During the investigation of recent hollers in the Complete Monster thread, it's become apparent to the staff that an insular, unfriendly culture has evolved in the Complete Monster and Magnificent Bastard threads that is causing problems.
Specific issues include:
- Overzealous hollers on tropers who come into the threads without being familiar with all the rules and traditions of the tropes. And when they are familiar with said rules and traditions, they get accused (with little evidence) of being ban evaders.
- A few tropers in the thread habitually engage in snotty, impolite mini-modding. There are also regular complaints about excessive, offtopic "socializing" posts.
- Many many thread regulars barely post/edit anywhere else, making the threads look like they are divorced from the rest of TV Tropes.
- Following that, there are often complaints about the threads and their regulars violating wiki rules, such as on indexing, crosswicking, example context and example categorization. Some folks are working on resolving the issues, but...
- Often moderator action against thread regulars leads to a lot of participants suddenly showing up in the moderation threads to protest and speak on their behalf, like a clique.
It is not a super high level problem, but it has been going on for years and we cannot ignore it any longer. There will be a thread in Wiki Talk
to discuss the problem; in the meantime there is a moratorium on further Complete Monster and Magnificent Bastard example discussion until we have gotten this sorted out.
Update: The new threads have been made and can be found here:
Please see the Frequently Asked Questions and Common Requests List before suggesting any new entries for this trope.
IMPORTANT: To avoid a holler to the mods, please see here for the earliest date a work can be discussed, (usually two weeks from the US release), as well as who's reserved discussion.
When voting, you must specify the candidate(s). No blanket votes (i.e. "![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_up_emote.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
to everyone I missed").
No plagiarism: It's fair to source things, but an effortpost must be your own work and not lifted wholesale from another source.
We don't care what other sites think about a character being a Complete Monster. We judge this trope by our own criteria. Repeatedly attempting to bring up other sites will earn a suspension.
What is the Work
Here you briefly describe the work in question and explain any important setting details. Don't assume that everyone is familiar with the work in question.
Who is the Candidate and What have they Done?
This will be the main portion of the Effort Post. Here you list all of the crimes committed by the candidate. For candidates with longer rap sheets, keep the list to their most important and heinous crimes, we don't need to hear about every time they decide to do something minor or petty.
Do they have any Mitigating Factors or Freudian Excuse?
Here you discuss any potential redeeming or sympathetic features the character has, the character's Freudian Excuse if they have one, as well as any other potential mitigating factors like Offscreen Villainy or questions of moral agency. Try to present these as objectively as possible by presenting any evidence that may support or refute the mitigating factors.
Do they meet the Heinousness Standard?
Here you compare the actions of the Candidate to other character actions in the story in order to determine if they stand out or not. Remember that all characters, not just other villains, contribute to the Heinousness Standard
Final Verdict?
Simply state whether or not you think the character counts or not.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Aug 31st 2023 at 4:14:10 AM
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
given that we’ve loosen the rules on that , I’d say Sloan might be worth a shot
Edited by G-Editor on Apr 21st 2022 at 5:36:47 AM
I'm afraid to put any number down since the movie never states any, but Sloan has dozens of assassins and Wesley gets two contracts during his training. Considering how many of his own people he's kept their names secret, it feels the number of innocents killed is quite a lot.
Think you're tough because you made it through Lord of the Rings? Real men survive The Silmarillion.
I...can't see Sloan. He's a pretty generic baddie, TBH.
Like, he has people killed. He's the head of an international fraternity of assassins, it's what you'd expect. He kills people who opposes him, has other folks assassinated for profit. He doesn't murder entire families, he doesn't start wars, he doesn't traffic people...we get very little to the extent of the operation at play here.
Remember, we want people to punch out of the class, and Sloan...doesn't.
Edited by Lightysnake on Apr 21st 2022 at 8:44:16 AM
I have a new possible CM candidate I'd like to suggest: a despicable duo from the fanfiction Abraxas (Hrodvitnon), Ichi/Eldest Brother/The First and Ni/Elder Brother/Younger Brother/The Second.
What is the Work?
Abraxas is a Godzilla MonsterVerse fanfiction which picks up after the ending of Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019). Following Ghidorah's movie-canon death, it's revealed that not only is the decapitated left head (San) still alive, but it's been carrying, resurrecting and transforming Vivienne Graham's Only Mostly Dead remains, slowly transforming San and Vivienne into a new Two Beings, One Body Titan: Monster X. Following their rebirth, Vivienne warily makes a truce with San; and as San undergoes Character Development towards a Heel–Face Turn, and as he and Vivienne learn more about each-other, they genuinely become a Sibling Team.
Who Are Ichi/Eldest Brother and Ni/Elder Brother?
They are the minds/souls of the three-headed Omnicidal Maniac Titan Ghidorah's middle and right heads respectively. Note that in this fic, it's very explicit that Ghidorah's bickering heads are three individual brother entities who share a body and nervous system below the neckline.
What Have These Two Heads Done?
Besides Ghidorah's crimes in King of the Monsters, some of which naturally get mentioned or referenced in this story...
(1) San's memories outright confirm that before Ghidorah came to Earth, it wiped entire alien worlds clean of life, before moving on to repeat the process on the next world: actively and deliberately slaughtering any native civilizations into extinction, and converting the planets' atmospheres into a neverending, global Perpetual Storm.
(2) For literally billions of years, Ichi/Eldest Brother and Ni/Elder Brother treated their "youngest brother" San like he was barely better than dirt, physically and verbally abusing him on a frequent basis and not giving him anything in the way of warmth. This caused or fostered many if not all of San's psychological issues such as his self-blaming tendencies. Note that whereas Ichi and Ni are characterized as The Sociopath, both versions of the left head in this storynote are characterized as an eons-old abused child.
(3) It's revealed that after Ichi/Eldest Brother deliberately targeted Vivienne Graham and ate her alive, he explicitly gave San the order to revive her and transform her into a part-Ghidorah hybrid. Whereas San had childishly innocent and heartwarming reasons for wanting to transform Vivienne, Ichi's intentions were much more malicious.
(4) After Ghidorah's three minds have resurrected from their movie death, they take full advantage of the hybrid monsters that have been created by humans' experiments with Ghidorah's remains. Notably, the Many — basically a Captain Ersatz of the Flood — are a living, moving Fate Worse than Death for the many humans, animals and other creatures which get forcibly assimilated into them, and Ghidorah takes advantage of how the assimilated victims' Hive Mind worships Ghidorah as a god to make the Many its agents and minions. Both Mothra and a post-Heel–Face Turn San consider this to be a new low even for Ghidorah.
(4.1) During the story's Final Battle, Ghidorah orders the Many to assimilate the entire population of Berezniki consisting of 150,000 people to expand their biomass (they succeed), and then Ghidorah merges the Many with its own body.
(5) Ghidorah also takes advantage of the Zmeyevich's creation. Whilst it's ambiguous how much the actions that led to the Zmeyevich's creation were deliberately influenced by Ghidorah via its psychic influence on humans and how much were the independent doings of insane humans, Ghidorah was certainly all too happy to exploit it. The Zmeyevich are the result of a new fertility treatment which secretly and illegally incorporated Ghidorah's DNA as an ingredient: the side-effects are that the women who take the treatment after an Evil, Inc. releases it to the public end up pregnant with half-Ghidorah Monstrous Humanoids instead of human babies, and the pregnancy causes potentially-deadly health risks to the mothers. If Ghidorah allowing human would-be mothers to unwittingly become Ghidorah's broodmothers for Ghidorah's Long Game plan isn't disgusting enough; it's also worth adding, before this fertility treatment's release to the public, the original three test subjects were a Medical Rape and Impregnate.
(6) Even after San has technically completed Ichi/Eldest Brother's last order to transform Vivienne, Ichi still isn't finished with her. Ghidorah has the Many actively prioritize capturing Monster X and bringing it to Ghidorah. Once this succeeds; Ghidorah (mainly Ichi/Eldest Brother), and Ni/Elder Brother's autonomous-bodied clone MaNi start inflicting vicious Cold-Blooded Torture on Monster X, with Ichi attempting to invoke Being Tortured Makes You Evil on the Vivienne half until absolutely nothing is left of her personality except an Ax-Crazy monster.
(6.1) And just one part of the torture process that Ichi/Eldest Brother and Ni/Elder Brother both intend to inflict on Vivienne (but fortunately never get around to) is to forcibly mate with her and use her as a Baby Factory to produce more monsters. If the Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil doesn't make this vile enough, there's also the fact that they consider Vivienne their sister and their daughter but this doesn't stop them eagerly looking forward to violating her.
(6.2) Oh, and another thing: during the Cold-Blooded Torture period, MaNi/Elder Brother physically rips San's head away from Vivienne and tries to eat him alive (which would've permanently killed that version of San) while Vivienne is Forced to Watch (fortunately, San is saved). Ichi/Eldest Brother meanwhile, looking on while this is happening, rubs salt in the wound by gleefully telling Vivienne: "YOU NEEDN'T WORRY. YOU'VE PLENTY OF BROTHERS ALREADY."
(7) When San-2/Youngest Brother quite literally bites back at MaNi for almost permanently killing Vivienne in his acts of Stupid Evil, Ichi/Eldest Brother contentedly watches his brothers' role reversal in pure amusement, then he proceeds to Kick The Son Of A Bitch by emphasizing that MaNi is no longer a part of Ghidorah and is thus nothing more than an Expendable Clone.
(8) During the Final Battle, Ghidorah actually has a chance to flee from Godzilla, Mothra and their allies into the Hollow Earth, where Ghidorah can complete its plans for Monster X; but Ghidorah disregards it and goes back. What makes this noteworthy is the Why (see below).
Why Have They Done It?
(1) In the beginning, Ghidorah's heads were just trying to make the Old Noise stop tormenting them (see Mitigating Factors or Freudian Excuse for more info), but after their Slowly Slipping Into Evil, they pretty much just did it because they'd grown to love it and they saw it as their purpose in life.
(2) Ichi/Eldest Brother and Ni/Elder Brother criticize the left head for being "slow" and "weak" and getting distracted, and it's implied that they've had this relationship dynamic of just taking their issues out on him when they get frustrated for a long time. Revelations about Ghidorah's backstory reveal Ichi and Ni always hated how the left head is genuinely curious about humans (and other "little ones" that Ghidorah encountered on other worlds) because of Ghidorah's Dark and Troubled Past (see Mitigating Factors).
(3) Ghidorah was aware of the humans led by Vivienne "building a cage" around the glacier to study Ghidorah while it was frozen, and Ichi/Eldest Brother was extremely pissed off at Vivienne for unwittingly pressing his Berserk Button by reminding him of his Dark and Troubled Past (see Mitigating Factors); to the point that Ichi explicitly wanted to grant her a Fate Worse than Death in retribution.
(4) The Many act as Ghidorah's agents through which to act, since it isn't yet restored to full power and in the meantime it's practically a Dark Lord on Life Support. It's also heavily implied that Ichi/Eldest Brother and Ni/Elder Brother just enjoy watching the Many work.
(4.1) Ghidorah does this because its body is still incomplete, and Godzilla and his allies are on their way to fight Ghidorah, so Ghidorah uses the Many to replace the missing biomass and act as a temporary crutch/substitute through which Ghidorah can reach an adequate state to fight the other Titans.
(5) Due to the author's use of Left Hanging to encourage Recursive Fanfiction after the fic's ending, it's ambiguous what exactly Ghidorah wanted the Zmeyevich for, but they're apparently its Long Game backup plan. Remarks by the Many in the story and Word of God indicate Ghidorah created the Zmeyevich to slowly integrate into human society and ultimately act as an Evil Counterpart Race, aiding Ghidorah in the future analogously to how humans have productively aided Godzilla in the MonsterVerse movies.
(6) After Vivienne's transformation into Monster X, Ichi/Eldest Brother has decided he wants to assimilate X's the Vivienne half into Ghidorah and create a new, four-headed Ghidorah with Vivienne as "dreaded number four". Ni/Elder Brother takes an active interest in his Eldest Brother's plans once the heads see just how violent Monster X is capable of being when it loses control and descends into a semi-psychotic Unstoppable Rage. The MaNi clone of Ni, who suffers Assimilation Backfire from merging with a Skullcrawler which makes him Stupid Evil with his Blood Knight tendencies, just wants Vivienne all to himself so they can fight and maim and screw each-other forever, and he will therefore actively do anything he thinks will drive Vivienne into a murderous rage towards him.
(6.1) Ichi/Eldest Brother and Ni/Elder Brother formed this idea for Vivienne as a result of gaining access to humans' socio-cultural knowledge through the Many's Hive Mind, and finding Paradise Lost's description of Satan impregnating his daughter Sin with Death appealing. It also helped that after Ghidorah saw how Monster X can be just as vicious as Ghidorah is, Ichi and Ni started seeing themselves in Monster X, in the "I'm so good at what I do, I want to fuck myself" kind of way. It's hinted in the story, and confirmed by Word of God, that for Ichi/Eldest Brother the whole Baby Factory rape intention is primarily about maddening and corrupting Vivienne to make her "worthy" of becoming Ghidorah's fourth head, whereas Ni/Elder Brother is quite explicitly looking forward to the copulating part more than anything else.
(6.2) This is very much an And Your Little Dog, Too! moment designed to drive Vivienne into madness and evil. MaNi/Elder Brother does it because he knows it'll enrage Vivienne into fighting back with her full fury against him if he kills her brother. Ichi and MaNi's treatment of San is also influenced by "Why" (7) below.
(7) Besides Ichi's obvious sadism and lack of anything resembling a remotely warm relationship with his brother heads; it's made clear throughout the story that Ghidorah's heads only consider the versions of themselves that are currently attached to Ghidorah's body to be the "real" versions, and the autonomous versions that sprout from severed heads such as San or MaNi (referred to as "shed skins") are Expendable Clones at best.
(8) Ghidorah goes back to the Final Battle solely so that it can forcibly assimilate Thor into the Many, because Ghidorah's thoughts are, in the narrative's words:
- [...] the idea of seeing the Deep One's [Godzilla's] face when he learns they have repurposed one of his pets [Thor] and ripped his irritating gnat [Mothra] to shreds is a delicious one. Oh, and how their sister-daughter [Vivienne] will rampage seeing the gnat's corpse! Oh, why not.
Are They Heinous by the Work's Standard?
Let's compare Ichi and Ni to the other antagonistic or formerly-antagonistic characters, including their Youngest Brother.
Both versions of Ghidorah's left head are presented as genuinely caring about Vivienne who ultimately acts as their Morality Pet, and as being very much capable of a Heel Realization and redemption if they receive the right influences from her. Ichi and Ni, as described above, have none of this with Vivienne nor with anyone else at all. Whilst San and San-2/Youngest Brother can't be called a saint due to the left head's own part in Ghidorah's past atrocities, it's made clear in this story that, even at their worst before their respective Heel Realizations, they're less actively malicious than their two older brothers and more complicit in whatever the middle and right heads want Ghidorah to do.
Alan Jonah's paramilitary organization's members get some more characterization here than they had in King of the Monsters, and they're overall presented as Punch-Clock Villains: individuals are Affably Evil at best, Jerkasses at worst.
As for Jonah himself, he's a real piece of work in this fic not unlike his movie characterization, and he's well past the Moral Event Horizon when his experimentation on Disposable Vagrants is revealed. But Jonah does have some Even Evil Has Loved Ones: mention of his close friend Asher's death really gets under Jonah's skin even if Jonah was the one who essentially sent him to his death, and Jonah also has a Love Makes You Evil motivation for his experiments with Ghidorah's DNA (it's revealed that he believed he could use Ghidorah's regenerative abilities to resurrect his late daughter, whose death was the main cause of his original descent into villainy).
As for the terrestrial Titans who helped Ghidorah to ravage the planet during King of the Monsters; in this fic, it's shown that they were more or less under Mind-Control Music from Ghidorah's Alpha Call when they served it, and they would never serve Ghidorah willingly. The Titans' personalities are portrayed as Good Is Not Nice and/or Jerk with a Heart of Gold at worst, as with Rodan.
The Many are very much victims, lost in the grips of a demented, fanatical Hive Mind, and enslaved by a Horror Hunger to consume more victims.
Mitigating Factors or Freudian Excuse?
This is where I'm slightly concerned, since compelling Freudian Excuses have disqualified a few characters from CM status before, and Ichi and Ni have pretty tragic and horrible reasons for being the way they are. Ichi and Ni's Dark and Troubled Past is described in this note: note . Of course, it's worth reminding, the left head shares all of the above Dark and Troubled Past with Ichi and Ni, yet San and San-2/Youngest Brother are still redeemable unlike their brothers.
Now for any other Mitigating Factors. San briefly mentions that Ichi/Eldest Brother raised San and Ni himself after their biological sire abandoned them as eggs. San also at one point briefly "remembers eldest brother's wings shielding him from the rain" earlier in his life, implicitly before the brothers' Slowly Slipping Into Evil. It might also be worth adding here, Word of God outright confirms that Ichi/Eldest Brother Used to Be a Sweet Kid and furthermore indicates he was the animal equivalent to a Nice Guy back then. However, none of this is seen with Ichi or Ni's present day selves in any form. They're never shown being anything other than abusive towards their Youngest Brother, nor do they show anything resembling love, affection or genuine concern towards each-other — at best, they show the scarcest respect for each-other because they're parts of Ghidorah and extensions of each-other. San's thoughts early in the fic when comparing Vivienne to his brothers makes it clear that he literally can't remember the last time his brothers made him feel warm or safe in any way.
During his Character Development, San admits without much prodding that his brothers are nothing but "biggest cunts" like Vivienne says they are. It says a lot that even after his Heel–Face Turn, San never exhibits any angst whatsoever about turning against his older brothers nor about killing them himself. It's clear that whatever goodness or compassion Ichi/Eldest Brother and Ni/Elder Brother once had inside them is long dead by the present, and whatever loving relationship they might've once had with their Youngest Brother before Ghidorah's corruption has been completely nuked.
Final Verdict?
I'll leave it up to you guys.
Edited by Derv0sB2 on Apr 21st 2022 at 9:45:16 AM
![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Thumbs_up_emoticon_3268.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
to Moray.
Tentative to Ordeaux26's quote.
![[tdown]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Thumbs_down_emoticon_3571.png "[thumb down]"){kind=small}
to Porky.
Not sure about Sloan, especially if it's solely implicit.
Edited by Derv0sB2 on Apr 21st 2022 at 8:52:43 AM
Did Sloan fake the names of who they killed or just hide the fact that every assassin's name including his own came up? I can't remember for sure. That seemed to be his pure motivation: that his name at least showed up on the list and he didn't want to die.
Berserk Button: misusing Berserk Button
From the character page:
- Being Tortured Makes You Evil: Ghidorah's creators methodically tortured it, implicitly to make it a more effectively violent Bioweapon Beast, and this was the beginning of Ghidorah's path into evil before it exterminated the Makers in revenge. The Old Noise the Makers had programmed into Ghidorah's minds finished what the Makers started, slowly tearing apart and erasing what goodness Ichi/Eldest Brother and Ni/Elder Brother still had in them, until Ghidorah became the vicious monster we all know it as.
- Reluctant Psycho: According to the author, Ghidorah was once this in the beginning. Ghidorah's three brains had a single command forcibly hardwired into them through indicated alien brain surgery, which drove them to try again and again without success to make the Terrible Ticking stop by sating it. The author suggests the command probably faded to something like tinnitus after eons, but by then, Ghidorah's Slowly Slipping Into Evil had come full circle. What did the Terrible Ticking say?
- Kill Them All.
- Terrible Ticking: A nasty variant. As described by the author, a singular demand known to Ghidorah as "the Old Noise" was deliberately programmed by Ghidorah's creators into it and exists in its three minds: Kill Them All. It's actually this that drove Ghidorah to repeatedly commit genocide at first. The author thinks it's faded to something like tinnitus after billions of years, but by the time this happened it had fully taken its toll on Ghidorah's minds. The author went into further detail here.
- Tortured Monster: Word of God reveals that Ghidorah began as this billions of years ago with its Terrible Ticking, but Slowly Slipping Into Evil eventually turned it completely gleefully evil.
- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Its Backstory before coming to Earth reveals Ghidorah is originally this. As described in Chapter 10 and further elaborated on by the author; Ichi, Ni and San were originally just three critters in an alien ecosystem fighting together to survive, before they were captured, forcibly transformed into Ghidorah and methodically tortured. Ghidorah exterminated its tormentors in a combination of revenge and desperation to satiate the Terrible Ticking they'd programmed into the three heads, but this failed to bring Ghidorah any peace or satisfaction. Ghidorah inflicted mass destruction again and again trying to make the Ticking stop, and Slowly Slipping Into Evil gradually destroyed what goodness Ichi/Eldest Brother and Ni/Elder Brother still had in them until they became the monstrously cruel Omnicidal Maniac we all know Ghidorah as.
- Berserk Button: Ichi/Eldest Brother specifically was ticked off by humans (namely Vivienne) building a "cage" around Ghidorah while it was frozen. It's also revealed that Ghidorah has such an extreme reaction to hearing an ORCA signal because it brings back bad memories from Ghidorah's Backstory as a Tortured Monster. It's heavily implied in the story, and confirmed by Word of God, that Ghidorah goes into Kill All Humans mode when it encounters humans and has actively wiped out civilizations on other worlds purely because Ichi and Ni (Ichi especially) despise any reminder of the human-like Abusive Precursors who tortured them.
Yeah, I am gonna say to Ichi and Ni for now on account of their evil having been literally induced into them via experiments- even if they become unsympathetic eventually, their backstory, from what I can gather, is too genuinely screwed up and agency-impairing to ignore.
Professor Gigachad
There is no need to be like that. Sailor made a good-faith discussion and we are voting on him. Nobody is wrong to vote either way or have the opinion he counts.
Hmm, yeah, Ichi and Ni. Backstory's just too fucked up.
Elder Brother Elder, backstory is too messed up.
Professor Gigachad
Yeah, I'm saying Ichi and Ni as well, seems too much to overlook.
for Gendon, Hans, Moray, and the Magnus Archives quote.
for Dimitri, Porky (tentative), and Ichi and Ni.
Schielman and Moray. Dimitri, Porky, Ichi and Ni.
Okay, so I just watched Mystics in Bali, and I think we gotta cut the Queen of Leak. Now, she has no redeeming qualities, but I don't think he body count of four is bad enough for a supernatural horror film. What might just push her over is that one of them is a pregnant woman and the other is an infant, but honestly even child murder via bloodsucking isn't that unusual for the genre, she explicitly needs three victims for her immortality ritual, and it's never made clear what her past crimes were nor what she plans to do if she succeeds. Even her mind-controlling her apprentice to become a vampire isn't played as bad as it could be given that she's not conscious during it and eventually undergoes a full Death of Personality.
Edited by DemonDuckofDoom on Apr 22nd 2022 at 4:50:38 AM
Mr 77
I'm giving a very weak to Porky and a to Moray
So Porky isn’t going up. I’m gonna ask again since the responses on this are mixed and he’s been brought up multiple times. Should he go on the NA List?
I’m plotting my schemes wherever I go! They’re perfect in every way…
Showtime!
to Ichi and Ni, and Porky
I don't think Porky needs to go on the NA list
Absolute destiny... apeachalypse?
- Lardeur (Orcs and Goblins after Shaala): Lort, Lukrenn and Lamyrad are three sadistic old men who took over a dwarf Fortress in a Oasis and turned the basement into a perilous maze filled with monsters and deadly traps. Having over two hundreds unsuspecting travelers thrown in the labyrynth, they watch them struggle and die for their amusement. The few survivors end up brainwashed and tortured with their tongue cut out so that they become their servants. They also keep a prisonner inside of a cage and has him beg others to kill him for years. Confronted by the orc Lardeur who won the latest game, the trio gleefully reveals that they murdered his brother and tricked his entire band into eating his body.
On a related note, the name of the setting "The World of Aquilon" has been made official since "Borogam of The Malt". Should I update the opener?
to Schielman and Moray. to Dimitri, Porky, Ichi and Ni.
Your friendly neighborhood stank goblin
for Ichi and Ni.
Finally got this EP done.
So I've talked about Wings of Fire before, namely way back when I got up Princess Blister and Queen Scarlet from the first and second arcs, respectively. Now we're on the third one!
The Lost Continent Prophecy arc takes place in a new continent called Pantala, which is populated by HiveWings, SilkWings, and LeafWings. After a war known as the Tree Wars (allegedly) rendered LeafWings extinct, HiveWing Queen Wasp took control of the remaining two tribes, where HiveWings have full control over most of the continent and SilkWings are treated as nothing more than peasants or slaves forced to obey them. When Blue, a SilkWing, finds out his sister, Luna, has a special gift to produce flamesilk, he realizes his sister is in danger after Queen Wasp kidnaps her and intends to make her a slave. During his journey to save his sister, Blue teams up with SilkWing Swordtail, HiveWing Cricket, and LeafWing Sundew, and the four of them soon discover that Queen Wasp is only a fraction of the reason why Pantala is in such a totalitarian state.
This guy here is responsible for all of it.
Who Is He?
Cottonmouth is the Greater-Scope Villain for The Lost Continent Prophecy arc. He's also not a dragon, but a human being.
...Yes, really.
What Has He Done?
Thousands of years before the series began, there were several human empires throughout the world. Cottonmouth was a scientist and advisor in one of these empires who wanted to manipulate his emperor into destroying the rest of the empires so only one would rule the world. He comes up with a crazy idea to steal dragon eggs so they can be turned into weapons. For several months, he sent a group of spies to steal eggs so he could experiments on dragonets when they hatched, not caring about any assistants who were wounded or killed during the various expeditions. Unfortunately, word got out about what Cottonmouth was doing, so other empires began stealing dragon eggs too. As expected, a lot of mama dragons were pissed off by this, and it resulted in a worldwide massacre known as the Scorching, where several dragons leveled dozens of human cities and empires as revenge for their eggs being stolen. With his plans foiled and the empire in ruins, Cottonmouth and a tiny group of followers cut and run, fleeing from their country with a single dragon egg left.
Eventually they reach the country of Pantala, and it's here where Cottonmouth discovers a plant that can control the minds of insects. He starts experiments on small animals and getting his followers to collect samples, and after (successfully) testing it on the brain of one of his followers, he tries to use it on the dragonet dubbed "Lizard." His plan went awry, and both Cottonmouth and Lizard were exposed to the plant, their minds now permanently linked together. Now permanently stuck in a vine-infested abyss, Cottonmouth waited very patiently, occasionally "absorbing" humans and having some of his followers serve him like some makeshift cult. After unsuccessful attempts to eradicate or drive away the dragons, Cottonmouth got his lucky break during the Tree Wars when a LeafWing called Hawthorn discovered the plant (known as the Breath of Evil) and decided to use it on himself not long after poisoning Queen Wasp. With both Queen Wasp and Hawthorn under his control, Cottonmouth allowed the Breath of Evil to spread throughout the Poison Jungle of Pantala, while allowing Queen Wasp to use her newfound powers to mind control thousands of HiveWings in the continent and using them to capture or kill SilkWings.
The protagonists find out that the plant is behind all of this and desire to destroy it before it wipes out the whole world. After Sundew unintentionally spreads the plant around the jungle, infecting various side characters as well as Blue and Swordtail, the remaining dragons flee the continent and team up with dragons from Pyrrhia to take down the plant dubbed the Othermind. Luna, having been rescued before all this, is unintentionally lured down to the abyss where Cottonmouth and Lizard are located and is ensnared by all the vines, alongside Dusky the dragonet. She spends...a very long time trapped down here, unable to help her friends as Cottonmouth continues to corrupt more dragons and play mind games with her friends, hoping to stop them all so he can freely spread the Breath of Evil all around the world. After many flashbacks and exposition and flashbacks...and more flashbacks...and more flashbacks...Luna gradually softens up Lizard as she talks to her and points out that she has enough control to free her. Despite Luna's attempts and sharing her memories (and Pineapple's) with Lizard, Lizard ultimately decides none of it gives her joy. She tells Luna that there's a vine connecting Cottonmouth and Lizard together, and if it's severed, both of them will die and the plant itself will return to normal.
With Lizard's help, Luna manages to free herself and severs the connection, killing Lizard (later named Freedom) and Cottonmouth, returning the plants to normal, and destroying the mind controlling poison so many dragons had been infected with for good.
Mitigating Factors?
No loved ones, no redeeming qualities, no images of family relatives, no Tragic Keepsake, not a Well-Intentioned Extremist, isn't loyal to his emperor (it's implied he was gonna overthrow him after he tamed the dragons), doesn't care about his own followers/soldiers, leaves his brother, Coyote, to presumably die because he was late to get to the boat when Cottonmouth and his followers decided to cut and run, agency is very clear, and it's shown he and Lizard/Freedom are the ones controlling the Othermind plant, not the other way around. And unlike Lizard/Freedom, Cottonmouth is not a victim who got corrupted over time.
Pass.
Heinous Standard Issues?
We got no problem here. Yes, lots of dragons start wars; yes, lots of dragons are sociopaths and murderers who backstab each other; yes, Princess Blister and Queen Scarlet are already up. But even with all that in mind, Cottonmouth is indirectly responsible for starting a massacre that resulted in human empires being destroyed and thousands of humans being killed and forced into hiding. And he kidnapped and experimented on multiple humans as well as dragons. And this was all before he became part of the Othermind.
While he's the Othermind, he used his powers to infect as many plants, animals, humans, and dragons as possible, with his ultimately goal being to spread his toxic, poisonous roots all across the world and infecting every single dragon to use as his playthings and slaves. Overall, your normal Omnicidal Maniac.
Final Verdict?
Definite pass here. I might do an EP on Queen Wasp too later. Because similar to Cottonmouth, she was not a good dragon before being infected, and she only got much worse after being exposed to the Othermind.
I write stories and shiz. You can read them here.
Berserk Button: misusing Berserk Button
Cottonmouth.
Speaking of, the pothole in Princess Blister's writeup should be changed from Manipulative Bitch to Villainous Princess, now that that is a thing.
One of these days, all of you will accept me as your supreme overlord.
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Seems bad enough; I can even ignore him indirectly starting the massacre.
Is she a princess or a queen?
Edited by ACW on Apr 22nd 2022 at 11:09:08 AM
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts
Showtime!
to Cottonmouth (is there a reason he's named after a snake? Like, is it his animal motif?)
Yes to Gendon, no to Porky.
So I got a question on how we want to handle a specific case of Offscreen Villainy. In Wanted, Big Bad Sloan fakes an unknown number of kill orders normally assigned by fate, and uses them to make his Fraternity of Assassins kill for profit. The audience has no idea just how many innocent people have been killed on his orders and he makes it clear he's doing all because he has a God Complex and will continue having innocents killed. There's this scene below.
It shows that Sloan has been doing it for a long time as he's gotten the names of most of his assassins in the meantime. Along with the kills of innocents we see his people unwittingly do in the film, is this presumption of a very high number of victims enough to make him worth an effort post in your guys' minds?
Think you're tough because you made it through Lord of the Rings? Real men survive The Silmarillion.