Discussion History Monster / VideoGames

\\\"... nobody beats the Joker in the evil department which, since this trope is for the 1% of villians, means Penguin is out by the \\\"henious by the standards of the story\\\" rule. He may be more vile the other villians, but he\\\'s less vile than Joker by a long shot, so he\\\'s automatically out of the running.\\\"

I can see how there\\\'s so much contention surrounding this trope, because apparently you and I have two different interpretations of the first criteria. By \\\"standards of the story\\\" I interpret that as, if the plot, tone and characters of the work treat what you do as pure evil, then that criteria is met. Since Penguin\\\'s tortures and murders are portrayed as pure evil, I think he counts.

Shaoken, your interpretation seems to be: if a person\\\'s villainous actions aren\\\'t equal to another\\\'s then they don\\\'t fit. But that seems flawed to me because there are plenty of works where there are multiple CM\\\'s. By that logic we\\\'d have to remove Fenrir Greyback, a cannibal and implied rapist/pedophile (at any rate he specifically targets children to become werewolves and eat, and he gives some really creepy rape overtures to Hermione) just because Voldemort is worse (he did essentially start a Wizard Holocaust in the second wizarding war).

EDIT: Or, a better example, the Joker from the DCAnimatedUniverse would have to be removed because, in the context of that universe, Darkseid is far worse. Sure the Joker\\\'s tortured and MindRaped a kid into being a mini-clone of himself for fun, and has probably murdered hundreds, but Darkseid turned his planet onto a hell on earth (so to speak) and has probably massacred tens of millions of people, so by the standards of the story Darkseid would be far worse.

\\\"... nobody beats the Joker in the evil department which, since this trope is for the 1% of villians, means Penguin is out by the \\\"henious by the standards of the story\\\" rule. He may be more vile the other villians, but he\\\'s less vile than Joker by a long shot, so he\\\'s automatically out of the running.\\\"

I can see how there\\\'s so much contention surrounding this trope, because apparently you and I have two different interpretations of the first criteria. By \\\"standards of the story\\\" I interpret that as, if the plot, tone and characters of the work treat what you do as pure evil, then that criteria is met. Since Penguin\\\'s tortures and murders are portrayed as pure evil, I think he counts.

Shaoken, your interpretation seems to be: if a person\\\'s villainous actions aren\\\'t equal to another\\\'s then they don\\\'t fit. But that seems flawed to me because there are plenty of works where there are multiple CM\\\'s. By that logic we\\\'d have to remove Fenrir Greyback, a cannibal and implied rapist/pedophile (at any rate he specifically targets children to become werewolves and eat, and he gives some really creepy rape overtures to Hermione) just because Voldemort is worse (he did essentially start a Wizard Holocaust in the second wizarding war).

EDIT: Or, a better example, the Joker from the DCAnimatedUniverse would have to be removed because, in the context of that universe, Darkseid is far worse. Sure the Joker\\\'s tortured and MindRaped a kid into being a mini-clone of himself for fun, and has probably murdered hundreds, but Darkseid turned his planet onto a hell on earth (so to speak) and has probably massacred tens of millions of people.