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
![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Thumbs_up_emoticon_3268.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
to Trask.
Yea to Trask, and new candidate.
From the Sierra videogame series: Quest For Glory...the company famed for Adventure Games brought us a nice mix and match Affectionate Parody of the genre with RPG elements to it. The series is really one straight saga with an unnamed hero, from his very first trials to the point where he finally becomes a true hero - and beyond.
Let's talk our villain. Ad Avis.
Who is Ad Avis and What Does He Do?
Ad Aviz is a cruel, misogynistic wizard who serves as the main antagonist for the second and fourth Quest for Glory games. Desiring to summon the Marid Djinn known as Iblis to use his power to dominate the entire world, Ad Avis sought out the Dark Master, a powerful sorcerer who he believed could make him powerful enough to complete the summoning. Didn't go how he wanted...
Ad Avis ended up shocked and appalled when he learned the Dark Master was actually a woman named Katrina, Ad Avis served her for a bit, learning all the magic he could, before betraying and attempting to murder her. Unfortunately for Ad Avis...Katrina was more powerful than he anticipated, and a vampire to boot. After defeating him, she promptly enslaved him. Once finally sent away from Katrina, Ad Avis began making a new plan for power, as he found and took over the the city of Raseir, turning the old ruler into a monstrous creature called a Sauron before installing the man's weak brother as the new leader and his puppet. Manipulating said brother, Ad Avis has Raseir turned into a hellhole where slavery is permitted, women are forced into harems and treated as dogs, and he slowly kills all magical life force in the city by draining it of its magic.
At some point, for some unknown reason, Ad Avis transformed his own apprentice Al Scurva into a creature and lect him to die in a cage in the desert, and, when he learns that his apprentice was saved, Ad Avis comes to discover the existence of the nameless hero on his quest. In retaliation for the hero not only saving Al Scurva, but also for thwarting an attempted invasion Ad Avis was planning for a nearby city, Ad Avis captures then later hypnotizes the hero into hunting down and finding the statue that Iblis is currently imprisoned in. Once the hero does so and returns the stature to Ad Avis, Ad Avis leaves him to die in an abandoned city before trying to take the statue's power and kill Katrina in revenge...the hero returns, foils his evil plots and throws ad Avis to his seeming death...
Until Game 4...as he was dying, Ad Avis begged Katrina to save him, and she did so, turning him into a vampire which also made him nearly her thrall to his anger. Unfortunately for Ad Avis, he can no longer harm his sire unless she initiates the attempt at harm. The duo make a new plan to manipulate the hero into assisting them in completing certain rituals that will enable them to summon the Dark One Avoovzl, an ancient Eldritch Abomination that will plunge the entire world into eternal darkness and anarchy and will allow Katrina and Ad Avis to make full use of their vampiric powers for every waking moment henceforth.
as Avoozvl approached? Ad Avis tricks Katrina into striking him, allowing him to attack her at last. Realizing he is losing, Ad Avis goes for Plan B, revealing he knows Katrina has feelings for the hero, and thus sending a lethal blast at the hero to force her to watch as he dies. Katrina takes the blast instead, and is promptly swallowed up by Avoovzl in her weakened state. As Ad Avis prepares to murder the hero "slowly and painfully," he simeltanously boasts his plans to unleash Avoovzl and lord over a land of eternal night and destruction, however some quick thinking by the hero enables him to defeat Ad Avis with the greatest trick in the book....the ultimate joke. A magic joke so hilarious that those who hear it will be temporarily paralyzed with laughter. When paralyzed this way, the hero manages to hurl his magic spear through Ad Avis's black heart, finishing him for good.
Mitigating Qualities?
Zip. He was evil from the start, evil before working with Katrina, utterly hates her and though he's cowardly enough to beg her to save him, he makes plots to betray her from the very get go. Nothing here. He's only loyal to himself and his own hunger for power.
Heinousness?
Worst in games. He has a variety of crimes distinct from Katrina and while she's up there with him, his other crimes, lack of any redeeming qualities or sympathetic motives make him stand out. Katrina has redeeming qualities and while it's a selfish sort of protectiveness, she refuses to prey upon 'her' people, as a just ruler shouldn't harm their own. she's not a good person, but Ad Avis is worse.
Conclusion?
Keeper, says I. You all?
The Merry Monarch of Darkness
Trask. Ancestor of the Sentinel-building family, perhaps?
Trask. He stands out enough due to the setting, even in the MAX universe. It's almost like how we sort Ass Creed by time period due to different moral standards and resources.
Ad Avis as well.
edited 23rd Aug '17 1:35:02 PM by PolarPhantom
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
Ad Avis. The fact that he was defeated by a JOKE would make me hesitant, if not for the fact that we have Snatcher.
Avis. Kinda love how he's defeated.
The Unknown Unknown
Trask, Griswold, Massimo, and Avis.
to Ad Avis.
to Massima, Trask, and Ad Avis.
The Merry Monarch of Darkness
Avis. What happens to Katrina by the way? Does she die there, or come back somehow?
Actually, Katrina can return and be redeemed in game 5
Yes to Ad Avis, Trask, and Massimo.
Lighty: Blegh, particularly evil villains getting redeemed will never cease to be a pet peeve of mine. 
Katrina's actually quite likable and sympathetic, even at her worst. She doesn't even seem to realize the ramifications of what she does
edited 23rd Aug '17 4:20:07 PM by Lightysnake
The Merry Monarch of Darkness
Oh huh, and she's a potential love interest as well. Looked it up.
The pig of Hufflepuff pulsed like a large bullfrog. Dumbledore smiled at it, and placed his hand on its head: "You are Hagrid now."
Yea on Avis and Trask.
Trask.
I still want to watch ''Blood & Black Lace" (even though I know the identity of the killer now), but if all the other upvotes are anything to go by, I suppose the Mystery Killer is worth one.
I'd like to do rewrites for Decker and the Djinn. They're not detailed enough as they are, if you ask me.
Dr. Philip Decker is far more evil than any of the actual monsters in the film are. He masquerades as a renowned psychologist, but is actually a masked, bayonet-wielding serial killer who butchers families (including the children), women he comes across, and anyone else he can get his hands on. He sees himself as a Death-like figure on a mission to stop the continuation of mankind. After Decker’s psychiatric patient Aaron tells him his dreams of the Nightbreed civilization, he frames Aaron for his crimes and gets Aaron killed by the police. When he learns of Aaron's resurrection and the existence of the Tribes of the Moon, he tries to exterminate the civilization of Dark Is Not Evil magical creatures as the ultimate extension of his mission to cleanse the world. A depraved and hypocritical Knight Templar with an utter contempt for humans and Nightbreed alike, he earns the fear and disgust of everyone who's unlucky enough to see his true face.
The Djinn from the first two films. While the whole race is said to be evil, we only see three of them (only the first two films share continuity, and the Djinn in the third film is killed at the end, so we assume the last two films have different Djinns). Of the three, the one in the first two films is by far the worst, and especially evil even for his race. He sees people as nothing but vermin and toys for his sick amusement. Most of the wishes he grants result in people suffering a Cruel and Unusual Death. He blows up an airplane and kills everyone on board just to kill one woman. Every soul he reaps he places in a hell-like dimension for eternal torture. In the second film, he sets out to trap one thousand mortals in this plane of eternal suffering. And his ultimate goal is to turn the Earth into a place of perpetual death, destruction, pain, and fear by releasing his fellow Djinn.
Decker doesn't need a rewrite. Indifferent on the Djinn.
So the Patrick Bateman re-write got me thinking. Has anyone taken a look at the blog Broke Patrick Bateman? It's a Setting Update of the original novel, so I'm not sure if it would be distinct enough to have its own EP.
Okay all, I've got another few comic baddies on the line today... from Dynamite's The Spider, let's get started.
What's the setting?
The Spider was an old pulp magazine back from the 30s about a millionaire playboy named Richard Wentworth who moonlights as a vigilante named the Spider. Imagine Batman if he was ten times more brutal and actually killed people (fun fact here... Batman's name? Actually came from an old Spider rogue). While the pulp comics probably have several nasty villains of their own, we're not looking at those today. Dynamite's revival of the series carries the exact same premise; in a corrupt New York, crime rate has been spiking to an all-time high and Wentworth takes it upon himself to purge the criminals of New York himself. We got two for-sure keeps (maybe three), so let's get on with the first. Enter the villain of the first arc, Anput.
Who is Anput? What has she done?
Anput is an Egyptian terrorist and supervillain who fashions herself after the Egyptian god of the same name. After a rough past, Anput and her bodyguard decided to strike terror among the heart of New York by stealing a lethal toxic gas from Wentworth Industries. Anput blackmailed Mr. Wentworth (Richard's father) into keeping quiet about the incident and proceeded to alter the gas for her own uses... turning it into a sort of zombification gas. The first incident Spider comes onto is when Anput gasses an apartment room full of innocent people as an experiment — including one child, whom she chains to the closet and rigs with an explosive collar. Once Richard and some of his allies on the police force (Ram Singh, the commissioner Stanley Kirkpatrick, and asshole detective Joe Hilt, whom I'll be talking more about later), Anput rings them up on the room's force and, upon being demanded for a way to reverse to virus, decides to gloatingly activate the explosive collar, blowing up the zombie child right in front of them.
Thus begins Anput's reign of terror on New York. Anput begins rigging the gas bombs to explode in random areas of the city to sow panic and discord, goading the police into stopping her before she infects the Metrocorp building in the midst of a tense negotiation filled with dozens of innocent people. Richard, as the Spider, manages to evacuate the building and finds Anput right outside of it. Anput gleefully decides to sic dozens of her infected, mindless zombie victims onto the Spider to tear him apart. As she continues infecting more and more people, Hilt sells information to Anput about Richard under the correct suspicion he's the Spider. With this information, Anput decides to get personal... infecting a public party with her gas to lure out the Spider, Anput infects Richard with a load of tarantula venom and informs him that she knows his identity. Unfortunately for her, Richard's built up a partial tolerance to tarantula venom — one of many random skills/gadgets he has for the sake of the plot — and shoots Anput through the shoulder, forcing her to flee.
So, after all this... Anput one ups herself by gassing Citi Field, leading for tens of thousands of people to be turned into mindless zombies and unleashed on New York to rip apart everything they come across. Anput then gasses a rival corporation of Mr. Wentworth. Anput finally announces that she'll stop the random attacks provided the Spider goes into hiding and the police department stops investigating. The police department is intimidated into keeping placid, but the Spider continues to investigate, and naturally, Anput continues her rampage... attempting to gas Spider himself before gassing out the New York Times building, this time with Richard's love interest Nita inside and infected among dozens of other innocents. Anput's end goal is finally revealed when Richard interrogates his father... Anput wants to gas all of Wall Street, sending the economy crashing down and allowing Anput to make millions off of the fallout. All Anput's supposed talk about cleaning out filth from the city? Was all bullshit. Anput's infected tens of thousands of people purely as a distraction so she can ultimately line her pockets. Richard finally confronts Anput and her bodyguard, sending the latter tumbling to his death before doing the exact same to Anput herself. Anput's last ace is a post-mortem attempt to gas Wall Street anyways, but that's disabled, foiling Anput's plans for good.
Any mitigating factors?
Okay, first, we need to talk about the heinous standard. The standard for The Spider is something fierce... among the legions of low-level murderers, traffickers, and rapists Spider takes out, we have a twisted sadist who buries people alive and masturbates to their pleads to be let out, a hypnotist who uses his powers to inspire countless assisted suicides, a chaos-obsessed anarchist who also tries to flush the world's economy down the drain while simultaneously trying to turn New York into a den of chaos, a corrupt ex-cop who murders hundreds of people and fully supports said anarchist's plan, an evil crime boss responsible for tons of organized crime... there are so many nasty baddies in this story. And Spider himself is incredibly brutal, to the point of murdering even petty crooks on the spot and shooting off the fingers of innocent people because they try and talk back to him.
...Honestly? I think Anput passes. The thing is Anput has by far the highest body count out of any villain in the series, turning countless thousands of people, children included, into mindless, ravenous zombies as a distraction to her actual plot. Anput may not necessarily have the personal cruelty of people like Lazarus (the person who buries innocents alive) or the Lawgiver (the ex-cop), but the amount of destruction she manages to wreak far surpasses any other villain in the plot.
There is one other potentially concerning thing in the form of a Freudian Excuse (which, to be fair, almost none of the other Spider villains have)... Anput moved to New York from Cairo and ended up turning to prostitution, until she finally killed her abusive pimp and saved her future bodyguard/boyfriend from his clutches too. For about the first four issues, I was completely ready to call Anput a non-keep because it does seem the excuse ties into her atrocities in the pleasant day. Anput talks a big game of never being controlled by anyone again and tells Spider she seeks to cleanse the corrupt "filth" of New York in her own way.
...then her true motive is revealed. All that talk about "never being controlled by anyone again" and her Knight Templar ideals? Are all bullshit. Literally all of Anput's terrorist attacks and motive rants are just a front for her real plan, which is to blow up Wall Street and get rich. That's it. Nothing else to it. Anput's past does not tie into that whatsoever and cannot excuse any of the leagues of collateral damage she racks up. Whatever mentalities about "never being controlled again" are complete lies and her past is clearly not affecting her anymore. What we see on-panel is just a psychotic, selfish terrorist driven by greed and greed alone.
Oh, and her boyfriend? Nothing redeeming there. Anput doesn't even flinch when Spider murders him.
Conclusion?
I'm inclined to say keep. I don't think Anput's Freudian Excuse goes anywhere near disqualifying her once her true motives are revealed and she handily clears the heinous standard.
I'll have at least one more villain from this series afterwards, but for now, thoughts?
edited 23rd Aug '17 10:22:11 PM by Scraggle
Anput. Is Lazarus your other keeper? Because holy shitballs, that's some Squick!
The other for-sure keeper is the Lawgiver, who's probably the most heinous supervillain in the plot bar Anput, but I am incredibly tempted to go ahead with Lazarus' post... even with the ludicrously high heinous standard, Lazarus has absolutely no resources whatsoever and his MO may be bad enough to help him stand out a bit. I'll have to give that one some thought.
Says a lot about this thread that the man who faps to the screams of people he Buried Alive might not be heinous enough.
Oh, you know what... to hell with it. I'll get to the Lawgiver in a bit, but for now, here's our second candidate... Lazarus.
Who is Lazarus? What has he done?
A baddie-of-the-week appearing exclusively in issue seven, Lazarus is a plump, balding middle-aged man who lives in a basement apartment in New York. Lazarus appears to be little else but a reclusive, unassuming man, but the truth is far, far worse. Lazarus regularly purchases tetrodotoxin from a voodoo practitioner in the seedy underbelly of New York. With this, Lazarus selects elderly people and poisons them with the tetrodotoxin, framing their deaths as simple deaths from old age. The kicker is, though... the tetrodotoxin doesn't kill them. It just paralyzes them and leaves them near-death, leading them to be buried alive and slowly die over a course of days inside the coffin. The cherry on top? After they've been buried, Lazarus visits their graves and pays respects in his own way... pleasuring himself to the sounds of their screams and pleas for help. Lazarus racks up countless victims this way, to the point where he's doing this about two to three times a week.
Unfortunately for Lazarus, the cops start to catch onto Lazarus' murders and start doing autopsies of his victims instead. Pissed, Lazarus strikes back by poisoning the police commissioner, Stanley, as vengeance, fully intending for him to be buried alive as well. So, with his elderly victims out of the pick, what's a depraved psychopath to do? Lazarus decides to start picking younger victims... stalking and kidnapping a young woman named Kathy, relishing her attempts to fight back and taking even more glee at the fact she's a mother of two and has a husband. Lazarus buries her alive in his own apartment, orders some pizza, and starts masturbating to Kathy's desperate pleas for help as she slowly expires. Thank God, Spider himself finally comes in to kick some ass... although Lazarus tries to paralyze Spider himself and smugly informs him he'll bury Spider and pleasure himself to him as well, Spider finally outwits the guy and buries Lazarus instead, causing the psychopath to die of fright after a few minutes of his own medicine.
Any mitigating factors?
With Lazarus himself? That's cute. Lazarus is a pervert and a sadist to unbelievable levels, so much so that he even gives Spider himself nightmares.
Alright, again, the main issue to focus on is the heinous standard. I've elaborated on the villains above in Anput's post, so the main thing to consider is... in terms of Spider's rogues? Lazarus is at the absolute bottom of the barrel. He has no nifty weapons. No nifty powers. Lazarus is literally just a chubby, naked pervert with some blowfish toxin and some especially sick compulsions. With that? Lazarus manages to carve his name into the heinous standard with an especially twisted MO. Cruel murder and other atrocities are widespread throughout the setting, but the way Lazarus kills his victims is probably the absolute worst. For a relative nobody... he kind of sticks out.
Conclusion?
I'm hesitant to call him as solid as a keeper as he could be precisely because of the high heinous standard, but I figure this creep deserves a post. Judge for yourselves.
Thoughts?
BTW, I tweaked the Marvel Lit page slightly to account for continuity.
Any thoughts on adding this
to the King page?
Incidentally, does anyone know if Book!Killian or anyone from the short story of Shawshank counts?
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts