Subpages cleanup: Complete Monster

Here's a writeup of my nomination from earlier:

• Mayhem is the leader of a renegade band of Amazons that routinely terrorizes the countryside in Greece and massacres entire villages, except for the little girls which she turns into mindless killing machines. Most Amazons who did raids would go for minimal loss of life, and are appalled by Mayhem's actions. She personally blinds Ruun, whose only five years old after killing his parents and kidnapping his sister who she turns into a mindless killing machine. Fast forward years later, when most of the renegade Amazons have rejoined the Amazonian Nation, Mayhem still leads raids which Rape, Pillage, and Burn entire villages for fun. When confronted by Hercules, she laughs off that her actions will lead to an Amazon Civil War which will be crushed by the outside world. And finally, when confronted on what she did to Ruun and his sister Siri after she is beaten by Hercules she flat out says "So what, I turned her into the greatest Amazonian Warrior!"

Had another character I wanted to propose, El Patron from The House of the Scorpion.

Who is El Patron?

El Patron, the original Matteo Alacran, is a major character in The House Of The Scorpion. He's the drug lord ruling over Opium, a country that divides the United States and Mexico. He's also the man Matt was cloned from.

What has El Patron done?

• He has everyone who tries to cross Opium, in order to make it either to America or Mexico, captured and implanted with a computer chip in their brain, turning the person into an eejit. These people are essentially living zombies, programmed to do specific tasks while having no hints of their old personalities present. Sometimes they don't even have to have illegally tried to cross the border. In at least one instance, El Patron had a scientist's son turned into an eejit because the clones the man was working on weren't thriving. If an eejit ever has to be repurposed for a new task, it requires torturing them to condition them to new behavior. Even El Patron's security personnel wasn't safe from this as he had them all turned into high-functioning eejit with kill-switches in place that made it so that they couldn't turn against him or disobey him. The most common use of the eejits is for manual labor in the poppy fields. Here they are subjected to grueling work, are underfed, over-worked, and have a high mortality rate due to the labor they endure. Matt estimates, based on how many workers there are and the rate that they run out, that hundreds of thousands of bodies are buried beneath the poppy fields.
• Makes illegal, sentient clones of himself, raises them as if he loved them and they were his children, then harvests them for organs whenever one of his own fails, in order to sustain his life.
• He murders his entire family (sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons) at his funeral by poisoning the wine they were to drink. He also poisoned most of his staff at the same time. However, that's just the first part of his plan. Due to the fact that the force fields that prevented anyone from entering or exiting Opium were coded to his DNA only. By coding it in this way, he made it so that once he died and the country entered lockdown, no one would be able to get in or out, including supplies. El Patron's ultimate plan was to murder his entire country, and the only reason why he was doing it was to give himself a fitting tribute in the afterlife.

Is he bad by the standards of the series?

Hell yes. Don't get me wrong, the morality of this series is dark. The other drug lords are terrible. By the end of the second book, almost no character hasn't done something morally questionable and Matt is ultimately forced to kill three hundred innocent people in order to accomplish his goal of giving the ejits their self-awareness back. Obviously a system that would condone drug lords ruling over nations and instituting such practices is bad, but El Patron is the most powerful man in the system, helped create said system, and is one of the most evil people in the system. No other character ever tried to wipe out their own country. The system’s bad, but El Patron is definitely the worst of the worst.

Does he have a Freudian Excuse or redeeming qualities?

The answer to both of those will take some explaining but the end result is the Freudian Excuse is insufficient and I believe it's proven by the end of the series that he had no redeeming qualities. I'll elaborate more below.

El Patron's Freudian Excuse is that he grew up dirt poor in Mexico, his family was abused, starved, and barely able to survive from year-to-year. El Patron was the only one of his siblings who survived, with each one dying while still young. El Patron frequently recounts the story of his poor upbringing in social gatherings, each time the story is told exactly the same… except for the last one. When he tells the story to Matt the final time it's revealed he didn't care his siblings died because they were his family. He cared about them dying because they were his possessions. He's so focused on the story because he believes he's "owed" those lives. He raises clones and kills them for their organs in the way he does because he believes he's taking back the lives he's "owed."

It's a recurring element with El Patron, he's incapable of seeing people as anything but extensions of himself. It's why he raises the clones the way he does. He showers them with gifts and pretends to love them, but in reality he's only doing it because he believes he should have had the childhood that his clones have. When the time comes for him to cut them open, he shows no sadness or regret over what he's doing, in fact he acts like his clones are being unreasonable for wanting to live.

El Patron only sees his living family as possessions too, and even then he spends his days manipulating them and forcing them to do things they don't want to do, such as Arranged Marriages. When a daughter-in-law (or grand-daughter-in-law) of his runs away with her bastard son, despite not liking either of them, El Patron has them both captured and brought back because they "belong" to him. This is most obvious he only sees his family as possessions when he kills them all in order to "serve him in the afterlife." In a way, Matt notes, their lives were just as hollow and meaningless as Matt's own. They were given wealth and education but were never meant to use it, El Patron planned on murdering all of them at his funeral, and if he had lived to his planned 150, he would have killed them there at his birthday party.

That being said, in the sequel, The Lord of Opium, Matt begins hearing the voice of El Patron speaking to him in his head. When El Patron talks to him he talks about things such as "abandoning his mother to make his fortune, sacrificing his son in the Drug Wars, and blowing up an airplane full of people to prevent a war." He mentions all of these when talking about the "necessary sacrifices" being a drug lord entails. Nobody else can hear El Patron, but when they find out about it, they believe it's some kind of madness. Matt seems to think it's the ghost of El Patron. The story never answers the question of whether it's madness or the supernatural, but, for my vote, I call bullshit on it being a ghost. Nowhere in any of these two books does anything happen that can be called supernatural other than this voice thing. For the ghost to be a real supernatural element, that'd feel wrong to me given the nature of the series. Nothing the voice in Matt's head says at that point (involving sacrifices) ever corresponds with El Patron's thoughts and actions in the book. Matt's already been hearing El Patron's voice throughout the novel. With the mounting pressure being put upon Matt to compromise his moral integrity for a "greater good," it's easy to see how he could hallucinate hearing El Patron's voice telling him to make moral compromises.

Does he count?

In my opinion, yes. He seems like he has redeeming qualities in the beginning, but it's steadily revealed to be nothing more than a prolonged Bait the Dog moment. His Freudian Excuse is seemingly sad, but ultimately revealed to be hollow. He doesn't care his family died, merely that he was deprived of his possessions. It was a harsh life, but a major element of the series is that both America and Mexico have degraded to the point where everyone's life is utter shit and most people don't have anything. It's not enough to justify his actions, and he's already proven to be devoid of good traits anyway.

edited 10th Mar '14 4:10:38 PM by OccasionalExister

Looks like a keep to me .

I read that book a long time ago, and I'll give you my vote. El Patron reminds me of Sayle from the Drowned Cities or Fortis from In Time in the sense that, while the system is bad, and produces terrible people, they would likely be a terrible person even without the setting.

edited 10th Mar '14 4:27:24 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Funny, I was just thinking about proposing El Patron a couple days ago, but decided I didn't remember enough about him. I had no idea there was a second one, either.

I have a suggestion for your consideration: Jackson Neville, A.K.A. "Mad Jack", from Heavy Rain. He is described as "dangerous" prior to even encountering him. For anyone else who's played the game, this is the segment in its entirety (split into two videos):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdaWSC-O8pg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CzG4ZSQ49k

I think Mad Jack would be a pretty uncontroversial addition. Anyone care to disagree?

edited 10th Mar '14 5:34:25 PM by Kurtis

Weblinks Are Not Examples

I just realized there's a second entry from Martian Successor Nadesico:

• There is also Yoshio Yamasaki from the same movie, the Martian Successors' resident Mad Scientist who was directly responsible for doing all those horrible experiments on Akito, Yurika, and Lapis - and possibly on a lot more people before them. This guy is the most chilling character in the whole Nadesico series: there is something about his cheerful and friendly demeanor, even as he's committing all those atrocities, that only manages to make him more horrific. It's not that he enjoys his cruelty. He just has no feelings whatsoever about it. To him, ruining countless people's lives or mind-raping an innocent girl into becoming a mindless machine is just as mundane as brushing his teeth in the morning. Think about it - he won't even have his conscience to answer to; he has no conscience, period. He's just pure intellect unbrindled by emotion. Think an evil version of Lloyd Asplund, make him a hundred times worse, and you've got Yamasaki.

Does this one count?

Souls in Kid Icarus go through a standard reincarnation process. They die, go to the underworld and are given peace. Then they're eventually reincarnated into a new person. Hades was taking the souls sent to the underworld during the wars he started and began using them for his own purposes. This includes shaping them into a bigger army for himself, feeding them to himself or his pets, or whatever else he felt like. This removes them from the reincarnation cycle. All the good guys see this as horrifying. Hades himself claims to Pit that it doesn't matter to the soul, as when its reincarnated it doesn't have any memories or remnants of the former person. Pit is unable to formulate a proper response, but he's not exactly an expert on the matter. Palutena probably could've given a better response, but she never heard the claim herself. The game doesn't dwell much on the point after that. Hades meets the heinous standard easily. The souls thing is just the icing on the cake.

If he is to be cut, it should be for tonal reasons, that the game and Hades himself is too comedic for a CM. I disagree, but it's one argument that has actual weight, and I'll concede on it if there's consensus.

If not for tone of story, I'd be certainly in the yes group. Otherwise, its murky.

IIRC, tone of series is the only thing that keeps people like Cartman and Mr. Krabs off the list.

-Edit: So what's the verdict on Black Doom? (on either page 906 or 907 IIRC). Special note: Much like the Big Bad of Higurashi towards Teppei, even the Big Bad of the franchise (Dr. Eggman) finds Doom repulsive.

edited 10th Mar '14 9:24:04 PM by magnum12

Sorry, what? Mr. Krabs? Even if Spongebob weren't a comedy, he's given plenty of sympathetic moments. Please understand that the kind of statement you made above casts doubt on your understanding of the trope.

As for Cartman, he's also only rarely sufficiently evil to fall into the trope; usually he's in Comedic Sociopathy territory.

edited 10th Mar '14 9:36:27 PM by Fighteer

Black Doom might count.

That said, yeah...Cartman only delves into 'CM territory' rarely, and it's usually played for laughs. Personally, unless it's a character like The Lich, I don't like hearing about comedy show examples as a rule.

Yoshio sounds like he counts.

Kurtis, I would advise you write a proposal: tell us who this character is and why they count. We don't like watching extraneous videos. Examples need to be self explanatory. And yea to El Patron, btw

edited 10th Mar '14 10:03:23 PM by Lightysnake

While its entirely possible, the Hades character has the potential to be a completeMonster. I think his crimes aren't delved into enough.

While Uprising does say souls get reincarnated and eating them takes them out of the cycle, it still doesn't delve into what a soul exactly means in Uprising. The eaten souls could very well become the Monsters in Hades stomach considering the tone of the game.

Hades does not have the aura of fear required in my view. The characters treat him as a nuisance for most of the game, and even laugh at his jokes sometimes.

Monsund, can we get a new writeup for Dagon?

I think I'll go nay to Hades, too

I'll try to write one up on Dagon when I have time.

I'm going to vote no on Mad Jack. He's a petty criminal so he is not as heinous as the Big Bad, the Origami killer, who is heinous enough as a multiple child murderer but has sympathetic moments and redeeming qualities. Jack isn't even as bad as Dr. Barker, the Taxidermist or Gordi Kramer, the former two are Serial Killers while the latter murdered a child, all of them comitted their crimes For the Evulz. In comparison, Jack kills two people to avoid going to jail, making his motives self-preservation rather than sadism like the other baddies.

Another vote down on Mad Jack. He does very little, has to compete with a mad doctor who lures people to his basement so he can conduct autopsies on them while they're still alive and conscious and a taxidermist who kidnaps, kills and stuffs women with sadistic glee, and his one murder and attempted murder were both in response to someone about to find evidence to arrest him. He's scum, but far below what qualifies for this trope.

Also voting no on Mad Jack.

on Mad Jack.

Found more evidence on Cartman for "against". We can officially put this one to bed permanately with the .

Post Season 16 (more specifically after the 1% episode), seems the writers have toned down his heinousness. He seems to have settled into somewhere between his season 5-16 "black-hearted sociopath" and his originial season 1-4 Jerkass posistion.

I mentioned Krabs mainly as an example of someone in a comedy who gets requested a lot. Has more to do with the "Seasonal Rot" era where he got so badly Flanderized that his actions stopped being funny (on a side note: EVERYONE gets bad flanderization during that time). The writers have actually like Cartman toned him down in later seasons, so definately

edited 11th Mar '14 8:30:01 AM by magnum12

Alright, I take back what I said about you understanding the trope. They are sort of my pet peeve with regards to it, though — a litmus test for whether people understand the definition. Anyone who proposes them seriously is confusing Complete Monster for "big meanie poo-poo head".

edited 11th Mar '14 8:33:36 AM by Fighteer

On a side note: I've been thinking of a little project within a project involving a thread that's basically a compendium of all the verdicts made in this thread. Should it be done?

Sure, Why Not?

Go for it

for El Patron, BTW. I read that book ages ago, and that guy was just a purely loathsome piece of work in the end.