Subpages cleanup: Complete Monster

Okay, so DC/Vertigo may need some work re: Black Hand, and I may wanna do Spawn, but how does Marvel look?

@Nocturna: I would if I knew how to write a good one.

voyd: Just write one. The rest of us can fix it up for you.

Anew man: It's not my problem or concern what others will call us. We have to have high, strict standards to keep quality control on this forum

The forum is one thing. My main concerns were with the wiki itself.

That, again, isn't our problem or concern.

Ambar, precisely Eddie the owner, precisely Norman's a CM for more than just killing Gwen, or precisely Eddie has no problem acting unilaterally?

Yes.

This is getting ridiculously bloated. I realize I lack authority, but let me try to wrap this up and lay down some things:

1. It is irrelevant to what anyone calls us or thinks outside here unless they be mods or admins. Do we care if people call us elitist? No. we have criteria we approved with the mods, who generously gave us authority to vote on examples here. Thus far, we have done a pretty thorough job, but there's a lot left to do and this sort of bogging us down, bringing up examples we added to the never again list and arguing over irrelevant points is not helping the cleanup. We have a ton of examples from the last few pages alone to delete, rewrite or writeup

2. It is equally irrelevant what a fandom at large thinks. The whole fandom can think Normamn is a CM for dropping Gwen off a bridge, that's not what we're concerned with. We're concerned with "does he meet our criteria." Yes he does, but not for this incident alone, especially as you can make a heavy case for Norman the man still having sympathetic qualities at that point, which he lost following his revival in the 90s. Our criteria will not change, and we're going to analyze things on a case by case basis. This is not meant to be a YMMV trope anymore. Yes, one can argue over how heinous they find out compared to others, and we have, but that's why we have checks and balances on one another.

I'd kindly ask you and Ambar to stop with these posts to one another and please focus on the cleanup. If you have other examples you'd like to bring up or challenge, I welcome you doing so. I did so quite a few times when I first started.

And I'd really, REALLY like it if nobody took any jibes at the admins or mods. Whether justified, or in fun, I don't care. That's the sort of thing that will bring scrutiny and wrath down on us and I've worked too hard in this thread to want that to happen.

edited 18th Apr '13 11:29:16 AM by Lightysnake

Well-played

Well put. I do wish to drop my exchanges with Ambar and instead focus on the cleanup. Doing otherwise gets us nowhere.

For Spectacular!Norman, I'll vote due to all that's been brought up. Heck, I'll vote the same for all versions of Norman Osborn from TV or movies, since none of them compare to the comics version.

First, on a new example: I saw Welcome To The Dollhouse back when it was in theaters. First, while a good movie, in retrospect, wish I hadn't taken a date to it. Second, we're talking about a movie that is a) a Crapsack World completely, b) containing a pedophile that's a major plot point in the latter third of the movie, c) regular discussion by a different character about raping the main character (although the context makes it sound like he just doesn't understand the difference between consensual sex and rape, and implies an abusive household) and d) a female bully who just gossips and says jerky things to the protagonist. It's someone who is the classic female bully, and the example as written is both yet another blatant misogynist example as well as doing a blanket condemnation on a group (in this case, the whole cast). Kill with fire.

Anew Man, after seeing your posts, I think the problem is that you don't understand the wiki as a whole. The issues that you still have questions about aren't particular to the Complete Monster cleanup. They're questions about general wiki operations, all looked at through the prism of the Complete Monster cleanup. Your questions aren't part of the FAQ because I drafted said FAQ with the understanding that this cleanup is a highly specialized part of the wiki's operations, and that full understanding of the wiki's workings, traditions, and standards are a baseline for being able to operate in this cleanup. There is precious little that I can recommend beyond going through Administrivia and get a better understanding of TV Tropes as a whole.

Alright, here goes.

• Rourke, from Atlantis: The Lost Empire. He's a tomb-robbing mercenary who's Only in It for the Money, but what cements him is his attitude toward his current assignment. He takes the Heart of Atlantis, which is precisely what keeps the Atlanteans alive. Without it, they'll all die. A lot of other villains wouldn't be aware of this fact, and any with scruples would leave it once they learned that. Rourke? Takes it KNOWING that the civilization will die, and just plain doesn't care. Later on, in order to ensure his escape, he throws his loyal Dragon off of his ascending zeppelin. What settles his evil here is that he jokes about it, and caps it off with a "Nothing personal!" What's rather frightening is that it ISN'T personal; he hadn't had any problems with Helga beforehand, and betrayed her simply because it slightly benefited him.

Anew Man, one final thing...

Judge each entry on their own merits in their own universes. Here are fixes for Rourke

• Rourke, from Atlantis The Lost Empire. He's a tomb-robbing mercenary who's Only in It for the Money, but what cements him is his attitude toward his current assignment. He takes the Heart of Atlantis, which is precisely what keeps the Atlanteans alive. Without it, they'll all die. Rourke fatally assaults the king of Atlantis and takes the Heart, knowing that the civilization will die, and just plain doesn't care. In fact, he's happy about it, as it will make his stolen artifact worth more. Later on, in order to ensure his escape, he throws his loyal Dragon off of his ascending zeppelin. What settles his evil here is that he jokes about it, and caps it off with a "Nothing personal!" What's rather frightening is that it isn't personal; he hadn't had any problems with Helga beforehand, and betrayed her simply because it slightly benefited him.

edited 18th Apr '13 11:51:16 AM by Lightysnake

@11608: Anime examples:

• Doji: Cut. Cares about someone.
• Reiji Mizuchi: Cut. Fails the heinous standard.
• Niida and Oda: Expand or cut.
• Kazuo: Cut, impaired moral agency.
• Shinigami King: Cut, he never appears.

@11678: I haven't played the game but based on that I think I'd be alright with Sundowner counting. His deeds sound the worst, his character sounds the most vile, and his Freudian Excuse really doesn't sound as bad as the others. In fact, unless the Freudian Excuse is actually played for "tragedy" I think I'll vote keep.

@11683: Agree with cutting Lolita.

edited 18th Apr '13 11:46:02 AM by OccasionalExister

@32_Footsteps: Thanks alot, again. I'll try to enlighten myself in the wiki's ways so that this doesn't happen again.

I've been trying. But baseline heinousness is important too. In The Spectacular Spider Man, I don't find any villain as despicable as Norman Osborn. But his actions are apparently just equal to that of the other villains, rather than truly surpassing them.

edited 18th Apr '13 11:49:49 AM by AnewMan

I don't know if this was intentional but you left out the bit about fatally assaulting and the king. Also you have a random capital on "Later".

edited 18th Apr '13 11:49:50 AM by SophiaLonesoul

Fixed

@lightysnake & Footsteps

Thank you. Agree on pretty much all of that.

Moving along, Rourke write-up looks good, with Sophia's corrections in should be good to go.

@Sophia

Burn the grandmother example.

@Occasional Exister

With your votes, I'm now a lot more comfortable about axing those bad examples. I've now put in the request.

edited 18th Apr '13 11:59:07 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Continuing on Sundowner, he does indeed love his work - there's an element of gleeful sadism to everything he does and says. For some reference material, here's a collection of the cutscenes from Revengeance. It's absolutely enormous, so I direct your attention to a few small sections in particular - the part where Sundowner kidnaps Prime Minister N'mani (the reformist leader I mentioned in my first post) at 0:06:00, the part where he kills him at 0:11:08, and his Motive Rant when Raiden confronts him in the 'training centre' for the kidnapped children's brains at 1:04:55. Observe how even when he's talking about the inevitability of war and its positive aspects, there's always this almost-childish delight bubbling beneath the surface about the suffering it lets him cause. He may talk the talk of a Well-Intentioned Extremist, but he doesn't even bother trying to walk the walk - it's just a big joke on his part, a sort of acknowledgement of how little he cares about what he is and how little he cares about what others think of him for it.

So, taking a leaf from ACW's book, I've been crossreferencing YMMV pages and the subpages, and found a discrepancy. This is from the YMMV page for Sword Art Online.

• Complete Monster: Cradil. A prick with a somewhat unhealthy obsession with Asuna, he flies over the Moral Event Horizon when he sets up a trap for Kirito after the latter is forced to join the Knights of Blood, and kills two other, completely innocent guild members just for laughs, and would have done Kirito in had Asuna not saved him.
  • Suguou, the Big Bad of the Fairy Dance arc. He imprisoned 300 SAO players, including Asuna, into a virtual prison, and conducted mind control experiments on them. And then if that wasn't enough, he intended to rape Asuna in ALO, and then in the real world, while she's still comatose. And as the last straw, he tried to kill Kirito in the real world.

On the anime subpage only Suguo is listed. Here's his entry (which I think needs a rewrite regardless):

• Sword Art Online has serial killers & megalomaniac kidnappers as its various antagonists, but the Sugou Nobuyuki takes the take. To wit:
  • He virtually kidnaps the consciousnesses of 300 people to experiment upon, and frequently tortures them. Keep in mind, these 300 people were already virtually imprisoned for two years in another virtual reality, and were about to be set free.
  • One of those he kidnaps is the main heroine, whom he locks up in a birdcage for over two months and frequently torments. Have I mentioned he was adopted by her father, and wormed his way into becoming her fiance and heir to the family company, all while she's comatose?
  • Speaking of coma, right after he marries her (yes, while she's comatose), he fully plans on raping her "in-game", then raping her body in real life. Oh, he gloats about these plans to the protagonist, who's in love with the heroine, as he's torturing him.
  • When defeated in-game, he goes after the protagonist with a knife, just as he's about to visit the heroine who just woke up (and is pretty much helpless after 2+ year in a coma).

I have no problem with Suguo staying, but he needs a rewrite. As for Kradil, he is a remorseless asshole, but here's the thing: he's a former member of the Laughing Coffin Player Killer guild, all of whom act that way. Within the anime he's the only member of the Guild to get named, but I wouldn't say that he gets notably more characterisation then the rest of the Guild members; he's just onscreen a bit longer. In the manga/novels several other members of the Guild go on to the be the Big Bad Ensemble of the third arc, and they definitely recieve more characterisation then he does.

I'm going to recommend a cut for Kradil and a rewrite for Suguo.

Now that we've got Rourke settled, is it about time to unlock the Pokemon Complete Monster page to remove Giovanni?

The 'Edit Requests for Locked Pages' thread should be able to handle that without an unlock.

Can I go ahead and delete that Jessie example as well as the one for Welcome to the Dollhouse?

Edit- I see the first one was already deleted. Thanks.

edited 18th Apr '13 12:22:59 PM by Hodor

Go right ahead.

Anyways, as I've reread Hack/Slash, I think I know the nameless scientist the original entry referenced, and I'm gonna have to say I'll do a writeup on him later because hoo boy is he a candidate.

Also, final vote on Sundowner...Iaculus has swayed me. Keep.

edited 18th Apr '13 12:24:57 PM by Lightysnake

@ 11719 Looks like he meets the criteria. Bad by the standards of the setting. Meets general on-screen heinousness. I don't think that his Freudian Excuse excuses his actions. No mentioned redeemable characteristics.

@ 11720 I agree that Kradil should be removed as that really isn't a stand out in terms of heinousness for the series. As for Suguo I think he probably qualifies but a write-up would need to include more of what he does to the other 299 players that he trapped and what torture entails.

edited 18th Apr '13 12:29:47 PM by SophiaLonesoul