Thread:LostGod2000/@comment-27586321-20141023194406/@comment-6489422-20141202072835

With Syndrome, I think TV Tropes was under the impression that his "everyone will be super" goal was altruistic. Not getting that the double meaning in the following "when everyone's super, no one will be" was that supers wouldn't exist anymore and that normal people likely wouldn't be able to handle Syndrome's superpower tech properly and that would lead to the downfall of society. Syndrome was wanting to risk that for kicks.

With Hopper, I think he WAS about to kill Molt that one time, but changed his focus to the other henchmen instead to prove a point to everyone, Molt included.

With Mal, I think he comes closest out of any TD villain but is still just an evil split personality, while Smaug in the films also comes close due to his characterization being slightly changed to ressemble Glaurung, a more sinister and heinous dragon than book!Smaug, but still can't go the full mile in qualifying overall.

My big disagreements here are with Ghetsis and G4 Tirek.

"Tirek engages in generic villainy, is only is heinous as the show allows (in other words, nothing more major than incapacitating ponies, not even to the point of attempted murder) and as said before, taking over the pony world doesn't mean everything's going to die. He may be the most evil villain in MLP, but I don't really think he's evil to the point of a CM. That counts for Sombra and whoever this is (I've seen her tagged with the Complete Monster category a few times) as well."

Where I disagree is that the "incapcitation" mentioned really does seem quite extra heinous. Equestria ponies are practically MADE of magic, it's in their blood. What Tirek does is suck the magic right out of them, all as this ball of energy that appears between his horns grows bigger (Freudian angle, much?) and leaves them as dull-eyed shells of their former selves. I don't want to invoke the "R" word, but that IS the closest thing this show has had to a direct violation of one's being. And he was doing this to every single pony in Equestria. (That most of the ponies are female doesn't help matters as far as violation imagery goes.)  And yeah, taking all the magic from Equestria DID mean that everything's going to die. Celestia explained in detail what would happen to Equestra's ecosystem if ponies weren't able to fulfill their regular magical functions - that being things that normally might not kill ponies if they had magic, but since they were now so weak and powerless - well, do the math. The last thing that I think made Tirek a worthy qualifier was that he's pretty much the only villain where you can't say "well, why don't they try befriending him, he might be redeemed!", because he HAD been offered friendship in the past - by the ponies and his own brother, Scorpan. And he refused the very concept of friendship by choice. Then he plays off of Discord's friendship issues before betraying him and saying that he held the token of trust and friendship that he'd given him (that belonged to Tirek's brother, BTW), thus the trust and friendship itself, in the same value he held his brother - which was worthless. This is a more blatant rejection of the idea of friendship than any other villain has done, and seeing as "Friendship Is Magic" is the central theme of the show, this makes him easily stand out as the most heinous and vile villain to date. You are correct, though, that Sombra and Chrysallis do not qualfiy - one's a Generic Doomsday Villain and the other's a standard monster rather than a complete one.

"His psychological abuse of N was relatively mild (Darkrai did it much better) and aside from using Kyurem for attempted domination, Ghetsis doesn't stand out in any other way,"

I've covered before how psychological abuse that brainwashes a boy against his own humanity is in no ways mild, and you understate how bad Ghetsis' use of Kyurem was. On one end, he has the Pokemon physically and mentally tortured by his machines and his cane in order to make it complicit with acts of terrorism. On another end, he has Kyurem's fatally cold ice power shot through a freeze canon to put an entire continent on ice and create a chill that's so torturous to the people, they become so terrified for their health and lives that they relinquish control of Unova to him. That's torture, terrorism, life endangering, extortion, and attempted domination all in one scheme.

"Keep in mind this is a series where, surprisingly, abuse both to humans and Pokemon and genocide of billions is the norm. The worst crime that Ghetsis commits is, again, trying to freeze over Unova, which doesn't carry the mass-murdering implications Cyrus, Purple and Lysandre made explicit."

He also wanted to take over the entire world through extortion via a Pokemon army led by the Hero's legendary in the first BW. How is this not also heinous? Purple Eyes I will agree is worse than Ghetsis by quite a margin, but as for the other two - Cyrus was going to recreate everyone he was planning on mass-murdering, just devoid of spirit. Which is quite heinous itself, but he didn't just want total genocide. And while Lysandre was planning on playing mass murder straight, there was no guarantee that the ultimate weapon's effects would extend to the world beyond Kalos like he seemed to believe. What we actually see seems to suggest the opposite.

"Killing the player character, a teenager? (not a child by nature, as it has been officially stated the Unova characters are older than the previous player characters) A few points. It was never clear whether or not Ghetsis was actually aiming to kill the player character (where as Darkrai tried to drive the players to suicide and Lysandre tried a suicide attack in Y to kill both the Five Man Band and Team Flare) as he could've been simply trying to incapacitate him/her. And that whole "slowly freezing to death" thing is as said, speculation. Pokemon follows Harmless Freezing and that would probably apply to the character as well."

First off, Nate and Rosa ARE a bit younger than Hilbert and Hilda. In the latter's case, Ghetsis' exact words in BW were "you must be eliminated!" in regards to keeping the PC silent about N's defeat. This suggested he was going to murder the PC. The  "Pokemon Special" manga took it beyond even suggestion by having Ghetsis show exactly how he'd kill Black AND Black's Pokemon - through a team of Pokemon specifically formed and trained to counter Black's team so that he'd be left defenseless (and that's not going in him trapping Black in the light stone afterwards). In the latter's case, I thought it was pretty clear that the Glaciate attack landing on the PC would lead to either a slow and painful death or a fate worse than death by being frozen alive. People assume it'd be Harmless Freezing based on what happens to Pokemon, but has it ever been shown to work that way on humans? It's more likely that humans are less resilient. Extra points worth mentioning is that Glaciate is a damage-dealing attack, not one that gives the freeze status effect, and we actually see the attack used to pretty much kill Hydregion in a different game. The deadly intent here isn't subtle. And lastly, something that goes overlooked about just the act of using a Pokemon's power to attack a human being before a Pokemon battle could even start is that the other bosses never did any such thing - they played by the rules of Pokemon trainer battles. Ghetsis did not. He doesn't feel bound by any rules. That makes him stand out as extra heinous to me. I mean, even CYRUS never even implied he'd so much as defeat your character in battle to get you out of his way.

''"Now, the heinous standard. If everything I've said convinced you he fails the standard compared to the other characters, I don't know what else to say. DocColress tried to justify this by saying Ghetsis lacked enough resources, which is complete bullcrap seeing as he was directly on par with the other villains in the first game and only had a slightly lower amount of resources in the second, having access to a super-powered legendary. Then he said that this wiki shouldn't follow the rule of the heinous standard, and I'm sorry to break it, but Ghetsis is in the same race as Darkrai, Purple Eyes, Cyrus, and Lysandre. If he fails to outshine his competitors, that means he simply fails the evil required to be a Complete Monster. He's the most wholly evil of the mainstream Pokemon villains, but he lacks the sufficient crimes and even then for genuinely unsympathetic villains (aka the two Complete Monsters recognized by TV Tropes in the games) still compete against him, and beat him. Notice how I'm not going to the anime/manga for comparisons because the anime/manga have their own versions of Ghetsis and don't share the same standards the games have. Bringing up J, Charon, or Kodai means nothing."''

Well since you mentioned me and called my points "complete bullcrap", let me argue back. I can't really see how he was "direclty on par with the other villains" in BW, or who "the other villains" even mean, but the entire point of his plan there was to be sneaky and smart as opposed to direct in evildoing like Giovanni or Cyrus - that was the point of N as the Hero. Ghetsis was self-aware enough to know that he couldn't be the Hero, so he set up N as his puppet to do most of the work for him. B2W2 is what I feel is a more straight version of a villain lacking resources yet still going all out with what he had. Again I say I feel he's a good deal ahead of Cyrus and Lysandre despite their more grandiose and potentially life ending plans. Why? Simply put, Ghetsis is an exploiter and a torturer, and were he to have his way, an oppressor. It's my personal belief that, to quote elsewhere, the torturer is "a human animal worse than the murderer." Cyrus and Lysandre made no efforts to torture or torment anyone the way Ghetsis, Darkrai, and Purple Eyes did. That's what makes them far nastier pieces of work.

"And, Zcooper, if you still aren't convinced about Ghetsis, he had a sticky-outy Pet The Dog moment. The reason the Shadow Triad is loyal to Ghetsis is because he once saved their lives, and are following him not out of fear, force, or blind faith, but gratitude. Unlike Hopper who treats his brother like crap and has to restrain himself from killing him, Ghetsis doesn't treat the Shadow Triad badly and the Shadow Triad thinks very positively of the man, implying good things about their relationship. Unless someone can argue against that, quite literally every other argument against Ghetsis is invalid. Complete Monsters do not pet the dog."

We don't see Ghetsis treating the Shadow Triad like anything, really. They're as much tools to him as every agent of Team Plasma. I have argued that we have too little information of what Ghetsis saving their lives entailed to deem it a proper Pet the Dog moment, and despite their gratitude, I would say the Triad are following on blind faith given their dialogue in regards to Ghetsis' ambitions that they've sworn to serve. They think positively of him due to WHAT he is to them, not WHO he is. This sort of thing has come up on the subject of other CMs like Ashnard from Fire Emblem for instance - how some characters will view them positively due to exterior details without actually knowing what they truly are on their interiors. We know the Triad truly cares about Ghetsis, enough to take care of him and try to battle the PC in order to make him regain heart in his quest, but we're given absolutely no evidence that the feeling is returned by Ghetsis himself, and actually every reason to think the opposite given Ghetsis' history of using pawns he deems ultimately disposable and his general It's All About Me attitude.

So I don't really see this variation of Mad Love as being invalidating. Ghetsis as a Complete Monster is still a legitamate assessment.