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
Think of the mooks!
Okay, stupid real life is now taken care of. Time to trope.
@3711 I actually addressed Monster.Disgaea in @3577 - remove the spoiler tags around Aurum, take it to the video game page by itself, and cut the rest of the examples. Though the last line should be removed, as demons get disgusted by things like "kindness" frequently in the games; it's trying to invoke Even Evil Has Standards and doing so poorly.
@3713 Thanks. To hit those suggestions...
@3674: Actually, from what I can tell, Tywin wasn't discussed before. Others were compared to him (to show others were less evil), but I don't see him having been discussed in this thread.
Upon review of his qualifications... hmm, I note he has a listing under Pragmatic Villainy. It's only a precious few that can qualify for both Complete Monster and that trope - the two often clash as to how to approach a given situation. Also, is it really any less of a rape if the woman was tricked (and doesn't realize it) into having sex that she otherwise wouldn't have wanted? I argue it is not, but that's getting into a hardcore feminist discussion on rape and culture, and I'm not the best person to handle that discussion from either side.
Instead, I think I'll just note that several places describe Tywin as frustrated with much crueller relatives, so he doesn't qualify as the most evil in his series. He's overshadowed in heinousness, and thus should be cut.
@3677 Hmm... a bit loopy, and I can practically taste the Continuity Lockout. I'm fine with cutting everyone but Teridax.
@3689 I think I need confirmation that the Pet the Dog episode was subject to a Retcon that rendered it non-canonical.
@3690 A few to hit:
- Saddam Hussein of South Park: Cut for the reasons cited.
- Sheila Broslovski of the same: Cut; almost doesn't cut it, plus she was a Well-Intentioned Extremist in the film.
- Lord Zedd of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Cut; he was toned down later on, and was quite capable of genuine love, as shown in the trope Unholy Matrimony.
- Alphabet Soup of Power Rangers: Cut, no groups.
- Doubletone of same: I need more info to judge.
- Nighloks of same: Cut, no groups.
- Rubeus of Sailor Moon: Cut; not as heinous as the villains out to destroy the whole world. Also, the Wiseman entry strongly suggests that he was tricked into being evil.
- Wiseman of same: Keep.
- Chaos: Inclined to cut; more like a personification of sadness than actually evil.
@3696 I will note that for video game examples, it's best to compare what we have to the sandbox. For example, we've already voted to cut the Shroobs entirely. I agree with the other groups suggested for cutting. For B.B. Hood/Bulleta, I discussed her back in @1763 - voted to cut her then (and she's been removed from Sandbox.Video Game Monsters).
@3703 I'm not allowed to say "Cut because I thought the game was terribly written and done." That aside, I will note that Zeus has a whole host of positive tropes attached to him (and the character page for God Of War even notes how he was basically trying to defend the world from what Kratos was doing). I wouldn't go so far as to call him a Hero Antagonist, but he seems to be disqualified for having redeemable aspects. Ares... actually, I'm kind of blanking at what he actually does. Can someone give a reason for him to stay?
@3705 That does admittedly sound fairly basic; I agree with a cut.
@3708 Good with those rewrites.
edited 10th Oct '12 9:04:17 AM by 32_Footsteps
Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
What Ares does? He attacks Athens and destroys the entire city and kills its citizens. Also, he killed Kratos' family and he is responsible for Kratos being who he is. I would say that he is the only character in the game whose level of heinousness is higher than Kratos.
I like your entry for Rorge.
I am fine with rewrites for other characters. And okay, you can cut Amory Lorch; Tywin has already been removed.
@3727 Basically he's what you'd get if you took Kratos and took away all of his Pet the Dog moments and Morality Pets. He sent Kratos to slaughter countless innocent villages for having temples for other Gods, especially Athena, and, of course, tricked Kratos into killing his own family. He also personally killed thousands of humans while attacking Athens. The other Gods all hated him enough to help Kratos in his quest for revenge.
Kratos himself comes ridiculously close to this trope in the third game, by betraying both Gaia and Athena, the only people who he ever seemed to respect and care about during the course of the games. Personally, I didn't like the story of the 3rd game because he was becoming less and less sympathetic. Zeus was clearly in the right. But even in that game, he still is shown to care somewhat for the safety of Pandora (even after killing her father), which is inherently a redeeming feature. Ares has no redeeming features.
edited 10th Oct '12 10:06:15 AM by Camberf
"Also, is it really any less of a rape if the woman was tricked (and doesn't realize it) into having sex that she otherwise wouldn't have wanted?"
What? When did that happen? Tywin doesn't trick Tysha. Depending on how you interpret the scene she was either gangraped, or paid to participate in a gangbang. No trickery was involved, and no one involved in the discussion has claimed that it was.
And Tywin was discussed before. About a year, year and a half ago, there was another thread on this topic active. That's where he was initially discussed. If you go through that you'll find the original argument between myself and a troper named Lightysnake over whether Tywin counts. At the time, I couldn't find a good counterargument. As we've added more requirements to the trope, it's become easier to cut him.
Anyway, we now have three votes, plus my own, for putting my write-up for Rorge at 3717 on the page. Are there any objections? If not, I'll post it, and some rewrites for Gregor Clegane and Craster on the edits to locked pages forum tonight.
edited 10th Oct '12 10:23:37 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar
Think of the mooks!
So, on Ares in God Of War... killing the inhabitants of an entire city, particularly one allied with your nemesis, is something that leaders of all stripes do, even if they aren't evil. Killing Kratos' wife and kids is a great example of Protagonist-Centered Morality - that's really piddling compared to the other murders. Yes, it was cruel and done to someone who was an ally. But comparatively? It stikes me as not all that evil, compared to some of the stuff Zeus pulls off (though he gets disqualified under different metrics). And the part about how the other gods hated him is a completely different trope - take your pick of Even Evil Has Standards, You Monster!, and/or Jerkass.
To be perfectly honest, while I get the sense that yeah, Ares is evil, I don't get the sense that he's actually all that heinous.
What? When did that happen? Tywin doesn't trick Tysha. Depending on how you interpret the scene she was either gangraped, or paid to participate in a gangbang. No trickery was involved, and no one involved in the discussion has claimed that it was.
Didn't you say earlier that there was ambiguity over whether or not she was actually paid? If she thought she was paid but wasn't, that counts as trickery.
As for the other thread... Okay, technically, nearly all of the examples involved have been discussed before. But I really only count this thread for purposes of actually weighing whether or not an example counts, because the other threads were all locked before there was a concerted effort to make strict guidelines. Everything else was, really, a false start regarding cleaning up this trope.
Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.
Its not that he killed Kratos' family that pushes him into CM territory, but because it turned Kratos into a horrible monster. So he can be considered as indirectly responsible for Kratos' actions.
Also, God Of War is such a great (one of my favorites!) game, and most importantly bloody with so much of brutal murder so its a big SHAME for it not to have a Complete Monster. It really needs one. It is too brutal for a game without one. Like Fighteer said many times that lighthearted kids shows (and I totally agree with him on that) CANNOT have C Ms, I will say that such bloody shows on the other hand need to have one.
edited 10th Oct '12 12:14:47 PM by Krystoff
Apologies for interrupting, but before the topic becomes too cold, I really do want to push the whole "cut Nassana Dantius from the Mass Effect subpage" thing based on her not reaching a standard of heinousness even when excluding the Reapers.
Taking everything into consideration (which I would not do for reasons below), she's not above and beyond the level of evil displayed by, say, individual mercenary Arc Villain characters like Garm, Jedore, Tarak and some of the unique Eclipse commanders whose names elude me, all of whom display a similar callous disregard for the safety of their employees and are willing to and actually do directly murder them or innocent bystanders for the same reasons (self-preservation) or even for less justifiable reasons (basic cruelty). These being the same character types who have already been discussed and disqualified because there are a ton of these kinds of guys and none of them go above and beyond the others. Nassana is no exception here.
Also, I only played the game once and it has been some time since then, but isn't most of the data that "qualifies" Nassana second-hand information, radio chatter, implication and other off-screen events? I can't remember too well, but the only thing I remember her even doing on-screen was killing a mercenary in cold blood, which is just kids shoes even by mortal standards in the Mass Effect universe. Her entire basis here seems to be so thoroughly built off of Offscreen Villainy that there's nothing really there to make her any more notable than as an Arc Villain for a character's recruitment mission. At the end of the day, Nassana really doesn't stand out in any way, shape or form such that she would qualify for this trope.
Please tell me this is some kind of a joke.
Lost in Space
Krystoff, you need to step back and take a look at your motivations for participating here.
edited 10th Oct '12 2:09:06 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
On a less appalling level, I think my point about the Mass Effect examples was misunderstood. It's not that I was trying to say that the Reapers could qualify, but that the two examples under discussion - a Mad Scientist who kills a few people for his experiments and a Corrupt Corporate Executive who has her own employees killed to make things convenient - are too small-scale to really fit. The only way I could see them fitting is if their actions were exceptionally nasty. I could maybe see that applying to Dr. Saleon, though the facts that he doesn't get much characterization and the majority of his actions are recounted to the player by Garrus inclines me to think otherwise. But Nassana Dantius, as noted by Aqua Regia, isn't much different from many other merc/criminal types seen in the second game.
On the Web Original subpage, I did see that the "scumbag steve" entry has been added without discussion. As a basis of a meme, I believe he should be killed with fire. Same with Dolan.
I'll clean up the Malachite entry.
edited 10th Oct '12 2:55:56 PM by EarlOfSandvich
I now go by Graf von Tirol.
@32_Footsteps: She was definitely paid. The only ambiguity is over whether she volunteered, or Tywin had her raped and then paid her for her trouble. It doesn't really matter honestly, because either way that still makes him better than the likes of Rorge and Gregor Clegane.
Speaking of Gregor Clegane, back in 3724 I proposed that his entry needed a rewrite. Here's my attempt at one. See what you think.
Ser Gregor Clegane, alias The Mountain That Rides. An eight foot giant kept in a constant state of rage due to migraine headaches, Gregor is one of the most feared characters in the setting, and with good reason. He is rumored to have killed his sister when they were children, to have arranged for his father's Hunting "Accident", and to have murdered both of his wives. The things that we know he did are even worse. As a twelve year old boy, he burned off half of his younger brother Sandor's face when the latter dared to play with one of Gregor's toys—a toy that Gregor himself, it should be noted, did not want anymore. At seventeen, he dashed the baby Prince Aegon's head against a wall, and then raped and murdered his mother, Princess Elia, with her son's brains still on his hands. At a tournament at the start of A Game of Thrones he kills one of his opponents, and tries to kill another, and that's before he's turned loose on the countryside. He and his men proceed to rape and murder anyone who falls into their hands, often torturing people to see where they have hidden their gold. At one point in A Clash of Kings each day, for ten days, Gregor picks one person from a group of villagers and has his Torture Technician, "the Tickler", question that person over and over, until they die from the torture. One of the villagers, a mother, volunteers to be taken if they will spare her daughter. The next day, he has the daughter questioned too, to make sure the mother didn't leave anything out. Another time he smashes a girl's face in for speaking when he wanted silence, than turns her over to his men to be gangraped for days. When confronted by the brother of Princess Elia, who repeatedly asserts that "you raped her, you murdered her, you killed her children," Gregor's only concern is that the man has gotten the order of events wrong. —> "Her name was Elia Martell. First I killed her squalling brat. Then I raped her. Then I murdered her."
I tried to include all the good points from the original entry, as well as adding some stuff. What do we think?
edited 10th Oct '12 9:26:48 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar
Pronounced YAK-you-luss
Not really (at least where that particular incident was concerned), since the money wasn't really for her. The entire purpose was to humiliate his son - she was just a vehicle for that (and a cruelly-used one, for that matter - having sex with a hundred men in rapid succession is just not something the human body is designed for, and the text makes it obvious that even in the unlikely chance that it was consensual at the start, it certainly wasn't by the end). That she got paid had nothing to do with generosity, and everything to do with reinforcing that she was a whore.
Oh, I'm not claiming Tywin's a good guy at all, or that it wasn't a thoroughly wretched thing to do to Tyrion. But as rapes in this series go (and god I hate that I'm writing that line; seriously Martin, can't you find a different horrible crime to inflict on your characters?) it doesn't really stand out in anyway beyond the fact that the girl survives and is allowed to leave. As a number of people have pointed out, Tywin's a bad person, but other people in the series are so much worse. He's off the page now and I'm very happy about that.
I like your Gregor rewrite, it goes into much more detail about what makes him heinous, but, I loathe to admit, I'm a nitpicker (stupid OCD). His line is actually, "Her name was Elia of Dorne. First, I killed her screaming whelp. Then I raped her. Then I smashed her fucking head in. Like this." Then he crushes the head of her brother.
Craster could also use a rewrite but I'm not sure what else can be mentioned about him. We only see him in two chapters before he dies.
edited 10th Oct '12 4:04:58 PM by OccasionalExister
I'll fix that line if and when I post it. For me that's the point when he really exposes how awful he is. Rape may be common in the series, but boasting about it that way? Yech.
Azor Ahai
You know, I was kind of wondering about Craster. While I can't think of any excuse for his sickening Parental Incest, given that we don't yet know the nature/ motives of the Others, I wonder whether future books will suggest a well intentioned motive for sacrificing his male children to them.
Hodor
Is he actually sacrificing to them, or just leaving them to die with that as an excuse?
Honestly, I thought Craster was just giving his sons to the Others so the Others would leave him alone. Or he's just getting rid of unnecessary mouths to feed that wouldn't be part of his harem, or could challenge him for dominance.
edited 10th Oct '12 5:08:28 PM by OccasionalExister
It's funny—normally I'm against adding bit characters, but Craster's so flat out disgusting that I have trouble with the idea of removing him. The man's raped how many generations of his own children?
Azor Ahai
Yeah, no real argument against including (although knowing Martin, I guess it's possible that he was preventing the world from ending by raping generations and generations of his daughters and killing generations and generations of his sons)
Hodor
It's always a possibility. Until then though...
Avatar by Leafsnake
@Ambar: Gregor: Very good rewrite (What a bastard), also I think you should include Occaisonal Exister's edit about what Gregor said in it's entirety.
Craster: Generations of Parental Incest... give him a more threatening rewrite, and he'd look good. I think I saw a similiar thing on Law And Order SVU
Also:
Whoops, It seems I missed a CM on the The Avengers Earths Mightiest Heroes
Annihilus
- Complete Monster: There is nothing that he won't kill, for no proper reason. Several SHIELD agents, Blizzard, Radioactive Man and Whirlwind found this out the hard way. He also has nothing against Mind Rape.
Here's the thing, I have no idea what the Hell Annihilus is. He just shows up, and the characters mention that it must live in the Negative Zone, where they put the prison (Nice Going there Reed, a prison which holds the villains, and leaves them as prey to get killed along with the guards). Ultimately, the characters can only guess where Annihilus comes from (Never read the comics, but this is an adaptation, and they do not apply as much). As a native of the Negative zone, I don't know if he's Made of Evil, or is just mad because there's matter from a different universe in his home. Does he have a compulsion to destroy regular matter? Anyway, his crimes are accurately listed. He attacks a SHIELD Prison in the Negative Zone, using mind-controlled bugs, kills several prisoners and guards, and would have attacked the regular universe as well if not stopped. He assaults the Leader's mind as well.
edited 10th Oct '12 6:42:53 PM by DrPsyche
I think if you can't remember who the character (Annihilus) is, that's not a good sign. He sounds bad, but if he doesn't stand out that much, is he CM material? And as for Gregor, I'm going to include that line. It's pretty much his character defining quote.
Yeah, the Reaper's exist on such a higher scale and on such an alien mindset it's impossible to consider them. It's like saying Cthullu is a complete monster; what we consider henious he's literally incapable of understanding/