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I'll give a weak yes to Stu

I'm curious if there's some script keepers in the series, I know 2 got a rewrite that changed who the killers where and I remember reading that Stu was supposed to return as the Big Bad of either 3 or 4.

Dagon.

Hell's Prophet.

...You know what ? Sure to Stu.

Also a little tidbit about What Could Have Been. One of the earlier versions of Scream 3 supposedly had Stu survive getting his head smashed in, and return as the Big Bad, manipulating new killers as his proxies. Not sure if a full script has been written around that though.

Edit: Holy shit, a jinx!

Edited by Beast on Oct 30th 2021 at 6:29:18 AM

and And on Halloween Eve, too! Y'all are toast

Easy Yep to Hell's Prophet aka the Purple Man from Hell! And a late happy Yes to Freddy Kruegers!

Edited by Ravok on Oct 30th 2021 at 6:47:54 AM

Hells prophet.

Stupid insomnia. Like lol it's hard for me to go to bed.

Edited by miraculous on Oct 30th 2021 at 6:40:50 AM

And a happy yep to the Hell's Prophet

Yes to the Prophet

Hell’s Prophet and Stu Pickles

Ok, with the whole "offscreen" conversation out of the way, I've got two villains in mind I wanna discuss...firstly and the one I'm more excited for since this was a harsh near-miss for me when the game first released:

What's the work?

Uncharted 4: A Thief's End is the fourth entry in the awesome video game franchise created by Naughty Dog. We follow Nathan "Nate" Drake on his usual quest for riches and glory as a treasure hunter, this time teaming up with his brother Sam to hunt down the legendary treasure of famed pirate Henry Avery while combatting the forces of the spoiled Rafe and his right-hand Nadine.

Now, Rafe and Nadine both are miles from the trope, Nadine being a badass, honorable MB and Rafe hardly meeting the baseline of heinousness while also having enough nuance to keep him away, especially in a setting like Uncharted...the arguable biggest villain of the game, though, is neither of these two.

Who is Henry Avery? What has he done?

One of the most infamous pirates of all time whose massive treasure has been a mystery for centuries, Henry Avery serves as focal point of Nate and Sam's adventure through the game, out to find Avery's treasure...and in the process, Nate discovers that Avery was batshit nuts.

As one of the most successful swashbucklers in his era, Avery—working with his right-hand Thomas Tew—concocted an apparent pirate utopia: "Libertalia", a hidden island where pirates from across the globe could bring their treasure to bask in victory and escape from all justice. Alongside his 11 other "Founders", Avery reigned over Libertalia, setting up clues around the world for potential colonists and pirates to track down the island—clues that were interlaced with horribly deadly traps that killed plenty of people who failed their tests while seeking Libertalia.

Once Libertalia was established, populated by hundreds...that was when things got...bad. Avery turned the "paradise" into a dictatorship, stealing the fortunes of and enslaving the hundreds of colonists and pirates who weren't part of the "Founders" and dealing harshly with anyone who defied his rule or tried to flee. By which I mean he utterly decimated swathes of people, stacking their corpses in massive piles, hanging them in cages to slowly die from exposure, or torturing and mutilating them to death.

His reign of terror continuing as the populace desperately helped their families escape Libertalia before revolting, Avery put down much rebellions before ultimately fleeing with his Founders and their massive treasures to a walled-off portion of Libertalia named "New Devon" after Avery's birthplace. But though they had avoided the colonists for now, Avery quickly realized he didn't like sharing all of the accumulated treasure and, using Tew, lured the 10 other Founders to a dinner for them to "abandon our animosities", only to then poison all of the Founders barring himself and Tew.

Avery then intended to ground all boats on Libertalia except his own and flee with the massive treasure for himself, leaving everyone else to die on the island. When Tew discovered this and, realizing what horrors he's committed in the name of a man who doesn't even care for him, staged a war on Avery, Avery ordered his men to destroy the massive dam near New Devon and flood the entire city, wiping out a massive chunk of the city's populace.

By this point, Avery was "not even pretending to be sane", and began doing shit like cutting off people's arms by the score, carving their chests out, tearing off their jaws...and then decorating his hidden caverns with them, marking each room filled with dozens of markers of victims with such snide remarks as "The hands that stole from me," "The hearts that hardened against me", etc. He also killed dozens of people by mummifying them and turning their corpses into bombs, which would be set off if anyone tried to follow him to escaping the island.

Avery tried to finish his fleeing, but, confronted by Tew, the two former allies had a final duel in which they struck each other dead, grounding Avery's ship in the process and ensuring his treasure would never be found...until Nate and his partners do in the present.

Mitigating features?

Nothing that holds up...Avery was an admirer of Saint Dismas—the "penitent thief" who requested salvation while hanging by a cross at Jesus's side—and liked to view himself as the "good" kind of thief who is said to have primarily targeted "non-British heathens", and who even properly bought a church of St. Dismas's from the priest owner...but the game goes to great lengths to showcase that Avery's just a self-righteous, hypocritical asshole, a hilariously awful piece of shit who ironically drove his own right hand man to be the actual "penitent" one in turning on his insanity, making all of his admiration of St. Dismas nothing but pure Never My Fault Holier Than Thou bullshit about his insane crimes, especially when he's quick to betray his own allies who he claims to value.

Now, the reason I decided against Avery when the game first released was simple...the man himself only ever appears onscreen as a corpse, and is given no flashbacks or proper "onscreen" scenes, with even his design only really being known because of official Naughty Dog art, so the issue was that lack of onscreen presentation. Thing is, with our looser restrictions? Avery's got enough.

The entire game is spent looking for his treasure, solving his puzzles, stumbling onto his atrocities...and everyone acknowledges the dude was a fuckin' psychopathic egomaniac, a dude who specifically built his statue to be bigger than his fellow 11 Founders ("I'm starting to think our friend was a bit of a narcissist."), devised a diabolical scheme to become a dictator and rob hundreds of people of their riches, had a deep infatuation with St. Dismas and his own religious superiority...and ultimately betrayed every one of his allies, Tew's journal entries describing Avery as a "treacherous madman" who he deeply regrets ever allying with, and though Avery gets almost no lines himself in journals, he does have his oft-repeated "I am a man of fortune, and I must seek my fortune", and one of the final journal entries you find in the game is written by Avery himself:

Heinousness?

Not an issue in both the series' massive standard or Offscreen Villainy. Avery is, in no uncertain terms, the most horrific villain of the franchise in sheer visceral nature. Nate comes across piles of corpses on Libertalia and others hanging from cages left to die, people killed by Avery's traps, the bodies of the Founders Avery poisoned, the "mummies", the rooms filled with "the hands that stole from me, the hearts hardened against me" filled with bodies parts, the flooded New Devon...the entire back half of the game is basically a step-by-step walkthrough and showcase of all the heinous shit Avery did, and it's all fully on display, then detailed further from in-game notes.

Final Verdict?

Offscreen he may be, Avery has all his crimes fully on display, gets described through Nate's own musings and journal entries from people who knew him, and his presence is heftily felt through the whole game. He was a sadistic, narcissistic, greedy, self-righteous psycho, and I think he lands nicely.

Edited by Ravok on Oct 30th 2021 at 7:33:37 AM

Oh, hey, I remember talking to you about Avery. Yes to him.

Shit, BTW...I remembered I have this guy. I rewatched the 2014 Equalizer with Denzel Washington and I think we missed a particular scumbag.

What has Slavi done?

Slavi is the film's Starter Villain. He's a scummy pimp and trafficker who's a particularly emphasized proponent of The Mafiya's prostitution business. Slavi stands out because he's not just charging willing, paying prostitutes—one of the central characters of the film, Alina, was captured by Slavi as a little girl and forced to live her entire life as a prostitute.

When he's not prostituting Alina out to others, Slavi is raping Alina himself, and this has been going on for years, since Alina was a little girl. When Alina meets ex-agent Robert McCall, he encourages her to take some agency in her life—she takes this opportunity to defy Slavi the next time he tries to rape her, and he responds by subjecting her to a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown so horrifically brutal it leaves her at the edge of her life. He remarks if she ever questions him again he'll cut her throat—"Maybe a whore who fucks and doesn't speak will make twice as much."

Robert attempts to buy Alina out from Slavi's grasp under the disguise of a client, but even with an offer of $9,800 Slavi refuses to give Alina her freedom, telling Robert she can have her for a month at most. Robert, absolutely tired of Slavi's shit, beats the living shit out of him, kills his minions, and finishes the smug fucker off.

Any mitigating factors?

We have a guy from this film up already and he's a Psycho for Hire named Nicolai I've litigated, but...TBH, it's mostly because of his proximity to the human trafficking. Slavi is such a despicable, revolting asshole that even with none of Nicolai's kills, he's still horrifically and notably brutal. Slavi occupies the absolute bottom ladder of The Mafiya's hierarchy and yet he goes out of his way to be as despicable as possible. That Nicolai generally oversees this business is probably enough, but Nicolai has absolutely nothing to do with Slavi's child trafficking and raising Alina to be a Sex Slave for years. Even the Big Bad has no presence and no direct involvement in the worst of his operations. Slavi stands supreme, particularly given he's just a Starter Villain.

Conclusion?

Easy keeper.

Edited by Scraggle on Oct 30th 2021 at 8:14:43 AM

Avery and Slavi

Avery and Slavi. I feel this new rule’s gonna open up a major floodgate of overlooked candidates, and boy, am I looking forward to that.

Yes to Avery and Slavi

Sure to Slavi and Avery.

Avery

Slavi

to Slavi and Avery (I tried to get Avery proposed but wasn’t able to so as with Batari I’m glad you got that you’re able to get Avery approved)

Yes to Stu(i do think he is unique enough), Hell's Prophet and Slavi

By the way, Recycled In Space has been renamed Recycled with a Gimmick, or alternately, Old Tale, New Twist. So we need to dice the pothole on Sandbox.Monster Warhammer.

We are supposed to respect TRS decisions. Also, the original name attracted a lot of misuse.

Edited by SkyCat32 on Oct 30th 2021 at 11:58:45 AM

Do we? It's still the trope, it just got a new name.

Yes to Avery

I know? I just don't see why a dicing would be Neccesary, as the trope still applies.

Edited by Snoketrope on Dec 10th 2021 at 3:04:27 AM

Avery, Slavi

Edited by nwotyzal on Oct 30th 2021 at 9:12:56 AM

to Slavi and Avery

Finished watching Maya and the Three, can't wait for the discussion on November. PM me for more information.

What's the tally on Stu right now?

Also, forgot to mention: Thursday around noon I got my booster.

Yes to Dagon, the Prophet, Avery and Slavi. I'm a yes for Stu but I'll just leave it there unless he's at a disadvantage.

For Avery. I considered it but didn't take the plunge

Aragon, Prohpet, Slavi and Avery. Abstain on Stu.

Alright, I asked Ravok about this and he said this character is worth re-litigation, so I am going to repost the EP, with a handful of alterations. I am still not 100% sure he keeps now, so this EP will be neutral.

What's the work?

Tokyo Dark is a point-and-click visual novel hybrid. It stars Detective Ayami Ito as she tracks down the wicked ghost girl Reina, and discovers her past and the truth of 'The Dark', a strange phenomenon consuming Tokyo.

Now, previously, Eiichi Higashi was brought up and approved. However, he was not the only man responsible for Reina's insanity. There was another.

Who is Tokimassa? What has he done?

Shinji Umezawa, aka Tokimassa, was the leader of the second Kamenkai, a cult based on the first Kamenkai which existed in times of old. The first Kamenkai orchestrated a mass killing in order to sacrifice souls to the Mask, an Artifact of Doom, to seal away the realm of the gods and keep it from being abused by human greed, but also to protect humanity from The Dark, an Eldritch Location that is either the realm of the gods or stands between it and the human realm.

Tokimassa, however, is basically a fictional Japanese Jim Jones. He despised humanity and human society, considering it evil and corrupt, and he desires to reach the realm of the gods himself. So, after somehow getting his greedy mitts on the Mask, Tokimassa sought out people who were down on their luck to brainwash them with his philosophy. Once he got enough followers, they all fled to the infamous Suicide Forest and made a compound there, where he would continue to brainwash them.

The most important member of this cult was Reina, the girl I mentioned earlier. A little tyke at the time, she was raised her whole life by the Kamenkai. They basically emotionally abused her and such. Tokimassa wanted her to become the new bearer of the Mask, and she would do so through a ritual of sorts. This ritual would free the members of the Kamenkai from the corruption of Man, and bring them to the land of gods.

Considering I compared this guy to Jim Jones, you probably know where this is going. The ritual turns out to be a mass Murder-Suicide, and poor Reina has to watch the whole thing, after Tokimassa already carved the symbol of the ritual into her body so he could use her blood. Everyone dies except her, and all their souls are sealed in the Mask. With this, Tokimassa hopes to gain entrance into the realm of the gods, all while humanity died at the hands of the Dark. Reina ends up traumatized, and this is but one of the things that lead to her becoming evil.

Heinousness?

Easily passes it with his ritual. After emotionally abusing his followers for years, he cut Reina to get her blood, and several people die, including Reina's mother. Also, he unleashes the Dark upon humanity (or at least helps it come about), knowing it will result in the destruction of humanity and actively relishing in it. The only real competition is human trafficker Higashi, but I say they both have unique niches. And Reina, despite being the Big Bad, does not really set the standard- she only has two murders, a couple attempted ones, and psychological torture of Ayami, but Higachi and Tokimassa are worse.

Mitigating Qualities?

Now, the thing that got him downvoted initially is that we never actually see Tokimassa in person, or in flashback. But with the rule change, we can see the effects of what he has done- we see flashbacks of his followers and, through their dialogue, see how they have been brainwashed by him into believing that they are sinful and corrupt. We also see a flashback, however brief, of the immediate aftermath of the ritual, with bodies strewn around. But perhaps the most important evidence is a letter that Ayami finds. She says it might have been written by Tokimassa himself, and given the way it is written and the content, I am fairly certain he is the author of this letter (“only I can lead” and “my faithful” are things that a cult leader says, not a follower). With that in mind, the letter gives us an insight into his thinking:

So yeah, even though he never appears, Tokimassa demonstrates his personality through the letter- a Knight Templar who believes that only he and anyone who does exactly as he says is worthy of happiness. Aside from that, a former member of the cult (the Old Kawana Woman) notes that he was clearly just using his followers as sacrifices to the Mask so he can reach the world of the gods, and unlike the original Kamenkai who were trying to protect humanity, Tokimassa actively relishes in the idea of the Dark destroying all humanity.

To sum up, here are the rules proposed by Lighty, and why I think Tokimassa passes:

• Personal Impact on the plot: He’s one of the Greater Scope Villains- the entire plot would not have happened without his machinations. The Big Bad was turned into who she is by him (and Higashi, but mainly him), and the threat to humanity was at least partially unleashed by his actions.
• Relationships to characters: We see flashbacks of his brainwashed followers praising him and rebuking criticism, he's the reason the Big Bad Reina is as twisted as she is, and we meet a former follower who outright calls him a madman and said he was just using them.
• Form of the Work: It’s visual, but again we do get a letter.
• Heinous Standard: Kills like 10 people in Murder-Suicide and essentially dooms humanity to the Dark, with the threat only being quelled by the heroine sacrificing herself. Higashi, the human trafficker, has his own unique niche and no eldritch powers, so Tokimassa has his own niche as well.

Verdict?

I dunno if he can make it now with the rule change, so I’m neutral I guess, but I personally think he has enough of a presence. It’s okay if you disagree; I just wanna put this nagging doubt in my mind to rest.

Edited by MasterN on Nov 7th 2021 at 10:30:48 AM

It's midnight here, so Happy Halloween to all!

I'm gonna abstain on Stu. The brutality of his killings in the opening scene and his lack of a motive might push him to a keeper, but I really have to ask... when was it established that him and Billy raped and tortured Maureen? From what I gathered, Maureen had sex with Cotton just before they killed her, hence his semen being at the crime scene, which is where the rape accusation came from.

But anyway, since it's Halloween, I've got a surprise effortpost for you all that I never expected to write, let alone get my hands on its source material. What is it? Keep reading...

What's the work?

Fright Night (1985) is a cult classic that can basically be summed up as Rear Window... WITH A VAMPIRE! I won't be focusing on the movie, but rather, the ultra-rare novelization by John Skipp and Craig Spector that I was lucky enough to pick up at Crypticon. Where incidentally, I also met two actors who've played CMs. Anyway, without further ado...

Who is Jerry Dandridge? What has he done?

Jerry Dandridge is very much the same villain from the movie: a vampire who has moved in with his seemingly human servant to a long-abandoned house in the town of Rancho Corvallis, in search of fresh opportunity and fresh blood. Our hero, Charley Brewster, becomes obsessed with Jerry after seeing him and his servant carrying a coffin into the house, with a series of murders coinciding with his arrival. He witnesses two of the murders, one by hearing the scream of a prostitute that Jerry hired to come to his house, and the second when he sees Jerry through the window, seducing a young college student who turned to prostitution to help pay her bills.

Charley's mom invites Jerry over to the house, effectively seducing her and leading to a very uncomfortable and awkward introduction between Jerry and Charley, where Jerry just psychically forces him to shake hands. This was all AFTER Charley brought the police over to his place, mind you, so Jerry isn't happy, and he returns to the house that night to kill Charley, briefly considering killing his mom. He offers Charley a chance to go on his merry way, leaving Jerry to continue his feedings without any interference, less because he wants to give him a chance, and more because he doesn't want the kind of attention that killing your next-door neighbor would undoubtedly draw to you.

After Peter Vincent conducts a test on Jerry to prove Charley he's not a vampire, Jerry's fairly content to leave Charley's friends alone, but as soon as he finds Peter's cracked mirror on the floor, he goes after them, first coming for "Evil" Ed, promising him the power to stand up to his bullies, sending him to kill Peter (a mission he fails, to which Billy Cole warns him that he's "in the deep shit" for), then personally chasing down Charley and Amy to a nightclub, telling Charley to bring Peter to his house to face him, then slaughtering a pair bouncers with claws and snatching Amy away.

Back in his bedroom, Jerry and Amy come face to face, with his hypnotic control over her coming to a head. As Amy begins to come to from her stupor, Jerry mocks her plight saying "we're having so much fun", and he... well, I can really only describe what he does next to her as a psychic rape. Not a Mind Rape, a psychic rape. I really don't want to go into detail because I realize it could be upsetting to some people here if I do. I'll just say Interplay of Sex and Violence is especially strong in play in this scene. It ends with him turning her.

Charley and Peter — who has managed to muster up enough courage — come to the house to face Jerry. He was waiting for them, however, and when it appears that Charley has him cornered as Peter flees, Billy Cole whacks Charley in the face, throwing him into Jerry's bedroom with the recently turned Amy. Jerry has a little talk with Charley, giving him the option to kill Amy or be turned by her. The rest of the novelization is mostly just Charley and Peter killing Billy Cole (which Jerry is only upset by because it took him 113 years to create such a great servant out of him), then trying to find Jerry and kill him before daybreak to free Amy, with Jerry turning into a monstrous bat and trying to kill Charley in that form, and the two finally confronting Amy and Jerry in the basement, Peter missing Jerry's heart with the stake, and finally, they let some light in, reducing the vampire to ash.

Mitigating qualities?

Nothing of note. Much of Chris Sarandon's input for the character that actually made him likable is notably absent here, particularly that he doesn't have a past lover who resembles Amy. He pretty much just flat-out rapes her for no other reason than because he wanted to hurt Charley and had some shallow attraction to her for her virginity. While his seduction of her in the movie is... questionable at best, he sees his lost love in her there and he doesn't actually have sex with her in any form. Though he did prepare a coffin with soil from Rancho Corvallis for her, but otherwise, there's nothing to say he actually has any feelings for her except keeping her around as a sort of undead trophy wife who never even wanted to become a vampire.

We get to see his perspective quite a lot, and he absolutely enjoys what he does. He's not just some tragic monster who just wants to "live", no, he makes a point to "savor each death". Though speaking of wanting to live, we do get to see a few Hidden Depths to him. Namely, he misses the sun and human companionship. But this thought follows his little inner diatribe about hating humanity for being able to enjoy themselves at the club, and is followed by thoughts of turning and/or killing Charley and Amy. You could read it as him burying his self-loathing underneath contempt for the human race, but I don't see those arguments as all that compelling, especially when he says he likes killing and drawing it out when possible. It really just comes off as self-pity. He's made some valued contributions to vampire society, like teaching them that chemical additives actually add nutritional value to blood, but is that really a good thing for everyone? He doesn't even have the magnetic natural charisma that he seemed to have in the movie and has to psychically force people into doing what he wants. Aside from a little shared banter, Billy Cole is just a servant to him that he happened to have spent over a century grooming. THAT was the most upsetting thing to him when he found him "dead" at the bottom of the stairs.

Heinous standard?

His on-page body count is nothing to write home about, and I did briefly consider proposing Billy Cole for reminiscing on his meeting with Jerry's third in-story victim, but... nah. Jerry sets it. Murder, sadism, sexual assault/rape... safe to say he's much worse than anyone else.

Verdict?

Gonna say keep, if only because he's so horrible in this one and has none of the actual redeeming qualities from the finished product. Not quite on par with his remake counterpart (either of them), but just bad enough.

Edited by Stellarvore on Oct 30th 2021 at 12:16:49 PM