Board Thread:Clean up Concerns/@comment-2175012-20170507201405/@comment-2175012-20170507204653

Now, for raising the bar....well, originally, the heinousness standard concerned both the setting, and what's nasty by the standards of the story. For instance, if a show is a crime series, you can expect things like rape or murder to take place (baseline), but if a villain who commits human trafficking is present within the work, that would allow for the villain to breach the baseline. Basically, the baseline is what determines a normal villain from a pure evil one. By what's nasty by the standards of the work...one example is Tales from the Crypt. Murder is so commonplace in the series, that committing one or two murders isn't enough to breach the baseline. To my knowledge teh only one that counts is a serial killer with seven confirmed kills. This is called the relative heinous standard. Now, say if in DB, destroying planets, while bad, it's commonfare, so the villain has to be specially evil in order to stand out. The relative heinous standard also introduces the resources test which is whether or not the villain is heinous enough with their resources. The resources test is what allows a psychopathic soldier to qualify alongside an evil overlord. It can range from powers, intelligence, ranking, etc. Of course, if they use their resources to commit atrocities common to the series, they most likely won't count.