Special:Badtitle/NS90:Talk:Complete Monster/Pokémon/Ardos/reply

This is one candidate I'm damn sick of discussing, so let's hope this puts an end to it.

An on-screen Pet the Dog is an on-screen Pet the Dog regardless of what prompted it or what motivated it, and if it was on his father's orders, then this shows that Ardos is loyal to his father, who is both more heinous than him and who we have good reason, this moment included, to believe shaped Ardos into the man he is today. Even if we're to believe it's in Ardos' nature to be evil, nurture plays a part here too. If Ardos were truly completely monstrous, wouldn't he consider himself to be above his father and not obey his orders to do something good? And yeah, our limited knowledge prevents us from knowing the full relationship between these family members, so we have to go by what the game does show us, and if it doesn't blatantly suggest that he doesn't care about his family because they're his family, then we can't use that to qualify him.

Less heinous doesn't equal potentially redeemable, but eclipsed in heinousness by another villain in a shared space, scale, setting, and narrative of a work who is redeemable makes it harder for the less heinous villain to qualify. (And Nascour's action towards Wes is a huge Kick the Dog that sells him as being as cruel as Evice and Ein, so it stays.) And the "evidence" that Ardos is potentially redeemable is that his more heinous father and his brother who's often complicit with Ardos in their actions in the game both redeem themselves, and there's not enough sufficient evidence to label Ardos as just being the black sheep. Fanatical devotion isn't always a sign of irredeemable evil - Saturn of Team Galactic was fanatically devoted to Cyrus and his cause, yet he redeemed himself. Heck, Mars in the anime was going to blow up a populated island similar to what Ardos wanted to do, but she's no CM (and it was done on Cyrus' call, anyway.) I forget if Ardos or Greevil had the idea to blow up the island, but I know they'd both be culpable for that if it happened, the only difference being that Ardos wasn't willing to stop and give consideration to the loss of life that it'd cause like his father was.

If a third game had been made, I can just as easily imagine Eldes being in it and wanting to get his brother to see that it's not too late to change, and maybe Ardos gets redemption, even if it's a Redemption Equals Death sort of deal. That speaks volumes about how un-thoroughly, un-horrifically evil he came across. I'm also sick of hearing Mombi come up and thus will not address that subject. I did not mean to suggest that Ardos had no choice in the way he behaves and the actions he takes, since he certainly does, but being raised and conditioned to be evil by his father and Cipher might adequately explain what his deal is, even if his brother chose to respond differently. It's like Noatak and Tarrlock from The Legend of Korra - both were raised by the same abusive father, but both turned out differently, albeit both became bad people in different ways. And all that last part is Wild Mass Guessing about that third game that never got made. That he possibly could go further and become a definite Complete Monster is why he's a YMMV example. But I've covered thoroughly why he is not and cannot ever be a main page example.