Talk:Ghetsis

OK, TV Tropes can say otherwise all they like, but on this wiki, I think Ghetsis should be acknowledged as a Complete Monster. He's been THE Complete Monster of "Pokemon" for at least two years now. Why stop now?

The reasoning for deleting it here was "Sorry, Ghetsis fails the criteria since most of his actions are offscreen, and calling his son insulting names isn't crossing the moral event horizon."

I'm against the notion that a Complete Monster absolutely HAS to commit attrocities ON-SCREEN to qualify. The trope ought to be about who and what the villain IS, not just what they do. Villains who are 100% pure evil and inhumane enough to do heinous things. Ghetsis fits that bill. And I actually agree that calling his son insulting names was not crossing the Moral Event Horizon: it was just Kicking The Dog. The backstory shows us that Ghetsis was already on the Moral Event Horizon from the start of the game: he just keeps on going with all of the actions we see him take.

To prove my point further, let's really look at the criteria and see how Ghetsis stacks up:

- The character is truly heinous by the standards of the story, which makes no attempt to present the character in any positive way. The character's terribleness is played seriously, even if the work is light and/or comedic. Other characters in-story must fear or hate this character.

If TV Tropes big reason for excluding Ghetsis was because he failed the heinous standard compared to Cyrus, then they shot themselves in the foot by saying "by the standards of THE STORY" rather than "by the standards of the franchise". The "Pokemon Black and White" games are a completely different story from the "Pokemon Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum" games, and Cyrus' actions have absolutely no bearing on them. By the standards of the story that features Ghetsis, Ghetsis is the most heinous villain. (I'd argue that even considering Cyrus, Ghetsis is still a darker villain by the franchise standards judging by who he is, not what he does or attempts to do.)  Ghetsis is never ever presented in a positive way in either games: by the end of the sequel, even the Shadow Triad seem willing to give up on him. His terribleness is played dead seriously every time he's involved in something. Other characters like Alder, Cheren, Bianca, Hugh, and Colress hate him, the rest of Team Plasma fears him (as evidenced at the Dream Yard), and even N, Zinzolin, and the Triad turn against him in the end because he cares nothing for anyone or anything other than himself.

- The character has either no Freudian Excuse to validate their crimes, or their Freudian Excuse is presented in-story as inadequete. Any sympathy evoked in their backstories is long gone in the present time.

There is no Freudian Excuse presented for Ghetsis. None. At all. His motives all come from power lust, arrogance, and a sense of entitlement. His descent from some royal bloodline has led him to believe he's "perfect" and that only he must have Pokemon and use their power to rule over the world. That's all it ever amounts to.

- They are completely devoid of alturistic qualities, show no regret for their crimes, are never redeemed or have any possibility of redemption.

Ghetsis shows zero positive traits or redeeming qualities, and has no alturistic qualities. Everything he does, every word and action he takes towards everyone, is for his own purposes and he'd use anyone he could in order to fulfill his desires, then throw them away when they were of no use to him. He is completely, shamelessly selfish. He shows no regrets for his crimes: in fact, he justifies them every step of the way because he is "perfect." He's never redeemed. Not all "Pokemon" villains are, but Ghetsis is one of few who was offered redemption by someone he had personally hurt all his life, and yet he still refuses to accept it. With Cyrus, there was at least the possibility of redemption because he only drowned out attempts to help him due to his mental issues. Ghetsis just cannot accept or embrace forgiveness, goodness, and redemption because he's just plain evil. There's not a shred of decency in this guy.

What tops this all off is just how much Ghetsis gets off on hurting others and elevating himself to greater glory. He goes on about how he cares for no other human being or Pokemon: only himself, and how much he loves seeing someone break in despair when all their hopes and dreams are taken from them. He's cruel to everyone, takes sadistic pleasure in being so, every deplorable action Team Plasma takes and thus everything that goes wrong in the story is because of his scheming, he'd be ready and willing to dispose of even his adopted child, whom he never loved, he is verbally and possibly physcially abusive to people and Pokemon, cares for nothing but himself, wants to enslave everyone, his actions in the sequel endanger many lives, he tortures Kyurem in order to have it comply with said destructive actions, and he also tries to have the player character killed. He's one of the few villains who's willing to have a Pokemon flat-out attack a human child directly rather than challenge them to a battle first. And the death would not be by icicle impalement: it would be a slow, painful death by freezing, which would be even worse and is the kind of death Ghetsis would enjoy more because the person will suffer and break in despair. Add all this together, and Ghetsis is pretty much the Devil of this series, like his name and appearance would suggest. That's why he's a valid example of a Complete Monster.

Edit: Sorry, I was using the Mirror Wiki's (much better) definition of Complete Monster to prove my point. The TV Tropes one is:
 * - The character is truly heinous by the standards of the story, which makes no attempt to present the character in any positive way.
 * - The character's terribleness is played seriously at all times, evoking fear, revulsion and hatred from the other characters in the story.
 * - They are completely devoid of altruistic qualities. They show no regret for their crimes.

Yes, Ghetsis hits all three of those. The one thing TV Tropes claims he fails is the "heinous standard", and I already covered why the Cyrus comparission doesn't fly because Cyrus was from a different installment: not part of the same story. So Ghetsis is indeed a Complete Monster, thus the category should stay.

DocColress (talk) 20:04, April 9, 2013 (UTC)DocColress

Role in the Sequel
If anything, I think Ghetsis could probably qualify as a CM in the sequel games, because his plan this time around was to freeze the entire Unova region, and it most likely would've lead to hundreds, if not millions of deaths. robinsonbecky@bellsouth.net (talk) 02:30, August 16, 2014 (UTC)Robinsonbecky

True, but that alone wouldn't be enough to qualify him since one region is small time compared to Cyrus and Lysandre's intended body counts (Worse in the latter's case since he wasn't even planning on re-creating them - just flat-out mass murdering everyone.)  What qualifies Ghetsis is that he causes as much damage as he's capable of with the scale and resources at his disposal, AND he has zero redeeming features on to op that. Also the fact that he's a specialist in physical, mental, and emotional torture, which is arguably even worse than murder. DocColress (talk) 21:46, September 4, 2014 (UTC) DocColress

I know that, I just think that given what he could do with freezing the Unova region over, he could at least be as heinous as he could've possibly been. robinsonbecky@bellsouth.net (talk) 04:29, September 7, 2014 (UTC)Robinsonbecky

That's what I mean. The way Ghetsis is characterized (and remember, characterization is as important as actions when it comes to this trope) gives us the idea that if there was a means to the end of gaining power that he felt was most suitable, he'd use it to the best of his abilities. If he had Cipher's resources at his disposal to create Shadow Pokemon with, he would. If he had the Golden Armor than Purple-Eyes hijacked, he'd use it. If he had the powers of Mystery Dungeon Darkrai or even Arceus itself, he'd use it. It just so happens that he had only Kyurem to work with after the failure of his initial plan, so he used it's powers to fire through his canon (by torturing it, no less) in order to do the most damage to Unova that he was capable of dealing out. He states flat-out that the end result of his freeza attacks will be "the terrified masses" relinquishing power to him. They'd be terrified, of course, for their lives. So yes, he was intending to cause a large amount of death and destruction just to extort power. And that's not getting into what he attempts to do to the Player Character at the chasm - a Glaciate attack, if used on a human, would be fatal. DocColress (talk) 00:10, September 8, 2014 (UTC)DocColress