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
The Moron
Yep to another Vlad!
Alright, I was reading a play for my Theatre History class and stumbled on a potential keeper from ancient Chinese theatre. Let's talk about the 13th-century play Snow in Midsummer.
Basically, the play follows a young girl named Dou E. She's truthfully named Duanyun, but when she was seven, her father was forced to give her as a daughter to a widow named Mistress Cai in order to repay a debt and Cai renamed her to Dou E. However, Cai has another person who owes her money - the town's doctor. Rather than try to repay the debt, the doctor takes her outside the city and tries to strangle her, only for two men to discover them and force the doctor to flee. One of the men in particular makes the situation infinitely worse.
Who is Donkey Zheng? What does he do?
Donkey is at least the name that this translation I have uses - I can't verify if it's the common name but it's what we're working with.
Donkey and his father Old Zheng come across Cai being strangled and force the doctor to flee. When Cai thanks them, she reveals that she's a widow and has a widowed daughter-in-law at home, which gives Donkey an idea: he can marry the widow's daughter, while his father can marry Cai. Cai tries to pay them off instead, so Donkey threatens to strangle her unless she agrees - with no choice, Cai takes the men back to her house.
However, Dou E. stays loyal to her dead husband and refuses to marry Donkey, so Donkey decides to take matters into his own hands by poisoning Cai. He slips the poison in a soup Dou E. makes for her, then hands it to her - unfortunately, Cai and Old Zheng (who actually get along now) share it, and Zheng takes the first sip. It kills him basically instantly (13th century play after all), and Donkey, uncaring of the collateral damage, accuses Dou E. of the crime, saying that either she can publicly confess or she can marry him. She refuses to marry him, so he takes it to the district's Prefect. The Prefect believes him over her and tortures her (enough that she faints three times and has to be roused with water), but when even that isn't enough, the Prefect threatens to torture Cai instead. With no option (and with Donkey still hanging around watching), Dou E. confesses, and she's executed for the crime the next day.
Luckily, Dou E's spirit lives on and goes to her father, who's now a government official dedicated to finding corrupt officials. She's able to tell him the story, and the father then publicly revokes her sentence and sentences Donkey to be executed in the square the next day.
End play.
Any mitigating factors? Freudian Excuse?
Donkey shows absolutely no regret when the poison he uses accidentally kills his father instead and gets right to framing Dou E. for the crime. Other than that, nothing - Donkey personally threatens to strangle Cai, he comes up with the plan for the double marriage himself, everything traces back to him directly.
Is he heinous enough?
For a 16 page play from the 13th century, Donkey threatens to strangle a woman to force her to marry his father, tries to poison her, poisons his father instead, and frames someone else for the crime, leading to her being tortured and executed. Considering the length, time period, and quality of his crimes, Donkey is definitely past the baseline.
Final verdict?
I think a yeah - short and sweet. What about you?
The Emperor of Evil!
![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Thumbs_up_emoticon_3268.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
to Vlad, tentative yes to Donkey.
![[tdown]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Thumbs_down_emoticon_3571.png "[thumb down]"){kind=small}
to Titus H. Crockett, Taurus/Cornelius van Lunt was a Corrupt Corporate Executive too who tried to kill countless people who are born a Gemini in Manhattan, and he fails the heinous to other Corrupt Corporate Executive in Marvel.
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
Yes to Donkey as well.
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts
Professor Gigachad
Donkey, finding a possible CM in your class, that is pretty cool, who knows maybe that will happen to me eventually.
to Donkey
Ultimate Moral Compass
Barb / Temporary Kylo
to Vlad and Donkey
Yes to Donkey! Great work bro!
Professor Gigachad
Also leaning Titus, sounds too tame for a Marvel Corrupt Corporate Executive villain.
Not the Eye
While I don’t agree with idea that we should take ones like Taurus in equation if thread decides we should I acept, just happy to ep him now and be done.
In other news if nobody minds I am calling dibs on webcomics: Mothorial, Ruinous Fortune and Ava's Demon. I would be open for collabs.
EDIT: Donkey
Edited by EmperorGeode on Oct 6th 2022 at 2:13:26 AM
The Emperor of Evil!
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
I mean, resources ain't always a get approved free card. At least you tried though.
Edited by Powermaster201 on Oct 6th 2022 at 4:36:06 AM
Woagh
to Vlad and Donkey.
Yes to Donkey Zheng
Both Smaugs, Vlad and Donkey.
Why original Saruman doesn't count? Agency issues or not heinous enough?
Professor Gigachad
I think it's both. Though it might just be heinousness.
The Emperor of Evil!
Wasn't it also Alas, Poor Villain demise as well?
Edited by Powermaster201 on Oct 6th 2022 at 4:44:26 AM
Wrong thread
Edited by Scraggle on Oct 6th 2022 at 2:46:54 AM
His corruption is tragic in the original narrative, it's really not the right tone of character to apply this trope to him or even try to imo.
Not the Eye
Really weird how many versions of him we have up.
Caesar
Yes to Vlad and Donkey, good work on the first theatre keep, bud!
Another quickie, thanks to mah girl for pointing me to this one...
What's the work?
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead is a 2019 Pulitzer prize-winning novel, based on the horrific real life Dozier school. It follows a black boy named Elwood as he is wrongly thrown into the Nickel Academy, a boy's "reform" school where he comes across all manner of disgusting examples of humankind that have been perpetrated for over a hundred years.
Who is Spencer? What has he done?
The current Superintendent of Nickel Academy, Spencer is a racist authoritarian who serves as The Heavy of the book in running the everyday operations of Nickel, segregating the colors of the boys and treating any black students with far harsher means than the rest.
Spencer rules over the teen and preteen boys of Nickel with an iron fist, letting his staff run rampant in abusing the boys both physically and sexually, using the kids as forced labor and "selling" their daily services to paying customers to force the boys to perform housework and other jobs around the "school."
Any boys that act "unruly" by Spencer's standards are personally taken out to a shed dubbed "the White House", where Spencer beats them horrendously with a notched strap across their bodies and even genitals. What Spencer regards as "unruly" and appropriate punishment is...completely absurd. Kids being bullied are beaten right alongside their tormentors for disrupting the peace and sometimes get worse from Spencer, who doesn't truly care what the students have done, simply valuing the cruelty in itself.
Controlling the children under his care through further typical abuses like witholding food, Spencer also has disregarded newer laws forbidding the use of solitary confinement in reform schools and throws the most disobedient boys inside them for weeks at a time in total darkness where they are barely fed and have only a bucket for company.
And when Spencer gets truly fed up with a boy? They are taken "out back". Translated into being painfully chained to a tree and beaten to death with a horse whip, their bodies quietly disposed of in a secret graveyard while the school lies that the boys "ran away."
One of the biggest examples of Spencer's cruelty is on the night of a big boxing tournament organized between Nickel and another school, the champ of Nickel being the hulking, dimwitted boy Griff. Spencer threatens Griff into taking a dive in the 3rd round of the championship bout, Spencer having bet against him...when Griff accidentally wins, he's taken "out back" by a furious Spencer and never seen again, even as the boy is last seen tearfully swearing to Spencer that it was an accident.
Now, Spencer delivers nasty beatings to Elwood in the novel, and all the horrors the boy witnesses leads him to sneak a letter detailing the nastiness of Nickel to a state inspector. Spencer discovers this as the school is brought under suspicion, and delivers a vicious beating to Elwood before throwing him in isolation for several weeks, regularly routing to kick the boy into bloody supplication. Spencer plans to take Elwood "out back" when the heat has died down, so Elwood's best friend Turner sneaks him out and they flee.
Sadly, Spencer dispatches his hunters and Elwood is shot dead in the ensuing chase, Turner barely making it out alive and taking on Elwood's name to honor his close friend. Decades later, as Nickel finally is shut down and survivors of the abuse come forward across the country to expose it, excavations are done and dozens upon dozens of bodies of children are found buried on the property, all covered up by the vile staff for years. Spencer himself died of natural causes before he could be given any true justice, and Turner ends the novel ready to come forward himself and give testimony about what he and Elwood went through.
Mitigating features?
Nothing...dude is just a wicked child abuser, he reminisces at one point about how poor he once was but nothing sympathetic is drawn from it.
Heinousness?
So, it's well established that Nickel is a heinous system that's being propagated by a litany of people, the Greater-Scope Villain being Director Hardee, and making it worse is that Nickel has been around for decades, Spencer's administration just the latest in a long line of abusers that have passed their methods and control onto the next leaders for years.
Buuuuut nonetheless, Spencer is established as the biggest factor in the mass abuse going on in the present and isn't just a cog in the machine, but an active enabler and heavy hitter of it. No other single person comes close to the level of systematic abuse Spencer personally oversees, with Hardee far too much of an Orcus on His Throne leaving the tinier details to Spencer's overseeing, and while there's one other character who miiiiight pass, Spencer is explicitly the worst we've got.
Final Verdict?
Easy Yes
WHAT A WONDERFUL DAY!
Yes to Vlad, Donkey, and animated Smaug.
No to Titus and film Smaug.
In what no adaptation has covered yet, Saruman has his throat cut open and dies in the dirt like a vagabond. It's shown as fairly tragic in the scheme of the narrative even if book Saruman is technically more heinous than his other counterparts.
Think you're tough because you made it through Lord of the Rings? Real men survive The Silmarillion.
to Vlad, Donkey and Spencer. Titus.
Ultimate Moral Compass
Spencer
Yes to Vlad. This is the novel, and it's based on the 1985 film, correct?
Also, I'm for the first novelization, I'm replacing the Big Bad pothole around Jerry's name with Adaptational Villainy.
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts