that was why he was looking for the Court of Miracles. Him lusting after Esmerelda was just to show he was a pervy old hypocrite. I'd also suggest altering the entry to mention he only tried to kill Quasimodo as a baby because he was ugly, and when he spared him, it wasn't just because the archdeacon called him out on his actions, but because he reminded Frollo that he couldn't hide his evil deeds from God and that he could be punished for his actions if he didn't spare the child, of course even then he sentenced Quasi to a life of isolation and emotional abuse, even naming him Quasimodo because the name meant "half-formed." Sorry, for rambling, the entry is really good, I'm just kind of a colossal nitpick.

@22284: Iris sounds like a keeper.

edited 24th Feb '14 8:03:59 PM by OccasionalExister

Actually, Raphelson was gonna destroy the White house just to hide the evidence of his involvement. If not for Channing Tatum, Walker's plan would've gone off without a hitch. I'm sure Raphelson had a plan either way, given he immediately orders US forces into the ME to 'contain' it after.

and even without that, I think Raphelson is pretty damn heinous for the film, given he organized a massive slaughter of innocent people to create endless war. And nuking the Middle East would start WW3 with China and Russia as well, so Raphelson would be fine there

edited 24th Feb '14 8:08:08 PM by Lightysnake

Where do I request these Never Again rewrites? I'd assume the locked pages thread, but since the list isn't on a page I thought I'd check.

edited 24th Feb '14 8:26:40 PM by TVRulezAgain

Well it's been a while.

I still don't like giving Scar an entry, but if he's going to have one, that's pretty good. I do have a question about this attempted rape in the play though—are we talking genuine attempted rape, or Disney style "force her to marry me?" Because we've certainly had cases where people tried to read too much into the latter before.

Regarding Power Rangers I think we do have to treat the shows as being in continuity with each other. We did the same thing with UC Gundam after all, regularly using Gihren Zabi and Yazan Gable in particular as points of comparison. We've got to do the same here. In any case, I'd say we definitely cut any big bad who isn't Bansheera or Venjix. No other villain has ever come close to either of them.

Do we really need to have Gavin Archer on the "Definitely not a CM" list? I mean, after the third game especially, it just seems so obvious that he isn't one that it seems kind of pointless.

are we talking genuine attempted rape, or Disney style "force her to marry me?" Because we've certainly had cases where people tried to read too much into the latter before.

It wasn't marriage that was the focus. Scar comes to the point of making advances towards Nala after he specifically establishes he wants to have cubs to be his heirs. So yes, he's being a sexual predator/abuser.

Regarding Power Rangers I think we do have to treat the shows as being in continuity with each other. We did the same thing with UC Gundam after all, regularly using Gihren Zabi and Yazan Gable in particular as points of comparison. We've got to do the same here. In any case, I'd say we definitely cut any big bad who isn't Bansheera or Venjix. No other villain has ever come close to either of them.

I dunno. Darkonda, Deviot, Master Org/Dr. Adler, and Mesogog might also be equally solid qualifiers.

edited 24th Feb '14 8:44:16 PM by ANewMan

Again, it's a film for kids. Rape and/or sexual abuse can only be implied, not stated outright, which means it can't count.

edited 24th Feb '14 8:42:26 PM by Fighteer

1. We were talking about Scar in the stage show, not the film. The "rape" subplot got cut from the final film, making Scar less easy to qualify there.

2. It's family entertainment, not "a film for kids." By that same logic, Frollo's rape intentions towards Esmeralda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame cannot count because it's a "kid's film."

edited 24th Feb '14 8:47:38 PM by ANewMan

Well, Frollo gives the ultimatum of 'Marry me or burn alive.'

In the musical, it's not even implied. Scar outright leaps on her and she fights him off and runs away, with Scar calling after her she'll be his one way or the others.

for Power Rangers, I could've sworn we qualified Darkonda and Xandred. If Serrator is anything like Akumaro from Sentai he clears the heinous standard very easily, too. Master Org, I'm not sure on, but Mesogog seems to have agency issues.

Also, Fighteer, I have to note, we have an entire section for Western Animation, tons of Shonen manga examples and a whole Disney section. Being ostensibly for kids, which many examples of the above two are? It doesn't seem much a bar to me.

edited 24th Feb '14 8:55:26 PM by Lightysnake

The Master Org I'm referring to stands out as despicable because he's actually a human named Victor Adler who consciously chose to become a monster just because he the woman he had a crush on married someone else. He proceeded to murder both his former love and her husband, and "enjoyed every minute of it." In the current timeline when the son of the couple he killed faces him, he confirms that Adler has lost his heart completely. I'll have to look up his crimes, but...yeah, he's a sick guy. As for Mesogog, I thought he was a Yami Marik case where the split personality was a separate character. Mesogog isn't a product of Anton Mercer's mind or psyche: Mercer was Mesogog's vessel. Mesogog even splits from Mercer much like Yami Marik with his host.

And the whole "it's for kids!" when it comes to things like Disney movies and the Animation Age Ghetto used for cartoons, especially Disney movies, mentality that Fighteer has used really needs to die on this thread. The attitude that family-friendly cartoons can't possibly contain a dark trope like Complete Monster just makes it out to be the "edgy" trope that many of it's misusers seem to believe it to be.

edited 24th Feb '14 9:05:00 PM by ANewMan

In the previous discussion of Mesogog we determined that his moral agency was pretty much shot (or that's the way I recall the conversation going). Moreover, unless there's something very significant that I'm forgetting he doesn't stack with Bansheera. Neither does Org for that matter. Trying to conquer/end the world are the standard goals for villains in the franchise (and so few of them come close to that goal that it's hard to take it seriously; we may not take competency into account, but when you can't successfully occupy one city, I do start to wonder if we should) which means that in the end, qualifications are going to depend on how personally vile you are. And nobody comes within a mile of Bansheera in that department.

I dunno, Darkonda and Serrator/Akumaro hit that end.

I'm not suggesting that "family" shows can't have CM examples; I'm saying that you can't show rape on-screen in those kinds of works, and you can't count implied acts towards CM status.

In case you forget, we're trying to keep this trope from being synonymous with Big Bad — and especially "really mean guy".

edited 24th Feb '14 9:27:55 PM by Fighteer

I agree. But I feel that sometimes it goes out of being just implied, depending how the work treats it. Frollo is a definite example there. Or Doctor Destiny from Justice League Unlimited

@Lightysnake

You'll note I said cut any big bad. Darkonda spends most of his show as a slimy starscream. It's a very different character type, and I'm willing to assess him on those merits (though we'll have to contrast him with Deviot). Org and Mesogog, and big bads have to get compared to Bansheera and they fail hard. All of them want to "destroy the world" but it's played a lot more seriously in her case (both Org and Mesogog's shows were silly even for Power Rangers, Lightspeed Rescue actually attempted to play the concept fairly straight) and she's got a lot more general cruelty, what with getting her son killed, brainwashing minions who question her, forcing one henchman to kill one of his friends, etc. As HT noted the first time we talked about it, she's one of the worst bosses in anything, ever.

Here's the start of the original discussion: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=6vic3f9h1cy5qivsenw8llok&page=554 Can we please cut the likes of Doubletone (he told a kid to stop playing baseaball! The horror!) now?

I think we don't have a Doubletone problem anymore. I got zero objections to the cut, more or less being ignored. I apologize if I jumped the gun, but we did agree he failed the heinous standard last time he was brought up.

@Occasional Exister

For Scar we could add at the end, "Later, in a desperate attempt to save his own skin, he tries to blame everything on his loyal hyena henchmen."

As for Frollo's entry, how about this:

• Judge Claude Frollo (pictured) from The Hunchback Of Notre Dame is likely one of the most evil characters the company has ever invented. In the film's opening, he pursues a young woman on horseback, and pushes her onto steps of the church, causing her to tumble to her death. He tries to drown her infant son, Quasimodo, in the well for being ugly, but the archdeacon stops him. Solely out of fear of being punished for his crimes, Frollo takes the boy in, keeping him under strict rule, isolation, and emotional abuse. He initially seems to have to have fallen in love with the young gypsy girl Esmeralda, but when she rejects him, he decides she must burn in hell. Taking his anger out on all gypsies, Frollo burns down a windmill, where a family lived, for harboring them. After that, Frollo tries to have a massive section of the city burned so he can kill Esmerelda. Even being a classic case of Knight Templar, the things he does casts his "good intentions" as being sham and hollow.

edited 1st Mar '14 6:56:15 AM by TVRulezAgain

Org/Adler... he might actually be a contender, due to the fact that he's the only pure evil completely human villain in the show's history.

Though Lightspeed Rescue was pretty dark by PR standards, probably owing to the main characters being rescue workers first and superheroes second. It got away with saying "dead," had real guns, and there was a definite emphasis on minimizing collateral damage that you rarely see in shows like this.

edited 24th Feb '14 9:49:17 PM by HamburgerTime

He's so ridiculous though that it just doesn't work though. Wild Force is one of the most narmy entries in the franchise, and it's impossible to take anything in it seriously. He also fails to, again, stack with Bansheera when it comes to being personally disgusting.

Completely agree regarding Lightspeed Rescue. It's what made Bansheera work, and why I have no issues with her qualifying.

edited 24th Feb '14 9:50:56 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

@ TV Rulz; Good catch, I'll edit it in now.

@ The Gavin Archer example; he was debated pretty hotly, people did not like that I had removed the example under Well-Intentioned Extremist grounds and spent a good long while arguing that he should be on the list. This was maybe one and a half to two years before Mass Effect 3 came out.

And I've beat Danganronpa last night. Give me some time to write up a proper post.

edited 24th Feb '14 10:13:10 PM by Shaoken

Yea or nay for Game!Junko?

Right, well, here we go. Anyone who is yet to play or finish Danganronpa and doesn't want to know the ending, skip this post entirely since spoiler tags would be counter productive to the matter at hand (wall of text and spoilers incoming).

Junko Enoshima of Danganronpa

Who Is She?

On the surface, Junko is the Ultimate School-Level Fashionista attending Hope's Peak Academy, a school which only accepts students who are considered the best at their particular field (i.e. the Ultimate Gambler, the Ultimate Swimmer, etc. etc.). In reality she is also part of the Ultimate Despair along with her twin sister Mukuro Ikusaba, and the mastermind behind the game's events controlling the robot toy-bear Monokuma.

What does she do?

Going off what is seen in the game, her first act in the story is (controlling Monokuma) killing the previous headmaster of the school via rocket ship (long story). Through Monokuma, she reveals to the students of Hope's Peak that they're now trapped inside the Academy and that the only way out is to kill another student and get away with it. Periodically motivation is provided to encourage someone to murder another student.

When students start killing each other, she has Monokuma throw a class trial where the students try to identify the real killer, and if they get it right the killer gets executed via some form of Ironic Punishment (the baseball star is bludgeoned to death by hundreds of baseballs, the Biker gets put on his bike and sped through a cage until he liquefies - although he still leaves a corpse in the morgue but moving on - , the planned execution for the swimmer was a shark tank, etc.). If the killer manages to trick the others into voting for someone else they get to Graduate (i.e. leave the school) while everyone else gets executed in their stead.

To make things "interesting" Monokuma introduces a heap of regulations that all students have to obey (with the penalty of course being death).

Now here's the slightly confusing part; before the characters meet each other Junko swaps with her twin Mukuro with Mukuro pretending to be her while Junko controls Monokuma and keeps the game going. As far as the other students are aware Mukuro is Junko and there is no 16th student with them. When Mukuro (as Junko) breaks one of the regulations she gets killed by a death trap, although at the last class trial the real Junko admits that she was planning to kill off her twin anyway because she wasn't doing a good job at portraying her and to make an example of her to show what would happen if the regulations were violated.

Now, outside of the game's events, there is repeated mention of an event one year before the story commonly referred to as "The Worst, Most Despair-Inducing Incident in the History of Mankind." What is meant by this is never really elaborated upon, but apparently it utterly ended human civilisation and put humanity on the path to extinction within the next century. Ironically the students locked themselves in the academy and had agreed to spend their entire lives inside to ensure that hope survived, but Junko and Mukuro erase their memories of their entire time at the Academy so that when they woke up they would think they just arrived and had no idea just what was outside. But I will get into The Worst, Most Despair-Inducing Incident in the History of Mankind later.

Heinousness standard

Pretty high. The only competition in this game is Genocide Jack/Jill, who is a serial killer with an undisclosed body count but evidence in the game states she brutally murdered a lot of people, the ages ranging from at least the late thirties/early forties to fourteen. Genocide Jill also states that had she known another student was really a girl dressed up as a boy she would have murdered him in a heartbeat and never really cares too much about Junko's crimes, her only issue with Junko being that her beliefs "weren't funny."

There is also the character Celeste who tricked another student into murdering one person, killed him after he had outlived his usefulness and framed a third, knowing full well that if they fell for it the others would all be executed, all because she wanted the extra $10 million Monokuma had offered on graduation so she could live in a castle surrounded by handsome servants.

Now onto the direct death count, we have five; the headmaster (killing by rocket ship), her sister (response to breaking the rule about not attacking Monokuma), and the three killers found guilty by class trial (Leon, Mondo and Celeste). If you count A.I.s as alive then Alter Ego can be added there as #6 (killed by the laptop they were running off of being crushed into a sphere. For better or worse Alter Ego would not have been aware of what was happening).

Freudian Excuses? Redeeming Qualities? ANYTHING that could possibly disqualify her?

Now to the real meat of the issue. And another wall of text coming.

For Freudian Excuses apparently Junko was born without the capacity to feel hope. For her entire life she was plagued with despair and was unable to understand why people clung to hope. The only source for this is Junko's own words, but she is (mostly) entirely honest when exposed. But all of her appearances and talk spells it out that she sincerely believes that despair is just the natural order of the world.

Furthermore; she is utterly batshit insane. Once you meet the real Junko she goes through personalities like crazy. The past justification to ignore her insanity was to compare her to the Joker and Kefka (and full disclosure; I have no fucking clue who Kefka is whenever someone in this thread uses him as an example of something I am utterly lost), the former specifically because of how his persona changes so much yet still has moral agency. I would dispute that since the Joker's character changing happens from story to story, Junko runs through all of her personalities in the same scene, changing without rhyme or reason. The Joker is also the exception to the rule on insanity, since it's been established in works that he is fully aware of morality, he understands the concept, and consciously choses to be the way he is anyway.

To seal the case on her insanity they even use the stereotypical "brainwashed/crazy swirling eyes" graphic when she's about to execute herself.

As for redeeming features...well in one of her personas she states that she loves the rest of the students in her class and basically bringing them despair was a gift from her to them (because again, unable to comprehend that normal people prefer hope to despair). There is legitimate envy of her sister's death too.

The main sticking point for me is that, for better or worse, she's pretty fair in how she ran the game. All of the regulations she made she also obeyed to the letter, only one person was killed outside of that (the headmaster as established earlier), and although she was working with another student to have a murder committed to start things off, as she herself points out at the last trial she never forced any of the students to kill each other, they all did that of their own violation (the main character's main counterpoint is that she did put them all in that environment and gave them motivation to want to kill). She violated the regulations exactly once, and then when confronted to it agreed to a do-over putting her own life on the line. And when she loses she does go through and executed herself despite all of the other characters saying "hey we actually don't want you to die." And in all endings she does keep her word; she let's the survivors out in the case of her death, and makes sure they live long and comfortable lives if they have to stay.

Plus, her characterisation as herself is pretty lacking. She shows up halfway through the final trial, at which point she runs through seven personalities (Queen, emotionless, Foul-mouthed rocker type, Depressed, Cat-like, Teacher/lecture sort, and speaking through Monokuma) before reverting to a rather straightforward "my life has been one without hope" straight-forward type. There's really not a whole lot you could say on the "real" Junko beyond her belief that despair is the natural way of living.

There's also the issue of the whole "how much responsibility does she bare" over the deaths thing. Directly, the only students she killed were all aware that if they murdered another student they could very well die, and for her twin "if you attack my avatar you are going to die" was made clear previously. Every other murder carried out by a student was a deliberate decision (there is one iffy one which was a fit of rage) but half of the deaths in the game were done by the students. But there is that point that if they hadn't been put in that position and if the extra motivation wasn't provided (teasing at what had happened to their important connections, threatening to reveal the most embarrassing secret, the $10 million dollar reward) none of them would have killed each other.

The last part is The Worst, Most Despair-Inducing Incident in the History of Mankind. She states that she's responsible for that but...nothing in the game supports that (well first game, but the second isn't out in English until Q3 2014) and considering that the event resulted in the utter collapse of human society at a point of time where she was at Hope's Peak it's a bit too much to swallow that it was all her. Plus The Worst, Most Despair-Inducing Incident in the History of Mankind (which they refer to by it's full name every time it comes up, except for when they just call it "The Tragedy" which is a lot less than it's full name) is never really defined, beyond important monuments getting Monokuma's face put on them, a giant Monokuma destroying cities Godzilla style, and rioters wearing Monokuma masks rioting. So whatever that is doesn't really factor into this discussion at the moment.

Anyway, that is a lot of talk so I am going to sum it up:

What is Shaoken's vote on Junko?

Nay due to Moral Agency: Insanity issues. Too date I think the only exceptions we made for this were Kefka (who I have not the foggiest clue about) and The Joker (who despite his insanity has been established by the works to understand morality and chose to do evil for the lulz). There's also the bit about being fair with enforcing the rules (which may be mitigated by it being all to further the spread of despair and keeping things interesting) which might count as a positive quality. Plus her characterisation is a bit lacking (she shows up herself in one scene once revealed and switches between personas so much it's hard to know what she really feels beyond "despair is awesome."

If I had to do a "tldr" I would probably sum it up as "Junko is too close to a Generic Doomsday Villain who spreads despair."

And here is the current example for your viewing pleasure:

• Complete Monster: Monokuma. He relishes in twisting the knife in the cruelest way possible at every opportunity. And, of course, the mastermind behind him: Junko Enoshima. They were one of the people who caused The Worst, Most Despair-inducing Incident in the History of Mankind, masterminded the game where the students began to snap and kill each other, and killed their own twin sister and the headmaster, all for the sake of causing despair!
  • And as of Dangan Ronpa IF, we can also add sisterly abuse to their list, although admittedly this particular crime borders on Obliviously Evil, since Junko seems to sincerely think she's being loving by abusing her sister and causing her despair, unable to comprehend how anyone could not enjoy such treatment.

Okay so, if you're not gone yet, can we have a discussion on this one? Looking back the closest thing we got was A New Man saying "hey can this character count?" "Aren't they insane?" "Not in a proper sense" "Okie Dokie Loki" with the vote being A New Man, Snake and I think Ambar for while the rest of us discussed Todd from Breaking Bad (and I realised how appropriate that may have been in retrospect).

edited 25th Feb '14 1:28:56 AM by Shaoken

Now I'm wondering: Having seen both (but not in a VERY, VERY long time), how is Frollo wanting to "marry" Esmerelda different than Gaston wanting to "marry" Belle?

@Shaoken: Kefka Palazzo is the main villain Final Fantasy VI. At some times his status as a Complete Monster was discussed by tropers, and it was ultimately agreed that he didn't qualify because it was hinted, both in the main game and the spinoff Dissidia Final Fantasy, that the process of turning Kefka into a magitech knight had left him insane and unable to feel hope or love.

As for Junko... Well, I have to admit, she is similar to Kefka, indeed. Unable to feel hope, obsessed with crushing the hope out of everyone because she herself cannot feel it... My vote would verge on , considering those factors.

edited 25th Feb '14 1:27:11 AM by Sachiko