Subpages cleanup: Complete Monster

True, but he's seen as being less evil by a lot of the common folk. He has no sympathy for the weak, and he's not doing it for any reason but to advance his Social Darwinist agenda, but the fact that he's being looked on in a less-negative light in at least a couple of scenes, particularly in part 1 of Radiant Dawn, is warranting of additional scrutiny that I don't know if it has been debated yet.

He's 'seen as less evil' by them because they never see him at all. How they see him is utterly irrelevant and a Villain with Good Publicity can be a complete monster (See Gihren Zabi and Emperor Palpatine).

How he is seen by random peasants who never met him is completely irrelevant. Period. The facts are they are unaware their king was a psycho warmonger who murdered his father, enslaved a sentient being to serve as his tortured mate, started a war of violent conquest that led to all the problems their country is currently experiencing, and they probably don't know he was gonna release a Dark God strictly for giggles which might have killed them all.

@ Aarfy: Hey, I added that! No, I wasn't calling the Air Force a CM; it was an in-universe You Monster! from Yossarian over Aarfy getting away with it, prompting him to desert the Air Force. That said, I'm not sure if Aarfy really fits. He's easily the worst character in the story, and the only one without a single redeeming quality or Funny Moment, but is he heinous enough compared to Milo and Cathcart, who have higher body counts despite having redeeming features (Milo loves his daughters and is, as mentioned, pretty much totally divorced from reality and Cathcart is Played for Laughs) is the question.

Aarfy kills a woman he rapes, though. I'm not sure the others get up to anything that bad

Actually... keep Aarfy. He's the only villainous character in the novel whose crimes are played seriously. The nastier things Milo and Cathcart get up to (like selling all the squad's parachutes, for instance) are meant to cross the line twice.

edited 8th Jul '13 9:16:23 PM by HamburgerTime

@14456 For the Castlevania entry: Satan doesn't show up until the very end of the game, so everything he does is Offscreen Villainy. Nobody from that game is bad enough to qualify.

Code Geass entry looks weird. The main part talks about Bradley, but the bullet point looks like it's a leftover of a part dedicated to V.V. Shall I go request cleanup for that?

edited 9th Jul '13 12:05:57 AM by Adannor

yep, you caught that one. That's definitely a leftover V.V. entry and needs to be deleted

Anyways, here's my thing on Ashnard from Fire Emblem Path Of Radiance

The scene that' referred to is a scene in the sequel when two commoners comment things were better under Ashnard's rule, and he'd promote anyone, regardless of background or status. The latter is true, the former, however, needs explanation.

Put bluntly, Ashnard doesn't give a damn about the well being of his people. He rises to power by getting his father to sign a Blood Pact, a magical contract that kills every single other person who might possibly have a claim to the throne. He then murders his father and forms his nation into a warmongering dictatorship. Ashnard's philosophy is basically "the weak are meat, the strong eat." He's a Social Darwinist in the extreme. His egalitarian promotion policy is not "everyone deserves a chance" it's simply that he has no regard for social customs, wants the best army possible and will promote whoever can as an example of Pragmatic Villainy.

He also used his lover as bait to draw in her brother. They're from a race of shape shifting dragons. Once he caught said brother, he enslaves him in dragon form as a feral weapon and mount for himself. He has zero regard for his lover or their son, either. he has a Motive Rant where he reveal his entire goal is creating a world ruled by the strong where the weak submit or die. He also intends to release an evil god that might well kill everyone. His response when called out on this is more or less "and your point is what? I'm strong, I can do what I want."

Oh, and if that wasn't enough, he employs Izuka, a sadistic Mad Scientist who conducts hideous experiments on the shapeshifting beast people to turn them into feral weapons for Ashnard.

In essence, this scene isn't meant to establish sympathy. It's not giving him better traits. It's simply two peasants commenting on a Villain with Good Publicity. No different than in A Song Of Ice And Fire when people reminisce what a great King Joffrey was until that evil Imp murdered him, or how everything was so peaceful under Palpatine in Star Wars.

Ashnard has zero by way of redeeming qualities, is never presented as positive except by two ignorant peasants who probably don't know their role in his grand design was "slave or dead" and he's extremely heinous.

edited 9th Jul '13 12:55:30 AM by Lightysnake

...and that's just about the perfect summary for that issue. Ashnard is a keeper; the only reason why those people could even bring themselves to utter such a statement was because Ashnard failed to create his ideal world. Otherwise, they'd be yet another set of corpses on the pile, and I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be saying that he'd be a better ruler under those circumstances.

edited 9th Jul '13 1:03:15 AM by AquaRegia

Not only that, but they'd never met the man. Ashnard is pretty Obviously Evil. The man wears black armor with spikes, walks around with a Slasher Smile all the time and is not exactly shy about his ambitions. The strangest thing about his son being alive is Ashnard not eating him at birth.

And again, it also ignores a lot of the problems is country is facing is kind of because of the war of conquest and horrible, horrible things he constantly did. Yeah, there are issues when you start a brutal war with neighboring countries, let sentient beings be subject to horrible experiments and possible extermination and weaken the fabric of reality.

I support keeping Aarfy. As Hamburger Time said, he commits horrible crimes and unlike everyone else, those crimes aren't played for laughs.

I'm fine with keeping Ashnard - the couple of scenes there warranted debate since it makes him seem not so bad in comparison to some of the Begnion overlords, but I agree that the man had no redeeming traits except that his policies could have, unintentionally, caused some commoners to be slightly better off.

I still believe that bringing those scenes up was warranted.

With Ashnard, that moment with the commoners seems like a Broken Pedestal that just didn't happen because Ashnard is already dead after the fact. If people who knew the guy personally revealed some big Pet the Dog moment from him, it'd be a different story. But these are people who were not personal with Ashnard talking about how they percieved him. The irony of that dialogue is that their idea of Ashnard doesn't quite match up with what Ashnard actually was.

With the consensus for a cut of all the other examples from Sons of Anarchy, I did a write-up for Jimmy O'Phelan as he seems like the only genuine example.

• Jimmy O'Phelan is a member of the True IRA, an Irish terrorist organization and criminal syndicate involved in gun running with the gangs in California, chiefly the motorcycle gang SAMCRO. O'Phelan ran current SAMCRO member Chibs out of the IRA years before, then married his wife Fiona and adopted his daughter Kerrianne. When he tries to mend the business relation with SAMCRO he meets with Chibs again, gloats that he took what was his, and threatens to dump Fiona and marry Kerrianne next because he says her mother has become too old. Enraged, Chibs gives him up to the authorities, and O'Phelan flees back to Ireland. He withholds information about Jax's kidnapped baby son Abel to maintain the good dealings with SAMCRO. He goes rogue when the IRA intends to demote him for his failure in the States, and he plans to destroy SoA's Belfast chapter to take over the IRA himself. He tries to have SAMCRO killed in an explosion in which many Belfast members die, and Fiona and Kerrianne have to be put under IRA protection because he poses a threat to their safety. He kills an IRA member trying to take them back, and tortures and executes another one to find Abel. He murders the adoptive family Abel was placed with. He takes Abel hostage to ensure his escape to the States, then exchanges him for another hostage whom he later kills. He tries to escape to South America through the Russian mob, but is double crossed and given up to SAMCRO, who kill him. Unlike the other gang members in the show he has no real loved ones or shows remorse for any of his crimes, and there seems to be no point behind his actions beyond power, cruelty, and trying to save his own hide.

edited 9th Jul '13 9:37:54 AM by Morgenthaler

As I recall on Xykon, he counts because even when the audience members find him funny, he's still treated as a horrible threat in-universe, especially the part where he murders Roy. Everything just stopped being funny at that point. Just look up 32Footstep's discussion on him.

Yeah, the thing about Xykon is that being funny only makes his evil seem that much worse. He cracks jokes while he horribly murders people. It's played for laughs for the audience, but not for the characters.

Okay, I'm back after a vacation. Looking at things that are under discussion:

Keep O'Phelan. Sounds like the worst person in the show by a longshot.

Cut that bullet point that was under Bradley. It is a holdover from VV, and several people have pointed it out.

Keep Ashnard. That bit about the commoners liking Ashnard just goes to show what a CM has to do in order to stay in power—namely, give the people something that they want.

Keep the Elder and the stepdad from Yu Yu Hakusho. I don't know enough about anybody else to comment.

Butch Cavendish sounds like CM material Occasional Exister. Anything else we should no about him? Also, on a sidenote, is the movie worth seeing?

On the subject of Wonder Woman, one of the most consistent problems with The Cheetah is that as the most recognisable of Wonder Woman's non-mythical rogues, she gets used in a lot of villain team ups. So while in the Wonder Woman comics she's a Tragic Villain with flashes of humanity, in crossovers, she has to be portrayed as the sort of psycho who stand up alongside Luthor and The Joker is the evil department. Hence lines like that one about eating kids. I'll do some more research on Doctor Poison II, and see if I can craft a write up for him/her.

And Post # 13080 sounds like a keeper to me.

edited 9th Jul '13 10:33:16 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar

I'd like to second Butch Cavendish from The Lone Ranger. I've seen the film and agree he more than qualifies as a Complete Monster and would be willing to list my reasons why.

The Laughably Evil CompleteMonsters can be the scariest.

BTW, I'm starting Order Of The Stick.

Main reason I came here: This is from Deadpool YMMV

edited 9th Jul '13 12:05:07 PM by ACW

Re: Butch Cavendish - the reviewer in my local paper (who I generally disregard, but that's besides the point) heavily criticized The Lone Ranger for Mood Whiplash resulting from mixing an essentially cartoonish take on the mythos with extremely dark villains. I don't really plan on seeing the movie myself, but his comments make me inclined to lean towards thinking he's an example.

I think a clarification is needed for SHODAN of System Shock. She's not motivated by pure logic or some misinterpreted goal like most other villainous A.I.'s. She is motivated by pure ego-maniacal arrogance. She wants to exterminate humanity for no reason other than because she's a massive narcissist.

Yeah, pure logic doesn't really apply when you decide you're god and everything else is "a footnote" to your glory...

That sounds like it would be worth including in an entry.

Yup. Either way, the Blue-and-Orange Morality that excuses most homicidal AIs doesn't apply to SHODAN.

So, on the subject of those Wonder Woman examples we were briefly discussing:

Doctor Poison

Doctor Poison II (from what I could find out) has only appeared a few times, but gets up to some pretty heinous behaviour in a few of those. In her first appearance, she develops the Pandora Virus, a virus which mutates its victims into some of the worst beings of myth. It's first use was on the poor bastard in the link I posted some pages back, Richard Agodas, whom she first tortured and then transformed into a horrific spider monster. Following his defeat, she released the virus into the air, with the intent of causing more people to go through the experience that Agodas did. That the virus failed to work in the atmosphere, and no cases were reported, speaks to her incompetency, not her lack of evil. She later joined up with Villainy Incorporated, and following their invasiong of Sakartis, used the prisoners they took as test subjects for further experiments with toxins and infections. She also played a role in the creation of Genocide, which was a Moral Event Horizon worthy moment for everybody involved.

I could go either way on this one. Doctor Poison II hasn't appeared very often. That said, her few appearances have all been godawful, and she's crossed a lot of lines in those appearances. I suspect that if the Pandora Virus plotline hadn't been dropped (which is the real reason why the airborne virus failed) we wouldn't be debating her presence; she'd be on the list. With that in mind, I think I lean towards including though not by much.

Alkyone

I reread Alkyone's first appearance to make sure I was remembering things correctly, and I've got to say, that in it she doesn't come off as that evil. She's obsessed with the Amazons and Amazon culture. When she finds out that the queen is going to have a child, she feels horribly jealous, decides that the rest of the Amazons will feel the same way, and therefore decides to try and kill Diana in the name of preserving peace on the island. She knows that it's a terrible act, and fully expects to be damned for it. In her second appearance, she does the standard villain act of trying to take over Themyscira. She does it while under the influence of Genocide's soul, and the guidance of Ares who is playing her like a sock puppet. Given that half of Wonder Woman's rogues have at one point or another tried to wipe out Themyscira, I have trouble qualifying her based on that.

Earlier on I was questioning her inclusion, but now I am one hundred percent against it. Alkyone has, if not redeeming traits, then at least some sympathetic ones, may not be acting of her own accord during her later appearances, and fails the heinous standard when measured against Ares, Circe, The Cheetah II, The Cheetah III, Doctor Psycho, or even Doctor Poison II. Cut.

EDIT: The YMMV page for Wonder Woman references the version of her from the failed 2011 pilot as a Complete Monster. Now, I know they derailed the character, but that much? Anybody know if it went that far? I've removed the references in the meantime.

edited 9th Jul '13 8:17:44 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar