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
Actually, isn't rewriting examples to a decent quality one of the main purposes of this thread?
Avatar by Leafsnake
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
I think he see's Tenma as a rival or an opposite ideal, not a father figure.
edited 16th Nov '12 1:51:22 PM by DrPsyche
Foreign Troper
Concerning the Mass Effect Subpage: I think Nassana and Saleon should definitely stay. And I want to add another entry: The Cerberus-Cell who lured the Squad of Major Toombs (and Shepard, depending on the background) into a trap where they were attacked by Tresher Maws just to see how it worked out. And after they found Toombs, they captured and experimented on him for years.
edited 14th Oct '12 5:26:44 AM by Forenperser
Certified: 48.0% West Asian, 6.5% South Asian, 15.8% North/West European, 15.7% English, 7.4% Balkan, 6.6% Scandinavian
So does anyone object to the examples that I brought up?
No to the cell; no groups allowed and all their actions take place offscreen. We don't even get to see the after-effects like we did with the cell that Jack suffered through.
Avatars may be subject to change without notice.
The current caption on the Disney CM page seems to be an implied spoiler, especially with the way it's currently potholed. Also, it quotes a line uttered more than a minute after the pictured moment.
I request that it be removed. I'm not sure what it should be replaced with but I'd rather see it captionless than with this caption.
(In case you're wondering why I'm not using the edit request thread, it's because I think this does warrant some discussion first.)
edited 14th Oct '12 7:18:37 AM by HiddenFacedMatt
"The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon Stewart
I think that we might replace it this
.
I also see another problem with the Disney page; the quote. It links to a Disney Villain list on Youtube, but all the villains on the list are those that did not make it to our page (Jafar, Maleficent, Chernabog are all there while Frollo, Sykes or Shan-Yu are not).
Also Matt, do you have an opinion on examples that I brought up on the previous page?
edited 14th Oct '12 7:58:47 AM by Krystoff
Both of the Primeval examples(one of them is on live-action TV)
- Oliver Leek, though only barely. He's more of a Jerkass and Smug Snake who just happens to have little regard for people who can't advance him in his rise to power.
If that's so, then this entry destroyed itself by claiming he's less of a CM and more of a Smug Snake.
And the big one:
- Helen Cutter is more of a tragic/sympathetic example. She was already mentally unstable from being isolated from people for eight years, but she went off the edge into irrationality after she saw the Bad Future. When she kills a person, it usually isn't out of malice, but she does seem to have a callous disregard for people.
- How much of a Complete Monster she really is depends heavily on whether or not you consider preventing the evolution of the entire human race to be equivalent to murdering it.
There is arguably a go mad from the revelation here that causes her to become like this, so arguable lack of moral agent, and they mention that the character can invoke sympathy from the audience or can be seen in a tragic light. We have other characters like this in other franchises that go all insane and want to kill a specific group of people because of a negative & destructive view of the future that made it this way.
And the one on Live-Action TV has to be deleted if the latter is cut:
- In Primeval, Helen Cutter wants to wipe out the whole of humanity before it even began and along the way she'll screw with the cast's lives and minds just for the hell of it. She even shoots said husband immediately after he saves her from a burning building (which was only on fire to begin with because of the suicide bomber she sent).
This doesn't mention why her excuse is insufficient and is arguably written by a hater.
Also from Star Trek: Voyager
- The Borg Queen from Star Trek: Voyager, first introduced in Star Trek: First Contact. She is the personification of the Borg Collective, the cybernetic pseudo-race in the process of conquering the galaxy through "assimilation". This consists of absorbing all of a civilization's technology and raw materials and then injecting the people with nanoprobes that submerge their individual identities into the mass Hive Mind so that they become Borg themselves. Their cyborg transformation is completed through surgery without anesthesia. And why does the Queen do this, you ask? She wishes to bring them to "perfection", of which she sees herself as the embodiment. It's been implied that she's been at this for thousands of years.
- Despite a significant amount of Villain Decay on Star Trek: Voyager, her appearance in "Dark Frontier" is probably one of Trek's most chilling. She forces Seven of Nine to watch the assimilation of a helpless planet. We hear the screams of the victims brought to the Borg ship and see a half-assimilated man on a surgical table. And the Borg Queen actually seems aroused by this, breathing in deeply and rhapsodizing about how she can feel the new Borg "becoming one" with her.
The goal of the Borg is apparently to assimilate everything into their perfection. One has to take into account stuff like Blue-and-Orange Morality and To What Measure Is A Non Human here.
edited 14th Oct '12 8:19:37 AM by xie323
The Borg Queen strongly believes that assimilating everyone makes them better, which makes her a Well-Intentioned Extremist, which probably disqualifies her.
I think I was the one who wrote the original entry for Nassana years ago. I'm pretty sure that I wrote it before CM was a YMMV trope and there were no real standards for inclusion. I was rather surprised that she managed to survive the previous cleaning of the subpage. Personally, I don't think she qualifies because she's not heinous enough. Plenty of villains in the Mass Effect series have killed innocents for petty reasons. She's nothing special.
I would however, keep Saleon. His brutal experiments are similar to those conducted by Cerberus and the Reapers, two of the series' largest antagonists, but while Cerberus consists mostly of Well Intentioned Extremists and the Reapers have a large case of Blue-and-Orange Morality (not to mention both are groups), Saleon has no excuse. That being said, I do acknowledge that Saleon has a very small role in the seriesnote but I'm not sure if that disqualifies him.
Avatars may be subject to change without notice.
Besides, the thread linked to in one of the edits was to a very recent Image Pickin' thread for that page.
Anyway, I get the impression that the quotation is there because it shares with the list the theme that some of Disney's villains are much darker than Disney's reputation for soft, lighthearted works would have you believe. I suppose it does warrant further discussion, though.
In any case, assuming you're referring to this post, I'm not familiar with any of the works mentioned in it anyway.
@Shaoken and 32 Footsteps, posts 3794 and 3795
(Doors of the court slam shut. No "Load game" is provided.)
I concede the point. Unless someone else comes in with last-minute evidence, I'll leave in Manfred Von Karma.
Anyways, so no argument to doing some cleanup based on post 3404? Not being familiar with the PP games, I'm not going to touch anybody from those games.
I'm also going to remove Actrise from Castlevania from the general Video Game Monster page, for Offstage Villainy.
edited 14th Oct '12 3:06:45 PM by TriggerLoaded
Don't take life too seriously. It's only a temporary situation.
I cut Gambino and the torturer from the Berserk subpage. I've also made some minor edits to the other entries, fixing grammar, and removing unnecessary comments (the fact that some fans give Griffith Draco in Leather Pants is irrelevant to the trope). I haven't removed any details; I've just made them read better.
"In distress", my ass.
Anyone here familiar with the Walking Dead comic and game? I'm not, with either, but I'm not sure either work's CM entries really fit.
Comic's entry:
- Complete Monster:
- Thomas and the Governor. In fact, the Governor's the closest to a morally black character encountered so far (although his novel made him a bit more complex).
- Negan. Even before he even appeared he seemed like this, but from his first panel in the comic it is clear he belongs here.
Game's entry:
- Complete Monster:
- Played with regarding Larry. He seems perfectly willing to kill anyone (including small children) on the merest suspicion that they've been infected, he outright tries to leave Lee for the walkers near the end of Episode 1, even after Lee risks his life by going outside amongst the walkers to get the key to the pharmacy to get Larry the heart medicine he needs. However, those who delve into the Back Story will find Lilly telling Lee that Larry had crossed the Despair Event Horizon even before the zombie apocalypse thanks to a series of tragedies that left him with nothing but his daughter. The outbreak only made him worse.
- From the 2nd Episode of the series, we have the St. John family, who have been luring survivors to their farm to eat them. Danny in particular seems to enjoy killing just for the sake of it.
- The people of Crawford in Episode 4. They're a neighbourhood in Savannah that built barricades and cut themselves off from everyone when the infection began. After a while, they began systematically eliminating anyone who was viewed as The Load; all disabled, everyone who was sick, the elderly, not even children were safe. Pregnant women were forced to terminate their babies, and recovering cancer patients had to flee for their lives. All to preserve a perfect little paradise while the world fell apart around them. When you go to Crawford to raid supplies, you find the whole area teeming with zombies and no survivors around. A video-tape implies that a pregnant woman went on a shooting spree, and it is likely that the dead turned and overran Crawford. Molly, Brie, Vernon and even Lee admit that they had it coming.
(The show I am familiar with, and will be clearing the Shane entry. Fails the "particularly heinous" test, and he does show genuine warmth to Andrea and Carl, making him fail the "no redeeming qualities" test.)
All your safe space are belong to Trump
We may want to have a look at the Yu-Gi-Oh! section. The past two days have seen two undiscussed additions.
I now go by Graf von Tirol.
I wonder, what about Lord Barkis from Corpse Bride
- Lord Barkis Bittern in Corpse Bride. He appears to be a worst monster than Oogie Boogie. At first, he is respected by everyone, until the end has revealed his true personality: he only marries women in order to get their money for himself, killing them afterwards. If that wasn't enough, Barkis was the one who murdered the character, Emily (in her case, he tricked her into waiting for him with a box of jewelry that was her dowry, then murdered the girl and took said small fortune before running away), and he was also eager to do the same thing to Victoria once her Perfectly Arranged Marriage to Victor was annuled. This causes the living and the dead to "have shock on their faces". While Oogie has death as his ending, Barkis has a Fate Worse than Death, after becoming one of the dead, an angry mod descends upon him.
If he counts, it needs a serious rewrite; remove about his fate and most of all, nothing about Oogie Boogie should be mentioned since he definitely doesn't count.
And please stop ignoring me all the time.
edited 15th Oct '12 5:08:46 AM by Krystoff
Think of the mooks!
First things first, I did kind of overlook @3776. So, in fairness, Bryan Fury of Tekken.
Well, the first part of that entry is extremely vague (ooooh, he's bad, guys!), plus since he's already a cyborg when he first appears, happens before the game starts (good ol' Offscreen Villainy). Also, his actions do pale before Kazuya's... or even Heihachi's. Cut.
@3796 Mel Gibson examples? Oh boy.
I would like a much better entry on Tavington of The Patriot, if he does qualify. That's a little too bare bones.
Edward Longshanks is a Jerkass in Braveheart, but I don't think he quite crosses the line. Cut.
Cut the Mayan warriors of Apocalypto, for no groups. I'm not so sure on Middle Eye either - there may be some Values Dissonance involved here (i.e. that might have been totally normal for the time). I also need more info on the character in general.
@3800 To echo the earlier comment, making everything about this trope look good is the point of this thread. That includes cleaning up formatting on correct examples.
@3807 So what if it's a spoiler? This trope is fairly spoiler-heavy, as much of the qualifying deeds tend to be stuff that happens at the climax of a story. And the quote doesn't have to match up to the exact scene; it has to be appropriate and from the work in question (which is both the case). I see no problem with it.
@3809 That first Primeval strongly suggests not being the most heinous example as well as not giving any supporting arguments. Cut.
The second Primeval example should be removed for the "tragic/sympathetic" issue. If you can be any flavor of The Woobie, you don't qualify. Cut.
For the Borg Queen from Star Trek, I don't think she falls under Blue-and-Orange Morality. I think she's a Well-Intentioned Extremist - she believes that it's really for everyone's good that they become assimilated into the bionic collective, to remove individuality and the potential for war (and thus become perfect). So I do agree for a cut, but on different grounds.
@3814 My wife is fond of The Walking Dead; I'll ask her opinion tonight.
@3815 I'll give it a look shortly; going to hit another Video Game subpage first.
@3816 I haven't seen Corpse Bride, but it does sound like we get some onscreen attempted murder for selfish reasons. I do want to hear more, though, because that alone isn't enough... the suggestion of serial murder does have my attention.
Also, to remind you from the FAQ:
Besides, given how many of my proposals that you haven't commented on, I really don't want to hear about the one or two of yours that I haven't yet commented about.
Speaking of, today's look-through for me will be Monster.Mega Man... considering that there have been multiple snide references to a couple entries on the page in the past, I think it's high time I gave everything consideration.
Dr. Weil - I think he belongs, but the entry could use some trimming (it does feature some Offscreen Villainy, and he does enough onscreen actions to qualify).
Omega - Cut, as he's clearly just following programming, and all of his sins really fall upon Weil for that reason.
Gemini - Given what King does below, he doesn't sound quite so heinous. Cut.
Joker - Under King's control; cut.
King - Keep.
Plant Man - Cut; very few Navis are shown of being capable of that level of moral judgment and manipulation (Mega Man.EXE being one of the precious few). He's under the control of his operator.
Dr. Regal - It depends; does redemption via Laser-Guided Amnesia count? I'm inclined to say that it doesn't, and that pre-amnesia Regal still counts. (For the record, I would cut any case of realistic amnesia, but I'd be willing to consider any case of Hollywood-style "rewrite your whole personality" amnesia.)
Blur - Keep, but I think anime characters should be shunted off from the video game characters, further down on the page.
Dr. Wily from the cartoon - Eh, I'm inclined to call him a Generic Doomsday Villain, unless someone can really go into depth about his depravity (given that he doesn't think of Mega Man as truly sentient).
Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.
The Wanderer
I've watched Apocalypto, but that was years ago.
Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.
@3816
You found a bad one there, didn't you? At best that needs a major rewrite. Have you seen the film? If so, what else does he do?
To those discussing the Borg Queen, it's been a long, long time since I've seen anything involving her, but given that she's a member of a species that is Always Chaotic Evil, and seems to have well-intentioned goals, I'm cool with cutting her.
I haven't seen Corpse Bride. I am fine with letting him stay; I just want opinions and a serious rewrite if we agree that he counts. The description doesn't strike me that much though. Based on the description, he is certainly a dick and bastard but not pure evil to the core. Unless someone watched the movie and knows more, we will discuss and if we let him stay, we need a serious rewrite. For now, I say cut.
Also 32, what about Kazuya or Heinhachi? They are both on Tekken YMMV page. My opinion? Cut.
edited 15th Oct '12 10:48:41 AM by Krystoff
Avatar by Leafsnake
I saw Corpse Bride, the puppets look the closest in design to Franken Weenie. Anyway, the lord is a Jerkass. He pretends to be the uptight snobbish guy, who at least cares about his bride, but in reality he's a male Gold-digger so to speak. In a flashback image we see a shadowy figure attacking Emily (the Corpse Bride and killing her. Later on in the film it's revealed that Barkis Bittern was her husband and murderer, and responsible for her depression. He later attempts to marry Victoria, rob her blind and murder her as well. Unfortunately, her parents were broke, and marrying him for wealth, of which he has none. Also, he tried to kill the hero when his plan went awry. He also tried to kill Victoria out of frustration that she had no money. Any rumors among the fans if he is a rapist are unconfirmed, and should not be counted.
As for the Walking dead, the Governor is just appearing, maybe not yet, so we'll probably just list his comics portrayal.
edited 15th Oct '12 10:51:13 AM by DrPsyche
So, what is you opinion about him Dr Psyche?
@3814 None of the examples from the Walking Dead game count. Larry is one of the worst Jerkasses that I've ever seen, but he doesn't pass that. The cannibals from Episode 2 care for each other,and are really just trying to survive. They also claim to only kill and eat people who are going to die anyway, though they might have a loose standard for how close someone is to death. Crawford obviously breaks the rule about groups, and while I'm sure that there are plenty of examples in there, we don't actually meet any of them, and the two that we see a video of clearly don't qualify. Episode 5 might very well have one when we discover the identity of the psycho on the radio, but we'll have to wait and see.
I'm fine with keeping the two examples from the comic.
Avatar by Leafsnake
Well, the dead and dying were mostly played for laughs up until that point. His actions are treated seriously, Heinous in universe, and he has no altruistic moments. I'm voting to keep him in, but with a rewrite.
Your description has convinced me, and now I also vote to keep him.
Hey, I just remembered that Johan Liebert from Monster actually does have a single redeeming quality. He genuinely loves his mother and his sister, and he sees Tenma as a father. I'm not saying he should be cut, but it does add a little grey to his pitch black heart.