During the investigation of recent hollers in the Complete Monster thread, it's become apparent to the staff that an insular, unfriendly culture has evolved in the Complete Monster and Magnificent Bastard threads that is causing problems.
Specific issues include:
- Overzealous hollers on tropers who come into the threads without being familiar with all the rules and traditions of the tropes. And when they are familiar with said rules and traditions, they get accused (with little evidence) of being ban evaders.
- A few tropers in the thread habitually engage in snotty, impolite mini-modding. There are also regular complaints about excessive, offtopic "socializing" posts.
- Many many thread regulars barely post/edit anywhere else, making the threads look like they are divorced from the rest of TV Tropes.
- Following that, there are often complaints about the threads and their regulars violating wiki rules, such as on indexing, crosswicking, example context and example categorization. Some folks are working on resolving the issues, but...
- Often moderator action against thread regulars leads to a lot of participants suddenly showing up in the moderation threads to protest and speak on their behalf, like a clique.
It is not a super high level problem, but it has been going on for years and we cannot ignore it any longer. There will be a thread in Wiki Talk
to discuss the problem; in the meantime there is a moratorium on further Complete Monster and Magnificent Bastard example discussion until we have gotten this sorted out.
Update: The new threads have been made and can be found here:
Please see the Frequently Asked Questions and Common Requests List before suggesting any new entries for this trope.
IMPORTANT: To avoid a holler to the mods, please see here for the earliest date a work can be discussed, (usually two weeks from the US release), as well as who's reserved discussion.
When voting, you must specify the candidate(s). No blanket votes (i.e. "![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_up_emote.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
to everyone I missed").
No plagiarism: It's fair to source things, but an effortpost must be your own work and not lifted wholesale from another source.
We don't care what other sites think about a character being a Complete Monster. We judge this trope by our own criteria. Repeatedly attempting to bring up other sites will earn a suspension.
What is the Work
Here you briefly describe the work in question and explain any important setting details. Don't assume that everyone is familiar with the work in question.
Who is the Candidate and What have they Done?
This will be the main portion of the Effort Post. Here you list all of the crimes committed by the candidate. For candidates with longer rap sheets, keep the list to their most important and heinous crimes, we don't need to hear about every time they decide to do something minor or petty.
Do they have any Mitigating Factors or Freudian Excuse?
Here you discuss any potential redeeming or sympathetic features the character has, the character's Freudian Excuse if they have one, as well as any other potential mitigating factors like Offscreen Villainy or questions of moral agency. Try to present these as objectively as possible by presenting any evidence that may support or refute the mitigating factors.
Do they meet the Heinousness Standard?
Here you compare the actions of the Candidate to other character actions in the story in order to determine if they stand out or not. Remember that all characters, not just other villains, contribute to the Heinousness Standard
Final Verdict?
Simply state whether or not you think the character counts or not.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Aug 31st 2023 at 4:14:10 AM
Lizzid people!
I requested for the SCP Foundation examples to be added to the other media page.
Speaking of SCP, don't we have more entries to discuss?
Did we decide on SCP-106?
Personally, I think it counts. SCP-106 has been observed to be fully sentient, sadistic and self aware. While the canon is iffy, the game SCP Containment Breach has it actually writing threatening messages and allying with SCP 079
Lizzid people!
Does the game also include SCPs such as Bobble the Clown?
edited 31st Aug '14 6:14:13 PM by AustinDR
Yes but entries like that would have be written with only the game as reference, not the website articles. Aside from SCP-035, don't we have non-SCP entries to judge?
Bobble isn't in the game, actually. SCP-106 is easily the nastiest there, but I think it can count from just the website articles alone
Lizzid people!
Oh okay then.
Say, Morgenthaler, have you been able to expand Aphidel and Quinn Dexter?
A total has-been.
Since Super Buu was born of the evil of fat Majin Buu that literally came out and ate him in order to have dominance and agency over his being, then he's really the only incarnation of Buu that could qualify. Fat Buu, Evil Buu, and Kid Buu all have moral agency issues, but Super Buu did everything willingly by choice.
edited 31st Aug '14 9:23:41 PM by AnewMan
I asked you to spoiler mark that for a reason.
But that answers the morality issue. Could somebody list(in spoilers) his actual actions beyond that?
Ok.
What do we need for an entry? I'll write up an entry for Lord Recluse, I just need a few guidelines.
If everyone were normal, the world would be a dull place. Like reality television.
Ah, Dragon Ball Z characters. Just when I started musing about how I wanted to go see the movie but had to skip it because I was running a Tabletop Game\Dark Heresy session.
From memory of the people brought up recently, Cell was a keeper because we established he has full moral agency as Android 16 was fully mechanical and also programed to kill Goku but openly chose to defy his programing and assist him. His sadism is just another mark against him.
With the Buus, I think we only counted Super Buu because we determined that he did have moral agency, while Kid Buu is basically just a force of destruction personified.
The only other villain who was a clear cut was Tao from the original Dragon Ball. I personally voted against him for various reasons but that vote was settled rather decisively in his favour so I'd suggest letting it lie.
Pronounced YAK-you-luss
Basically, the thing is that Buu was, as mentioned, an ancient demon summoned by an Evil Sorcerer to help him in universal domination. The demon, Kid Buu, had a special power in addition to his raw strength - he could absorb people, imprisoning them inside himself to be slowly digested whilst he took their power, intellect, techniques, and some of their appearance and personality. He was childlike, mindlessly destructive, and monstrously powerful, but after he absorbed the most powerful god in the universe, the Grand Supreme Kai, the Kai's innocent kindness unlocked the good within him, calming him down a little (though he remained a Psychopathic Manchild with anger-management issues and the ability to blow up planets - not a fun combination). Buu took on the appearance and... ah... dimensions of the Grand Supreme Kai, which is why this version is called 'Fat Buu'. The remaining Kais took advantage of his newfound docility and sealed him away, and over the years, the Grand Supreme Kai faded away, becoming another part of Buu's mind and body.
Five million years later, the 'son' (translation: magical clone) of the Evil Sorcerer unleashed Fat Buu on Earth. He promptly went on a rampage again, but a human befriended him and taught him the value of life (he was so innocent and unworldly that he didn't even realise killing people was bad). Fat Buu took his friend's lessons to heart and settled down, but when a pair of hunters shot their pet dog, and then his human buddy himself, his newfound resolve was stretched to breaking point. He didn't want to break his promise to his friend, but he couldn't handle the emotions that the attempted murder of the first person he was ever close to had caused, so he took the all-powerful god-child's route out and literally expelled his evil, murderous impulses from his body. This split him into two creatures, Good Buu (what was left of Fat Buu after all the evil was gone) and Evil Buu, his Enemy Without.
Unfortunately, Evil Buu, being an evil murder-machine, was in the mood for a fight, and overpowered his good parent, fusing them together once again with him in charge and the Good Buu locked away within him. Thus, we got Super Buu, Evil Buu with access to the demon's full power. Super Buu proceeded to kill most of Earth's population and absorb anyone who looked interesting, adding their strength and power to his own.
This is where the moral agency gets complicated. On the one hand, this should have theoretically allowed him to develop a conscience again like he did after consuming the Grand Supreme Kai. On the other, the Grand Supreme Kai was a literal incarnation of power and goodness, and it still took centuries for him to turn Buu around (and he had external help in the form of Mr. Satan, Buu's human friend, who didn't have an easy time calming the big monster down either). DBZ characters are hax, but they're not generally that hax. More importantly, the GSK swayed the original Buu, an amoral being who barely even had a mind to influence. Super Buu has Evil Buu at the controls, and he's doing his level best to ensure that nobody else has a say. It's literally the only reason he's Super Buu rather than Fat Buu in the first place. In other words, the mix of personalities that makes up Super Buu isn't Made of Evil, but it has a Made of Evil guy in charge, and he ain't sharing. He absorbs some of their personality traits, becoming playful when he absorbs Good Buu and becoming eloquent when he absorbs the Genius Bruiser Piccolo, but not enough for a radical change like that which happened after consuming the GSK.
This is best emphasised when the heroes enter Super Buu's body to break out all the people he's absorbed before he can digest them. He realises what's going on and attempts to hunt them down, ranting that by destroying the ingredients that make him who he is (the collective evil of Kid Buu and all his absorbees), they'll kill him. The heroes succeed, freeing Fat/Good Buu in the process (i.e., the last remnant of the Grand Supreme Kai), and with the loss of his power and intellect, Super Buu devolves into his original incarnation before he absorbed anyone, Kid Buu. Kid Buu is, as mentioned, a mindless force of destruction, barely capable of forming words and more animal than person. He's incredibly destructive, but he has no moral agency. The heroes defeated him with the help of Good Buu, one of the few major villains (for a given value of 'villain') to survive Z.
So yes, Super Buu did have a chance to not be evil, but it was far less of a chance than most CM candidates. Even in the best of circumstances, a Heel–Face Turn might have taken centuries, and he had a Made of Evil Split-Personality Takeover actively working to stop him being good.
edited 1st Sep '14 1:30:36 AM by Iaculus
What's precedent ever done for us?
One of my big issues with Made of Evil in Dbz, though...Piccolo was literally the reincarnation of all of the god of the world's evil and hatred manifest into one person...and it took him no time at all comparatively to become a good guy. Just about 10-15 years
Pronounced YAK-you-luss
Super Buu was around for about a couple of days at most, though, and it's not completely clear that Piccolo was a Made of Evil as his dad - reincarnation doesn't determine morality, as demonstrated with Kid Buu and his human incarnation, Uub.
What's precedent ever done for us?
I'd say the fact he had a chance to choose a different path, no matter how long it took, makes it a ![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Thumbs_up_emoticon_3268.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
in the moral agency department. Time isn't important to me, it's whether it's possible or not.
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
I'll submit Juarez tomorrow morning. Did we ever get a consensus on WHTTMOT!Mxy?
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts
Lizzid people!
Could we remove Judge Claude Frollo from the Cry for the Devil trope?
I would remove it on the grounds that its writeup seems inconsistent with the listing of Frollo under Complete Monster, and the cleanup process makes me think that the CM entry is more accurate than the CFTD one.
It's worth noting though that CFTD is an Audience Reaction. Thusly, it's not mutually exclusive with a trope like Complete Monster at least in theory.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Cry for the Devil is okay. It's an audience reaction. Sympathy for the Devil is what we have to look out for since that's an in-story, very much objective trope.
Pronounced YAK-you-luss
I guess the other thing to note about Super Buu is that he can only exist as an evil being, since he's very specifically 'Fat Buu with Evil Buu in charge'. If Evil Buu decided to turn over a new leaf and become good, that would logically mean that the other personalities comprising Buu would get a say again (rather than just the evil bits that Evil Buu skimmed off them), and he would revert to some form of his default state, Fat Buu. Evil Buu's quite clear about considering this death for himself.
What's precedent ever done for us?
I noticed in the YMMV 12 Years a Slave page, Edwin Epps is listed a Jerk Ass Woobie, I assume that is a misreading of that trope and Epps is still a monster:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/TwelveYearsASlave
edited 1st Sep '14 9:54:53 AM by TheOverlord
Just reading that makes me ill. Oh, Epps is really just in love with the slave he rapes, abuses and whips until her back is bloody tatters! Oh, the poor, POOR man. He's the REAL victim here because he can't express his love any other way.
Burn that with fucking fire. That's borderline offensive.
His character page says Caesar Clown cares a little for Smiley, as sort of a pet. I'm guessing not redeeming enough. And I removed the WIE part from Akainu's entry.
Lighty, any spoilers for any of the works that need to be kept?
edited 31st Aug '14 3:17:31 PM by ACW
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts