Ask The Tropers

All CM examples go through the dedicated forum thread. Examples that qualify are properly crosswicked and can be checked against the locked CM pages.

Looks as though this one wasn't cross-wicked, and its threadbare description suggests it was almost certainly not discussed in the thread. An edit reason would have been nice, but the removal appears correctly motivated.

There was so much misuse (ie: listing every really evil character when this trope is for the extreme of being both evil AND having literally no redeeming traits or sympathetic qualities) that every example has to be discussed in the forum thread and approved now.

Doing horrible things isn't this trope. Doing horrible thing AND being completely unlikable with no redeeming qualities, Pet the Dog moments, or sympathetic excuses is.

^ Pretty sure "completely unlikable" isn't prerequisite. Ok, you don't like the character as a person, but they can be likable as a villain. Sometime they're incredible fun to watch, maybe they're only one who manage to counter the resident Mary Sue with The Reason You Suck Shut Up, Kirk!, for example.

The criteria are discussed in the topic.

• They must be exceptional in terms of heinousness, both within the context of the work and the context of general audience expectations for works of that type.
• They must not be eclipsed in heinousness by other characters in the work, even if said characters themselves do not meet the standards for CM. (Note: Allowances may be made for wildly varying capabilities — a corporate overlord may do more net harm, but a serial killer is a much more personal threat and operates on a vastly different scale.)
• They must not have any redeeming qualities, such as love, remorse, etc. If presented with the opportunity for redemption, they reject it.
• They must not have a genuine excuse for their actions — any justification they bring to the table should be insufficient or clearly specious.
• They must have agency — they must be in voluntary control of their own behavior and moral choices.
• They must be characterized sufficiently to establish motivation and intent. A Generic Doomsday Villain may do awful things, but unless we get some sense of why they do it, they can't be a CM.
• Their actions must be visible to the audience and they must be directly responsible for said actions. Offscreen Villainy usually doesn't count; heinousness cannot be an Informed Attribute.
• They must be an individual, not a group.

• They should be reviled In-Universe. If there's anyone out there expressing love or regard for them, and that character is not brainwashed or otherwise insane, it's a serious mitigating factor.
• They may be comedic, so long as their humor value does not mitigate their evil. Villains who laugh while torturing and killing can be among the most terrifying.
• They cannot be genuinely likable; any apparent affability must be a facade.
• The work itself should be capable of believably sustaining a monstrous character without losing its audience. This is why most works intended for young children (a "G", "E", or equivalent rating) can't have a CM.

• We will not consider creepypastas or dark fics where the sole or primary intent is to evoke horror or disgust without any consideration for verisimilitude with the canonical interpretation of a character or characters.

I almost feel like we're starting to run afoul of Tropes Are Not Narrow with this one, guys...

Not relevant in this case. CM is a subjective trope because people cannot agree on the criteria, and it becomes something of a stamp of honor for a work to claim one. The cleanup effort is intended to address the problem by establishing rules that allow it to at least maintain the veneer of objectivity. The trope itself is legendary and is not going away, but the alternative to being rigorous is to have literally every villain in every work listed, which is what was happening before we attacked it.

I kind of thought that was the point of YMMV tropes, of which this seems to be marked a YMMV trope judging by the banner.

The thing is, YMMV tropes still all have definitions. And people love to add Complete Monster without bothering to figure out if they fit the definition of it.

And if we let CM just go the way it was going, damn near every single work would have Complete Monster listed effectively making it meaningless. For reasons beyond my comprehension, fans tend to want their pet work to have a CM and think that it makes them better so they shoehorn it in.

You can longer call a trope an audience reaction in good faith when it has such a restrictive definition. It might as well be moved to the main work pages and have it's YMMV status revoked at that point.

In theory, that's the goal. Whether we ever get there or not is another matter. As it stands, all CM examples get voted on in the topic, which rather disrupts the idea that it can be treated objectively.

CM is also not an audience reaction. It's a subjective trope, which is different. A subjective trope is based on criteria observably present in the work, even if people may disagree about the extent to which it occurs.

This is dependent of Moral Event Horizon, that is an Audience Reaction.

Worth noting: Moral Event Horizon is not an audience reaction, either.

That's not what subjective means

It's unclear why we are having this argument. There are several classes of non-work, non-creator article that we recognize:

• Objective tropes, which occur factually within a work
• YMMV tropes, which are arguable in terms of presence or degree of presence
• Trivia, which is interesting information that is external to the presentation of a work — you wouldn't know it just by watching
• Audience reactions, which do not occur within a work at all, but rather in a viewer's thoughts or opinions about a work
• Flame bait, which is a subcategory of YMMV trope and/or audience reaction that is so volatile that we've decided not to host examples at all

In many cases, the difference between an objective and a YMMV trope is usage: does it cause arguments? Is it a constant source of natter? Do we keep having to clean up examples that are a matter of opinion rather than fact? In all these criteria, Complete Monster falls squarely into the YMMV category.

However, YMMV tropes can still have definitions. They aren't an excuse to lump anything you feel like in there because "it's your opinion, man". The reason for the CM cleanup thread and the strict criteria that we've been applying is that people were literally shoveling any villain they thought was the slightest bit mean into it, making it meaningless. It can't be seriously defined as the "worst possible villain, with no redeeming qualities" when some teenager beating up his younger brother is held in the same category as Jack the Ripper.

Shoboni: Let's put it this way. The subjective, YMMV aspect to Complete Monster is not "I would like to call this character a CM" (which was the case before the cleanup effort), because it would make the trope so subjective as to be meaningless. It would mean just "somebody out there really thinks this character is evil".

Instead, the consensus has been to make a set of criteria, and the subjective part is "I think the character fulfils the criteria".

In general on this wiki, YMMV does not mean anything goes. Ignoring this is likely to land you in trouble and other tropers with a cleanup effort.

In attempting to fix it we've gone the opposite extreme and and IMO, I strongly believe the new definition runs afoul of Tropes Are Not Narrow because so many restrictions have been added.

Regardless, we've answered the OP's question and I am locking this.