Topic on User talk:DocColress

Well, I decided that it's probably for the best that I set up some sort of topic where potential examples are discussed for the Complete Monster trope given it's controversial nature, so I was thinking about simply making a big one here assuming you don't mind of course. If you do, I'll think of something else. Since I've had an admittedly bad habit of adding examples that I feel count without any discussion, I'd like to be more diplomatic about future additions since I quite like discussions and getting more involved with others in this community.

But since I don't want this to be an empty topic, I'd like to get it to use for just one minor example for now since I'd hate to waste your time. Yesterday, I had a bit of a Disney movie marathon with some cousins of mine, and that got me to wonder about a potential example I'd like to run by you. Specifically, the candidate is Stromboli from Pinocchio. Now I feel a bit silly about suggesting someone who ISN'T that terrifying Coachman, but due to this site's more lenient (But still firm) views on the trope I think I can make a case for him. Now admittedly, he's MUCH lower key than the Coachman, and the fact that his evil is directed only to one character (Pinocchio, as you know) hurts his chances. But I think it's the moral nature of what he does to Pinocchio that I feel could make him a contender for the role, though admittedly far outclassed by the Coachman.

Who is Stromboli?: Stromboli is a traveling puppet-master who puts on shows for money. Nothing too heinous here... yet. However, whenever he realizes that he could make a fortune off of Pinocchio for being a living puppet, his truly unpleasant qualities surface.

What does he do?: He decides to let Pinocchio star in his puppet show to see how much money he could make off of a puppet who needs no strings to move. He at first comes off as amusing and jovial, but a bit of his true nature slips out whenever Pinocchio trips and falls at the beginning of the show. He reacts by grabbing him, then yelling and threatening him (And his body language seems to suggest that he may have been considering inflicting physical harm on him as well) before realizing that the audience was entertained by his screw-up. The show proved to be successful, and Stromboli is pleased by the huge amount of money he earned from that night's show. Once again, he acts very jovial and friendly at first, but when Pinocchio goes to leave and tell his father Gepetto about what happened that night, Stromboli grabs Pinnochio and locks him in a birdcage. It's here where we see Stromboli's cruel and unpleasant side come out: he reveals to Pinocchio that he's far too profitable to be let go and says that he'll tour the world while making more and more money off of him. And once Pinocchio gets too old to perform, Stromboli will kill him and use him as firewood. Once Pinocchio starts to freak out upon hearing this, Stromboli simply responds by yelling at him to shut up then threatening him with physical violence before leaving to drive the horses pulling the cart, laughing to himself as he imagines the future influx of cash heading his way. While he comes off as silly and hammy as well, he isn't played for laughs and is more of a Laughably Evil villain whose deeds are taken seriously.

Is he heinous by the standards of the story?: This is where I think it gets tricky. The Coachman is a lot worse than Stromboli, there's absolutely no debate there. However, I'd say Stromboli would be a close second simply because he doesn't have the Coachman's resources available to him. And out of the five antagonists shown in the movie, I'd say he handily beats out three of them: Honest John and Gideon (two conmen who get Pinocchio roped in with Stromboli and help the Coachmen with collecting boys, but don't count at all due to being horrified by the Coachman's plot and are only helping him because they're intimidated by him) as well as Monstro the whale (who also doesn't count at all due to being a wild animal, and only chases Pinocchio and Geppeto down at the film's climax because they lit a fire in him, which pretty much provoked him into violence). Unlike Honest John and Gideon who are shown to have standards when committing illegal acts, Stromboli has no problem whatsoever with putting a child into slavery and killing him at the end, as long as he makes a good amount of cash doing so.

Any Freudian Excuse?: Nope, he's simply a greedy asshole who is willing to do whatever it takes to make some money.

Verdict: I'd say he arguably counts. Yeah, he may pale in comparison to the Coachman, but the fact that he's willing to enslave and kill a little boy speaks volumes about his character and helps him stand out among the other villains shown in the movie who either have standards or are a mindless animal.

I'm not sure about Stromboli getting any write-up for the Disney page unless you can propose a good one, but he actually is already mentioned on the film's YMMV:

• Stromboli qualifies as well. Even if he is a puppet, Pinocchio is still a child. How do you threaten to keep him caged, exploit him, and then murder him by chopping him into firewood after you're done with him, and live with yourself?

And yes, I think he is a qualifier or at least contender. I have an Encyclopedia of Disney Animated Characters, and the writer talks about what makes both Stromboli and the Coachmen almost equally heinous (I say "almost" because even the book flat out states that the Coachman is the worse of the two). The two things that stand out about Stromboli is how for one he's the anti-Geppetto, an artist or creator who does what he does for profit rather than the art of it and is more into disposing of his work once he's done using it rather than preserving his creations. And for another thing, it mentions how horrifying it is that he seems so friendly with Pinocchio, almost like a second father figure to him, before completely betraying his trust and revealing his true monstrous nature. The betrayal of trust is an even greater horror than his actual murderous intentions and display of venom towards Pinocchio. As the book says: his "friend" is not a friend at all and very evidently never has been. It also says Stromboli's power as a villain is, despite being on-screen for such a short amount of time, he comes off as a genuine person rather than a straight-forward cardboard thug character. He appears friendly, generous, and jovial only to be revealed as greed, mean, and downright murderous, which is the film's first "loss of innocence" moment. The book caps it off by saying "Stromboli is a character from nightmare: such characters are often found in the real world, too, which makes Stromboli all the more terrifying." So yes, that's pretty convincing that he'd count in this trope.

So, looks like I didn't make a fool of myself for once! I'll come up with a write-up later as I have a lot of other stuff I'd like to do at the moment, but thanks to this Encyclopedia you mentioned, I think I may have even more of a justification for asking about him!

And I apologize if I come off as annoying or anything when I come to you with questions regarding this trope, I'd just rather get other people's input given the controversial nature of this trope. I'll keep suggestions down to a minimum, and only make suggestions maybe once a week if I feel like it.

You could use some of what I said the encyclopedia stated as reference for what to put in the write-up, BTW. As far as Disney movie villains go, the only other one currently not on the trope page that I could see qualifying as a CM is Maleficent, but she might be a harder case to make because of things like Kingdom Hearts (where she fails to measure up to the heinous standard set by Xehanort and has a few, though small, redeeming features) and that damn Angelina Jolie movie that rewrote her entire character and story. Oh, and I also think a case could be made for Glenn Close's Cruella DeVille, which is sort of strange since that character's animated counterpart doesn't even remotely qualify.

No, don't you go thinking you're being annoying. I really REALLY appreciate people like you coming to me with questions or proposals and stuff like that. Helps keep the tropes clean and gives clarification. A minimum would be nice, but it doesn't half to be so little as once a week. You can contact me for whatever, whenever. :)

I think I'll get on that write-up tonight. But as for Maleficent... you're right, she is a tricky example indeed. I mean, within the movie Sleeping Beauty she comes off as pure evil and not only curses a baby to die purely out of spite and pettiness, but is also responsible for a lot of the kingdom's problems in general. She's feared by other characters in the story, and within the movie isn't shown to be redeemable at all. She seems to like her raven assistant, but I'm not sure if that would be a redeeming quality or not. But then again, there's the fact that within other Disney properties she doesn't come anywhere close to meeting this status. Given that not only is she shown to be a tragic hero in that live-action movie (Boy oh BOY do I hate the direction they took in that movie... but that's neither here nor there) but also shows a few noble traits in Kingdom Hearts (I'm specifically thinking in 2 where she's willing to hold off a swarm of Heartless to let Sora and co. get to Xemnas) seems to show that others view her as redeemable, or at least not pure evil.

But then again, I'm personally more inclined to list her as an example because her situation reminds me a lot of Sweeney Todd in how in the original stories he was shown to be a monster, but was written as more sympathetic in later adaptations. Or Ganondorf, who becomes a lot more sympathetic and even noble in Wind Waker but still qualified as a monster in not only the earlier Ocarina of Time, but in Twilight Princess which was made later and took place in another timeline. When I really look at it, I can't see why we couldn't list her as an example for the original Sleeping Beauty and mention that it was with later adaptations where she started moving away from Complete Monster status. I'll admit that I'm not fully sure if she should qualify, but I'm leaning towards a yes.

As for Cruella... well, not sure how much I can help there since I haven't seen either live action Dalmatians movie. If she didn't meet the cut in the animated original despite being hell-bent on stealing and butchering tons of puppies for the purpose of making fur coats and going as far as to hunt them down when they escaped from her, I'm not sure if she'd qualify in the live-action films. Now I did some research regarding the live-action movies and it seems that she remains hellbent on killing puppies and only stopped because of some sort of therapy that became undone later... but I'm still not quite sure if I'd say yes to her simply because I'm lacking context. How was she presented in the movies? Were there extremes she took that she didn't in the animated film? I'd rather try to avoid passing judgment on examples from media I'm not familiar with since I don't want to make any uninformed decisions.

I think I'll have to check her relationship with her raven again to see if that counts as Pet the Dog or not. Because otherwise she's at least a borderline example of the trope in the original movie, being The Devil incarnate and heinous by the standards of that world and it's story. In KH she certainly isn't a CM, but then again, Shan Yu most certainly was a CM in his movie but just a Generic Doomsday Villain in KH2. Only Scar and Frollo retained their status. (Oh and I hate how the Maleficent movie turned out too. What the Hell were they even thinking?)

Well we can definitely say that Jolie's Maleficent is nothing like the Disney version. Neither is the one on Once Upon A Time. It's mainly the Disney animated version and how she's used in stuff like House Of Mouse or KH that gets me. Sweeney Todd and Ganon are cases where their incarnations differ, where Maleficent is like Cyrus: he was redeemable elsewhere in the franchise, so him being so in the games universe doesn't seem as unlikely. Does the same hold true for Maleficent? I feel the same as you, really: I lean more towards yes but because the issue is so tricky, I'm not sure she should be listed on the main trope page.

It's mainly for two reasons. One is Glenn Close, while hamming it up, did deliberately play her as 100% devilish and vile. And two is the additions they made to her character in the first film, where she's now seen as the head of a fashion business that Anita works for but has secretly been having her minions abduct animals and take them to a skinner who kills them and skins the fur hides off for Cruella to use as new outfits that she could profit off of, in short, a secret illegal poaching operation. The way this is shown to us is her having a rare Siberian tiger abducted from a zoo, meaning that she's greatly inconvenienced animals and humans for who knows how long just to benefit herself. Out of greed and love for fur fashion in general, not to mention a very clear disgust for animals in general. In the sequel she has been forcibly changed by therapy to be a better person and model citizen, but it gets undone due to a mental breakdown triggered by loud noise, played as Cruella's "true nature" coming back as she remembers who she really is, suggesting that she was never truly redeemable in the long run. Afterwards she frames a guy for dognapping, manipulates said guy's lover into letting her guard down while her minions go after the puppies she's after, tries to have the puppies killed at a skinning factory, and locks the two human protagonists up in a cellar to rot when they intervene. Oh, and she deals out a lot of abuse to her main employee, Alonzo. In general, her character is still very camp but there's notably more menace added to her as well.

So this Cruella is the head of a poaching operation and engages in all sorts of forms of animal cruelty, manipulates and abuses the people around her, and goes to the extent of leaving people to die all to satisfy her greed and lust for money and fur? Eesh, now she's the kind of person I'd consider to be a Complete Monster. Unfortunately I just get that sinking feeling that she'd probably be shot down by the delightful denizens of TV Tropes if she was proposed there, but it seems to me that she meets all criteria: she's as evil as she can be within the standards of the story, is treated as a serious threat by the characters within the story, and has no Freudian excuse or redeeming qualities (And her one redemption was forced and didn't stick). So yeah, I'd be more than happy to welcome her to the Disney section for Complete Monsters!

And I also have a write-up for Stromboli if you're willing to read it!

• Also from the same movie, we have traveling puppeteer Stromboli. A seemingly friendly and jovial man with a bit of a temper, Stromboli allowed Pinocchio to perform in his puppet show because he thought that a puppet with no strings attached could make him a fortune. Having been proven right, he celebrates later that night with Pinocchio who is happy to have been able to help this new friend of his, and can't wait to tell his father Gepetto about what happened that night. It's here however when we see Stromboli's true nature: having found Pinocchio to be very profitable that night, he never had any intention of letting him go and instead tosses him into a birdcage and reveals to the horrified boy that he intends to travel the world and exploit him for profit. And when he gets too old for more performances, Stromboli intends on killing him and using his remains for firewood. Despite his small amount of screentime, Stromboli is able to establish himself as a disturbingly realistic villain: he's able to come off as genuine and affable at first which allows him to take advantage of a naïve little boy, only to betray his trust when he reveals the true monster within.

It sounds good to me when I read it, though I'm afraid it's a bit lengthy (It's a common thing with me, I tend to make wordy Monster entries so I can make sure readers know why they qualify). That being said though, I feel it's because I wanted to include that great bit from the book about how Stromboli comes off as a realistic manipulative sociopath: charming and friendly at first, until you really get to know him and see the monster he truly is!

Yes, pretty much. To me, it really comes down to how she treats animals and people, and the severity of her treatment and actions. In the animated version, she was only a threat to animals but just a petty Jerkass to all the human characters (Roger, Anita, Horace and Jasper), and while trying to make a coat out of 99 puppies is sick and wrong, it's ultimately still standard cartoon villainy as opposed to truly heinous. Live Action Cruella uses, abuses, and inconveniences humans and animals in pretty big ways, and the deeds coupled with the performance really sells what a loathsome piece of work she is. I'm reminded of another character listed here as a Complete Monster despite having no body count: Mr. Potter of It's A Wonderful Life. He managed to be a CM purely by being in the business of inconveniencing or flat out ruining the lives of others and being a despicable human being to every single person he interacted with, and this was reflected in the actor's performance that made him truly seem like The Devil incarnate. Same case with Glenn Close as Cruella. Of course TV Tropes would veto her because they associate Cruella in general with Laughably Evil standard villainy, but here she matches the criteria. Also, the main female human in the sequel pretty much takes the stance that some people are incapable of changing because she never buys Cruella's rehabilitation, saying that someone capable of doing the things she did is just rotten to the core beyond salvation. And this proves to be true, so yeah, she counts.

No, lengthy write-ups are good at describing the vileness and heinous nature of the villain! I'll proofread it and if you haven't put it up yet, I will. As for Cruella, I'll do that write-up!

Sorry for not thanking you earlier, I was going to post Stromboli's writeup but I got sidetracked before flat out falling asleep! The Cruella entry looks great as well! But I've noticed that you've been going ahead with putting up examples that shouldn't be listed in the subpage talk section for various works. It seems like it'll be a pretty big project, you mind if I help out?

You're welcome and thanks! :) Well since I'm an admin, I was planning on doing it myself, but if you're to help, what do you have in mind?

I think I can handle a number of the Video Game pages, as well as Western Animation to a point. Not quite as sure with Anime, but I can also add non-examples to the Fullmetal Alchemist (Brotherhood and Manga, I'm not familiar with the 2003 anime) and One Piece. Heck, I'll do a couple of Disney ones too.

How about you let me finish my contributions to the discussion pages first before you get around to it, just so we don't bump into each other. If I've forgotten any, you can add them. Though, out of curiosity, which particular characters do you have in mind?

A couple of Disney examples I've been wanting to stress as non-monstrous are Gaston (I remember him popping up as an example back in the old days of TV Tropes) Mother Gothel, and CLU on the Disney pages (Atoning for old sins of mine), pretty much everyone not named Ghetsis in the Pokémon page (For the mainstream games at least, also Ardos and Lovrina in XD in regards for spinoffs), the Baron from one of the One Piece movies, and Sadist Show characters in general for Western Animation (As in characters from the Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park).

Hmmm, I might end up naming them once I reach those discussions, but if you feel you want to make edits, you could. Would you like for me to notify you once I'm done doing my part?

Sure! I'm actually doing some other things myself in the meantime, so I'll be more than happy to wait for you to finish up!

Aaaand I'm finished! Feel free to do contributions and edits of your own now if you so choose.

So over the past week, I was able to play Infamous: Second Son and I believe I may have found a potential contender, a woman named Brooke Augustine! The key word however is "believe", because she's a bit of an odd case. I'll go over it more in the effort post.

Who is Brooke Augustine?: Augustine is the head of an oppressive government organization which captures super-powered people known as Conduits, despite being one herself. She not only partakes in the oppression of people like herself, but normal humans as well.

What does she do?: When we first see Augustine, a security truck holding three Conduit prisoners crashes at a Native American reservation where protagonist Delsin Rowe lives. After Delsin who is a Conduit himself accidentally obtains smoke powers from one of the escapees, he stumbles upon Augustine as she apprehends the escaped Conduit by encasing him in concrete. It's here where we see Augustine's sadistic nature already on display: due to the fact that she suspects Delsin of being a Conduit sympathizer, she tortures him for information by growing concrete spikes from his bones to where they stick out of his legs, and even if he admits to being a Conduit himself, she won't believe him and subjects the rest of his tribe to this torture. But unlike what she did to Delsin, she grows concrete spikes IN their organs and flesh, which is shown to be very painful and will slowly kill them unless she removes them, and she absolutely refuses to do so, putting Delsin on a mission to absorb her concrete powers so he can remove them himself.

Later on it's revealed that she intentionally let loose the Conduit prisoners from the truck, intentionally allowing them to put innocent people in danger during the ongoing "War on Conduits" that she created, simply because her organization was doing too good of a job capturing conduits, having even gone out of her way to train two of the conduits to hone their powers and make them more dangerous.

Is she heinous by the standards of the story?: Definitely. She not only keeps humans in Seattle under an oppressive military regime and is willing to torture and slowly kill people who won't sell out one of their own, but also intentionally staged an escape where she let loose dangerous superpowered humans for the sake of keeping her organization running. Everyone who isn't one of her troops loathes her for good reason.

Any Freudian Excuse or redeeming qualities?: This is what I mentioned by Augustine being a weird case. It turns out that when her powers awoke in a past confrontation with a highly dangerous Conduit, normal people became terrified of Conduits and would murder them in broad daylight. Because of how Conduits were treated by people, Augustine decided that Conduits couldn't be able to co-exist peacefully alongside humans, which is the real reason why she captures them and is secretly trying to protect them... or so she claims.

Really, this is where it gets tricky. Despite her claims that she's trying to save Conduits from people, she's actually making their situation worse: whenever she captures a Conduit, they're kept locked away and are subject to torture and all sorts of inhumane experiments. And hell, the first Conduit she subjected to this fate was a little girl who trusted her! However, she also genuinely believes that this is the only way to protect her fellow Conduits as well, but is this redeemable? I know some Complete Monsters can genuinely believe that they're in the right such as Frollo or Admiral Akainu, so would this go for Augustine? The main reason why I don't think that she's a proper Well-Intentioned Extremist is that her actions speak far louder than her words: experimenting and torturing the people you claim to protect shows that her priorities are incredibly skewed, and there's also the fact that she knowingly doomed an entire Native American tribe to die and takes sadistic pleasure in growing concrete in people's bodies.

Verdict: I personally argue that she qualifies. It's really hard to sympathize with someone who takes a lot of pleasure in hurting others, intentionally causes more disasters to keep her little government project running, and experiments on and tortures the people she claims to care about and protects.

Okay, this one actually calls to mind a very recent example of a villain who is a Complete Monster: Koba from Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. A key exchange that defines his character and motives is when he claims that he has been fighting for his ape brethren so that they may be strong together, but Caesar counters it with the truth of the matter: "Koba fight for Koba." Similarly, it would seem that "Augustine is fighting for Augustine." She may claim that all of her actions are done for her fellow conduits own good, but when she constantly treats them like either tools or yesterday's garbage, arguably giving them worse treatment than what she's allegedly protecting them from, she shows that what really motivates her is the desire to have absolute power over all these extraordinary beings (on top of normal human beings) so that they can all seem like lesser beings compared to her. It's I Just Want to Be Special taken to a warped, disgusting extreme, coupled with being a sadist and a bully. Heck, TV Tropes actually lists her claims of altruism coupled with her deeds towards the people she's supposed to be altruistic towards as Insane Troll Logic. She's not protecting humans from conduits, nor is she protecting conduits from humans: she's screwing both over in order to elevate herself. So yes, this one's definitely a keeper.

I'll get her write-up posted then! And man, I need to go see Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, I've heard nothing but good things about that movie.

But anyway, have you made a decision regarding Maleficent's inclusion on the Disney page?

Yes, you gotta see it while it's still out! It was phenomenal: easily the best movie to have "Planet of the Apes" in the title.

I lean more towards no, honestly. I think Maleficent as an example is a pure YMMV thing that shouldn't be on the main page. The YMMV page of the film has this: "Complete Monster: Maleficent could be viewed as one, since she is the mistress of all evil!" and her possible status as a CM is also mentioned in her entry on the Magnificent Bastard film page. And really, that's all that's needed for this wiki.

The main reason I can't include her is that her most truly heinous on-screen action is her very first one: cursing Aurora as a baby to die by her sixteenth birthday. All her subsequent on-screen actions don't really go beyond standard villainy. She blasts her mooks for their incompetence, sends her raven to gather information, lures Aurora to her doom and then mocks the fairies, abducts Philip and locks him in the dungeon while taunting him, and then does everything in her power to try to kill Philip before she herself is killed. That's pretty much it: all Kick the Dog and things that villains do. So I think Maleficent is one of those cases where the character would be clearly a CM if we saw more of them on-screen and what earned them their in-universe reputation, but what we actually see is very limited.

I'd say that's pretty fair.

And I'm getting off topic as this is more towards the "NOT a monster" discussion pages, but freaking EDGAR of all people was actually listed as one?! Yikes, I underestimated the abuse this trope got in the past!

Thanks. I added why on the Discussion for Disney CM. Might also need to do the same for Chernabog, who's a similar case: virtually The Devil, yet doesn't do anything notably heinous in his screentime - or in his case, much of anything.

Sadly, yes. It went like: "Edgar, according to some fans. Yes, he's one of the least threatening villains in Disney history, but his intended victims are a family of adorable cats." To which it was correctly rebuked with "But you can see he never tries to kill them. Even when they come back, he just tries to send them away. Justified because he thinks that Cats Have Nine Lives. Plain and simple, Edgar is probably one of the least Complete Monster-y Big Bads in Disney." And really, when even his worst action (nearly skewering O'Malley with a pitchfork) was accidental, you know he far from qualifies for a trope about the worst of the worst.

I think the Disney CM page is pretty much finished in terms of pre-existing Disney material now.

I'd say so, there's no one who I feel really qualifies that isn't on the page yet. I do have my eye on Yokai from the upcoming Big Hero 6, but that's just a future potential example anyway.

Yes, Yokai's the one to look out for this Fall.

Also saw you found the "example" of Edward on the Camp Lazlo YMMV. I actually didn't delete that one myself because I was waiting to see when/if anyone would notice it. When it was brought up on the trope clean-up thread on TV Tropes, it was called "the worst example I've seen" for good reason. XD

I have to say that it's hard for an entry to make me cringe, but that one... I may not have seen the show since middle school, but I know that one asshole moment in one episode that was likely played for laughs given the show's nature does NOT qualify you. At all. Not sure if this is even an accurate comparison, but it reminded me a bit of the time whenever some people kept insisting that Mr. Krabs or even freaking Squidward met the qualifications and got into a serious edit war over it.

It was totally Played for Laughs. He wasn't even a major factor in the episode's plot: the main characters were just hanging for their lives, Raj's hand could've slipped at any moment causing them to fall to their deaths, so Edward (who's among many onlookers in the scene) pulls a bullhorn out of hammer space and shouts "GO FOR IT, RAJ!" It was such a brief moment too, yet somehow someone managed to abuse both Complete Monster AND Moral Event Horizon out of it!

I remember that, the whole "Mr Krabs is TOTALLY played seriously enough to count!" argument. Similar case to people arguing that Peter Griffin or anyone from Family Guy counted. Honestly, looking back at the History on this wiki shows how misused and abused the trope used to be on TV Tropes, it's downright embarrassing. While I don't agree with the overtly anal, heavy-handed, and restricting approach TV Tropes has taken to "repairing" it, I have the idiots who could not seem to grasp what the trope was meant to entail to blame for making it needing of repairs in the first place.

I think to get our minds off of silly non-examples and the like, I'll propose a very definite one who I feel a bit bad about not remembering until recently. Now from my Junior and Senior years of High School Literature, I read about all sorts of lovely villains such as Bob Ewell, Napoleon, as well as Abigail Williams and Danforth. This woman however I believe sickened me more than any of those people and for good reason as she is basically everything wrong with the sex-trafficking industry all bundled up in a loathsome human form. Her name is Mumtaz, and she is from a book called Sold.

Who is Mumtaz?: Mumtaz is a sadistic and greedy madam who runs a brothel called The Happiness House in an Indian red-light district.

What does she do?: Hoo boy. Whenever the innocent, naïve thirteen year-old protagonist Lakshmi is tricked into going with a mysterious man from her Nepalese village down to India, she doesn't quite know what she's been signed up for until Mumtaz leads her to a room where a rather gross old man paid for her sexual services is lying in wait. Whenever she realizes what exactly is in store for her, she fights back when he makes an advance and runs away, only for Mumtaz to chase her down and lock her in a small room where she's starved and savagely beaten unless Lakshmi submits. She refuses, and this treatment goes on for about five days until Mumtaz gets fed up with waiting and drugs her up so she can make her "please" her customers.

There's also the fact that Mumtaz has Lakshmi and the other girls at the house up to their eyeballs in debt that she forces them to make up for with their services. But of course she has no intention of letting them go as long as they can make money for her, as she adds to their debt buy making them pay for condoms, medicine, and other things and basically keeps them stuck in their situation for good. There are a couple of workers there who are there of their own free will and can leave at any time, such as a sickly mother named Pushpa, though their situations aren't much better. For example: Pushpa works at the brothel so she can take care of her young son and infant daughter, and is constantly in agony due to her constant sickness. She needs a day off to rest that Mumtaz of course denies her, threatening to kick her family out onto the street if she does since that's a day where she isn't earning any money. And once Pushpa gets too sick to work any longer, Mumtaz makes good on her threat and orders her and her son to leave and never come back. She does offer to take care of her baby for her... though it's far from noble as she wants to make her a prostitute when she becomes old enough.

And then, there's another thing that I feel truly and irrevocably put her up in this status that still gives me the shivers to this day: the most horrifying fate she has in store for employees who try to escape or receive gifts from clients. For this punishment, she has the brothel's cook grind up chili-peppers into a spicy mixture that Mumtaz dips a stick into. She then takes it and SHOVES IT UP THE GENITALS of whichever girl "needed to be taught a lesson." I apologize for the sudden caps, but still, how sick do you have to be subject someone to that kind of pain and not regret it in the slightest? Thankfully, she ends up getting arrested as the girls from the brothel are saved after a successful police raid at the end of the book.

Is she heinous by the standards of the story?: Do you really have to ask? While other unpleasant characters are in the book such as the Lakshmi's greedy stepfather who sells her into prostitution and the guy who made the offer and took her down to India, Mumtaz eclipses them and everyone else in terms of heinousness.

Any Freudian Excuse or Redeeming Qualities?: Hell. No. She is incredibly cruel and savage towards the girls and is properly feared and loathed by the girls she has at the Happiness House. There IS a brief moment where Lakshmi feels that she loves her after being nursed back to health after being afflicted with a disease, but she was delirious and not in her right mind at the time, and she continues to fear her afterwards. Mumtaz does have one loyal worker who will rat out any of the girls who are trying anything funny, but I don't remember her and Mumtaz having a good relationship or anything, she's more or less a crony of sorts and doesn't get a lot of characterization if memory serves. And while she gives medicine to girls who are feeling sick and won't have them work if they contract HIV, it's pragmatic villainy as she doesn't want to lose customers and views these sick workers as being a hindrance to her business. And leaving the girls to die in the streets of a red light district in a country that isn't kind to prostitutes is hardly a redeeming quality either.

The Verdict?: I'd honestly be surprised if she didn't qualify, she exploits children for profit by putting them into prostitution for god's sake, and happily makes money off of them without caring about them in the slightest.

And this is my last example for a while. Truth be told I would have suggested her around the time I bought up Augustine (Who I feel I need to do a re-write on as her entry is HUGE), I just wasn't thinking about her until now. As for now, Mumtaz, Stromboli, and Augustine were the only characters I wanted to present for the time being and I'll likely be gone for a while unless I take in another form of media with another of these delightful creatures in it.

She does all THAT...for profit? For personal gain? With a mix of straight up cruelty in there as well? Say no more, this is a VERY easy keep.

Had a feeling.

OK, Milked1992 needs to be straightened out in regards to how this trope works on this Wiki. He AGAIN tried to remove Scroop from the page and also tried to remove live action Cruella, probably because they weren't "sufficiently heinous" enough. Maybe by TV Tropes standards, but not here.

If it happens again, I'll block him for a little while and give him a warning.

You can do the same, since you now have sysop powers.

Oh, didn't see that feature. How do I do it?

Go to the page of the User you want block, look on the sidebar, and you'll a block user option.

You'll be given a list of options to block a user for, like length of time, whether they can edit their talk page or not, etc.

Check the options you want, then block the user.

You can also use this to change the length of the block.

OK, thanks for letting me know. ^^

Have you seen The Huntsman: Winter's War? It's the sequel to Snow White and the Huntsman, and I feel it pushes Queen Ravenna straight into CM territory. She was very close in the first film, but just barely fell short due to being shown in a tragic light. In the sequel, all mitigating factors are long gone and she's well and truly beyond the pail. Her absolute worst crime is murdering her sister Freya's baby daughter by forcing the baby's father to burn her alive in her cradle, for no apparent reason other than to destroy her sister's belief in love. She has other new crimes under her belt too, but the above atrocity combined with her crimes in the first film really seals the deal.