Subpages cleanup: Complete Monster

Vouching for the Jankowski image

Yes to Zhao, Boon, and Wiggles.

The Magic the Gathering page can be officially locked now if you want to pit in the edit request ACW.

to the Abattoir quote and the Chien Na Wei/China White quote.

Abstain on Zegin Highline.

@STARCRUSHER99: I like the Jankowski image most.

to Ulrich, Zhao, Hoon and Wiggles. Quirrell.

Yes to the Dexter baddie

Clock is set on Image Pickin' for League of Legends page.

to Ulrich, Zhao, Hoon and Wiggles. Quirrell.

Yes to Ulrich.

I'll request locking of the Magic page next week.

• Birdy the Mighty
  • OVA: Seichiro Hikawa is an amoral biologist seeking to forcibly evolve the human race solely so his genius can be recognized. Originally an Imperial Japan war criminal responsible for heinous experiments, Hikawa faded into exile following World War II. When the enigmatic alien terrorist Christella Revi sought his expertise for her own ends, Hikawa saw this as an opportunity to revive his failed dreams. Through Revi's resources, Hikawa enacts a plot to contaminate Japan's water supply with an experimental serum to mutate its citizens into psychic metahumans enslaved to his will. When confronted with the fact his plan will undoubtedly fail and kill everyone in Japan instead, Hikawa in a rage unleashes the serum into the sewers anyways.
  • Decode season 1: Satyajit Shyamalan has a philosophy of only the "Chosen" deserving life. Locating an alien weapon called the Ryunka, Shyamalan seeks to use it to "cleanse" the world. Murdering those in his way, Shyamalan later strangles the host of the Ryunka's grandfather to death and hooks the Ryunka up to a device of his own making to amplify its powers, killing many, many people with the intention of completely annihilating humanity save those he deems worthy of life.
• Savage Dawn (1985): Pigiron, leader of the Savages, leads his men on marauding, brutal sprees that include raping women they come across. Settling into the same town as the nomadic hero Ben Stryker, Pigiron has his men set on one woman and drags her boyfriend behind his bike. Later setting the Savages on the town and using a tank to fire randomly at buildings, Pigiron shows no concern for those who could be killed and even guns down multiple random innocents in a final spree.
• Trial By Jury (1994): Rusty Pirone is a sadistic mob boss on trial for murder, seeking to escape his fate by having witnesses murdered and by intimidating single mom juror Valerie. Having killed numerous innocents and other mobsters, even those who loved and trusted him, Pirone has cops and witnesses killed while vowing to kill Valerie's young son and elderly father should she not give him a hung jury, raping Valerie to show his power over her. Deciding to have Valerie killed anyways, Pirone tries to murder her himself after admitting he has wanted to hurt everyone in his life.
• Victorian Horror Stories' "Let Loose": Sir Roger Despard was a mass-murdering psychopath who enjoyed terrorizing the people of Wetwaste. Nearing the end of his life, Despard is asked to repent for his many sins, only for him to refuse to and instead say that his only "regret" is not being able to kill more people. To rectify this, Despard cuts off his hand and instructs it to murder and maim in his place before he dies. Fifty years later, said hand eventually escapes its confinement and proceeds to kill a little girl, the local blacksmith, and very nearly kills the protagonist himself. The latter ends up protected by his dog, who dies in the process, and ends up needing to wear a high collar, even in hot weather, to hide the bruises.
• Blacktop (2000 HBO film): Jack is a virulently misogynist man who kidnaps the heroine Sylvia and places her in his truck with a challenge to her boyfriend David to save her to "prove" his feelings. Jack gleefully maims a man in a bar fight and shows no compunction torturing Sylvia, removing a finger to prove he's serious. Jack is revealed to have a freezer full of corpses in his truck with numerous mutilated remains, and later gleefully tries to murder both David and Sylvia.

Edited by ACW on Jan 24th 2022 at 8:37:22 AM

I agree with Ordeaux on the Images.

Also, I took the liberty of disambiguating Blacktop by year.

I personally prefer the Zimm image

to the quote, though

Yes to the quote.

I think I like the first image better, but both are good.

Finally, I've finished my proposal of my latest candidate... for the Former Complete Monsters list.

What's the Work?

A few years ago, Lighty and Scraggles proposed two villains from the French comic Le Troisième Testament (The Third Testament), a historical religious fantasy comic about a knight who seeks to stop the Apocalypse.

Now Lighty and Scraggle did a good job, but as it turns out there's a five parts prequel Le Troisième Testament: Julius that hasn't been translated into english yet (but does exist).

Julius tells the story of Julius of Samaria, a forgotten saint who got The Third Testament from God himself about 30 years after the crucifixion. As it turns out, Julius was once a cruel Roman general and his story is deeply intertwined with Duke Sayn's.

Uther the Purple can stay where he is, unfortunately Sayn requires reevaluation because of his extended backstory.

Who is he?

Sayn (then known as "Sa Har Sarim" but I'll keep calling him "Sayn") – is Jesus' evil brother and the Big Bad of the original series.

Now there's a bit of a retcon there, contrary to what was implied in the first arc, Sayn never was the thirteenth apostle. Joseph and Mary gave him up for adoption when he was a baby, only saw Jesus once and didn't know about their parentage until years after the latter passing.

The short version is that Sayn for the first three books wasn't a monster at all but a selfless and empathic hero. The long version...

What has he done?

After General Julius Publius Vindex defeats the rebellion from jews of Alexandry, he threatens his very large crowd of prisonners with slavery. He asks if there are christans among them. When many rise, he orders them to renounce their faith or else they will burn for the banquet of the Emperor. Sayn is one of the only nine people who bravely and fearlessly stand. Julius picks him up and utterly massacres the rest.

At Rome, Julius exposes his evil scheme: he plan to burn several quarters of Rome in order to build new palaces and buildings. He will then frame Sayn in order to scapegoat the Christians predicting that thousands including women and children will be persecuted and fed to the lions. He also goads Sayn into killing him and cruelly scoffs when the latter refuses and tells him "God Loves you too".

However, Julius' daughter Livia and Sayn mutually fall in love and, in order to save him, she denounces the conspiracy to the Emperor. Arrested, Julius and Sayn are enslaved and sent to a mine in Judah (They are later joined by Julia).

There the prisoners are in awful conditions: back breaking labor, whips, starvation, you named it. Julius and Sayn are in charge of getting rid the bodies of the slaves who drop like flies. When jewish prisoners recognize Julius, the infamous "butcher of Alexandry", Sayn stands to protect him and lectures them. He also later befriend an old lady and ask her to give the fruit she stole to Julius. Angered by Sayn's unconditional kindness, Julius brutally beats him to near death before having a change of heart and asking the others to heal him.

Later, Livia is almost raped by a guard and kills him in self defense. She's sentenced to burn in public as an example. When jews informs Sayn about the army that is about to save him, Sayn refuses to leave knowing the woman he loves is going to die. Luckily, they arrive in time to rescue the girl and free the camp.

Sayn, leading the prisoners, meets the elder Galamiel who runs La Résistance in a hidden oasis. Galamiel reveals to Sayn his origins and gives him the quest to find the Third Testament in the distant West with the well intentioned goal of ending sorrows and bring God's reign on Earth.

In Book 2 and 3, Sayn with Julius and other companions goes on a long perilous journey to reach God's call. Again, I insist that during the trip, Sayn remains a nice dude who displays genuine affection for his comrades and longs for Livia. Long story short, they face multiple dangers on their ways in Babylon, the garden of Eden and freaking Tibet. Many of the companions die during the journey but Sayn remains determined to fullfill his goal even after the betrayal of Thadeus.

U When Sayn reach the destination on top of a snowy moutain... God remains silent and ignores him.

Sayn decides to go back to the oasis on his own and lying to his followers, he claims that God ordered them to take the arms and reclaim the holy land from the Romans. He confides the truth to his beloved Livia whom later marries. However, It turns out that God chose Julius as the guardian of the Third Testament unknowingly to Sayn.

At this point, Sayn leads expeditions against the Romans and take over a fortress. Livia grows increasingly worried for her husband even though he believes that he does the right thing for his people. This leads to repression from Rome with many civilians being caught. After a victory against a General, Emperor Nero offers peace to Sayn and to end the occupation of the land but Sayn declines and instead declares war on the Empire.

Finally, Sayn crosses the Moral Event Horizon after one of his men attempts to assassinate him and Julia. Sayn retaliates by ordering the massacre of his entire village, women and children included so that "the people will know that if they feared the Romans before, they should now fear God even more".

Horrified by what her husband has become, Livia secretly escapes to sign peace with the emperor. However, she and her companions are ambushed by the senator Modius who destroys the boat. When Sayn finds her ring in the wreckage, he cries and falls in a depressive and catatonic state. (scene here) The Romans then have no problem capturing and sentencing him on the cross just like his brother.

Julius, who returned to Judah with the Testament and witnessed Sayn's crimes with horror, comes to see him on his execution and calls him out. Sayn begs him to ends his torment which Julius denies.

The wicked Senator Modius rescues a near dead Sayn from the cross and brings him to the cursed ruins of Gomorrah. He revives him with dark magic and offers to be his servant on his worldwide conquest and gives him command over the army of the Gommorheans ghost. Sayn reveals that he knows about Modius' involvement in Livia's death so he makes him drink his blood to render him immortal and then lock him in a sarcophagus, condemned to be Buried Alive until the end of days. Sayn announces that he no longer wants to conquer the world who failed him but annihilate it before joining God.

However, it turns out that Livia isn't actually dead and is pregnant with Sayn's child. But Sayn marches against Jerusalem (where Julius surrendered the Testament) killing everyone in his path.

Confronting Julius near the temple, Sayn exposes his resentment over being ignored by God and Julius "stealing" his destiny and literally blames him for all his problems. When Julius reveals that Livia is alive, Sayn is schocked for a moment but then says "Liar! You all betrayed me. Your daughter more so. If the Roman didn't kill her, she'd be the first to fall under my blade" and then exposes his ambition "You all betrayed me but I will see your doom. Not in the comfort of the Kingdom but in the torments of the end of days. I will open the seven seals and the Apocalypse will happen because this world must return to nothingness. Because the World means no longer anything to me."

Luckily, Sayn collapses before reaching the testament and Julius manages to save it. Livia dies in childbirth and Julius spends the rest of his life finding a place to hide the Testament.

A dying Julius finally sees Sayn for the last time in Rome. Hetells him that he's grateful that the latter saved him from former life of cruelty and now he would like to return the favor. He tearfully begs for forgiveness as he dies but Sayn refuses.

In the end, we have a very ironic Hourglass Plot: Julius starts as a monstrous persecutors of jews and christians and ends up as a saint while Sayn starts as a selfless hero and ends up as a apocalyptic villain.

Heinous Standard

Not an issue. The series admittedly has a high standard but Sayn is on top of it and even gets additional crimes in the prequel.

Mitigating Factors

This is where Sayn suddenly becomes a far more complex case than he was in the original series. We clearly see that he wasn't born evil. He once was a genuine hero who wanted nothing but free his people and be with Livia.

Now by the end of the arc (and the entirety of the original series), Sayn discards all his redeeming qualities. He claims he would have killed Livia himself and never mentions her in the original albums.

The real debate is whether or not, Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse. Unfortunately for me, the prequel does too much to explain his turn to villainy even if he ends up as an irredeemable and thoroughly unsympathetic villain.

In order: he survived a massacre, was enslaved in terrible conditions, beaten to near death, saw the deaths and the betrayals of his companions, was disulioned by God's silence after a perilous journey, fell into depression when Livia seemingly died and was crucified for hours. Now I could maybe overlook some of this - We have C Ms with sad backstories after all– but the biggest issue of them all is his reaction when Livia seemingly perishes. Granted, he had already become unhinged before that moment but it seems to be the very point where he completely snaps and believes that the world failed him and can't be saved.

In light of this, his cries of "God. Why have you abandoned me" before his death in the original series can be argued to be a retroactive Alas, Poor Villain moment.

Verdict

This is NOT an easy case. I could see and understand arguments for him staying but for me there's too much going on to be comfortable.

Edited by Silverblade2 on Jan 24th 2022 at 4:08:09 PM

The Slasher.

The "Father".

Anthony Ulrich.

Zhao and Hoon.

Mr. Wiggles.

I'm likewise a cut on Sayn for this.

Cut Sayn.

Seems like a cut.

Cut Sayn, that's too many mitigating factors which are never thrown away

Though if he's being removed, let me tweak Uther a bit:

• Uther the Purple, Bishop of Stornswall, matches his liege in evil and faithfully serves him on his mission to bring about the end times. Uther personally massacres a monastery of nuns and slaughters Élisabeth's father, while furiously pursuing Conrad and butchering everyone who gets in his way. Even on his own time, Uther is vile, coldly torturing and murdering numerous people who get in the way of Sayn or himself with a specialty for drawing out their agony, and mutilates his own servants in Stornswall to permanently deny them any sort of a life outside of his walls.

• The Third Testament, by Alex Alice & Xavier Dorison: Uther the Purple, Bishop of Stornswall, matches his liege Duke Sayn in evil and faithfully serves him on his mission to bring about the end times. Uther personally massacres a monastery of nuns and slaughters Élisabeth's father, while furiously pursuing Conrad and butchering everyone who gets in his way. Even on his own time, Uther is vile, coldly torturing and murdering numerous people who get in the way of Sayn or himself with a specialty for drawing out their agony, and mutilates his own servants in Stornswall to permanently deny them any sort of a life outside of his walls.

Cut Sayn.

cut sayn.

Sayn

Edited by nwotyzal on Jan 24th 2022 at 8:12:07 AM

cut Sayn

I just added a write-up for Sir Roger Despard here.

What do you guys think? :)

I already got it, modified a bit:

• Victorian Horror Stories' "Let Loose": Sir Roger Despard was a mass-murdering psychopath who enjoyed terrorizing the people of Wetwaste. Nearing the end of his life, Despard is asked to repent for his many sins, only for him to refuse to and instead say that his only "regret" is not being able to kill more people. To rectify this, Despard cuts off his hand and instructs it to murder and maim in his place before he dies. Fifty years later, said hand eventually escapes its confinement and proceeds to kill a little girl, the local blacksmith, and very nearly kills the protagonist himself. The latter ends up protected by his dog, who dies in the process, and ends up needing to wear a high collar, even in hot weather, to hide the bruises.

No to Quirell.

Thanks. Is it good enough now? :)