Subpages cleanup: Complete Monster

Gonna keep saying no on Cooler. And no on Gero.

Okay, so I was thinking that J's entry on the Pokémon page was somewhat lacking, so I made a new one. It's kind of long, so if anyone feels like revising it or editing it down, feel free.

Here's the current one:

Pokémon Hunter J from Diamond and Pearl. Unlike most human advesaries, J goes out of her way to try to kill Ash and his friends rather than detain them or get them out of the way. She also doesn't care whether her own minions die and treats Pokémon in a cruel manner that even Paul would cringe at.

And here's mine:

The Diamond and Pearl series gives us Pokemon Hunter J. As her name implies, she hunts rare Pokemon to sell on the black market, and has no qualms with stealing them from other trainers. She is willing to go to any length in order to capture these Pokemon for her clients, including attempted murder on her fellow humans. In her first appearance, she drops a section of her airship containing several of her own men, and the Pokemon that she’d stolen, just in order to be rid of our 10-year-old protagonist, who was in the same section of the ship. She shows absolutely no hesitation or remorse for this action, and Ash had only been a slight inconvenience to her at that point. In her follow-up appearances, she continued to demonstrate her sociopathic, greedy, ruthless nature, as well as her total disregard for any form of life by continuing to steal rare Pokemon, setting fire to a large section of densely populated forest in order to kill Ash, ordering her Salamance to attack humans directly, commanding her Drapion to squeeze the life out of Ash, and abandoning one of her clients to the police the second after she got paid. In the 800+ episodes of the Pokemon anime, she’s the only character who has proven to be purely evil with no redeeming qualities.

edited 15th May '13 3:08:38 PM by Camberf

A bit long, but not so bad that it becomes a Wall of Text; and there are longer ones. It's fine IMO. And that's a Pokemon villain? Wow.

BTW, like the revised entries for Stephen King awhile back. The current one for Wild Bill from The Green Mile seems to call Percy one and not at the same time. Meanwhile, Norman from Rose Madder's entry has gravedancing.

edited 15th May '13 3:40:31 PM by ACW

Yeah, the Stephen King page needs work. Percy isn't a CM.

Inclined to vote on Buu because it's his good half that's holding back his evil half, thus you can argue he would actually kill Hercule if Fat Buu didn't restrain him.

I don't think the problem's with whether or not he meets the heinous standard, but with whether or not he has moral agency.

I also wonder what's keeping Gero from qualifying. If it's because "being responsible for the heinousness of bigger villains (through mostly offscreen actions at that) isn't as heinous", then why do we still have Hojo as a Complete Monster?

Percy isn't a CM.

I'd argue that he is, seeing as he's as bad as he can be in his position and was planning on getting a bigger job that would allow him more freedom to bully people who wouldn't be able to fight back. Really, I think the only thing that's keeping Percy off the trope is that his heinousness is eclipsed by Wild Bill.

And that's a Pokemon villain? Wow.

Yep. Though the write-up probably ought to mention the part about her being the one to drop the Galactic Bomb into Lake Valor and petrify the Lake Pokemon in order to sell to Team Galactic, thus assisting Cyrus in his Omnicidal Maniac plan without caring one bit. Like Nina Myers, she enables terrorists to do terrible, destructive things all for the sake of lining her own pockets with money.

@Penelope: Reminds me of the I Carly example that was put on just because she tried to kill people on a kid's show. The heinousness was exaggerated there, and it is here as well. People, trying to kill someone in of itself is not enough to make one a Complete Monster. Bringing up the Nibiru Entity in comparission is laughable, since that villain actually did eat everyone or have them killed in horrific ways. Attempted murder doesn't stack up against that.

@Super Buu: His three "Pet the Dog" moments don't count since they're early on in his screentime and all a result of Fat Buu still lingering in him. Once he starts eating and absorbing more people, he gets more and more evil. The only issues that could hold him back are is he made of evil (I thought that was Kid Buu) and does he have any standards (like not wanting to revert back to the more destructive Kid Buu)?

edited 15th May '13 4:29:36 PM by AnewMan

That's the thing. If Bill's more heinous...well, there you have it. Same reason only Angelus and Caleb qualify for Buffy.

EDIT: So Cyrus himself's not a CM?

edited 15th May '13 4:25:23 PM by ACW

I'm sure we've talked about him and Percy before.

Edit: Yes, we cut Percy for not meeting the heinous standard (the worst thing he does is cause an inmate who was already getting put to death to die more painfully), and apparently Cyrus has a Freudian Excuse, though I can't find what it is.

edited 15th May '13 4:35:47 PM by Camberf

I know Percy. It was decided

That's the thing. If Bill's more heinous...well, there you have it. Same reason only Angelus and Caleb qualify for Buffy.

I never liked how this logic reeks of "there can be only one!" Like Buffy, which has two like you stated, there can be more than one CM if the villains in question are heinous in different ways but one does not eclipse the other. Bill and Percy is up for debate: I personally thought they were both equally horrible. Another thing to consider is that Bill's murder of the two girls, while described, was off-screen in the book. Percy's actions were not.

So Cyrus himself's not a CM?

No, he's not. At least not in the games, where he has a valid Freudian Excuse for being the way he is, and in the manga (two manga!), where he pulls a Heel–Face Turn.

I assume that Freudian Excuse extends to the anime, right?

@12794 I don't think that Super Buu wants to stop them from changing him back to Kid Buu because he's more destructive, but because that would essentially kill him, in that he'd become a completely different being.

edited 15th May '13 4:40:13 PM by Camberf

If it's all canonical yes.

And yeah, I'm not TERRIBLY fond of there being only one, but it is what it is. Hell, I thought the kiddy league coach counter in his own right...

EDIT: And I had to do some research for Cyrus...abusive parents.

edited 15th May '13 4:45:19 PM by ACW

Eh, the Pokemon manga and the anime are pretty different; they don't exactly follow each other. I highly doubt that anime Cyrus is more evil than his manga counterpart, but can we just get a confirmation that he has a Freudian Excuse/does a Heel–Face Turn/whatever?

I'd argue that Buu doesn't count(from what I recall, there were bad guys that did far worse in DBZ)

edited 15th May '13 4:48:47 PM by shoboni

Now, Stephen King (can't remember the other rewrite besides Bill):

• Rose Madder: Get rid of the last sentence and it's fine.
• Under The Dome: Seems fine as is.
• IT: Could use some expansion.
• Randall Flagg: Ditto
• The Talisman: Basically a Zero Context Example.
• The Dark Tower examples need some rewriting
• Different Seasons novellas need context.
• Leland Gaunt seems like a good writeup. Motivation just For the Evulz?

One problem with the Under The Dome example- it's like 99% spoilered. Is that not annoying to anyone else?

What's the policy on that? Definitely seems like he counts though.

^ Handling Spoilers

TLDR: That Under the Dome CM entry isn't kosher under spoiler guidelines for the wiki.

(At a glance, not being familiar with the work as I'm not a King fan, he does look like he qualifies.)

Big Jim is a definite counter. We just need to unspoil the entry because he was probably put up when the book was more recent. No big deal now.

The thing with the heinousness standard...it becomes if someone is overshadowed. The coach in Buffy is a bastard, no doubt about it. But his crime was beating a child into a coma and possibly later going to kill him. Now, the Buffy-verse also includes:

- Angelus, who killed a baby (and many other children) while Darla vamped the baby' older sister,, in addition to Angel killing and raping the mother solely to torment the father.

- Lurkonis, a demon who eats babies. In fact, Lurkonis isn't really unique in this. This even gets played for laughs with some demons.

- Marcus, a vampire Torture Technician who's implied to be a pedophile who targets children while feeding

- Der Kinderstod, a demon who haunts hospitals to prey exclusively on sick children in an absolutely nightmarish fashion and has been doing this for centuries

- Sahjan, a demon who fixates on having a baby murdered (though he's satisfied with him banished to a hell dimension)

- When LA is plunged into eternal night, several vampires cheerfully discuss attacking a pre-school.

- Even a bunch of run of the mill people we see are monstrously abusive, human monsters.

When you have a world with these guys, beating a child? It becomes run of the mill. Buffy and Angel are...dark shows. There's a ton of nasty, nasty monsters. Eventually, when you hit 4 or 5 seasons, you've covered a ton of crimes that you can actually pull off. You end up with few guys standing out, and some others who could contend are disqualified because they have redeeming features (The Master and the Mayor come to mind, the former having loved Darla and the latter having loved Faith)

Angelus stands out in part for David Boreanaz's truly excemplary performance, but also because in terms of cries he stands absolutely supreme. He's done it all: murder, rape, torture, infanticide, you name it. He loves challenging himself with new ways to torture people. Other monsters are scared of him. He's the threat that always hovers around.

Caleb also stands out. He's the most misogynist monster in a series rife with them, a deranged serial killer who serves the ultimate force of evil out of free will and like Angelus wants the world to be overrun by hell simply out of amusement. He even asks his boss to take the form of women he's killed so he can do it again for sick thrills.

It's hard to measure up to those two

edited 15th May '13 5:20:48 PM by Lightysnake

Strange thing about Angelus; has there been another CM in any work who's a CM in one instance and a good guy in another; like 2 different characters.

I actually proposed some rewrites for some of the Monster.Stephen King examples (Randall Flagg, IT, and Wild Bill) here and here. I was hoping to have the current entries swapped out with the rewrites within the next two days if there are no objections. Also within that time, I'd like to cut Sunlight Gardener, the Hitler Brothers, the Sisters, Dussander and Todd. Sunlight Gardener is revealed to have a son he loves, and the others have all been brought up before and no one has ever been able to expand on their deeds and justify their presence on the page.

edited 15th May '13 6:03:38 PM by OccasionalExister

I assume that Freudian Excuse extends to the anime, right?

Actually, no. Cyrus was made a much less complex character in the anime. Rather than being a crazy Well-Intentioned Extremist, he was an Omnicidal Maniac for no other reason than he was crazy. They even changed his entire goal so that he wanted to wipe out the universe so that he could create a new world "for him alone." For commiting such a heinous plan for a totally selfish reason, animeverse Cyrus could possibly count as a Complete Monster, unless we feel like pardoning him by reason of insanity.

but can we just get a confirmation that he has a Freudian Excuse/does a Heel Face Turn/whatever?

He had no Freudian Excuse present in the anime, and only did a Heel–Face Turn in two different manga series. In the games, he still doesn't give up his evil ways, and in the anime, he's so batshit he ends up erasing himself from existance in a last ditch effort to claim his new world.

But Cyrus in the games and manga is not a Complete Monster. He has the most horrifiying plan of all Pokemon villains, but he himself is a Well-Intentioned Extremist or Knight Templar who is only slightly more evil than Giovanni and less evil than Ghetsis, and has a legit Freudian Excuse for being the emotionally repressed perfectionist he is.

Strange thing about Angelus; has there been another CM in any work who's a CM in one instance and a good guy in another; like 2 different characters.

Angelus was never a good guy: you're referring to the split personas of Angel and Angelus, right? There was an example we covered: Yami Marik from Yu Gi Oh. A split personality from one character who took on a life of his own and became a different character who is a Complete Monster.

Fun fact: I have a Buffy The Vampire Slayer book called "the Watcher's Guide" (ha ha, double meaning) that was written before the third season was finished, and at one point it flat out states "Angelus is a complete monster."

^If that's the whole of it, I'd still say he fails the heinous standard when compared to Hunter J. However omnicidal he may be, if he hasn't successfully killed anyone (or nearly killed someone) he probably doesn't qualify.

Also the Iron Masked Marauder is a nasty piece of work as well as Giovanni in Mewtwo Returns. The IMM nearly killed a trainer, destroyed an entire forest, nearly killed Celebi, and tried to kill Ash. I'd say that's probably a qualifier.

Don't really know enough about anime!Cyrus to comment on his status one way or the other for this trope, but I would like to say success isn't a factor we take into account. So long as Cyrus's goal is to commit omnicide and he at least attempts it, he could still count for this trope even if he doesn't succeed in killing anyone.

edited 15th May '13 9:44:19 PM by OccasionalExister