Do you disagree with any of the Complete Monster entries?

Gorons: maybe not. Gerudo: yes, that's exactly what it is. How exactly did Ganon change their lifestyle? As I remember, their status quo is pretty much the same in both Hyrules. In any case, I'd say it's much harder to interpret either action as those of a complete monster. When compared with say, Big Brother or mad King Hamdo (and by the way, I don't exactly count those as complete monsters either—just way higher up on the "evil" scale), Ganon falls far short. As I see it, had Hyrule actually been taken over by a complete monster, everyone whom Link had helped—Malon, Talon, Ruto, the Gorons, the Kokiri, etc.—would have been systematically and publicly killed as soon as Mr. Hero of time turned his back on them, therefore reinforcing the message that there is no hope, and eventually turning people against Link, as the oppressed begin to see his prescence as a source of despair. The fact that Ganon doesn't do any of these things, and instead does nothing as Link progressively undoes what little change the Gerudo Prince brought about suggests that neither he or Nintendo were interested in going that far or telling that story.

edited 12th Nov '10 6:47:27 AM by DoKnowButchie

Avatar art by Lorna-Ka.

Again, I thought Ganondorf TRIED to massacre the Gorons but just so happened to be thwarted by Link. Surely the otherwise-cheerful Gorons being reduced to tears ought to count for something. Some sort of large-scale equivalent of Break the Cutie, maybe?

In any case, should I remove Ganondorf from the list?

so they're getting this trope wrong. that's what discussions like this are for. we shouldn't encourage Trope Decay if it can be avoided.

that said, i think characters like what you described would be a better fit in other individual villain tropes. i don't really see much value in making a "halfway to Complete Monster" trope, when they probably have specific characteristics that might make them fit in other tropes. why is your pure evil villain not a Complete Monster? because he's quirky? because he can't ever win? because he has a good Freudian Excuse? the Villains index is quite long and already covers many options.

^^Yeah, a Complete Monster wouldn't have just locked up the Gorons so his dragon could have a snack later, giving our hero ample time to recuse them. A Complete Monster would've just slaughtered them and kept their remains in a fridge or something so that the bodies would still be fresh for when his dragon got hungry. And his treatment of the gorons is still easily his worst act.

So yeah, if you don't think it'll cause an edit war, take him off the list.

edited 12th Nov '10 8:08:16 AM by Gilphon

I don't think Ganondorf realized Link would rescue them, let alone allowed Link to have enough time to.

In any case, he gone.

If people use Complete Monster to mean just a villain who's pure evil, then that's what the trope means, regardless of what the trope page actually says.

There are also a bunch of tropes for how a character can be bad without being entirely evil: Even Evil Has Standards, Even Evil Has Loved Ones, Well-Intentioned Extremist, Knight Templar, Pet the Dog, and so on. There should be a trope for characters who avoid all of those and are just pure, unmitigated evil. Creating a character who has no good traits is as much of a storytelling technique as anything else.

Yes, they'll probably fall under other tropes as well, but most characters qualify for multiple tropes.

Why don't we just cut the article entirely? As has been covered here, it's hopelessly subjective and constantly abused, usually by editors who merely want to pimp their favourite works. "My villain's worse than yours" and all that; does the wiki really benefit in any way from having the entry? All we really get out of it is the unending threads about the page.

The more misuse I see, the more I'm inclined to agree with you.

Cutting the article's probably a bit too extreme. Giving it an Example Sectionectomy, however…

I disagree with many, many examples on the page. In fact, when I first saw the trope on the YKTTW, my reaction was "it'll never work." I would have argued against it ever being made in the first place, had I not mistakenly assumed it was a foregone conclusion that it would be rejected.

...eventually, we will reach a maximum entropy state where nobody has their own socks or underwear, or knows who to ask to get them back.

no. Complete Monster is properly defined as it is; it is a storytelling convention, which is what we're here for: document storytelling conventions. it has enough examples that legitimately fit the criteria. the problem is that people keep going "well, my villain gets excluded from Complete Monster because character X mocked him once. this isn't fair, 'cause he's really awesome and extreme and he ought to be called a monster. so i'm going to make a 'pure evil' trope that my villain can fit into."

and that's all well and good— make the trope. if it's a different storytelling convention, with enough good examples and the definition is separate enough from CM to stand on its own, that's fine. just make sure you explain that to people, so they don't go "but that's what Complete Monster is for." if they keep saying that, then maybe your trope is not separate enough from this one to be tropable.

but regardless, we can't (re-)define the trope around the examples. if the trope can be saved from Trope Decay (and i personally think this one can be saved), then we should work on it. hence this discussion (and the other 7827289373 threads about it).

also, "it's hopelessly subjective" is not a good enough reason to cut. we're not trying to purge subjective tropes at all. so long as it's marked as subjective, and it's not used on main namespace pages (kept to the YMMV tab), there's really nothing wrong with subjectivity in and on itself.

i'm curious, though. what's an example of a "pure evil" villain that's doesn't fit the Complete Monster criteria? are we talking about cartoony-type villains in that case? skeletor, mumm-ra, that sort of thing? hmmm.

"In fact, when I first saw the trope on the YKTTW, my reaction was "it'll never work." I would have argued against it ever being made in the first place, had I not mistakenly assumed it was a foregone conclusion that it would be rejected." - Desertopia

You were around when the trope was in YKTTW? Do you recall when that was?

Sorry, back on the Ganondorf argument, though it's more a rebuttal of him being cartoony and "generically evil" rather than defending his Complete Monsterdom.

Chancellor Cole from Spirit Tracks is the only one who really approaches cartoonish. And, when was Ganon's acts at any point played for humour? There was that time he ordered the Helmaroc King to throw Link out to sea but...that still doesn't really fit.

No deaths on screen, but he definitely kills most of Hyrule's soldiers, including the one you can find in the back alleys as Young Link. Also, I'm pretty sure Nabooru, his second-in-command calls him a murderer. Outside of Ocarina of Time, he definitely kills in the backstory of Wind Waker, and while he doesn't directly kill the Earth and Wind sages, he forges and orders the monsters (Jalhalla and Molgera) to do so.

Also, the crowds reappear in the credits. Maybe they moved outside of Hyrule.

Also also, in the past, he cut off the Goron's food supply until they handed him the Goron's Ruby, while not monstrous necessarily, is that "generically evil"?

edited 22nd Nov '10 4:48:56 PM by OldManHoOh

I think the problem with the trope is that there's characters with Freudian Excuses who are still ridiculously sick, vicious, and evil in a way that can horrify audiences. On the other hand, there's character's who are complete card-carrying villains with no good part, yet are still rather benign.

And then there's examples that make no sense, such as characters who are supposed to be good being complete monsters, or knight templars being complete monsters, or...

Fight. Struggle. Endure. Suffer. LIVE.

An example I was thinking of was Biff from the Back To The Future movies. He never shows a single good trait and just about every scene he's in is devoted to showing how cruel and unpleasant he is. However, since he never succesfully does anything really evil on-screen, and gets made the butt of jokes on several occasions, he's excluded from Complete Monster based on its current description.

having a Freudian Excuse does not automatically exclude a character from being a CM; the excuse has to be adequate for that to happen. if the character has a Freudian Excuse but it does nothing to mitigate the horror his actions cause, then he's still a Complete Monster regardless.

benign compared to what? it all hinges on context. Card Carrying Villains are tough, because they can sometimes be totally narmy, but given the right context it could, in theory, work. do you have a particular example like that?

antiheroes, Knight Templars and other such grey morality characters should generally be taken out. but it may help to just bring ambiguous examples to discussion.

re: ganondorf— well, it's been ages since i last was into zelda games, and even then it was only A Link To The Past (i can't even remember the plot of this one anymore) and then Ocarina Of Time (i remember the gist of this one). oh, and the cartoon, but all i remember from that one is "Well, Excuse Me, Princess!" so take this with a grain of salt, but... wasn't ganondorf's main schtick getting a hold of the three triforce pieces and, you know, Take Over the World and stuff? sure, he killed a bunch of people and did many dastardly deeds for that reason, but he always seemed pretty much your standard villain to me. every other character agreed that he was evil and he had to be taken down or the world would be doomed, but i never saw the type of horrified reaction this trope is supposed to inspire.

i'd like to point out there's a difference between "you're a murderer!"-type reactions and "you're a monster!"-type reactions, and it's in the tone or intent of the phrase. "you're a murderer" is an accusation; it may carry a fair amount of anger with it, and a desire to take action against this person. "you're a monster," on the other hand, is charged with disbelief; whoever says it cannot possibly conceive that there could exist someone so horrible, so vile, so cruel, so disgusting. they know there's evil in the world, but this person's actions go beyond anything they could've imagined. that's the reaction a Complete Monster should inspire.

i never really saw that with ganondorf. maybe i'm suffering from Small Reference Pools, though... or maybe link was just too much of a classic hero to fall to such a despaired conclusion, but in the extent of my knowledge of ganondorf, i never saw him as a Complete Monster, personally.

re: biff— i don't remember much of the BTTF sequels, but i definitely wouldn't count biff as a Complete Monster. Jerk Jock for sure, perhaps Laughably Evil as he's made the butt of the joke quite a few times, and maybe a Card-Carrying Villain if we stretch it... if the idea is that everything he does goes to show how evil he is, perhaps For the Evulz?

"the excuse has to be adequate for that to happen. if the character has a Freudian Excuse but it does nothing to mitigate the horror his actions cause" - carla

It's not even that. It's more of a matter of distinguishing between a terrifying yet pitiable villain and the ones audiences are NOT supposed to pity.

"every other character agreed that he was evil and he had to be taken down or the world would be doomed, but i never saw the type of horrified reaction this trope is supposed to inspire." - carla

Horrified reaction in what sense? The gorons were trembling in their cells, begging for mercy, etc... one even seemed to be crying when describing what Ganondorf was about to do. At the very least, the victims of his attempted Moral Event Horizon were horrified.

^^ What I'm trying to get at is that we have all these tropes for how a character can be a villain but still show the audience that they're not completely evil (Pet the Dog, Even Evil Has Standards, Even Evil Has Loved Ones, etc.) But what do you call a character who avoids all that and has no noble or sympathetic traits as far as the audience can see?

• Many a Harmless Villain or even Minion with an F in Evil carries a card, but Poke the Poodle does not make you a CM. However, most have a good side.
  • The Aomeba Boys are pretty much the essence of Noble Demon. They're also so pathtic, they try to get themselves arrested... and they can't. Which makes them sympatetic.
  • Similarly, Doofensmirtz is on such good terms with archnemisis Perry that he gives Perry the keys to his lair so Perry won't have to break in to foil his plans.

The closest I can come up with to a character that has no positive traits at all but isn't a CM would be Neville Sinclair, the slimy actor and Nazi spy from The Rocketeer.

To a lesser extent, Gaston.

Gaston is neither a harmless villain nor a card-carrying one. No CM either, but that is beside the point. This guy was dishing out a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on the Beast under the impression that Beast was too kind and gentle to fight back. Had it actually been true, there would have been nothing stopping Gaston from beating the Beast to death.

That is not even getting into how effective his attempted blackmail would be had it not been for Belle having the mirror revealing the Beast.

edited 24th Nov '10 6:40:49 AM by neoYTPism

well, victims always are. their lives are at stake, that's only natural. but was anyone else? like i said, i don't remember much about what he did or didn't do, and link certainly doesn't SAY much so we can't really know what he's feeling, but people wanting to take him down because he's certain to be an evil dictator doesn't make him a Complete Monster. like i said, there's difference between anger/righteousness/we-have-to-stop-him and outright horror/disbelief.

unsympathetic, non-CM villains can have their own categories. Laughably Evil is one, for example, if what disqualified him from CM-ness is that he's not taken seriously. he may be the nastiest person on earth, and not ONE character can find anything nice to say about him, but they all regard him as a joke— so that's where he belongs. the problem is that people apparently don't like thinking of their favorite villains as Laughably Evil, for some reason. like their pure evilness should be a badge of honor or something.

i'm not familiar with neville sinclair, so i'm not sure i could try and classify him. what exactly is it that disqualifies him from being a CM, though? that could help point us in the right direction.

as far as gaston goes, i never liked him or Beauty And The Beast, so i'd rather abstain from judging him. i always felt he was ridiculous and rather hilarious so if i had to, i would never classify him as a Complete Monster, but i acknowledge i'm biased.

i'm of the mind that we don't need to create any more tropes for these types of characters, i'm sure we could go through the Villains index and find many tropes where they can fit. but just throwing out an idea, what you guys want is to make a Completely Unsympathetic Villain trope? for villains who are not Complete Monsters, whose deeds are not hideous enough to cause horror in the other characters, who may sometimes be the butt of the joke or the stepladder for the Aesop of the day, but still everything they do is shown as bad, they never have a Pet the Dog moment and they're just nasty all around? (lol, there's a catchy name, All Around Nasty).

EDIT: going through the B&B page, i see tropes like Heteronormative Crusader, Those Wacky Nazis, Manipulative Bastard, Prince Charming Wannabe, Stalker with a Crush, Villain Song, Villainous Glutton, Villain with Good Publicity and such, applied to gaston. all of which are Villain tropes. and that's not even counting the "evil deeds" tropes such as Murder the Hypotenuse, or the "nasty personality" tropes like Jerkass and Ungrateful Bastard. none of those imply he's sympathetic in any way. so WHY exactly would we need another villain trope to describe him? i'd say we got that covered.

edited 24th Nov '10 7:18:35 AM by carla

at his finest. (spoiler alert!)

Affably Evil, Manipulative Bastard, and Villain with Good Publicity certainly apply.

I'm not sure he's got both feet firmly planted on the other side of the Moral Event Horizon. He kills people and steals top secret stuff, just like every other villain in the story. The difference is, he's out to betray his country to Those Wacky Nazis because it'll line his pocketbook and support his ideologies at the same time.

edited 24th Nov '10 7:26:52 AM by FrodoGoofballCoTV

"as far as gaston goes, i never liked him or Beauty And The Beast, so i'd rather abstain from judging him. i always felt he was ridiculous and rather hilarious so if i had to, i would never classify him as a Complete Monster, but i acknowledge i'm biased." - carla

Comical portrayal nothing, this guy was displaced from CM status for much better reasons than that. His "heinous evil deeds" include one attempt at extortion and a couple attempts at killing the Beast, whom he had no reason to believe was human before, nor could be human in the future... for all Gaston was implied to know the Beast could have been just another animal.

EDIT: Moved separate subject to separate post.

edited 24th Nov '10 3:56:45 PM by neoYTPism

Also, I believe this was the thread in which the Batman Begins version of Ra's al Ghul was mentioned earlier. As I explained then, he was added to the Batman Begins trope list before, and I just added him to the Complete Monster example list accordingly.

Well, recently, someone added him to the Batman Begins trope list again. I did not remove it, but at this point I figured it was a good idea to create a YMMV tab for that movie and its sequel, and bring the CM mention, along with a variety of tropes, over to it.

I figured this would be a good thread to discuss this; should I copy this to the TRS thread too?

Just do it. What you're talking about is just making the page conform to current policy. That doesn't need TRS talk. Just leave a note on the edit reason.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick