Subpages cleanup: Complete Monster

I took a look at the Disney CM list, and its Disney Animated Canon subsection consists mostly of characters for whom prior discussion (much of which was in another thread) eestablished consensus to keep.

There is, however, one more DAC character left to discuss before moving on to the Pixar part; Scroop, from Treasure Planet. Prior discussion of that character didn't seem to lead to any particular conclusion, and I'm not familiar with the movie so I wouldn't know whether or not he should stay on the list.

edited 3rd Jul '12 6:56:14 AM by HiddenFacedMatt

Based on what I've heard about him, Scroop is close, but he's not quite heinous enough. Considering what he could have done to Silver, but didn't, I think there's some amount of loyalty (though not much) in him, which makes him not completely terrible. That, and I think he falls short of the heinous standard, but only just.

Just double checking, does anyone object to me requesting the bad examples I listed cut, with the exception of the one/two that others countered.

<Mod Hat On>

It's come to our attention that this thread is getting downright insular and unwelcoming to new opinions. There is no call to be hostile to a newcomer nor to report his posts when he's done nothing but state an opinion in a unoffensive way. If you guys can't treat someone's opinions respectfully, then it's not the newbie that needs to go.

That is all.

<Mod Hat Off>

edited 3rd Jul '12 8:26:10 AM by ccoa

I'm sorry if I've come off that way. It wasn't my intention. I do act a bit brusque at times, and I don't mean to be.

I support discussing Disney villains, but think we also should remember about the sandbox, and what was the answer regarding Sarrano?

And yes I support cutting off those characters.

edited 3rd Jul '12 9:13:42 AM by Krystoff

I think the problem is regarding Sarrano is that a) very few of his deeds have been described, and b) nobody has really gone into the kind of world that Bulletstorm is. The one deed that was described (ordering people to kill innocents) qualifies in some universes, but not all. I'm currently inclined to vote on cutting him, but I can still be swayed with solid descriptions of both his actions and the world in which they take place.

With the issue of the post of mine you thumped....someone comes in here and says that my argument is made up of Insane Troll Logic and that's showing respect to me? And I gave them a solid rebutall of why their argument was wrong, and why when the character they brought up to be added to the CM list last time we rejected it.

I don't see this hostility you're talking about; the only new person in this thread who recieved something close to hostility was one who, after everyone disagreed with their suggestion for a CM, said

So I don't see this hostility towards new opinions. We welcome new opinions all the time. This thread dies without new opinions. I've never reported someones post, I've never insulted someone personally, the worst I've done is tell a person that they're trying to take this trope and make it into something it isn't.

edited 3rd Jul '12 9:44:22 AM by Shaoken

Clearly, someone did report those posts, though, or they wouldn't have shown up in the mods' holler thread. Not everything has to be about you, chief.

Well, one mine is the post that gets thumped, and I was the only one who would have reason to see anything wrong with it (on account that I was the one who presented the argument against Yakone, and the reported post in questioned described my argument as Insane Troll Logic), I'm at a loss as to why someone else would report it. EDIT: Accoring to Cocca, my post is thumped because it was rude and accusing the other poster of saying my argument was Insane Troll Logic.

Moving the topic along, Krystoff has raised no objection to the examples I'm requesting cut, does anyone else have any input before I go and make the request? I prefer to have three people in agreement (inculding myself) and no unresolved objections before making a cut of this size.

edited 3rd Jul '12 10:23:36 AM by Shaoken

@1376: I believe that scroop qualifies. He was a murderous and sadistic individual. He killed Mr. Arrow by sending him into a black hole, and blamed Jim. He tried to kill Jim later, but was sent into space. He was intimidating, terrifying, and awesome at the same time. The sadistic spider monster deserves a spot amongst Disney's Complete monsters.

edited 3rd Jul '12 10:24:32 AM by DrPsyche

What about his relationship with Silver? Judging from 32 Footstep's posts that seemed to be the thing stopping him from Complete Monster territory.

Silver was his boss, and he had to restrain Scroop, quite painfully (With his cyborg arm), to make him not kill Jim. Scroop didn't seem to like Silver much, and followed him out of greed, or the ability to cause pain. He mocked Silver's feelings for Jim, and tried to kill Jim in the end, because he thought it would be fun.

Okay, if that's the full extent of it it seems like he had no real loyalty to Silver, stuck with him out of greed and didn't disobey due to fear. If there are no other objections, I could give my support to a well-written example.

A few posts back someone had talked about the new (sandbox is that the right term) that they'd created for Fire Emblem. It looked good, but hasn't been swapped out with the original (very messy) page yet. Is that going to happen? The current page is just ugly to look at, let alone read.

That was me, and I think we had to scrap some examples. Specifically, I think we were hung up over Valter and Sonia, both of whom are real close to the defining line.

Page is Sandbox.Fire Emblem Monster, and I went ahead and chopped the ones that there weren't any objections to cutting.

edited 3rd Jul '12 11:10:50 AM by DarkConfidant

Maybe I should have been more clear... It's not Scroop's loyalty to Silver; it's Scroop's loyalty to the other pirates. He was clearly in a position to screw them all over; he still had camaraderie to them. Also, I'm still convinced that his actions are fairly run-of-the-mill for pirates. I feel like he's one of the ever-common "95% Monster" candidates we see.

Was he really loyal to the other pirates. He clearly didn't like Silver and Arrow (Though arrow wasn't a pirate). I just thought that they all worked together because they all wanted treasure, not out of any loyalty. Also, they left Scroop to guard the ship instead of taking him along, make of that what you will. Scroop is a sadistic murderer, and unlike other Disney CM's, like Sykes (Sic), he gets away with the murder (Well he kills someone, he doesn't get of scott-free).

Gets away? He got killed by Jim. There was another villain we discussed. Scar from The Lion King. Hidden Faced Matt made request to remove him and he has been removed. Shaoken thought that he counts though. Do you still Shaoken?

edited 3rd Jul '12 11:51:42 AM by Krystoff

I know Jim killed him, that's why I wrote that he got away with murder in that he killed someone, he didn't get away scott-free. Also, I didn't know Scar wasn't a complete monster, in fact he's still on the Lion King page as a CM.

I deliberately excluded Silver from the list of pirates that Scroop was loyal to. In fact, Silver was the only pirate that Scroop wasn't loyal to.

As for leaving him behind on the boat, I don't think that establishes anything either way. Was he on the boat because he was someone that the others didn't want to deal with? Was he just ill-suited to dealing with Treasure Planet? Was he the best one to make sure that the getaway vehicle was defended? They don't make it explicit in any direction. As such, I think discussing that is immaterial in discussing Scroop's qualifications.

Way back in the day, I begged out of discussing Scar, on the theory that discussing the Disney Animated Canon gave me headaches. Well, I obviously have changed on that. And yes, I have gotten headaches over it. Oh, well, that'll learn me - it'd be hypocritical now to not give further opinion on Scar.

Well, first and foremost, I will note that we do not include Claudius of Hamlet on the list. I find this instructive since The Lion King is based on Hamlet, and Scar is pretty transparently based on Claudius. That said, given that Scar does kill Mufasa on-screen, as opposed to Claudius, it's fairly easy to say that Scar does surpass his inspiration for villainy (or, at the very least, avoids the Offscreen Villainy issue that bedevils me so).

Moreover, it seems that Scar is pretty terrible in terms of in-universe actions as well as compared to all other characters. Compared to the actions of, well, all of the other characters combined, I think it's fair to say (God forgive me for the pun) that Scar has the lion's share of the atrocious acts, and he thus would hit the heinous standard. He obviously never bothers with the possibility for redemption, so that's easy to deal with.

So, the question is, does he hit the "no redeeming qualities" example. Well, unless I'm misremembering the movie (I only saw it once, almost 20 years ago), there really isn't anything about him that's positive. I'd personally be in favor of allowing Scar.

In light of discussion in this thread, I think I'll make a request for the removal of Scroop from the list.

As for Scar, something seems a bit odd about revisiting a character I thought people agreed earlier to remove; the approach I used to suggest was to wait until all characters were discussed before deciding who to take a closer look at; but then again Scar is an especially tricky case so I guess we may as well make an exception here.

I think if there is reason to consider him a non-CM, it's that some of his evil deeds are played comically, and the movie's story leaves room for ambiguity.

Remember the "IS THAT A CHALLENGE" scene earlier on? Scar's reaction implies that Mufasa's authority derives from differences in physical strength. Given that being king isn't a physical job (sure, Mufasa chases hyenas out of the pridelands, but there's no reason for being king to be associated with that role) it's either out of a shallow favoritism towards the physically strong... or a sign that the only reason Mufasa's king is because Scar can't beat him in a direct fistfight.

Now, I get that it's in lions' nature to use fighting to determine who is dominant... but then again, it's also in their nature to try to kill cubs.

I'm not saying any of this justifies what Scar does in the movie, but it does strike me as a subtle form of a bit of an excuse he's given for his feeling entitled to such power in the first place. Not enough to negate that he's still a darker-than-average Disney villain, but it might be enough to negate CM status.

It seems the earlier kerfluffle was the result of a misunderstanding - neither I nor the other mods that examined the hollered post noticed the Insane Troll Logic pothole that changed the tone of the post. I sincerely apologize for the trouble.

In the future, please point the problem part of the post out when you holler it. Mods are not omniscient. We do miss things and make mistakes.

edited 3rd Jul '12 3:12:19 PM by ccoa

I'd like to petition for a blanket request to all pages.

All entries on Monster/ pages should be treated as spoilers, and therefore, no spoiler markup should be used.

My reason is that half the examples on various pages are spoilered out. In order to explain why X is a CM, we have to go into spoilerrific details about all the heinous atrocities that the individual commits, and as a result, important plot points often have to be explained in that process. The mere fact that X is a CM may well be a spoiler in and of itself, as villains rarely reveal themselves at the start of the game, and may be hiding in sheep's clothing for the first part of the work.

OK, been replaying Bulletstorm, and got a few examples for Sarrano. We covered how he used special-ops teams to kill civilian critics in the backstory (and we're talking hundreds of deaths here), and was cheerfully unrepentant whenever it was brought up. Now here's some more:

• Designed the Skillshot system. Now, this deserves some explanation. During the creation of his latest special-ops team, Final Echo, he decided to give them a bit of on-the-job training by sending them to clean out a Death World (no, this wasn't a reasonable request given their abilities, and no, he didn't care in the slightest). Of course, to do this, they'd need supplies. So he incorporated a points system into their equipment. The more creatively sadistic the deaths they caused, the more points they'd get. Points were required to requisition ammo from the supply caches sent down with them, and if you didn't have enough points... well, you'd just have to face a planet's worth of mutated monstrosities with an empty gun. In other words, he sent his recruits on a suicide mission, then punished them when they weren't being brutal enough.
• Attempted to murder one of his own soldiers by pushing her off a skyscraper after she objected to him killing her father in the aforementioned critic-purges. Notably, she'd just agreed to let him live for the time being in the interests of common survival.
• Derived sexual arousal from massacring civilians.
• Subjected a dying man with the greatest interest in helping him escape to a tirade of racist abuse at every opportunity.

There's more (lots more), but long story short, Sarrano is an asshole. And no, he doesn't have a single Freudian Excuse or Pet the Dog moment. What you see is what you get.