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
Jupiterian Local
A few days late, but I finally got around to taking a look at Monster.Gundam like Ambar asked a few pages ago.
- There seem to be a lot of sinkholes on the page in general, especially of the "chained Sink Hole" type.
- Some of the entries seem overly long. I would be tempted to trim basically all of them at least a little, but maybe that's just me.
- Killing from Gundam 0080: he's almost entirely offscreen, and his most heinous crime is successfully prevented.
- Bask Om from Zeta Gundam: has a Freudian Excuse (he was tourtred by the people he's now oppressing the hell out of).
- Ken Tsubarov from Gundam Wing: does he pass the heinousness standard? I honestly don't recall the character, but from the writeup it sounds like the worst he does is trash his own base.
- Dr. Berg from Gundam Wing Unit G: needs a rewrite. Huge block of spoilered text is huge.
edited 3rd Apr '13 7:36:36 PM by NativeJovian
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
@Dragonheart, some of my favorite childhood movies, so I can help here.
In the first movie, Eion's father doesn't get much screen-time, it's implied he was a tyrant, but when only see him as he dies. As for Eion himself, he's pretty back, when he sees his own father dying, his only concern his ripping the crown of his head and claiming it for himself. He also does alot of nasty things, including rape if you consider the book based on the movie cannon. When we first see him again after the time skip, he orders a man's eyes burnt out with a white-hot steel rod.
As for the second movies big bad, can't say much for him. 95% of what he's does is Offscreen Villainy, so I'd be tempted to say no. All he really does onscreen is stage a attack to try and trick Draco into sharing his heart with him, keep the king drugged to maintain control, and almost kill the hero at the end, but those are standard fantasy villain things.
@X, I already dropped a link to his post off in the request thread.
Should we add the father from Dolores Claiborne? Even though he's an Asshole Victim, he's done enough on screen to qualify.
I haven't read it, but from what I've seen, he qualifies.
Fair warning: I can get pretty emotional and take things too seriously.
Bask's Freudian excuse isn't even present in the series, and it's wholly inadequate. He's a gleeful sadist. He always was. The 'people he's oppressing?' the people he gasses had no part of what happened to him.
@11027: Regarding Bask Om, I agree with lighty. Having a Freudian Excuse isn't enough to stop a character from counting, for that to happen their excuse needs to be proportional enough to their actions so that their crimes are "justified." Om's excuse is never mentioned in the series, we only know about it through supplementary materials, and it isn't used as a sympathizing factor at all. I haven't seen Gundam 0080 or Gundam Wing but with regards to Killing and Tsubarov, it doesn't matter if their crimes succeed or not only that they were attempted. Agree with you on limiting those Sink Holes though and despoilering the last half of Berg's entry.
edited 3rd Apr '13 9:19:33 PM by OccasionalExister
@11027
Hey Jovian.
RE: Sink Holes and length. I was asked to make the page as understandable as possible for non-fans so there are a lot of sink holes, bracketed explanations, and exposition. If you think there's too much, please tell me what you feel is extraneous, and I'll gladly burn it.
RE: Bask Om. I'd say that lightysnake and Occasional Exister have covered the bases on that one, but I'll add this: Bask's excuse could work. If they played him as a PTSD sufferer who is still refighting the last war, I'd be prepared to cut him some slack. Not only is his excuse not mentioned, however, but he's not even played as such. He comes off as a brutal thug more then anything else.
RE: Killing. It's been a while since I've seen 0080. Killing isn't onscreen much, but all of his crimes (sabotaging Rubicon, shooting his superior, ordering the nuking) are, are they not? And I'll second was Exister said. Trying to kill people is what matters, not whether you pull it off. Killing's willing to obliterate a whole colony to get one machine, and throws away his entire team to get permission to do it. Given his relatively low rank that strikes me as more then enough, but I'm open to argument.
RE: Tsubarov. I'm the one who added him, so I admit to not being unbiased here. That said, I think Tsubarov is definitely the worst person in Wing proper. While Treize, Dermail, and Zechs might get more people killed, all their victims are soldiers. Tsubarov, if I remember correctly, turned his mobile dolls loose on the civilian population of a colony for no reason beyond being pissed he was loosing. That's in addition to trying to suffocate the Gundam pilots to death (killing the hero might be standard villainy, but nice method there Tsubarov) and shooting Une because she didn't want the dolls used against people. Given that he's not one of the series' major players I think that lets him pass the heinous standard, though I'm open to arguments. Oh and if the issue is just clarity, I'll cheerfully support a rewrite.
RE: Dr. Berg. Ha! I knew there was a rewrite I'd missed. Thank you Jovian. Am off to delete the spoiler text now, and do some touch up on grammar, and so on. I know nothing about he or Farkill though, so I admit my ability to repair is limited.
EDIT: Despoilered Dr. Berg and moved one or two things in Tsubarov's for clarity (hopefully). I'm actually wondering about Farkill though. According to the entry he's the Big Bad of G-unit (on a sidenote, what a truly stupid name for a story) yet his list of crimes (shooting down a refugee ship, discarding subordinates) is far less then Berg's (which starts with murder and ends in a Colony Drop). He doesn't sound like he equals Tsubarov, either, who has a bigger rapsheet (once you add turning his dolls loose on the colonists), but far less power. A cursory scan of both his entry, and the entry for G-unit on the Gundam Wiki doesn't reveal any more crimes for him (though it does reveal one or two more for Berg). It might be unfair to compare him to characters from other series (seeing as Wing is one of the lighter entries) but it appears that the likes of Yazan Gable, Rakan Dahkaran, Ali Al-Saachez, and Decil Galette, all of whom are nothing more than fighter jockeys, may have better lists of atrocities than this apparent Big Bad.
I think Farkill should go. I wouldn't give him any humanitarian rewards, but I think both Tsubarov and Berg are worse then he is.
edited 4th Apr '13 1:36:59 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar
Serph Sheffield is a major antagonist of the main characters in the Embrion group(Sera, Serph, Heat, Argilla, Gale, and Cielo). His actions are what caused the plot of the Digital Devil Saga games. Serph is a talkative young man who, in Sera's presence, acts supportive and kindly, gently prodding her to maximize her potential in the Karma Society's God Project. He does not get along well with fellow scientist Heat O'Brien, who acts more brashly in comparison. Both scientists routinely locked horns on the direction of the God Project and Sera's role in it.
Sheffield's true motives was eventually revealed during a painful experiment: in reality, he is a cruel and manipulative young man who used everyone around him in his quest to attain the power of God for himself. To him, Sera was only an expendable tool in the pursuit of science and the power of God. He explains that even if she were to be destroyed in the process, he would move on to another child, and so on. Along with this he brainwashed Argilla to cooperate with him and tricked Colonel Beck(an antagonist from the first game) into continuing the project.
edited 3rd Apr '13 10:58:56 PM by VeryMelon
Here is yet another group example:
- The "blood-bending" Deadmen in Deadman Wonderland can be pretty sadistic (see Minatsuki: "Your despair turns me on!"), but the anti-Deadman-weapon-wielding Undertakers are worse because while some of the Deadmen are criminals, all of the undertakers are sadistic murderers (even the eight-year-old Cloud Cuckoo Lander). As an example, two vicious serial killers (one of whom enjoyed killing women and sewing their scalps into a coat that he wore "inside-out") are easily dealt with in order to highlight how difficult the real Undertakers are. The leader of the Undertakers, Genkaku, is pretty much the poster boy for In Love with Your Carnage. He has a Freudian Excuse that fails to make up for the fact that he is absolutely insane.
For the Disney Subpage, I'd like to nominate King Candy, aka Turbo, from Wreck It Ralph. (WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD) Reasons? This man is such an attention whore, that, when a new racing game got into the arcade in the 80s, he crashed into the game and tried to take over, causing both of his games to get unplugged. However, Turbo survived, and, when Sugar Rush came in, he did something much worse. He snuck into the game, Mind Raped the entire population to forget the true ruler, Vanellope Von Schweetz, then messed up her code, locked up the citzens memories, and made himself into King Candy, the supposedly true ruler of Sugar Rush. This resulted in Vanellope becoming a glitch and an outcast, and bullied and shunned by THE ENTIRE POPULATION for FIFTEEN YEARS. Turbo is willing to make a kids's life miserable just for his own ends. Ralph arrives in search of getting his medal back, befriends Vanellope and makes a kart for her to race with. But Turbo is still willing to mess this up. He manipulates Ralph into thinking that if Vanellope races, their game will get unplugged. So Ralph wrecks her kart while the kid sobs and begs him to stop. Then, King Candy puts Fix It Felix Junior, who came searching for the Bad Guy of his game, in jail. As for Vanellope, he locks her up in his "Fungeon"- A Monster Clown filled, Circus of Fear styled prison cell, and chains her up so badly she can't even MOVE. And when Vanellope finally races, Turbo reveals his true form, and tries to KILL HER so he can still rule. Yes people, he's that sadistic. When Sugar Rush gets overrun by Cy Bugs, he gets eaten and turned into a hybrid. He then beats the crap out of Ralph, while yelling about how powerful he is now and how he'll TAKE OVER THE ENTIRE ARCADE. Then, he forces Ralph to watch Vanellope die as the Cy Bugs draw closer to her. Fortunately, she and the other 3 main characters survive, and Turbo finally gets burned alive in the volcano explosion near the end. He really deserved that anyway.
edited 4th Apr '13 4:39:56 AM by TheWildWestPyro
Pardon, we have discussed King Candy some times already. Consensus is that he fails the "heinous" criteria, to the point that he's permanently banned from the list.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Re: Previous discussion:
@ X Fllo: Yeah, let's shelve Armus for now. I don't think the Freudian Excuse that he was left there on the planet by his creators adequately excused his actions, which were simply murder and hatred for the sake of it, but the more important question is whether he had much of a choice in the first place. Since he's quite literally an embodiment of hatred, it's questionable if he could even do anything other than that. If anyone else saw that Star Trek: The Next Generation episode ("Skin of Evil") not too long ago, feel free to comment.
RE: Semyon from Eastern Promises: That example probably needs to be rewritten to exclude the part about him loving his family, since he clearly doesn't.
Also reposting the example write-up for the Djinn. To anyone - is it good enough, or does it need more work?
- The first Djinn from Wishmaster. We only see three members of his race (only the first two films share continuity, and the Djinn in the third film is killed at the end, so it seems that the last two films feature completely different ones). Comparing them together, the one in the first two films is by far the worst of them all, 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 dying horrific Body Horror-related deaths. 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.
New examples:
I had a large number of examples that I felt needed discussion, but I don't want to hijack the thread, so I'll just post them one at a time. First Majora's Mask from The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. Here's the entry from the page:
- Majora not only goes into a sadistic rampage affecting several characters, but threatens to send a whole moon (albeit a relatively small one) crashing into Termina because it's FUN.
Does he/it/she (?) ever actually say that it was getting kicks out of destroying Termina and spreading misery to the people? Majora seems almost too alien in its thinking to be a CM. When Link talks to the children on the moon (which are all Majora in disguise) he asks him several questions that make it pretty clear it doesn't even understand concepts such as friendship and goodness. Or evil, for that matter. It thinks it's the good guy when it fights Link. Don't you actually have to be aware that you're doing evil to be a CM? I get the impression it just decides to "consume everything" out of an alien morality.
edited 4th Apr '13 6:12:10 AM by Morgenthaler
You've got roaming bands of armed, aggressive, tyrannical plumbers coming to your door, saying "Use our service, or else!"
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
If we're going to have an entry for the Djinn, that's a decent one.
@11025
Einon seems like a proto-Joffrey, so I can tentatively vote keep here. The dragon seems like a cut. It seems that he is a Generic Doomsday Villain + Sealed Evil in a Can. The Kingbefore Einon should be cut as a ZCE.
For AQW:
Dr. De'Sawed just seems like your sterotypical mad scientist. Unsure about TV Tropes policy on Mad Scientists so abstain
Kezeroth is another Generic Doomsday Villain from the implications. Cut
And didn't we vote to cut the Artix examples save for Krellenos? Also the entire page is written by a hater using quotes like "idiots" to describe them and gravedancing over Krellenos death.
edited 4th Apr '13 7:30:36 AM by xie323
No, the other one.
Painting Majora as too Blue and Orange to be a Complete Monster fits with my perception of it. Much more of a surreal horror than a heinous villain. Fearful, definitely. Hateful? I'm not so sure.
edited 4th Apr '13 7:23:47 AM by AnotherDuck
Check out my fanfiction!
Majora was already discussed. I don't play video games so I don't know if they fit.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
@Very Melon: He also directly caused Heat O'Brien's death, which was the catalyst for Sera's mental breakdown, which subsequently caused Brahman to fly into a rage and curse humanity with the stone virus.
Shamelessly plugging my comics, Oh yes.
I can give a vote to Einon from Dragon Heart. A repulsive piece of work.
With the vote going in favour of her, I thought I'd post a write-up for Darkside Chronicles Alexia Ashford.
- Alexia Ashford as presented in Resident Evil The Darkside Chronicles, where her love for her brother is no longer a part of her personality, the way it was in Code Veronica and her evil is cranked up a few notches higher. A Child Prodigy who joined the Umbrella Corporation at the age of twelve, Alexia was also an entitled sadist with a serious god complex. She aided her brother in murdering and experimenting on their father, tortured a classmate to death (and recorded the session) for being almost as smart as she was, and eventually injected herself with the T-Veronica virus, which she planned to use to Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence. Reawakened from cryogenic sleep in her twenties, Alexia kills her brother for not waking her up on time, transforms Claire Redfield's Love Interest, Steve Burnside into a monster and forces him to fight her to the death, and tries repeatedly to kill Chris and Claire for no other reason then their presence at her facility. She reveals that her plan is to infect the world with the T-Veronica virus, enslaving most of humanity to her will. When asked why, Alexia just gloats about how, as a superior speciment of humanity she deserves to be Queen.
What do we think?
Also, while we are on the subject of Resident Evil I've been going through the YMMV pages for the various games. Most of the pages are clean, but this was on the YMMV page for 3.
- Complete Monster: Nicholai is surprisingly an extremely dangerous and cruel hearted man. First he pretends to aid Jill, Carlos, and Mikhail and then goes on to fake his death all so he could secretly kill off all his "supervisor" comrades one by one so he could have more bargaining power with the company to discussing a bonus. He then tries to kill Jill and Carlos to try and rack up the sum further. Finally, he makes away after all is said and done and makes away with the last chopper. You DO have the option to kill him in the chopper or have Nemesis kill him depending on your choices , but canon wise, he's alive.
Nicholai, if memory serves (I haven't played that game in years) meets two of our requirements. He never acts altruistically, has no good traits, and no Freudian Excuse. It's the heinous standard I wonder about. On the one hand, he's nowhere near as bad as Wesker or DC!Alexia. On the other hand, he's not a Diabolical Mastermind, Mad Scientist, or bioterrorist. He's just a low-ranking soldier in Umbrella's special forces, and you could likely make the case that he is as bad as he can be. What do people say?
edited 9th Apr '13 11:58:43 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar
"In distress", my ass.
Einon, from what I remember of the first Dragonheart film, is a keeper, though that entry might need a bit of work.
Einon's dad, as said, doesn't get any screen time before his death scene. Everything about his tyranny is an Informed Attribute at best. Cut.
The sequel's Big Bad doesn't seem like he'd qualify, from what's been said here, but I didn't watch DH2 so I'll pass on voting about him.
All your safe space are belong to Trump
I'll also vote to keep Einon and cut the other two.
Here's a tentative writeup:
- From Dragonheart we have King Einon. At the film's start, Einon seems a youth in need of guidance by his wise mentor, but it is revealed that any honor Einon has is just a front to learn swordsmanship from Sir Bowen. After Einon finds his dying father, he simply attempts to wrench the crown out of the man's hands, showing what he will become. After being mortally wounded, Einon is saved only when a dragon shares his heart with him, linking their lives. As King, Einon taxes and woks the people without mercy and even orders a man's eyes put out with hot pokers for no real reason. Einon attempts to rape the man's daughter later and when his mother attempts to kill the dragon to stop Einon, Einon murders her with no remorse. While Bowen initially blames the dragon for Einon's change, it is revealed Einon was always a monster and the dragon shared his heart to try to change his nature.
edited 4th Apr '13 10:54:32 AM by Lightysnake
Say swordsmanship instead of useful skills. Otherwise somebody is going to think Einon was learning carpentry.
Done. Lets also launch the Star Wars page. Any other write ups we need? I can do The Gorgon and Hack/Slash in just a few.
Rightyoh, for the Gorgon:
- Tomi Shishido was always a Child Prodigy of dizzying ability who, at a young age, founded the mutant supremacist group called The Dawn of White Light that launched multiple, brutal terrorist attacks across Japan that claimed many innocent lives. when he was eighteen, joined The Hand, slaughtering his own family to show he had no ties elsewhere. Shishido, now called The Gorgon for his mutant ability to turn humans to stone with a look, captured Wolverine and brainwashed him into a killing machine that claimed many innocent lives, and the lives of heroes such as Northstar. When deprogrammed, Wolverine killed the Gorgon, who was later resurrected by HYDRA and Baron Wolfgang von Strucker. The Gorgon quickly took a leadership role in HYDRA, eventually ousting Strucker, and revealed a disturbing habit of turning innocent women into stone as decorations for his chambers.
From HackSlash
- Akakios, AKA: Samhain is at first a man with Laser-Guided Amnesia and a Dark and Troubled Past who is an ally and later lover of heroine Cassandra Hack. After a series of events, however, it is revealed that Samhain is the original 'slasher,' Akakios, founder of the evil Black Lamp Society. Regaining his memories and true personality, Akakios is disgusted by his former self's feelings for Cassandra, reasoning he could have taken her any time 'whether she wanted it or not.' Akakios forges the undead slashers into a fighting force and systematically kidnaps or kills everyone Cassie loved, purging the upper echelons of the Black Lamp Society for being ''too nice'' despite their own atrocities. Akakios plans to spread the slasher disease, turning innocent humans all over the globe into murderous monsters.
edited 4th Apr '13 12:37:30 PM by Lightysnake
@Lightysnake: I'll post your write-up for Highlander as a part of my request for Star Trek. Hope that's all right.