Best Villain Tournament Rd 2: Saddam Hussein vs Joseph Stalin

[Judge Clock]

Saddam Hussein

VS



Joseph Stalin

[Arius]

Stalin
He could very accurately be described as super Saddam after all, also he was able to fool idiot communists that lived in the first world into supporting him while murdering people which is awesome

[PITTFOX]

Stalin

[Speedy Cumzales]

Stalin

[HalloweenJack]

stalin. if a mere image of his face could scare Hitler, imagine what it'd do to Saddam

[Ramz]

Saddam is a hero.  Stalin wins.

[Whiskeyclone]

Stalin, big.

[Pie]

Stalin

[NeoGreenLantern]

Stalin

[subaudible one]

Stalin.

[Zechs]

Stalin

[AP]

Hard to say.  Both had epic mustaches.  Stalin scared people so bad, no one wanted to save his life out of fear of being killed for it.  Saddamm had a massive porn collection.

Then again, the US brought down Saddam's Iraq in a few days while they were shitting themselves at the idea of having to go to war with Stalin's USSR.

Stalin.

[Strider119]

Who are the protagonists to these villianous characters, exactly?

[HalloweenJack]

Hard Working Red Blooded Americans Everywhere

[Strider119]

Nominating real people for this tourney is the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard.  I hate this board and I hate all of you.  Especially HJ.

[HalloweenJack]

and the world keeps on turning.

[AP]

Stalin was never real.  It was all made up.  He was actually a paper mache puppet tied to some yarn.

[HalloweenJack]

then who was pulling the strings?

[AP]

Lenin's ghost.

[Hal Jordan]

Stalin

Nominating real people for this tourney is the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard.  I hate this board and I hate all of you.  Especially HJ.

I agree with Strider.  Except, replace all of you with some of you and HJ with AJ.

[The Notorious WDM]

Pity vote for Saddam.

And yeah, adding real people was pretty stupid.

[NeoGreenLantern]

Nominating real people for this tourney is the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard.  I hate this board and I hate all of you.  Especially HJ.

While the term "villain" is a literary term it does include historical narrative. Being real doesn't disqualify them as being a villain as long as they are the antagonist of a story fictional or non. 

[Supeprime]

Saddam got pwnt by a noose last time I checked. Stalin wins.

[Strider119]

While the term "villain" is a literary term it does include historical narrative. Being real doesn't disqualify them as being a villain as long as they are the antagonist of a story fictional or non. 

So then that goes back to my first question as to who the protagonist is in this case? 

[NeoGreenLantern]

So then that goes back to my first question as to who the protagonist is in this case? 

I guess it depends on what historical text or story your reading but since the rules include all versions for the same character it doesn't really matter. Some stories would have Stalin the Antagonist of Trosky, Saddam the antagonist of Bush Sr.

[NeoGreenLantern]

Of course some of the real world people don't fit at all like Uwe Bowl, Bendis, and Ali since it would be near impossible to find any kind of fiction or non fiction that depicts them as Villains outside of blogs.

[Strider119]

I guess it depends on what historical text or story your reading but since the rules include all versions for the same character it doesn't really matter. Some stories would have Stalin the Antagonist of Trosky, Saddam the antagonist of Bush Sr.

And he's the hero of the Saddam story, is my point.  You read a book written by certain groups and you will get Bush as the villian.  History isn't as neat and clean as fiction, which is why nominating real people is so fucking stupid.  Stupid as the day is long.

[NeoGreenLantern]

Same can be said about fiction. Grendel is the protagonist in John Gardner's book. The Wicked Witch is the protagonist in Wicked. Secret Six is a team of antagonist turned protagonist.

[Strider119]

I called you the new Khell, but you have got to be the new Garra.  You have a new story with new characters, then yeah they can move on.  But in The Wizard of Oz, the Wicked Witch is the villian.  The end.  You write a different story with different events you can get a different outcome.  You can have her fight crime later on if you want, whatever.

But Stalin only has one series of events.  He doesn't have multiple stories and he's not a villian to everyone.  He's a celebrated hero in parts of Eastern europe.  He's a real life human being, not a plot element leveraged against another plot element.  How can you even say that any one person is a villian to another person, philosophically, without reducing thier respective lives to trite interactions that would at some point have to have been editorially organized and shuffled?

[NeoGreenLantern]

Thats great and all but that doesn't change the fact that by the very definition of the word villain they fit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villain

A villain (also known in film and literature as the "bad guy", "black hat", or "heavy") is an "evil" character in a story, whether a historical narrative or, especially, a work of fiction.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/villain

5 : one blamed for a particular evil or difficulty

[Strider119]

But you need to have a certian perspective to declare a person villianous.  Like I said, Stalin is viewed as a hero in parts of the world.  Anyone really can be.  You going to pick and choose which authors view of history that you want to follow?  It's still something that's been constructed, so who's construction is the "right" construction?  Historical narrative is still a narrative remember.  Wikipedia that word next.

[NeoGreenLantern]

So you are telling there are no narratives that depict Hussein and Stalin as villains? Remember the tournament rules said that all versions count for the same person.

[Strider119]

There are, sure.  And there are those that don't.  It's a human being, not a thematic plot point.  This is what I'm getting at.  I'm saying that if a writer were to boil a human being down into being a literary device as anyone easily could, it's merely a one sided depiction.  It's not analagous to the Wicked Witch or shit like that.  Things created, thematically, to impact a story.  If someone tells another Wicked Witch story, it's an entirely new narrative, not another interpretation of given events.  Because the events have already been interprited in the first story.  If I write a story about how the wicked witch was actually a freedom fighter and Dorothy was invading her land, I'm still creating new events and dialoguse and whatnot.  I'm not deconstructing fiction, I'm recreating it.  Whereas you can have a book about Stalin being terrible and I can have one about him being a hero and both can be factually accurate ... or inaccurate as the case may be.

[NeoGreenLantern]

Its a human being thats been turned into a thematic plot point. It seems like your biggest problem is that some how vilifying a real human being is wrong but that doesn't change the fact that these people can and have been depicted as antagonist both in historical narratives and in fiction and that is really all that is required to be considered a villain. Are they good enough villains to be part of the tournament? Thats up for debate but that doesn't change the fact they are, in some depictions, the villain.

[Strider119]

I'm not saying it's "wrong" I'm saying that by this stuttered logic, who isn't a villain?  It's retarded.  The determination on which historical figures get to be villains and heroes for this tourney seems arbitrary at best, if not supremely culturally stilted.  You should at least have to define the narrative in which a given villain is the antithesis to a given protagonist.  What was Stalin's role as the villain?  How and who did he antagonize?  Or any real life person, for that matter.  The more I think about it the stupider nominating real people has become.  Someone's life isn't a story book.  Not everyone lives in a 3 act structure wherein they are allowed to deliberately work against a protagonist.

[NeoGreenLantern]

At least with people Stalin, Saddam, and Hitler you can come with various stories where they are the obvious antagonist. People like Ali certainly shouldn't have been involved since they don't even fit the basic definition of a villain.

[AP]

Ali was a villain of Foreman's?

Saddam got pwnt by a noose last time I checked. Stalin wins.

Stalin choked to death on his own vomit.

[HalloweenJack]

Lenin's ghost.

LENIN'S GHOST!!!!

Ali was a villain of Foreman's?

Stalin choked to death on his own vomit.

wait....Stalin is Elvis?!

[Judge Clock]

Stalin

[Judge Clock]

Stalin wins.