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
Lost in Space
See that other thread; we're still working on VDS. (that acronym sounds very wrong)
edited 12th Nov '10 1:23:08 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Just another two cents: yeah, the Reservoir Dogs ear-cutting scene is a Gory Discretion Shot. A Villany Discretion Shot is to keep a villain sympathetic, which is obviously not the case with Mr. Blonde.
Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.
Serocco
Carla, you have a very good point there. Good job in defending your opinion.
Aizen does qualify: The Wonderweiss treatment, plus his manipulation of Hinamori, tricking her best friend into nearly killing her just to save his own ass, and slaughtering dozens of civilians just cause he could... pretty hard to justify that kinda stuff.
Does Yammy qualify there? He's on the list, after all. Moreover, does Nnoitra qualify as well?
In RWBY, every girl is Best Girl.
I know the ear cutting scene is a Gory Discretion Shot. That isn't what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about his background and the stuff that you never see, and the fact that he is one of the only people in the movie that you never actually see kill anyone. Yet he is the Complete Monster while the others are the "Good Guys".
But, the other posters made a good point that his offscreen actions at the robbery aren't presented to gloss over them, but to keep bringing them up and make him less (not more) sympathetic because of it.
So, he isn't disqualified from being the Complete Monster that he clearly is. YAY!
Personally I would argue against Yammy and Nnoitra being here. And before I get started, no it's not because I have any desire to give them leather pants. Here goes:
Yammy. He's Dumb Muscle personified. Both Ichigo and co, Ulquiorra, Grimmjow, and Aizen treat him as at worst a joke, and at best as a marginally useful Stone Wall. Morally he probably qualifies, but he's not feared or hated, just mocked and belittled, no matter how monstrous he gets.
As for Nnoitra, that one's a little harder, but I still wouldn't put him on the page if only because he is—in a very different way from Yammy—too pathetic. The man is the Inferiority Complex that walks. His every action is driven by his realisation that he's not the strongest person around. He's a Death Seeker, and more than that, an example of what happens when a Blood Knight like Kenpachi gives up on life and their goals, and the series' portrays him as just that: a failure, whose evil is multiplied by his belief that none of them are finding redemption. To me he comes off as less evil and more, very, very, deeply and unfixably, screwed up. The anime in particular actually managed to make his death scene rather sympathetic—the whole business where he shouts about Don't You Dare Pity Me! and locks eyes with Nel—and the scene left me, at least, feeling burnt out rather than elated. Combine that with his Fashion-Victim Villain status, and the fact that Tesla at least seemed sorry to see him go, and I'm not sure he counts.
Anyway, there's my two cents. Yammy's a joke, and Nnoitra, while not sympathetic in the least, is too pitiful and pathetic to count.
edited 13th Nov '10 9:55:08 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar
Serocco
^ In that case, Nnoitra being a Complete Monster is more or less played with.
Meanwhile, Yammy pulled a pretty dickish move by killing the nurse that reattached his arm, but you make a point that he's a joke compared to others.
edited 14th Nov '10 5:07:11 PM by Serocco
In RWBY, every girl is Best Girl.
Pronounced YAK-you-luss
Remember - it's possible to cross the Moral Event Horizon without being a Complete Monster. Even if Yammy's disqualified from the latter by everyone else treating him as a joke, he could have managed the former.
What's precedent ever done for us?
I'm almost wondering if we'd be better off just wiping the subpages clean (retaining the images, of course, since I doubt there's any page image character who isn't an obvious example) and putting the examples back one by one so that we can discuss them as we go.
I removed Aizen, since Ichigo feels somewhat sorry for him and he isn't over the Moral Event Horizon yet in his first appearance.
Currently taking a break from the site. See my user page for more information.
Serocco
^ Remember: Only Ichigo - the one that only rarely witnessed any of Aizen's actions - ever felt sorry for the dude. Everyone else either hates or fears him.
One could say that Aizen did cross the Moral Event Horizon with everything significant he did, from manipulating his lieutenant to be a loyal supporter and nearly shattering her sanity by stabbing her, to turning one of his subordinates into an autistic doll and claiming that it was his way of giving it a purpose, plus tricking four captain-level opponents into arraying against the aforementioned lieutenant and making it so that her childhood friend, the one that swore to protect her, was the one that nearly killed her.
I'd say Aizen more than qualifies.
edited 16th Nov '10 1:05:37 PM by Serocco
In RWBY, every girl is Best Girl.
Reminder: you can only cross the Moral Event Horizon once. Any subsequent, equally bad or worse actions are superfluous for the purposes of the trope, although people are free to disagree about which event was the actual crossing. Moral Event Horizon = point of no return/redemption.
edited 16th Nov '10 1:22:51 PM by Elle
Serocco
^ So, by that logic, is it accurate to say that Aizen has crossed the horizon and qualifies as a Complete Monster, even if there is some debate as to when he did?
In RWBY, every girl is Best Girl.
Of course you can say they crossed the MEH without knowing when they did. Some would argue Frollo crossed the MEH when he was about to drop a baby in a well before the priest talked him out of it, others would say it's when he ordered an innocent family's burned alive in their homes. I go with the latter but that's beside the point; all you need to do is look at their portrayal earlier in the work and their portrayal later in the work to see that they crossed the horizon SOMETIME within it.
^^ Crossing the line does not automatically make a character a Complete Monster. The Complete Monster has to have crossed the line and also meet all of the other criteria. I'm not familiar with Bleach other than being aware it exists and it's shounen anime, but if the protagonist is feeling sorry for that character (possibly Licked by the Dog), that disqualifies them (criteria # 2 or 3 I think). It sounds like he could become a candidate for it later if he ever loses that sympathy though.
edited 17th Nov '10 1:53:19 PM by Elle
I wear no mask.
Regarding Ichigo feeling sorry for Aizen, I don'treally think that disqualifies him, as he's pretty much the only one who feels this way. When only one or two people feel anything other than hatred or fear towards someone, he still qualifies for that criteria, as it refers to "most people", not "absolutely everyone"; even Complete Monsters can have people who love them (usually hapless patsies, like Hinamoto was for a long time before getting over it) or have The Messiah-type heroes feeling sorry for them (like doctor Tenma feels towards Johann in Monster). So considering that fact he should stay. Also note that Ichigo, despite feeling a bit sorry for Aizen, obviously doesn't think this excuses his crimes in any way, shape or form, it only explains them.
edited 20th Nov '10 11:50:55 PM by Paireon
I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me.
I wear no mask.
Anime and Manga cleanup:
- And these Complete Monsters have all been released from prison. The ringleader of the sick torturers, a Karma Houdini extraordinaire, is now married and has a daughter.
This was in Anime and Manga, under the Schoolgirl in Concrete entry. According to my research (mostly The Other Wiki, but virtually every other site just had a cut-and-paste of their article), the ringleader got 20 years in 1990-1991, so if he's out of prison it probably hasn't been long enough to do those two things. And 20 years when you're a minor doesn't really count as Karma Houdini. If someone wants this to go back there they'd better show sources and evidence as ougoing links. We're already walking on eggshells by talking about real people on this page.
Removed the "filler" mention in Tao Pai Pai's Dragon Ball entry. His cyborg form was in the manga, and they outclassed him there too, so he's not just a filler villain.
- Syn Shenron/Omega Shenron appears to be the most evil, depraved, and monstrous character that Goku ever faced in Dragonball GT.
What does he do to earn that badge? His presence here must be justified or he's out.
- Then there's Jail Scaglietti, Quattro's boss and a Mad Scientist far surpassing Precia, who doesn't make any pretenses to having a motive and proved himself to be utterly, disgustingly evil even before he used a five-year-old to power an Artifact of Doom and forced her to attack her mother. Again, his WTF-pwnage was most wonderful to see.
- Jail Scaglietti came over as pretty much just a troll, since he had no motives what so ever. Still not as shockingly evil as Precia, and he did have his Pet the Dog moments in the Sound Dramas.
- Then there's Jail Scaglietti, Quattro's boss and a Mad Scientist far surpassing Precia, who doesn't make any pretenses to having a motive and proved himself to be utterly, disgustingly evil even before he used a five-year-old to power an Artifact of Doom and forced her to attack her mother. Again, his WTF-pwnage was most wonderful to see.
It's the second part that bothers me. Can he be a Complete Monster if he isn't as evil as the character who set the bar for Complete Monsterdom in this setting? Are his Pet the Dog moments exclusive to the Sound Dramas? What do you guys think?
- Oh, he's that bad in the novel too. You just have to read his line concerning what he considers "good parenting" (he raised his own daughter so that she's eagerly awaiting her chance to participate in Battle Royale so daddy'll be proud of her), when in the same conversation he gleefully tells the surviving students the Awful Truth about (part of) the why of Battle Royale; even unflappable Bad Ass Shogo is shocked and appalled to the point of tears. His movie counterpart, though, avoids the trope thanks to a few humanizing scenes and flashbacks (and being played by Takeshi Kitano).
Battle Royale had a double entry, so I merged them. This part is about the novel, so I'll rework it and put it in Litterature. I was the one who originally wrote that paragraph, anyway.
edited 21st Nov '10 1:30:07 AM by Paireon
I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me.
Pronounced YAK-you-luss
Scaglietti's got a big Freudian Excuse - he was designed from the ground up to be the perfect Mad Scientist. That said, he's a tough case, given a definite Moral Event Horizon crossing (strapping a six-year-old to an operating table and painfully implanting her with unstable magical artifacts in order to turn her into a living power source for his Doomsday Device), and the fact that his Pet the Dog moments were towards minions who are very loyal to and fond of him for rather suspect reasons (he's an expert brainwasher who built them from scratch), and who he impregnated with copies of himself in order to ensure his immortality.
Can probably be pulled, but he's really borderline.
edited 21st Nov '10 5:07:29 AM by Iaculus
What's precedent ever done for us?
I wear no mask.
Yeech! That last one pretty much decided it. Parental Incest (or something of a close facsimile) really pushes the wrong buttons to me. I don't think I'll be removing him after learning this.
I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me.
Pronounced YAK-you-luss
To be fair, it was artificial insemination for entirely pragmatic purposes, not an excuse to get his jollies off with some delicious abuse of power.
Still hella squicky, though.
What's precedent ever done for us?
Precia has an out of complete monster-dom: she used to be genuinely a nice person. The loss of her daughter and her quest for power probably drove her insane. By the time we get to see her that barely matters anymore, mind you, so wanting her to qualify us understandable.
For Jail, does "perfect mad scientist" have to mean "evil"? Or does he just use his creation as an excuse? I don't remember. But I'm pretty sure it's not milked for sympathy (he uses his origin as a Hanibal Lecture Not So Different weapon against Fate), he has free will as far as we know, and I'm not sure I'd call it "adequate".
edited 21st Nov '10 4:37:49 PM by Elle
Pronounced YAK-you-luss
Hard to say. Certainly, it meant amoral, given that he was intended to be a weapons designer for some rather shady individuals.
What's precedent ever done for us?
considering the way yammy went down (the fight that was never shown and then kenpachi and byakuya's less-than-stellar comments about it, and of course the Licked By The Puppy!Car thing which was meant, i guess, as an Alas, Poor Villain moment of sorts), i would absolutely say he's mostly taken as a joke. even by the audience; how many people thought the whole "0th espada" thing was absolute genius precisely because yammy was the last arrancar they'd ever expect to be the most powerful? he was taken as a joke from the beginning. i wouldn't count him as a CM.
as far as nnoitra goes, i skipped most of the chapters that had him in it (ugh, he just creeped me out immensely) so i can't really comment on that one.
...when did ichigo feel sorry for aizen? did i miss a chapter? 'cause i don't remember that happening when ichigo defeated him. shoot, i wish i could open mangareader in this computer. O_o but again, i note that there's a difference between feeling sorry for someone and wishing things had gone differently. like Paireon mentioned, he doesn't excuse aizen's actions, instead he wishes aizen could've known/felt something ichigo himself feels is important.
"i feel sorry for him, he never felt love" does not make that person less of a monster. "i feel sorry for him, he only wanted to feel love" may. two different sorts of pity there.
(still, i would appreciate someone refreshing my memory on that particular scene).
as far as scaglietti goes, i'm not familiar with him (which work is he from, anyway?), but it's this bit that makes me pause: "he was designed from the ground up to be the perfect Mad Scientist." he was designed? like a pre-programmed robot or similar? so does that mean he doesn't have any free will when it comes to his Mad Scientist-ness, there's no way he could choose not to be evil? 'cause that might be enough to leave him out of Complete Monster-dom, in my book.
and as far as rank goes, whether or not the character is a CM has nothing to do with rank. you could have a Big Bad with an adequate Freudian Excuse, while The Dragon gleefully goes around following the Big Bad's order to murder and destroy simply because he Loves the Sound of Screaming. of course, i would expect The Dragon to eventually take over if he's that evil, but it doesn't always happen. it's not about rank or leadership qualities, although those do help.
Pronounced YAK-you-luss
Dr. Jail Scaglietti is from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha.
It's really hard to say how much free will he has. We know he has a predisposition towards unethical scientific experimentation, but we don't know how much is built in and how much is just him being a sadistic nutbag.
It doesn't help that artificial humans built for specific purposes in the Nanoha-verse have pretty good odds on living as thoroughly nice, productive members of society - see also, the living weapons known as the Wolkenritter, Fate the benignly defective Replacement Goldfish, and a good number of Scaglietti's own home-grown Super Soldiers. The doctor himself, meanwhile, is locked up in a maximum-security orbital facility whilst the Bureau - a civilisation with a big focus on prisoner rehabilitation - quietly attempts to forget all about him.
edited 22nd Nov '10 10:26:36 AM by Iaculus
What's precedent ever done for us?
Good point about the other artificial humans: I think the case for Jail having free will can be made.
- If he was totally devoid of free will, or completely a product of his environment, he couldn't have turned against the government. Likely the most they could have done is select genes for personality traits and intelligence. There isn't an indication shown that he was mistreated or forcefully indoctrinated in any way.
- He presumably bred the Numbers to be "in his own image" to a degree, or at least to have them be weapons loyal to him, but their actual position on the moral spectrum varies. Two of them turn out to be protagonists, ignorant of their origin until partway though the series, several in the epilogue get rehabilitated while the unrepentant ones are given life sentences.
- Fate is probably an example of the fact that you can have all the genetics exactly a way you think will produce an expected result, but the person will come out different.
And a separate thing to consider, do his Pet the Dog moments in the audio make him less scary, or more? I know in the anime he has subtext with one or two of the other Numbers but only the ones that approach him on the evil scale.
edited 22nd Nov '10 2:25:39 PM by Elle
Oh, ok then. He's one of the first examples on the Villainy Discretionary Shot trope page itself. I assume he should probably be removed from there?
I'm on it.