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
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
He doesn't love them though. Both died when he was young and he never really expresses love towards them.
He never expresses any love for them in the modern day, honestly. It just drove him mad with fury and rage from the stories I've seen.
Cleric of Banjo
Re Walder Frey in the books versus show, besides the factor of other villains standing out as more heinous, these are what I understand to be the redeeming qualities such as they are:
- While it isn't clear he necessarily loved him, Walder had been grooming his son and heir Stevron for his (Stevron's) entire life, and while Stevron is a good guy in contrast with his old man, one lesson he learned from Walder was the importance of taking care of your family. Steven dies in battle fighting for Robb, which happens right before Robb gets married and breaks his oath to the Freys.
- Related to the above, iirc, Walder cites among his grievances the loss of a fair amount of troops (in addition to his son and heir) supporting Robb's cause.
So, while very disproportionate in both mediums, Walder Frey's revenge in the books has a certain amount of understandable cause. The show pretty much implies he was traitorous all along and waiting for an opportunity, and the revenge was motivated by a feeling of being looked down upon.
Edit, edit, edit, edit the wiki
I still question including a character who was driven mad by his parents' deaths.
The Merry Monarch of Darkness
Concurred.
Which reminds me, remember Obadiah Stane? We decided he qualified, but I read that watching his father shoot himself made his hair fall out. So even if he felt no sympathy for his father's death, that suggests it affected him on some level, if only an unconscious one.
The pig of Hufflepuff pulsed like a large bullfrog. Dumbledore smiled at it, and placed his hand on its head: "You are Hagrid now."
Cleric of Banjo
Batman?
He wasn't driven mad as in insane, he was just pissed off and became a villian because of it. At no point does he ever show any love or feeling towards his parents, it'd be less than Bellatrix's obsession with Voldermort in terms of redeeming features.
Stane grew up into a man who disdained his father, though. That doesn't mitigate his deeds.
The Merry Monarch of Darkness
I know that, I was just wondering if apparently experiencing some likely-unconscious trauma over his death is enough to cut him.
![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Thumbs_up_emoticon_3268.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
For Ramsay Bolton and Walder Frey.
Does Obadiah's son count, being a terrorist, or does his Even Evil Has Standards with tobacco executives (the biggest cause of death in the world) disclude him?
Is this an acceptable entry for Mister Dark, and if so, could an admin please add it to the page?
- Mister Dark casually ravages, decays, perverts, and destroys everybody and everything around him to turn Nightmare Fuel level horrible For the Evulz. This includes millions of ordinary civilians in New York City, with aims to spread his rule everywhere on the planet. He casually and condescendingly causes former friends and families to distrust and despair to the point of savagely murdering each other, turns his victims into undead slaves, and spreads intense gloom, doom, fear, despair, murder, oppression, and corruption everywhere, with no provocation whatsoever necessary from anybody.
edited 3rd Aug '13 11:43:04 PM by CodenameBravo
Ezekiel Stane genuinely loves his girlfriend. Redeeming quality, unfortunately.
Let me help with the Mr. Dark entry shortly
Thank you.
Btw: Ishamael and Semirhage are already listed, but I really think that most of the Forsaken in Wheel Of Time qualify, save Demandred and Lanfear. We don't know all that much about for example Be'lal and Rahvin though.
edited 4th Aug '13 1:13:57 AM by CodenameBravo
From what I heard only Promethus from Justice League: Cry for Justice qualifies, and he was retconned to be an imposter
I thought that Cry For Justice retconned all non-Morrisson Prometheus appearances as an imposter?
The above is correct. Prometheus becomes a CM in Cry For Justice, but that's the real Prommy
15106: Characters can have zero redeeming qualities and still not qualify. There are a ton of MLP examples that most certainly do not qualify yet lack any redeeming qualities and are just Jerkasses. A Complete Monster cannot just be a Jerkass. They have to go above and beyond for their actions to count.
Fair warning: I can get pretty emotional and take things too seriously.
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
No, a CM CAN be a Jerkass, but he can't be JUST a Jerkass.
EDIT: I think.
edited 4th Aug '13 12:37:49 PM by ACW
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM DraftsWell they have to do something other than physically abuse someone. I hate bringing him up again but the reason Ghetsis was disqualified was because all he did was abuse his son and attempt murder on a 14 year old protagonist, therefore he didn't do anything that pushed him into CM territory. And all Cipher did was animal cruelty which isn't a qualifier however disgusting I find it.
And even if a character meets the heinous standard in a universe like MLP, it's a moot point because anyone can be redeemed regardless of how heinous they are. The fanfics are exempt from this because they don't follow the same guidelines. In a universe like that, even a fascist dictator could be redeemed.
Now if we're talking about someone like Brokenstar or Manfred Von Karma who have both the deeds and meet the heinous standard and their universe is dark enough to warrant a CM then they obviously qualify regardless of being Jerkasses.
Unless I'm mistaken and Manfred doesn't qualify.
edited 4th Aug '13 12:55:24 PM by Klavice
Fair warning: I can get pretty emotional and take things too seriously.
Actually, that's about right.
Yeah, Manfred murdered a man solely for exposing his corrupt practices and then raised the man's son to destroy his legacy with the sole intention to pin his own father's murder on him.
That is beyond jerkass
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
See, with Ghetsis (I'm NOT saying he qualifies), but when does child-killing move beyond standard villain into monsterdom?
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts
Ghetsis also had Generic Doomsday Plot and a lot of IMPLIED child abuse/Offscreen Villainy considerations against him.
edited 4th Aug '13 1:25:12 PM by LargoQuagmire
From what I hear, the 'kill' was a mistranslation. He tried to freeze them.
One could make the argument, I'm not sure how I'd go, that because they're the heroes, it's just standard
We've always ruled that "villain tries to kill the heroes" isn't a qualifier, because it's what a large majority of villains do - and most of those who don't are either from works that have no real violence to begin with, or works that are too-lighthearted to have characters that qualify anyway.
![[down]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_down.png "[down]"){kind=icon}
Well, yes, I suppose it's more like "villain merely tries to kill the heroes" isn't a qualifier.
edited 4th Aug '13 5:19:24 PM by nrjxll
Expanding on that, though, there have been cases of "villain tries to kill heroes in an incredibly sadistic manner" where that fact has counted towards their qualifying. (I don't think we've included anyone just on that basis, though.)
