Subpages cleanup: Complete Monster

@1308 Scale matters because it's written into the trope description. The first qualifier is heinous within the standards of the story. In other words, the story sets the scale of what truly counts as heinous. It sounds like you're actually arguing that the story makes her out to be not so heinous.

For Valter, it sounds like he has the potential to be a Complete Monster, but actually comes off as Orcus on His Throne because he doesn't need to do much. That leads me to think that he needs to be much more proactive to be qualified.

@1309 Hey, we have my old friend, the overused spoiler tag! In other words, even if we were to keep all that, we'd need a rewrite to clean the entry up.

I am in agreement with lu - the games never paint Master Xehanort as a Well-Intentioned Extremist at all. He's a depraved For Science! type at best. That note reads so heavily of the sadly common Draco in Leather Pants treatment from fanfic writers that it makes me laugh. I'll spend some time rewriting that mess to be both less spoiler-tastic (I think Ansem, Seeker of Darkness will have to be completely despoilered for It Was His Sled reasons at this point, and I'll be more judicious with spoilers beyond that).

I think we need to discuss Vanitas. I may be misremembering, but I think they don't quite make it clear whether he qualifies under the heinous standard (he does fit the other two).

@1311 Ah, that's right, you haven't been participating in the cleanup of Moral Event Horizon. It's only implicit in the definition as it's written now, but it's going to be redefined as the point in which the story stops treating them as potentially redeemable. In other words, it has to be within the text of the story itself.

Besides, the "formerly sympathetic character" bit is either shown in the story (in which case, so is the Moral Event Horizon), or it's not shown in-story, in which case it's an Informed Ability. And as with anything else surrounding this trope, we want it all on-camera. So since it's not in-story, it gets cut.

For the Assassins Creed examples... guess those two didn't get mentioned before. They both seem to qualify, although they need to be rewritten. The former just needs tweaks, but the latter also needs to have it made clear how he's involved in the overarching plot, since that material is fairly small potatoes for the series. Also, no third-level bulletpoints. Work that into the main description.

For The Joker... huh, he somehow didn't get on there before? I feel bad for missing that. I'm going to rewrite that, though, because you also need to cover his deeds from Batman Arkham Asylum as well in the description.

Finally, the Emperor that isn't Palpatine... looks like he qualifies handily, but there's too many cases of jaywalking mixed in the arson and murder. I mean, the disintegration of a droid looks pretty minor compared to basically killing off an entire planet's energy supply. The description can stand to be tightened up.

I think Naugus should be removed from the Western Animation section. From what I recall he does not get much screentime, and the entry itself admits he does not do much to put him on Robotnik's level. It relies entirely on citing that Robotnik fears him, which again I do not recall specifically, but that alone is not proof of CM status, as it does not specify in what sense he fears Naugus, (Even Evil Has Standards might suffice, if that is the sense being referred to, but even that could be from a warped perception of who is more evil) let alone cite specific indications of this. I do not think that is enough to warrant a character's presence on the list.

EDITED IN: I am referring to Naugus from Sonic The Hedgehog; his entry is towards the top of the Western Animation list.

edited 30th Jun '12 10:23:45 AM by HiddenFacedMatt

... Again, name the show. Not everyone is familiar with your example.

In case of the Emperor, the description is not clear but do you want to know how he killed his own mother (the most horriblee deed you can ever commit in my opinion! Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas)

He tortured her for months! Seriously!

edited 30th Jun '12 10:40:27 AM by Krystoff

Once Kry-Money is done with the Sandbox I'll start bringing across the best examples from the current page and organise them in alphabetical order.

But on a different front, does anyone have any ideas where to put the hypothetical list of rejected Complete Monsters? The list that the P5 use to list their decisions seems to be a good model for a forum based one, although I'm not sure one trope would be worthy of a locked forum topic.

Discussion page would be the best place.

Why would I be the only one who works on the sandbox? Aren't we all supposed to corporate here? Also, I think they should be listed accorning to the game genre, rather than alphabet.

edited 30th Jun '12 10:52:27 AM by Krystoff

When you edit a page you lock it for everyone, so I can't do anything until you finish.

Game Genre could work, I picked alphabetically because it is the simplist way to find an example out of the list.

The problem with Discussion Pages is that it seems that most tropers ignore them.

Anyway, I'm cleaning up the Ace Attorney subpage. It has valid C Ms but piss-awful entries.

edited 30th Jun '12 10:57:50 AM by Shaoken

I think that maybe we will start alphabetically and once we will be done with list, we will sort them all by genre. How's that?

Also, since the consensus on the villains was that they count, I will bring next ones

• Quite a few of the villains in the Knights Of The Old Republic series qualify for the title. While Darth Malak just barely avoids this trope due to his dying acknowledgement that he was wrong, his right hand man Admiral Saul Karath has no such moment. He crossed the Moral Event Horizon by not only betraying the Republic but also carpet-bombing an entire planet just to prove his loyalties; and he continues sailing across it by torturing you, Carth, and Bastila regardless of how you answer his questions, just because he can.
  • Chuundar, meanwhile, manages to claim the title of Complete Monster without even having to join the Sith: having his brother exiled, inviting Czerka to set up shop on his home planet, and selling his own people into slavery, as well as betraying his father and leaving him to die in the forest, with his own people tricked into believing he had gone insane.
  • In the second game, Darth Nihilus is an Eldritch Abomination who drains the force energy of entire planets to sustain himself, and while that might seem somewhat justifiable considering he has to do it in order to survive, he also augments it with pure sadism: after obliterating the Jedi gathering on Katar and taking a good deal of the Miraluka with them, he finds Visas Marr and makes her his apprentice- mutilating her face in a cruel mimickry of eyesockets, and mind raping her into submission to seal the deal. And let's not forget Darth Sion (especially in the Male Exile playthrough), who delights in inflicting pain on others, from beating the living daylights out of the depowered Kreia to torturing Atton to death

edited 30th Jun '12 11:12:03 AM by Krystoff

Hardly. Or, at least, it was not my intention. Heinous by what they do, I agree with, but not their goals. It sounds like you're saying if Villain 1 wants to conquer the world, and Villain 2 wants to eat babies, (And we'll say this story shows him doing so, and everyone reacts with sufficient disgust and horror, and there's no sympathy given to him) then there's no way that Villain 2 could be considered a CM because he's not as wide-scale in his deeds as Villain 1, even if Villain 1 is Affably Evil with a sympathetic backstory. That's the part I don't get. Because she isn't actively trying to rule the world, she's not as evil as the main villain?

She is helping the main villain attempt to conquer the world, so it's not like she's sticking only to small-time. Her deeds are shown as heinous, no sympathy is given to her, and she expresses no regret.

Huh, and here I thought I said she may not count as a CM at first. Guess I just like playing devil's advocate.

Well, he doesn't do much direct villainy, I should say. A lot of talking, ordering subordinates, and the aforementioned toying, mostly by sending the aforementioned subordinates after the main characters. But very little direct villainy. Not sure if that's Orcus on his Throne, but I do agree he may not count as a CM.

You're not getting what he said. Scales in this instance refers to the scale of henious deeds. When Villian 2 eats babies alive, Villian 1 could never meet the henious requirements if their most evil act is ordering people to kill other people to take over the world.

edited 30th Jun '12 7:49:15 PM by Shaoken

"Besides, the "formerly sympathetic character" bit is either shown in the story (in which case, so is the Moral Event Horizon), or it's not shown in-story, in which case it's an Informed Ability. And as with anything else surrounding this trope, we want it all on-camera. So since it's not in-story, it gets cut."

Just as a question than, before I reference it in any other examples—can a Moral Event Horizon be retroactive? Basically, we have a character, they're treated sympathetically (or at least as no worse than the other villains) and then we find out that at some point in the past, they raped and murdered a schoolgirl or something. The story than stops treating them as redeemable. Would that count?

That was the sense that I was using the term with Lekain anyway. He's not treated as any different from the other Senators; than the reveal of his involvement in the genocide comes out and he is treated as the worst person in the story.

In relation to the Sandbox, I'm removing the Emperor from Old Republic and spoiled-out ridden example from Diablo and putting them here. Both are C Ms, but the entries are nowhere near the standard of what the page should be.

Originals:

• Adria. She pledged herself to Diablo's service since first meeting Aidan after he became the Dark Wanderer, and had Leah with him for the sole purpose of making her the vessel for Diablo's resurrection as the Prime Evil by means of the aforementioned Black Soulstone, which she successfully manipulates the heroes into finding and trapping the last two Lords of Hell into, in accordance to Diablo's grand plan. Adria's betrayal not only kills Leah, but is directly responsible for allowing Diablo to kill a whole lot of people in Bastion's Keep and run roughshod all over the High Heavens in Act IV. The worst part is that this betrayal is the very last you see of Adria in-game, as she leaves through a portal to await being "called upon again" by the resurrected Diablo.

• The Emperor (No, not Palpatine!) from Star Wars The Old Republic is a really, really cruel man. As a child, he murdered his own parents and tortured his mother for months before finally killing her. He also drained the energy from a planet, forced Revan and the Exile into his mind, telepathically tortures Exal... it says a lot when the ancient Sith Lords preferred Exar Kun over this guy. It says even more when the Dark Council plotted to overthrow him. And that's not even getting into what Kira endured thanks to him. She fled the Sith because of his evil and during the Jedi Knight's battle with Angral, he possesses Kira purely to do away with her friend. Why? Because he saw visions that her friend might be the one who will defeat him and being Dangerously Genre-Savvy he's decided to take the hero out now while he or she is still weak.

My propossed rewrite;

• Adria from III. She pledged herself to Diablo's service since first meeting Aidan after he became the Dark Wanderer, spending the time between Diablo I and III gathering up the power of the other Lords of Hell so she could use the Black Soulstone to bring about Diablo's rebirth in the body of her own daughter, an act that in the setting would damn Leah's soul to hell.

• The Emperor from Star Wars The Old Republic is a pointlessly cruel man, murdering his own parents as a child, torturing his mother for months first. He also drained the energy from a planet, forced Revan and the Exile into his mind to torture them, telepathically tortures Exal... it says a lot when the ancient Sith Lords preferred Exar Kun over this guy. It says even more when the Dark Council plotted to overthrow him.
  • Kira endured even more thanks to him. She fled the Sith because of his evil and during the Jedi Knight's battle with Angral, he possesses Kira purely to do away with her friend. Why? Because he saw visions that her friend might be the one who will defeat him and being Dangerously Genre-Savvy he's decided to take the hero out now while he or she is still weak.

edited 30th Jun '12 10:03:26 PM by Shaoken

Is that last one especially evil? I don't know about you guys but I've never found killing someone prophesied to kill you to be a particularly evil action. If nothing else, it's pretty understandable.

I'm no expert on the Old Republic, but I think it's more taking someone else over and making them kill their friend that outweighs the "prophisied to kill you" part.

Re the retroactive Moral Event Horizon idea, I don't see why not, assuming the character's on screen actions follow in that direction or even go further. For instance, in Fullmetal Alchemist, the character Envy started the genocidal war that ended shortly before the start of the series by transforming into a soldier *

Hello folks. I'm sorry to interject on any ongoing discussions, but I need to address the changes for The Elfen Lied Complete monster page. The examples were disscussed on page 51, and they were axed as seen fit, namely, some weren't examples, and some weren't bad enough. While i didn't agree with how high the bar was set, the reasons were sound, and the examples were let go. There are two examples I need to put forward. Professor Kakuzawa, who wanted to steal his father's insane godhood dream by raping the protagonist. This example wasn't brought up on the previous discussion. He's a bad guy, and unlike his father (who's done far worse things) doesn't have any sympathetic qualities.However, he might not be depraved enough to reach the qualifications (Only Mayu's father, and The Unknown man do). Also, Lucy's third personality, She's an Omnicidal maniac, and guids some of Lucy's worst actions of murder and torture throughout the series. She kills millions of people, and infects many more, to have their children kill them. She was brought up in the last disscussion, but never elaborated upon. What're your thoughts.

The first doesn't sound henious enough by the standards of the story. The second is not an actual character but rather a split-personality, and we decided split-personalities couldn't be Complete Monsters.

Well, Split Personalities are up for debate. In Elfen lied, however, the split personalities are treated as different souls in one body. If the last chapter is to be believed, then two of the "personalities" got reincarnated into girls, meaning that they probably count as individuals. Kakuzawa Jr. isn't depraved enough, as you said.

@1337 "Retroactive" is not the right word for how to describe when a flashback reveals a Moral Event Horizon. Because it's not like the work rewrites itself to make the character suddenly irredeemable. If the game shows that the character did something in the past that qualifies, what you have is the convergence of three tropes - Moral Event Horizon, The Reveal, and Flashback. You need to make it explicit that the Moral Event Horizon in this case was shown in a flashback - that way, you properly are able to show when within the story the character started to be treated differently as well as properly lay out the series of events.

@1338 Better, though the bullet point about Kira should be merged into the main part about the Emperor.

@1342 I'm about the only one here, I think, that's willing to consider each distinct portion of a Split Personality. But we need more description than that to consider it.

How much discription do you want, you can just look at the elfen lied show page. The three personalities are Nyu: innocnet, naive, and has problems talking initially, Lucy, broken angry, and murderous, and third personality, hateful, raging, and abuses the other two to bring about Humanities extinction. Third personality kills, infects, and ravages.

Alright, time for me to get some examples removed off the Monster.Yu Yu Hakusho page.

The villains who qualify as CM's and should remain:

1. Elder Toguro
2. Dr. Ichigaki
3. Mukuro's Stepfather

The villains on the page who are not CM's, and a brief reason why:

1. Rando - He's a fairly generic demon / villain. He killed hundreds of psychics and stole their techniques. By the standards of the work, that's really not very bad. All this villainy is in the past (and off-screen), and while he's cruel and tortures the people he faces in Genkai's tournament, he's out on the "standards of the story" criteria.
2. Kazuya - He's part of a Split Personality of Sensui / Shinobu. While he's an Axe-Crazy sociopath and meets the "standards of the story" criteria, he has an excuse in that he was created by Shinobu to bear the brunt of psychological trauma too great for mere humans, and was corrupted into what he is when we meet him.
3. Mr. Akashi and Mr. Iwamoto - Standards of the story again. In a work with murderous demons, including those that take delight in torture of various varieties, and who have killed (or worse) hundreds, if not thousands, simply being a jerk of a human being is not anywhere near what we're looking for here.

The villains that are borderline

1. Gonzou Tarukane - Certainly, he has no redeeming features, and is played up as a greedy man who is willing to torment Yukina for money. The issue I have here is that he relies on hired hands and henchmen to do his dirty work, and doesn't have the "hands on" level of cruelty as the others. He's irredeemably evil, but I'm not sure he's quite what we're looking for here.
2. Sakyo - I really don't know about this one. He doesn't have good qualities, but I don't know of any truly heinous actions he commits, at least not compared to the three who are definitely qualified, all of which involve horrific body horror and extreme sadistic torture. However, I'm not too familiar with his role in the story, so there could be actions I'm overlooking which put him over the edge.

@ 1345

I know it's late to comment, but if that's how we're going to play it, than my comment about Lekain does stand. He's initially a slimy creep like the other senators, he performs a series of increasingly underhanded and brutal actions that put him closer and closer to the MEH, and than it is revealed that he was the one who ordered the genocide of the Herons. At that point any chance of his being redeemed is gone, and he continues to get worse after the fact.

@1348 It's not that I object to it being labeled a Moral Event Horizon moment. It's just that how it's phrased is important.

Reflecting to what I said I would do earlier in the thread, I believe I'm about halfway through Epic Mickey. Unless more is about to come to light, I'm going to say that The Mad Doctor is to be removed from the list; it turns out his goals are not nearly as vicious or deadly as it's first suggested, and the only other factor that's in his favor is Chronic Backstabbing Disorder (which is certainly evil, but not quite heinous enough on its own). Still need to wait on the Phantom Blot; he hasn't shown up too much yet (though the depiction thus far has me think he's more an elemental force of destruction incapable of morality).

@1345: I ptt it into a second bulletpoint because I couldn't get it to run off naturally. What did you think of my version of the completely spoilered out version?

@1347: Sounds like a convincing argument to me, I'd support cutting them out.

edited 1st Jul '12 9:28:29 PM by Shaoken