Subpages cleanup: Complete Monster

Oh, 32, speaking of Offscreen Villainy...I don't know if this was a rule when you were here, but tor Serial Killers and the like, we allow it if we just see 1 murder, enough to establish a pattern.

Also, killing heroes sure, but "murdering large swaths of population" is not infrequently enough.

edited 30th Jun '17 1:16:01 PM by ACW

I'd also note Veppers' rapist tendencies are definitely not offscreen...Lededje flashes back to his ruining of her father, acquiring and raping her, and we see his 'parties' with the women forced to attend, in addition to his own deeds. I'd feel comfortable putting it in, and it's such an enormous part of Lededje's storyline that it goes well past offstage.

Okay, if flashbacks are shown to it, that's fine, but that should be made more explicit.

Generally speaking, I make it a rule to ensure any crimes aren't just informed. All the deeds I list are either g onscreen, made abundantly clear, if subject to Gory Discretion Shot, or are so intrinsically part of the story and characters that it goes beyond offscreen

I can attest to Lighty's attention to detail. They're good enough at it that I trust just about everything Lighty says. Hell, they caught me out on a potential mitigating quality I missed on a failed EP I made.

As for Yabu... Hm. Bad, certainly...

I think they do just enough to get a from me. I think it's prison of torture that does it for me. Are villains that kill millions to billions that common? I suppose. That's why I tend to look for something "special". The thing that drew me to Vanquish's Viktor Zaitsev, for example, was just how horrible the deaths from his Kill Sat was. People burning, writhing, bursting into blood in agony, up to a million of them, and he wanted to do it again. If it were just a big explosion, I wouldn't have proposed him.

Actually, how many people does Yabu have in his prison? I'm inclined to stay in support, but if there were others that would be helpful.

Also, that Zatanna villain. Cosmic Retcon Karma Houdini? It's more likely than you think.

Yabu is not a jailer. He has the villagers of Overwood enslaved and forced to work on the mines. We see them being chained and whipped.

It's never shown if the ensuing explosion from Vexx obtaining the War Talons destroyed his minions or stuff like that. It is possible the rest of the villagers are still under the rule of Yabu.

Another thing about this villain is that his actions are not totally undone by end of the game. He is NOT a Karma Houdini, but the clearly Sequel Hook ending never states what happened to the enslaved villagers and Vargas' soul. Reia's closing narration implies that things will eventually become better, though.

Veppers

'Yes' to Yabu and Veppers.

Alrighty, got a quick announcement that's been a long time coming: I'm taking a long break from the thread. It'll be a couple weeks, if not months, long, and I won't be on the thread at all in that time except to pop in every once and a while to vote on a candidate I'm looking forward to, but as of now, things at home have recently gotten really hectic, and I'm pretty burnt out from everything.

Note that I'll still keep my PMs checked, so any I'm curreuntly chatting with, or any who wanna chat besides, I'll still be in contact with, but I need a serious break from round these parts.

So, a little bit of a "goodbye" is in order to everyone here (Besides those I'll be chatting with on PMs), until next I appear after this post.

BEFORE all that, however? I have one final candidate to propose as my final candidate for the next few weeks. He's nothing outstandingly nasty, but he's a solid Keeper, and Lighty will be putting up another candidate from the same work soon.

What's the work?

Kill Shakespeare by Anthony Del Col and Conor McCreery, published by IDW Publishing, is a fantasy comic series that asks a simple question: What if all of Shakespeare's creations were not only real people, but lived in the same mystical realm together?

Our story entails Shakespeare himself using a magic quill to create an entire world of characters, from Hamlet to Romeo and Juliet to Othello, and hopes to preside over them as a caring creator.

Unfortunately, Shakespeare makes a somewhat fatal, if completely understandable, choice....to give his creations free will and morality.

Granted the ability of choice, many of Shakespeare's creations go about as they were. Others? Weeeellllll....

Who is he?

King Richard III is the Big Bad of the comic.

Once just a creation of Shakespeare, when he was given sentience, Richard II perpetrated his original story's crimes (Having slaughtered his family members to claim the throne), and in the present, Richard has heard tale of the mighty "Shakespeare" and his magic quill that allows him to rewrite reality as he sees fit.....and Richard wants it. No matter the cost.

What has he done?

Richard is introduced being seemingly welcoming to our hero who has arrived in his kingom, Hamlet, informing him that the "evil" Shakespeare needs to be stopped to save his kingdom.

Of course, Richard is simply manipulating Hamlet into assisting him in finding Shakespeare.

In the meantime, Richard teams up with Lady Macbeth, burning her husband's tongue and burying him alive to steal his armies as he begs for mercy.

Later, during their quest to find the "evil" Shakespeare, Richard and Hamlet are attacked by "the Prodigals", rebels against Richard's rule, and, after fending off this attack, Richard sends Hamlet on ahead to scout.

Richard then orders the village of the Prodigals who attacked him pillaged, the homes burned, and every male child slaughtered.

Later, when Hamlet is kidnapped by the Prodigals, Richard confronts the man supposed to be on guard duty, and proceeds to carve out his eyes.

As Hamlet learns that the Prodigals are rebelling against Richard for good reason, due to him brutally taxing the people, starving them, and allowing his men free reign to rape and murder whoever they wish, Richard eventually tracks Hamlet down just as Hamlet finds the home of Shakespeare.

Hamlet discovers that Shakespeare is a broken old man who did indeed create everyone across the land, however things went to crap when he gave them free will and the ability to CHOOSE, as people like Richard chose to be evil and selfish and take over the world

Gathering his forces for a final battle with the Prodigals and Shakespeare, stabbing one of Lady Macbeth's servants to death for....not working fast enough, Richard sends his armies to slaughter the Prodigals and other rebels as he heads for Shakespeare.

During the battle, Richard orders Lady Macbeth to use her magic to firebomb the battlefield. When she points out it will strike just as many of his own troops as the enemy, Richard smugly informs her he's aware, and she proceeds to follow through with the act, killing dozens of troops on both sides.

Richard gets into a final duel with Hamlet and Shakespeare, gleefully trying to strike his "father" down, at which point he plans to steal the magic quill and use it to rewrite reality and make himself a god that all will be forced to worship, or die.

Temporarily distracted by Lady Macbeth attempting to betray and steal the quill from him, Richard is thoroughly beaten when Hamlet/Shakespeare manage to kill him, but even as he dies, Richard attempts to hurt Shakespeare one last time, proclaiming he's only as rotten as Shakespeare made him (Which is total BS as Richard CHOSE to be evil, the prick).

The day is saved and such, woo-hoo, yay...

Freudian Excuse or other redeeming features?

Nope, nada, zippo, zilch. Richard likes to throw it in Shakespeare's face that he's "responsible" for everythint Richard did, but the story takes EXTRA care to show that everyone here has sentience. Richard is choosing to be a villain.

Heinousness?

Worst in-story. His backstory of slaughtering his family for the throne exists here, and couple that with slaughtering and starving villages regularly, lettinghis men rape and murder as they wish, killing off his own troops by the dozens, carving a man's eyes out, burying another alive, planning to rewrite reality.....yeah...

Final Verdict?

Keep to final candidate for the foreseeable future.

edited 30th Jun '17 2:42:44 PM by Ravok

Richard

@88457 I'd tread lightly with the backstory part, because that part sounds like it was Billy S.'s fault in context of the story's conceit. That said, focusing solely on what happens in the timeframe of the comic itself, keep.

Richard III.

Richard. Work seems fascinating.

Richard. We will miss you Ravok.

Yes to Richard III, and a hearty, tearful goodbye to ya Ravok. I'll definitely try to keep in touch.

Be well, Ravok. Do what you must. I hope to see you again here.

Oh, Richard III

Yabu, Veppers Richard.

Best of luck Ravok, and look forward to your return.

edited 30th Jun '17 3:56:01 PM by Beast

Yabu, Veppers and Richard.

Take care of yourself Ravok

Good luck Ravok!

to Roman by the way.

I'm guessing the other candidate from Killing Shakespeare (which I haven't read) is to be Iago?

I just went over it in my head and yeah, that was a bad idea.

How about someone you're surprised counted? Or would that be just as bad?

edited 30th Jun '17 4:28:33 PM by futuremoviewriter

It's too bad you'll be gone Ravok, you're gonna miss the Kil'jaeden discussion in a few days.

I'll get around to a write-up for Dev Tarrant at some point but I want to propose another Blake's 7 villain first. It's someone who I initially passed over, but given the resources at her disposal, she might actually qualify. Sara from the show's seventh episode, "Mission to Destiny" (which doesn't have a recap).

Who is she and what does she do?

Sara is part of the crew of a spaceship from the planet Destiny. They are carrying a neutrotrope back to their planet where it is needed to alleviate a famine. But it is very valuable, so Sara has arranged to steal it and sell it to unknown persons.

The first step is to flood the ship with knockout gas to send the whole crew unconscious. Sara is wearing breathing apparatus so goes up to the flight deck to sabotage the ship. Unfortunately (for him), the pilot has turned off the air supply and so wasn't affected by the gas. So Sara kills him, then smashes up the flight deck with the result that the ship ends up circling in a fixed route. Hence, her associates will be able to track it via a homing device she has placed on board. Just to make sure she's crossed the Moral Event Horizon, knowing that the supply of knock-out gas is limited and that the rest of the crew will eventually wake up and discovers there's been a murder, she decides to frame another of the crew, Dortmunn, for the murder...by murdering him as well. Plan A was to dump his body in an escape pod and eject it, so everyone would think he'd done the murder and fled. When she doesn't have time to drag him that distance, she instead hides the body and launches an empty escape pod. Then she takes off the breathing apparatus so she can pretend to have been knocked out with the rest.

However, the crew get revived a bit earlier than planned when Blake and his crew discover the ship drifting and board it. They then set about repairing the ship, while also investigating the murders (Dortmunn's body is found pretty quickly). When it looks like Avon might get the ship going, Sara decides to commit a further act of sabotage by severing the power lines. Mandrian, a crewmember who she shares quarters with (and who is implied to be her lover), attempts to talk her out of it...so she kills him too.

The truth soon comes out so Sara locks herself in the flight deck with a gun. A subterfuge sees her convinced that her associates have arrived and kill everyone else, so she emerges and is captured. However, her attempt to get out of it comes back to bite her. The rest of the crew intend to take her back for trial but she avoids evacuating to the Liberator with everyone else by taking off her teleport bracelet. As a result, she is killed when a booby trap left behind by Blake destroys the ship when her associates dock with it.

Heinousness

With very limited resources, she's responsible for three deaths, at least one of them pre-meditated. Mandrian, who thinks enough of her to cover for her when he realises she's the murderer, she kills simply because he's becoming too much of a nuisance. Any mitigation she might get from knocking out the crew is erased by the fact she seems to expect them all to be killed when her allies arrive. Plus she's basically condemning everyone on her planet by stealing the neutrotope, which they mortgaged their economy to afford.

As Avon says when someone questions the motive for the murders, "Try greed. It's usually reliable."

Redeeming Features

Kills three of her crewmates, including the one closest to her, prepared to see everyone on her ship and her planet die for the sake of money...Nope, not seeing anything here.

Verdict

Looks like a strong candidate.

So, I've got a candidate who we need to talk about, partly because of his write-up being problematic, partly because he's got competition. From the YMMV page for Kingdom of Heaven there is this:

This is not a good entry, and it contains a number of misstatements. There's also the problem that Reynald shares almost every one of his crimes with his boss, Guy du Lusignan. So, what I'm going to do is an effort post for both Reynald and Guy, so we can figure out which of them is worse, and who belongs on the list.

Who are Guy du Lusignan and Reynald de Chatillon? What have they done?

Guy is a French knight, a duke's son, and the husband of Sybilla, Princess of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and sister of the reigning king, Baldwin IV. Reynald is a French mercenary knight and a strong supporter of Guy's claim to be King of Jerusalem after Baldwin. Both are members of a faction that seeks war against Saladin and the Muslims of the lands surrounding the Crusader States. Both are also exemplars of the Sissy Villain trope, and despite being large, burly men, are portrayed as mincing fops; this isn't relevant to their qualifications, but that trope annoys the hell out of me and I needed to vent about it.

When we first meet Guy, he's played as little more than an arrogant French ponce who isn't very nice to his wife and enjoys mocking protagonist Ballian and his father, Godfrey. Reynald's first appearance is a tad more serious—he's being questioned by Count Tiberius, Baldwin's chancellor, about his role in the deaths of several Arabs. Subsequently, while his wife his visiting Ballian, Guy secretly joins Reynald for a raid on a Muslim caravan. The two talk briefly, with Guy making it clear that while this raid is very much his idea, he cannot have it traced back to him if he wants to remain in favour at court; Reynald laughs and says he will take the blame as he always does. They then attack the caravan and slaughter almost everyone in it.

When Saladin finds out about this, he marches on Reynald's fortress at Karnak. Baldwin rides out to meet him and manages to convince Saladin to back down, though not until after Ballian has lost a sizeable portion of his holding force trying to buy time for Baldwin's arrival. Baldwin arrests Reynald, forces him to kiss his bare hand (which given Baldwin is a leper is far more serious than it sounds), then beats him with said bare hand before having him thrown in prison. Baldwin dies shortly afterwards, and Guy becomes King of Jerusalem on the strength of his claim through Sybilla—though not before conspiring with Reynald and the Knights Templar to have Ballian assassinated (he survives the attempt, though just barely).

Guy frees Reynald from prison and demands Reynald "give me a war." Reynald waylays another Muslim caravan and, again, kills everyone in it. Among those in the caravan was Saladin's sister; Reynald approaches her and tears off her veil; we then cut to Saladin's ambassador demanding the return of the Sultan's sister's body. The implication that Reynald raped her before murdering her is there, though it's not necessarily clear enough for inclusion in a write-up. In any case, Guy hears out the ambassador, refuses his request, then pulls a knife and murders him in full view of both the court and the rest of the ambassador's retinue. Guy orders the man's head returned to Saladin, and declares that there will now be a war between Jerusalem and Saladin; when Tiberius declares that he wants no part in this war, Guy gloats there will be more glory for him.

Guy marches his army out to meet Saladin, ignoring the advice of Ballian who points out the army doesn't have the food and water for a desert campaign. Dozens of men are shown dying from heat and thirst as they march out to Hattin. The army is ultimately annihilated by Saladin, at which point Guy and Reynald are captured and brought before the Sultan. Saladin executes Reynald on the spot for what was done to his sister; informing Guy that "a king does not kill a king" he has the former King of Jerusalem strapped naked to a donkey and paraded in front of the walls of Jerusalem to humiliate both he and the defenders. This is the last we see of Guy.

Are their actions heinous by the standards of the story?

Guy is the worst person in the story. He's responsible for sending Reynald to destroy both caravans (personally participating in one of the raids) and executes the ambassador himself, all to drum up the war he so desperately wants. Unlike other characters, who wish to go to war with Saladin in the name of the Church, Guy makes it clear in his talk with Tiberius that he is doing it for his personal aggrandizement, and nothing more. This also makes Guy responsible, at least in part, for what happens during the war, including, but not limited to, the suffering and eventual destruction of his own army and the thousands who die in Saladin's attack on Jerusalem.

Reynald is the second-worst person after Guy himself, and while probably the more personally menacing of the two (presenting as a bonafide psychopath to Guy's imbecilic egotist) suffers from the fact that he's mostly acting on Guy's orders. Whether it's attacking the caravans or facilitating the assassination attempt on Ballian, Reynald does what he does at Guy's behest, and while the implication that he'd do it anyway is definitely there, he does clock in slightly behind Guy when it comes to onscreen villainy, since Guy's murder of the ambassador and complete lack of sympathy for his own troops is onscreen, while any crimes Reynald committed without Guy's involvement, if there are any (such as the murders of Arabs that he was being questioned about in his introduction; we don't know if Guy was a part of that or not) are entirely offscreen.

Do they have any redeeming qualities?

Guy has none. He's portrayed from start to finish as an arrogant, empathy deficient moron who mistreats his wife, rubs his status in the face of every man he meets, has no loyalty to Crown or Church, and is out to start a war solely for his own personal advancement.

Reynald is slightly more complicated. Just before his attack on the second caravan, Reynald is heard to murmur to himself, in a resigned and almost saddened tone of voice that "I am what I am. Someone has to be." How you want to interpret this is up to you. It could be Reynald denying responsibility for his evil, saying that someone has to do the things he does for the world to work. However, you can also read it as Reynald genuinely believing that starting the war is a Necessary Evil and expressing some few shreds of remorse over what he has to do to make that happen. You can read it how you want; I lean towards the second interpretation myself, because I think it makes more sense.

There's also the matter of personal loyalty. Guy displays exactly zero loyalty to Reynald, setting him up to take the rap for the attack on the first caravan, and showing approximately no emotion when Saladin cuts the other man's throat in front of him. Reynald, conversely, is willing to take all the blame for the attack on the first caravan and never rats Guy out to Baldwin, even when the king is not only beating him, but essentially trying to infect him leprosy (Baldwin breaks Reynald's skin, using a hand that is covered with weeping leprosy sores. Given leprosy's virulence, Saladin may have spared Reynald a far worse death when he executed him). The film never positions this as loyalty to Guy—it never comments on it in any way—but you can read it that way if you want to.

Freudian Excuse or other mitigating factors?

None for Guy and none for Reynald that we haven't already touched on (namely his being subordinate to Guy).

Other factors to consider?

I wouldn't say it's relevant but, for the record, Guy is getting a massive Historical Villain Upgrade. The real man wasn't a great general, and certainly pushed for war with Saladin, but there's no evidence he committed any atrocities (beyond waging a war in the medieval era with all that entails) or went behind Baldwin's back to do so. He also wasn't near as dumb as he is the film—the real Guy went on to play a notable role in the Third Crusade, laying siege to Acre, and eventually becoming King of Cyprus.

Reynald, conversely, is getting a Historical Villain Downgrade, given that the real man not only repeatedly went behind Baldwin IV's back to raid Muslim caravans, but at one point sailed for Mecca with the intent of stealing Muhammad's body and desecrating it. He was also far more gung ho about starting the war than Guy was—at one point Guy, as king, ordered Reynald to pay compensation to Saladin for a caravan he had raided, and Reynald essentially told Guy to go screw himself.

Final thoughts?

Guy du Lusignan is the worst person in the film, and has a rapsheet that includes attempted murder, murder, mass murder, and starting a goddamn war, all so that he can look good. He's not a particularly interesting or nuanced character, and his existence manages to be a disservice to the (not very impressive) man he's modeled on, but that's irrelevant to our qualifications.

Reynald de Chatillon is essentially Guy's bagman, and while the implication that he'd be just as bad without Guy is certainly there, it's not really explored. He also just might have some redeeming features if you care to read him that way, though the film certainly doesn't invite you to.

I can see Guy going up and Reynald coming down. I can see them going up together. I cannot, however, see a scenario in which Reynald stays on the list while Guy is voted down. Reynald might be the more threatening villain onscreen, but Guy leads him in heinousness and shares all of his crimes.

Thoughts?

edited 30th Jun '17 5:24:32 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Easy yes to Guy and a more wary yes to Raynald.

By the way, Kingdom of Heaven is my favorite movie.

Edit: Screw that. Easy yes to both. It's like Zander and Pierce.

edited 30th Jun '17 5:09:00 PM by emperors

Richard III, a fascinating study of a man doomed to being seen as evil by his enemies, and thus deciding and naming Then Let Me Be Evil

who was adapted into a comic as a would be god. Weird how that goes.

Ravok, I hope your home life goes well. Do what you must, for it is more important, and when you return to us, we will welcome you gladly.

Auf wiedersehen friend.

Yea to Richard III and I think I'll give a yea to both Kingdom of Heaven candidates. Do take care, Ravok, and I'll anticipate your return. Take it easy.

Richard III and both Kingdom of Heaven candidates. Don't like the bad times bog you down Ravok.